As part of its fourth-quarter earnings announcement early this morning, the company said that co-founder Mike Lazaridis will retire as vice chairman and director on May 1.

Well then. That’s progress.

The beauty of this gorgeous black Les Paul Custom Lite is more than skin deep, and Gibson USA has also packed added versatility into the traditional formula. Two of Gibson’s most popular humbucking pickups from the Modern Classics series offer all the tone that made the Les Paul legendary in the first place, plus added single-coil sounds thanks to the coil-splitting mini-toggle switch added in place of the second tone control.

Jim and Dan talk about Apple’s broken promise (iCloud), Google Reader, Fever, NetNewsWire, Black Pixel, Newsfire, iTunes Purchase fraud, WifiSLAM, the value of Apple stock, guitars, and more.

Sponsored by Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME3 for 30% off), and Shopify, and Harvest (use code 5BY5 for 50% off).

Tim Holmes has some photos on Flickr. I remember that day well — I wrote a story about his return that night.

[Via DF]

This is a great conference with one of the best speaker line-ups I’ve seen. Don Melton, Matt Gemmell, Matthew Panzarino and many others, including me, will be there. Go sign-up and we’ll see you there.

Feedbin, a Google Reader alternative I mentioned last week, will be supported in Silvio Rizzi’s popular Reeder app. Great news!

Portuguese media companies, struggling through the worst recession since the 1970s, are pressing Google to pay for content on its news search engine, echoing similar demands elsewhere in Europe.

I’m not sure I understand the demands by these media companies. Google links to the articles which should bring in traffic to the sites, enabling them to make money. I don’t see any ads on Google News, so it doesn’t appear they are making money from it.

“I went into my local store to return my Astro pants and Invert crops, both purchased this month. I was asked to BEND OVER in order to determine sheerness. The sales associate then perused my butt in the dim lighting of the change room and deemed them “not sheer”.

Wow Lululemon.

Another interesting article from Horace Dediu.

I was a guest on the the latest MacVoices podcast, #1399. I joined host Chuck Joiner, author and developer Dori Smith and coder/writer/web developer Brett Terpstra to discuss Dropbox’s acquisition of Mailbox, Google Reader and the future of RSS, and Apple’s hiring of Kevin Lynch, former CTO of Adobe. It’s available both as an audio-only stream and video if you’d like to see our pretty faces.

The only country where Google+ is top of the social networking category is Albania.

What the hell is going on in Albania?

I am a huge fan of negative space in design.

Well, for one thing, it doesn’t help that it’s been opposed for years by the company behind the most popular consumer tax software — Intuit, maker of TurboTax. Conservative tax activist Grover Norquist and an influential computer industry group also have fought return-free filing.

Intuit has spent about $11.5 million on federal lobbying in the past five years — more than Apple or Amazon. Although the lobbying spans a range of issues, Intuit’s disclosures pointedly note that the company “opposes IRS government tax preparation.”

Well, of course they’re going to oppose anything that takes their customers away.

I would be remiss if I didn’t mention Shaun Inman’s great Fever feed reader. With all the talk about finding a replacement for Google Reader, Fever should be high on your list.

RocketNews24:

Sometimes the hustle and bustle of big city life in Tokyo makes you forget your manners. With most people commuting by train and working very long hours, sometimes there’s no time to do things at home. And sometimes, you’re just so tired and stressed that you don’t care that you are behaving badly.

As a result, back in 2008, the Tokyo Metro system launched a three-year-long campaign aimed at reminding subway passengers to mind their manners while riding the trains.

Some of these are hilarious.

A new weather service from the people behind the Dark Sky app. This is really nice.

Are you a fan of the Alien movies? Are you a fan of William Gibson, SciFi author? Then you’re in luck.

Gibson just tweeted a link to a site that has the script of his first ever screenplay – Alien 3. This version was never made but it’s an interesting look into what might have been.

Grab it before some tight-assed Hollywood type makes the script disappear.

Ellis Hamburger wrote a great piece about why we haven’t seen more app developers supporting iCloud.

Tabular is a brand new tablature editor that lets you read and write music for guitar, bass, drums and much more. It’s the best way to learn new songs, write your own songs and run through practice exercises for nearly any kind of stringed instrument or drum kit.

It’s a nice looking app. I haven’t tried it yet, but it looks well done.

MacUpdate’s promotion is ending soon.

T-Mobile USA Inc. will begin selling the iPhone 5 on April 12, letting customers buy the Apple Inc. (AAPL) device via an installment plan that dispenses with the industry’s typical long-term contracts.

Qualifying buyers can get the phone for $99.99 down, plus monthly payments, T-Mobile said today at an event in New York. Service for the phone starts at $50 per month for unlimited calls and 500 megabytes of data.

Manton Reece takes a look at Netbot, Felix, and Riposte for App.net.

Yes, I laughed.

In December, the council unveiled its customary annual list of new Swedish words. Among the words that Swedes had begun using in 2012 was “ogooglebar” (‘ungoogleable’).

The California-based multinational soon got into a huff, asking the council to amend its definition. But the language experts refused to bow down to the demands, instead choosing a third option – removing the term all together.

Now Google is trying to control the words a country and its population can use? Really Google.