Cult of Mac put together some of Jefferies analyst Peter Misek’s predictions over the past couple of years. How does this man still have a job?

TreeHugger:

The recent death of John E Karlin of Bell Labs, the father of the push-button phone and other innovations, has sparked a lot of reminiscing about land line phones. According to the New York Times, Karlin was also “the most hated man in America” for killing the named exchanges (like Butterfield 8). However the story of how our phone numbers got to be the way they are is a much longer and more interesting one.

Fascinating story of the history of phone numbers.

The new lawsuit, filed by an investor from Pennsylvania in U.S. District Court in New York, seeks to block Apple from moving forward with a February 27 shareholder vote on two proxy proposals.

One of the proposals is the same measure Einhorn targeted that would eliminate from the company charter Apple’s ability to issue preferred stock.

I met the guy that’s building these during NAMM and I like what he’s doing. Go take a look at his ideas and support the project.

Apple is gearing up for a special media event next month related to its television initiative that may deliver the tools developers will need to prepare applications for a formal relaunch of the company’s Apple TV product, analysts for Jefferies Equity Research said Wednesday.

Nope.

Bryan Chaffin:

Apple saw almost as many visitors to its retail stores as Disney sees at its theme parks around the world.

Wow. There are some other great comparisons in the chart too.

Update: Bryan updated the article to show that Apple actually had 370 million for the year, not 120 million.

Pauline France at Fender.com:

There are tons of guitar riffs out there, but only a few have become deeply ingrained and ubiquitous in pop culture. Our Top 10 Instantly Recognizable Guitar Riffs all have something in common: They’re the ones you can’t wait to learn how to play; the ones you catch yourself humming; the ones that are revered worldwide by musicians and non-musicians alike.

There are so many riffs to chose from — Pauline picked some good ones.

Worldwide mobile phone sales to end users totaled 1.75 billion units in 2012, a 1.7 percent decline from 2011 sales, according to Gartner, Inc. Smartphones continued to drive overall mobile phone sales, and the fourth quarter of 2012 saw record smartphone sales of 207.7 million units, up 38.3 percent from the same period last year.

Apple’s number three in overall phone sales, not just smartphone sales, according to Gartner’s figures. Samsung leads with 22.7 percent marketshare – a figure Gartner attributes to Samsung’s strong placement not only in the Android market, where it is far and away the market leader, but also with less expensive feature phones. Nokia trails in second place with 18.0 percent, the lowest it’s ever been, according to Gartner, with demand diminishing 53.6 percent year over year. Apple comes in third at 9.2 percent, with 43.5 million units sold – a 22.7 percent year over year increase.

The batteries that your mobile devices contain are miracles of engineering. They hold amounts of energy that their predecessors couldn’t come close to equaling. Properly using this potential can help your mobile batteries last longer on the road. Here are our tips for obtaining optimum battery performance.

Some good suggestions here for making sure you get the best life you can out of your mobile electronics.

Co.Exist:

San Francisco’s Bay Bridge is the dollar store version of the famed Golden Gate Bridge. Before the Bay Bridge closes down this summer for final touches on the new, safer eastern span, the bridge is getting gussied up by artist Leo Villareal, who is individually programming 25,000 white LED lights to generate an endless series of sparkling patterns across the structure.

“Bay Lights”…will be the world’s largest light sculpture upon its completion in March.

The utilitarian Bay Bridge is the ugly stepchild of San Francisco bridges, always coming up short in comparison to the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge. Hopefully this project isn’t just putting lipstick on a pig.

Speaking at our D: Dive Into Media conference on Tuesday, HBO’s Eric Kessler said “effective today we will be enabling AirPlay” for HBO Go.

HBO still say they’re coming to Apple TV.

First Alicia Keys is named creative director of BlackBerry, now Justin Timberlake is the creative director for Bud Lite Platinum.

I’d be pissed if I was a real creative director.

Eric Slivka posted the transcript on MacRumors. Definitely worth reading.

While not a main talking point of the interview, [Samsung Executive Vice President David] Eun told All Things D’s Kara Swisher that he saw the seemingly endless legal struggle as “a loss” for innovation in the fast-moving tech industry.

Translation:

We are very upset that Apple is focused on the lawsuits and not releasing more amazing products that we can blatantly steal.

One of my favorite apps gets updated with some bug fixes.

For all of the money in the video games business, it’s just incredible that none of these analysts, developers, executives, or stakeholders has bothered to own up to what the truth about these games failing actually could be. Nobody wants to state the obvious and take responsibility for all of these millions of dollars in development and promotion squandered. So many excuses, but nobody talking straight.

It could be that your game just fucking sucked.

Preach.

USAToday:

PepsiCo on Monday announced it is rolling out “a new way to do mornings” with Kickstart, a fruit-flavored Mountain Dew beverage.

“Our consumers told us they are looking for an alternative to traditional morning beverages – one that tastes great, includes real fruit juice and has just the right amount of kick to help them start their days,” said Greg Lyons, Mountain Dew’s vice president of marketing.

Kickstart has far less caffeine than energy drinks — 92 milligrams for a 16-ounce can. By comparison, a 16-ounce cup of Starbucks coffee has 330 milligrams of caffeine.

Does anyone really want a “morning beverage” that tastes like “Mountain Dew and fruit juice” that has even less caffeine than their coffee?

Gadling:

Chinese New Year is the one time of year when everyone returns to their home villages to see family members and it’s been called the largest annual human migration in the world.

Some Chinese who can’t get train or plane tickets find creative ways to get home for the holiday. China Daily reports that one adventurous soul took a scenic route home, using “48 buses, a ferry, a free ride and his own feet to carry him 660km to his home town.”

You think traveling around the US is hard at Thanksgiving? It’s a cakewalk compared to the insanity in China this time of year.

Test your browser. I got two different scores in Safari, although they were close. Chrome scored about nine points higher.

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From the Nike Support Twitter account.

@mkoyerp Right now, we’re focused on iOS and web. We’re not working on an Android App.

— Nike Support (@NikeSupport) February 10, 2013

Rene Ritchie lines up the most popular Twitter apps and compares them.

Why do I think this will backfire.

Nicely done.

He added that the first class participating in the iMedEd Initiative scored an average of 23 percent higher on their national exams – taken at the end of the second year of medical school – than previous UC Irvine medical school classes, despite having similar incoming GPAs and MCAT scores.

That’s impressive.