Apple is providing a live stream of the event which takes place February 12 at 7:15 am PT / 10:15 am ET.

[Via TNW]

A handy tip from Michael Gorbach, an engineer that works on Kaleidoscope 2.

Two mobile operators in Europe have told customers with an iPhone 4S to avoid updating the device to iOS 6.1, because of reports that the upgrade brings connectivity problems with it.

Vodafone UK claims Apple is working on a fix related to 3G connectivity. iOS 6.1 has been out for almost two weeks, so this comes a bit late. But if you’re in either vendor’s service area and you’re using a 4S, it may be a good idea to put off updating for now.

As much as iCloud is the right idea still not realized, Dropbox is the wrong thing done brilliantly well. And at the end of the day, that still amounts to the wrong thing.

Interesting article by Rene Ritchie.

Note that you have to opt-in and change the settings yourself. I’ve been enjoying ADN.

Laughing Squid:

In the Brazilian town of Santo Antônio da Platina, spiders known as Anelosimus eximius were shot by Erick Reis as they showered the sky. Marta Fischer, a local biologist, is quoted at G1 as saying (translated), “…They are usually in trees during the day and in the late afternoon and early evening construct a sort of sheet webs, each makes his and then they come together. The goal is to capture insects.” She also says this phenomenon is normal.

Normal? NORMAL!? There’s nothing “normal” about thousands of spiders just hanging around in the evening sky!

io9:

Like so many couples, the husband and wife in Timothy Reckart’s Oscar-nominated animated short Head Over Heels have drifted apart, not just emotionally, but gravitationally as well. They roam their flying house, one living on the ceiling, one living on the floor, each barely acknowledging the other’s existence. Then, one day, the husband tries to reconnect with his ceiling-dwelling wife, setting in motion a chain of events that radically alter their existence.

Have some tissues handy. Your eyes are going to leak.

Esquire:

Beer is made by way of science. So it makes sense that a beer’s vessel should be constructed through science, too. And it makes perfect sense that the top craft pale-ale seller in the nation Sierra Nevada, and cultish extreme-beer fiends Dogfish Head — two companies that have gone to great lengths to make science improve their brews — collaborated with German glassmakers Spiegelau to engineer a glass specifically for the drinking of IPAs.

Serious beer drinkers know the shape and style of glass you drink your beer from can affect the taste of the beer itself.

I saw a number of these at NAMM in LA a few weeks ago. Everyone loved them and they looked really cool.

Paul Thurrott suggests that at least one Microsoft Store and other retailers are sold out of the Surface Pro 128GB model. He also said that Microsoft’s online store is sold out of that model.

This is great news for Microsoft, but I’ll wait until I hear exactly how many were sold before I congratulate the company too much.

I’d like to thank Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week with BBEdit, an app that I’ve been using since 1994.

BBEdit 10.5 from Bare Bones Software — The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac just keeps getting better. Now with Retina support and many other improvements — download the demo and see for yourself!

Michael Dell:

I am confident we are making the right decisions to position Dell, our customers and employees for long-term success. There is much more we can accomplish together.

I can’t wait to see what he does.

DudeFoods:

What if I were to make a grilled cheese sandwich that used this cheese in place of bread? A grilled cheese sandwich that was 100% cheese!

I like cheese more than any mouse but even I think this “sandwich” is a heart attack starter kit.

Kevin Roose on his using his BlackBerry Z10 review unit:

But then you died. After four days of trying you out, for no reason at all, you simply refused to turn on. I removed and replaced your battery, tried to manually reset you, and even connected you to my laptop to see if I could revive you that way. But you stayed there, motionless and dark, the lifeblood drained from your mini-USB port.

Hey, what’s that noise? BlackBerry circling the drain.

The University of Queensland:

The first Professor of Physics at the University of Queensland, Professor Thomas Parnell, began an experiment in 1927 to illustrate that everyday materials can exhibit quite surprising properties. The experiment demonstrates the fluidity and high viscosity of pitch, a derivative of tar once used for waterproofing boats. At room temperature pitch feels solid – even brittle – and can easily be shattered with a blow from a hammer. It’s quite amazing then, to see that pitch at room temperature is actually fluid!

You’ve heard the term “slower than molasses”? Apparently, pitch is even slower. (thanks to @JennS79 for the link)

Rian van der Merwe:

[Dieter] Rams didn’t say that good design disappears completely. “As little design as possible” is not about making things invisible, it’s about “not burdening products with non-essentials”. It’s about making the right choices about what should be there, and what shouldn’t.

Great article.

Ed Bott clearly did a lot of work on this article comparing the disk space of the Surface Pro and the MacBook Air, but I’ll tell you this — I’d put the MacBook Air up against the Surface Pro anytime, anywhere.

Watching people fumble around the Surface Pro running Windows apps on a tablet screen? Yeah, bring that on.

The Fed statement on Thursday was its first explicit acknowledgment that it did not yet know the extent of the security breach. Cyber-security specialists say it takes time to thoroughly investigate a stealthy intrusion by skilled hackers.

I agree with Harry Marks. “Source Links” at the bottom of articles are a way for a site to steal your content, but make themselves feel better about doing it.

Ben Brooks has a big list of things he wants for his ideal platform. I would like many of those items, but I would most like a simple interface that only loads the code needed for what I’m using on a particular page on the site.

I would pay for a platform like that.

Jim and Dan discuss Dell going private and how Apple has defined itself over the years with a brief appearance by Dan’s mom. Later they are joined by Greg Howard of 3 Monkeys Amps to talk about building custom amplifiers.

Sponsored by Hover (use code DANSENTME for 10% off), Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME2 for 30% off), and Squarespace (use code DANSENTME2 for 10% off).

Mediacase lets media professionals manage video projects online with friendly tools for delivery, collaboration, and storage. Say goodbye to hard drives and file transfers.

I spoke with the guy that started this last night. Sounds like a great idea.

Find the lowest calorie alcohol.

Apple updating shareholders on its cash plans.

BlackBerry will stop selling smartphones in Japan, partly because the company cannot justify the cost of modifying its operating system to accommodate the Japanese language.

Lucky Japanese.