Audio engineer Paul DeCarli put together 20 of his favorite tips for Pro Tools and published them in a book for the iPad. I met with Paul at NAMM last week and he did a good job with this book.

With 29 incredibly detailed Variax instruments—plus the ability to virtually tune down a whole octave without impacting playability or intonation—JTV-89F shatters the limitations of traditional guitars. The Floyd Rose licensed double-locking tremolo system by Graph Tech, high-gain humbucking pickups and lightning-fast fretboard combine to make JTV-89F the perfect instrument for players of heavier, high-gain styles.

A modeling guitar with a Floyd Rose is very interesting.

Ballmer knocking Dropbox pretty much ensures its success.

WakeyWakey is a utility application that runs on Mac OS X (Lion or Mountain Lion). It was born out of necessity. I have two Macs that share a keyboard and mouse. The problem was that the second system’s monitor would go to sleep. I had to figure out a way to wake up the second monitor. The result is WakeyWakey.

There’s a companion iOS app too.

Ars Technica:

in this article, the first in a five-part series covering online security, we’re going to talk a bit about keeping yourself (and your business) safe on the Web. Even if you know what lurks in the dark corners of the Internet, chances are you know someone you who doesn’t. Consider this guide and its follow-ups as a handy crash course for those unschooled in the nuances of online security.

You can never know too much about keeping yourself and your friends and family safe on the internet.

Daniel Eran Dilger:

Among these online movie rental competitors, Apple now takes 45 percent of unit share, followed by Amazon’s Instant Video with 18 percent, the Walmart-owned Vudo with 15 percent, Microsoft’s Zune/Xbox with 14 percent share, and other players (including Google Play and Sony’s PlayStation Store) splitting the remaining 8 percent (no other player can command more than a 5 percent share).

So basically there’s Apple and then everyone else fighting for second.

From the folks at iStockphoto.

Produced by Legendary Pictures for Warner Bros, who continue to look for a solid franchise to work with, it’s now been revealed that Duncan Jones will be taking on the directorial duties for the feature.

Duncan Jones directed “Moon” with Sam Rockwell and “Source Code” with Jake Gyllenhaal. Duncan’s other claim to fame is being David Bowie’s son.

“The threat right now is that Apple has gained a huge amount of market share, and has a relatively obvious pathway towards entering the living room with their platform,” [Valve Software CEO Gabe] Newell said. “I think that there’s a scenario where we see sort of a dumbed down living room platform emerging — I think Apple rolls the console guys really easily. The question is can we make enough progress in the PC space to establish ourselves there, and also figure out better ways of addressing mobile before Apple takes over the living room?”

Valve is working on hardware devices to complement their Steam game service, which is available for the Mac. The device will run on Linux and will enable Steam gamers to play games from their TV rather than having to use a Mac or PC.

IDC reports that tablet shipments set another record for the fourth quarter of 2012, with 52.5 million units sold worldwide. Apple’s way out in front with 43.6 percent of the market, but that’s actually down from 46.4 percent for the previous quarter, when Apple sold 14 million iPads, and down from 51.7 percent for the same quarter a year before.

Apple’s volume of iPads and iPad minis sold surged for the quarter with 22.9 million units. Samsung sold 7.9 million tablets during the same period, for 15.1 percent share. Amazon, Asus and Barnes & Noble trailed behind. Microsoft, with its vaunted Surface tablet, was nowhere to be found on the list.

IDC’s Ryan Reith noted that devices based on Windows 8 and Windows RT “failed to gain much ground during their launch quarter, and reaction to the company’s Surface with Windows RT tablet was muted at best.”

[Editor’s note: Readers are having trouble accessing the link. The IDC report seems to have been removed.]

Nvidia took the game industry by surprise at CES with its Project Shield announcement – an Android-based video game system with a built in screen and console-style controller which also streams games from a PC equipped with a late-model Nvidia graphics card. Now they’ve posted details on their blog about how the thing got built.

I agree with Benedict Evans. No matter how you look at this, the numbers just don’t seem to favor BlackBerry.

Jim and Dan talk about the new Apple TV, the 128GB iPad, Apple vs. Amazon profits and Wall Street, the future of the Apple Store, the Blackberry Z10, control surfaces and more.

Sponsored by Lynda and Shutterstock (use code DANSENTME1 for 30% off).

Now it’s a must-have.

I saw and heard this new series at NAMM and it was really interesting. They model different power valve responses, which is a really interesting way to shape the tone.

Cheers people.

Exactly.

Even though Android app revenue grew much faster than iOS app revenue, iOS apps still earned over three and a half times the amount that Android apps brought in, according to App Annie’s Index.

Top revenue for iOS games included Clash of Clans, The Simpsons: Tapped out and Puzzle & Dragons, according to the report.

The stock market makes me want to drink… more than usual.

This is hilarious. Much respect to the BBC.

Apple has been granted a service mark in the U.S. for the design and layout of its retail store, reflecting the company’s interest to protect the design of its popular stores from copycat retailers.

Ribeiro brings up China copycat retailers, which aren’t going to be affected by this – this is a U.S. trademark, after all. But China isn’t the only place where Apple’s store design gets imitated – one of the authorized Apple resellers in my area copies the Apple Store pretty closely, right down to colored t-shirts for their employees.

According to new data shared with AllThingsD by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), the average monthly carrier bill of the typical iPhone user is the highest in the smartphone market. iPhone owners spend more on wireless fees than owners of any other handset, be they Android, BlackBerry or Windows Phone.

CIRP also points out that carriers “are working hard to make their money back” because of high subsidies on the iPhone.

T-Mobile aims to buck that trend by doing away with phone subsidies this year, and other U.S. carriers are weighing their options too.

The iPad, for all its glory, suffers from one very distinct flaw: It’s very difficult to use for creation.

Bullshit.

[Editor’s note: My apologies. I didn’t look at the date on this article when I posted it. It’s very old.]

U.S. District Judge Lucy Koh in San Jose yesterday declined to increase the award after she found Samsung’s infringement wasn’t willful. The ruling was one of many post-trial decisions Koh issued yesterday denying both companies’ bids for a new trial and leaving largely untouched the jury’s finding in August that Samsung infringed six mobile-device patents.

Guess Apple will have to settle for $1.05 billion.

Macworld/iWorld kicks off on Thursday and runs through Saturday. We’re not going to be there this year, unfortunately, but if you’re in San Francisco and plan to attend, have a great time.