The [National Labor Relations Board] is standing up for the rights of workers to discuss wages and working conditions. The legal term is “concerted activity” — when workers take action to collectively discuss their employment terms — and the board says that’s just as protected on social media as it is in the company break room.
What’s not protected, as far as the National Labor Relations Board is concerned, is acting like an idiot. A few shining examples are included in the Poynter piece.
“We are in the peak of [violence in entertainment],” [consumer safety advocate and former presidential candidate Ralph] Nader said. “Television program violence? Unbelievable. Video game violence? Unprecedented.” He added, “I’m not saying he wants to censor this, I think he should sensitize people that they should protect their children family by family from these kinds of electronic child molesters.”
Sorry to see Nader adopting a ridiculous Jack Thompson-level of rhetoric on this issue.
iOS continues to lead as the top selling smartphone platform sold in the U.S, with 51.2% of market sales for the 12 week period ending December 23rd, 2012, according to data released today by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech.
Interesting to note that Android “remained stable” year over year, with Windows a very distant third.
The same company also says iPhone is big in Japan, taking two-thirds of the smartphone market.
Peter Zigich is back with more ideas for what a new Mac Pro might look like (we posted some previous work of his last September). I don’t think his ARM processor theory holds water – at least for a while – but I like the idea of a something as powerful as a Mac Pro in a less unwieldy box.
Jony Ive is a designer, he’s not an administrator. This guy is a grade A moron. Even he says, “It’s unclear whether Ive has the skills to manage Apple.”
The similarity in our names make me even angrier. Forbes is a complete fucking joke with shit like this.
Summarized: Wall Street investors are nervous about Apple because of its push into new markets, its complex supply chain and its coverage by analysts who consistently have their heads up their asses.
Dawson College ought to be ashamed of themselves. They’re punishing a guy who did exactly the right thing. He’s already gotten job and scholarship offers, and the school looks like a bunch of bumbling idiots.
“These are not minor — these are aggressive changes,” said Anuj Nayar, PayPal’s senior director of communications. “This is a fundamental shift in our business operations.”
Imangi Studios had a good weekend. The company said on Monday that its new app, Temple Run 2, was downloaded more than 20 million times in its first weekend on the App Store.
In addition to the huge downloads, Imangi said Temple Run 2 accumulated over 210 million sessions, which equals a combined time of 1,775 years of gameplay. So, people are not only downloading the game, they are playing it as well.
The original version of Temple Run was downloaded more than 170 million times in the various places it was available.
Imangi describes the game like this:
Featuring high-res graphics, new obstacles, abilities, player powers, and achievements, Temple Run 2 takes place in an entirely new and infinitely more challenging world filled with curvy roads, hills and valleys, where players must fly down zip lines and speed along in mine carts to get away from the temple dwellers and retain control of the idol.
Chris Breen at Macworld offers some helpful advice for parents looking to limit their kids’ iOS device use, including configuring your AirPort router to limit network access specifically to those devices during certain hours.
While his instructions are specific to AirPort devices, you can do the same with other routers as well – my Comcast cable modem’s web interface does the same thing.
Does anyone know what news Qualcomm announced at CES this year? What products it unveiled? No? But you do know that the chipmaker put Big Bird onstage. And Steve Ballmer.
Wohlsen counts Qualcomm’s keynote address at CES as one of the worst ever. Apple made the list, too. Check it out and let us know if you agree.
Ben Fritz, LA Times: The U.S. operations of iconic but long-troubled video game maker Atari have filed for bankruptcy in an effort to break free from their debt-laden French parent.
Atari was acquired by French video game maker Infogrames in 2003, which later changed its name to Atari S.A. In recent years, the U.S. part of the business has rebuilt itself as a Web and mobile game publisher, experimenting with ad-supported models and limited partnerships—including short-term campaigns with new non Gamstop betting sites—that never quite scaled. A complex relationship with the parent company in France and London financiers has kept Atari’s U.S. operations from growing more quickly, Fritz reports. The bankruptcy move would unshackle the U.S. organization from its European counterpart and its debt.
For some of us, writing is hard. Theo Sanderson has decided that it’s not quite hard enough and has created the “Up-Goer Five” text editor.
The name comes from a xkcd cartoon about a diagram of the Saturn V Rocket but explained using only the “ten hundred” words English speakers use most – thus, “The Up-Goer Five”.
Sanderson’s text editor lets you write about a topic of your choosing but it alerts you when you use “non-permitted words” in the applet’s text field.
Give it a try – Sanderson says it gave him “increased clarity” in his writing. It just made me even more frustrated with the writing process.
While Americans worry about things like “Why are we here?” and “What is the nature of the universe?”, we Canadians send our astronauts into space to ask good, down to earth questions.
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Every once in a while you come across a product that you know is just the best in its class. Honestly, that doesn’t happen too often, but the Universal Audio Apollo is the best audio interface I’ve ever used on my Mac.
I’ve been using and testing Mac audio interfaces for years — I have small USB units, FireWire 400 and 800 interfaces, FireWire mixing boards, guitar processors, pedalboards and just about anything else you can imagine. They are all in my studio and have all be used at one time or another.
I’ve recorded entire bands and everything right down to setting up a couple of mics and recording an acoustic guitar and nothing has been able to compare with the sound quality and ease of use I get with the Apollo.
With its combination of hardware and software, the Apollo is probably the closest thing you’re going to get to a console without sitting behind a desk and grabbing the controls. It’s with this combination where I think the Apollo ultimately beat out the competition.
With many interfaces, there is usually something missing — either the hardware is deficient in some way or the software doesn’t measure up to what we’ve come to expect in today’s music world. Whatever it is, I find myself saying, “If only this were better,” or something similar. That doesn’t happen with the Apollo.
Hardware
Here is a quick list of what the Apollo offers on the 1U rack unit:
Sample rates up to 192 kHz at 24-bit word length
18 x 24 simultaneous input/output channels:
Eight channels of analog-to-digital conversion via mic, line, or high-impedance inputs
14 channels of digital-to-analog conversion via:
Eight mono line outputs
Stereo monitor outputs
Two stereo headphone outputs
10 channels of digital I/O via:
Eight channels ADAT Optical I/O with S/MUX for high sample + rates
Two channels coaxial S/PDIF I/O with sample rate conversion
Two FireWire 800 ports for daisy-chaining other FireWire devices
32-bit and 64-bit device drivers
Bottom line, there are a lot of options available to you.
The Apollo doesn’t have a lot of buttons on the front panel, but there are enough to do everything you need. The big preamp knob not only allows you to adjust the gain by turning, it also lets you select the channel by pressing it.
There are six small buttons beside the preamp to change the mic/line of a channel, a low cut filter, phantom power, PAD, phase and link. Of course, lights on the hardware display will show you what’s on or off for each channel. You can get up and running without even going into the software.
There is also a Monitor (Volume) button and two headphone volume buttons, as well as the two headphone inputs on the front too.
Most of the other inputs and outputs are on the back of the Apollo, with the exception of the two Hi-Z inputs, which are on the front. The Apollo even auto-detects when an instrument is plugged into one of these inputs and automatically changes the input channel for you. I love details like that.
The hardware units comes in a dual or quad configuration, depending on how much DSP power you’ll need. I have the Quad version. They range in price from $2,500 to $2,999, but you can find them even cheaper online.
It’s also important to note that you can purchase a Thunderbolt option card for the Apollo. The standard option is FireWire, which is also very fast.
Software
The software for the Apollo comes in the form of an app called Console. And that’s exactly how it behaves.
Console gives you access to each channel available on the Apollo, adding a bit more control. Of course, you get simple controls like volume and panning, but you also get access to the Aux Sends, Headphone Sends, and all of the buttons that hardware unit has like phase, link etc. Whenever something is changed in software, it is immediately reflected in the Apollo hardware or vice versa.
Console also has four insert slots where you can insert any of the Universal Audio plug-ins you own. Here’s the great part — you can insert the plug-ins for monitoring only or record into your DAW with the inserts active.
And you can do all of that with no latency. That’s huge.
Your DAW has access to every channel available on the Apollo, so that means if you put a reverb on an Aux channel, you can put that into the DAW.
There are other little details that I like in software too. For instance, if you Command-click on the inserts, all of the plug-ins will pop-up like a channel strip. I like mixing like this when I’m finalizing things — a little tweak here and there.
Bottom Line
There is no doubt that the Apollo is the best audio interface on the market. If you care about your music and are tired of the hassles, go buy this now.
In late November, Nguyen was seated at the dinner table in Steve Job’s home on Waverly St in Palo Alto. Also present were Eddy Cue and Tim Cook and other Apple executives. Steve led the conversation while eating a beet salad:
“I’m going to give you a number, Bill, and if you like it, let’s do it and just be done with this whole thing. Okay?” Bill agreed.
Jobs passed a piece of paper to Nguyen and Bill nodded. The deal was done.
Here at MailChimp, we’re realists—as much as we love email and all the things you can do with it, we understand that building a campaign is a task, not a life event. You want to get in, get done, and get on with things. Duly noted.
Anyone that signed up for a membership would have gotten an email confirmation — I use MailChimp for that. Great service.
