It’s great to have another operating system for phones, but I think Gruber summed it up nicely.

In graphic design, nothing is what it actually is. Everything other than content is representative of something else. Additionally, much of the content is also merely representative of something other than what it actually is.

Both of these services are dangerous for app developers because they offer simple, one-tap installs of pirated apps and do not require that devices have been jailbroken in order to do so. This is an enormous problem, as it opens up the arena for their use from the relatively small fraction of users with jailbroken devices — as was the case with Installous — to any unscrupulous users of iPhones and iPads.

Don’t steal from developers people. Bad karma shit will come back on you.

Jamillah Knowles for The Next Web:

Smart mom, Janelle Burley Hofman has published a document that may secure you a full-on teenage eye roll, but it could also help young ones learn to be responsible. Amusingly it’s not just a few core principles, but an 18 point contract for her 13-year-old son Gregory to adhere to as the lucky recipient of an iPhone.

As a former teenager I bristle at some of this stuff, but as the parent of two teenagers and a tween I can’t help but admire Janelle’s thoroughness here. Really well-thought out, reasonable guidelines for a kid getting their first phone.

What do you say – is she being reasonable by making him stick to these rules?

I skipped by this at first and then found myself going back and looking again and again. I knew it was something I had to share.

[Via Swiss Miss]

This isn’t something I’d use for The Loop, but there are plenty of Web sites that this type of slider would work very well. I like these when done right.

Armed robbers broke into a central Paris Apple store on New Year’s Eve, stealing goods with an estimated value of one million euros.

That’s a lot of product.

Robin Wauters, The Next Web:

Vehicle rental services company Avis Budget Group (Avis) today announced that it has agreed to acquire car sharing network Zipcar for $12.25 per share, or approximately $500 million, in cash.

A big move for Zipcar, and a smart move to grow Avis’ business too.

For the uninitiated, Zipcar’s business is “car sharing.” Members can arrange to use cars by the hour or by the day, an alternative to traditional rental services. Gas and insurance are included in a fee you pay as a member.

It’s really useful in urban areas and elsewhere where residents may depend primarily on public transportation, but occasionally need vehicle access to transport people or cargo or to visit places they’d prefer to go to by car.

Avis says it’ll help expand Zipcar’s fleet to have more cars available at peak times like weekends or holidays, so expect to see more Fords and Chevys next to Minis, Volvos and BMWs in Zipcar parking lots soon.

Charles Arthur, The Guardian:

Sayonara, netbooks. The end of 2012 marks the end of the manufacture of the diddy machines that were – for a time – the Great White Hope of the PC market.

Arthur notes that both Asus and Acer exited 2012 with no plans to produce netbooks in 2013, apparently spelling out the demise of the mini-laptop platform.

The idea of the netbook echoes in products like Google’s Chromebook, manufactured by Samsung and Acer – a slim, tiny laptop with limited capabilities and Googlian (Googlish?) emphasis on “cloud.” I’d argue that Microsoft is trying to shoehorn laptop functionality into a tablet by building in a kickstand and emphasizing covers with built-in keyboards.

So I think it might be too soon to spell out the demise of netbooks entirely. Harry McCracken at Time agrees with me. He notes that the fix was in for netbooks from the get-go, from lackluster vendor support to active sabotage from Microsoft. McCracken predicts the netbook will reemerge in all but name as market forces push prices on Ultrabooks down further and further toward the netbook range.

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Joe Caiati outlines his reasons for pulling the plug on Facebook, including the ability to use Twitter to keep up-to-date. If I had to choose between Twitter and Facebook, I’d probably make the same choice, but there are plenty of people who still get a lot out of Facebook. I think it’s the people that use it as a small personal network of friends instead of trying to build a massive network of people they don’t know.

“Dirty Harry” made it.

Rolling Stone’s list is good, but clearly missing some iconic models. I think everyone’s list would be a little bit different.

This is very cool in at least showing the possibilities.

BBC:

Sony has ended Japanese production of its best-selling PlayStation 2 (PS2).

The hardware first went on sale in March 2000 in Japan and since then more than 150 million PS2 consoles have been sold.

Given how long the PS3 has been available, it may surprise you to know that the PS2 is still being made. But it has been. Sony routinely keeps older systems alive for some time after their replacements become available.

The final PS2 game, a Final Fantasy game called Seekers of Andoulin, is expected to be released (in Japan only) in March, 2013.

Susan Crawford, Bloomberg:

The Internet has taken the place of the telephone as the world’s basic, general-purpose, two-way communication medium. All Americans need high-speed access, just as they need clean water, clean air and electricity. But they have allowed a naive belief in the power and beneficence of the free market to cloud their vision. As things stand, the U.S. has the worst of both worlds: no competition and no regulation.

An interesting analysis of why things have turned out as they have for the average American Internet user. Crawford wants to see 1Gb fiber to the house standard throughout the country, instead of the paltry 4Mb goal offered by the FCC’s National Broadband Plan. How slow is your Internet connection, and how much do you pay for the privilege?

Gizmodo:

It seems like only yesterday we were planning for the Mayan apocalypse, but like so many other products, the 14th b’ak’tun (next era) has been delayed due to bugs and lack of pre-orders.

No doubt, in 2013, several long-rumored products will come to market. However, next year won’t be the year for these 13 gadgets and technologies.

Some of these are obviously not going to happen in that time frame – no chance for adoption of self-driving cars in less than a year for example – and some can be argued vehemently (can you say “Apple TV”?). What do you think – is Gizmodo wrong on any of their predictions?

Ars Technica:

Let us take a moment to remember a few of the companies, brands, and products that went to the great electronic recycling center in the sky in 2012. Some you may still have traces of in your sock drawer; others may be slowly decaying in a stack somewhere in your IT department. Some of them will be sorely missed by their loyal customers. Others…again, not so much.

I don’t know if I would describe many of these as “beloved” – after all, if they were, they might still be around. But I am saddened by the demise of Buckyballs. I even ordered a set but sadly it was never completed before the company shut down.

The New Yorker magazine has posted what they call “The Hundred Best Lists of All Time”. Leaving aside the impossibility of this actually being true, it’s an interesting “list of lists” nonetheless.

It includes everything from the obvious (The Ten Commandments) to the humorous (Late Show With David Letterman’s Top Tens) to the obscure (The Beatles’ set list, Majestic Ballroom concert in Luton, U.K., April 17, 1963).

Thanks to Macroplant for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop with iExplorer.

iExplorer makes a great gift this holiday season for any iPhone or iPad owner. The app’s one-touch music transfer seamlessly copies all your music and playlists from your device back into iTunes. Its messages feature allows you to search and export all your messages to PDF files or other formats. The app also offers access to your device’s voicemails, photos, and much more.

For while Liverpool has John Lennon Airport and New York JFK, the record company boss who discovered Black Sabbath is calling for Birmingham Airport to be named after Sabbath front man Ozzy Osbourne.

This has to happen.

Last month Apple asked to add the Galaxy S III Mini and other Samsung products, including several tablet models, to its wide-ranging patent litigation against Samsung.

In response, Samsung said the Galaxy S III Mini was not available for sale in the United States and should not be included in the case.

Of course, that’s just one product listed in the claim — there are plenty others.

I like it when the user experience is “useful and pleasurable.”

“If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” said Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary.

On the radio, Mr. Bloomberg said that Apple products appeared to be the preference for many thieves, noting that he was not including thefts of competing devices, like the Samsung Galaxy, in his count.

Just when you think politicians can’t possibly be any more stupid, along comes Mayor Bloomberg and his press secretary.

In order to appreciate the magnitude of new devices activated on Christmas Day, Flurry established a baseline using the average from the first 20 days of December. Over this period, daily activations averaged around 4.0 million per day, with variance of a few hundred thousand in either direction per day. On Christmas Day, activations soared to more than 17.4 million, a 332% increase over the December baseline. By comparison, Christmas Day 2011 held the previous single-day record, having reached 6.8 million device activations. Christmas 2012 is more than 2.5 times larger than Christmas 2011, which surpassed its own baseline by more than 300%.

There are lots of happy people out there.

John Koetsier, VentureBeat:

“For every 100 iPad impressions, other tablets have 14.75,” Gabe Donnini, Chitika’s data solutions engineer, said today. “Eighty-seven percent of the tablet web traffic in North America is generated by iPad.”

Chitka’s been tracking this stuff for a while, and while the number’s down month over month (above 88 percent for November, to 87 percent for December), it shows that iPad owners continue to use their devices fundamentally differently than Android tablet owners do.

Apple this week released a preliminary proxy statement in a filing to the SEC. The filing is an announcement of the 2013 annual stockholders meeting, as well as questions that will be voted on at the meeting and details of executive compensation arrangements.