October 15, 2012
The FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center has issued a warning alerting users about malware that targets the Android mobile operating system.

But Android is great… and open… and other stuff that Eric Schmidt says it is.

The sentiment around Windows 8 was overwhelmingly negative during our trip as the supply chain is experiencing little life ahead of the October 26 launch.

Uh oh.

There is a lesson here.

The Galaxy S III has been available in the U.S. for nearly four months, and posted impressive sales figures – even beating out domestic sales of the iPhone 4S in August 2012. However, only 18 days since the public release of the iPhone 5, the newest Apple device has overtaken the Galaxy S III in terms of Web traffic volume. Record-breaking sales numbers, along with new 4G browsing speeds which encourage data usage, are the most likely explanation for this tremendous growth. This latest shift in the mobile ecosystem is not welcome news for Samsung, which has positioned its device as a direct competitor to the iPhone 5.

It has to suck to think you’re doing so well only to be kicked in the ass by the iPhone 5.

Incredible pictures.

Great advice.

Eric Slivka:

Apple and Samsung have long had a complicated relationship, with the two companies locked in numerous court battles linked to their competition in the smartphone and tablet marketplaces even as Samsung serves as Apple’s largest component supplier. As tensions have continued to ride high between the two companies, there have been signs that Apple has been trying to cut back on its reliance on Samsung for component production.

Surely this doesn’t surprise anyone.

The Apple Design Award winning app, djay, transforms your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad into a complete and portable DJ system, letting you mix your music library on a hyper-realistic turntable interface. Perform live, record mixes on-the-go, or enable Automix mode and let djay mix your favorite playlist automatically. With unprecedented ease-of-use and innovative multi-touch mixing features, djay breaks barriers in DJ technology and offers a unique experience for beginners and professionals alike.

djay now supports the iPhone 5 and takes full advantage of the gorgeous 4-inch screen. djay for iPhone and iPod is on sale for only $.99 and djay for iPad is on sale for only $9.99! Get it now and become the DJ you’ve always wanted to be.

Daisuke Wakabayashi and Kana Inagaki for the Wall Street Journal:

Japan’s Softbank Corp. said Monday it will buy a 70% stake in U.S. mobile carrier Sprint Nextel Corp. for about $20 billion in the biggest-ever overseas acquisition by a Japanese firm.

Softbank is one of Japan’s largest mobile carriers, and acquiring Sprint would give the company a big push into the United States. The company hopes to close the deal by mid-2013.

New Xbox Music service brings streaming, subscription and music store to Xbox 360 and Windows 8 PCs, tablets and phones with cloud-based storage.
October 14, 2012

Whether you like App.net or not, Shawn is right, the reasons presented in the article don’t make sense.

10 Genres of Metal in 3 Minutes

Love it.

SNL lampoons iPhone 5 complaints

This week’s Saturday Night Live featured a segment called “Tech Talk,” in which host Christina Applegate paired off tech journos whining about the iPhone 5 with very unsympathetic Chinese factory workers.

You can view the video on the SNL Web site.

(Don’t be surprised if you have trouble viewing this outside the U.S.)

October 13, 2012

Risky, but all of the best stories are.

Many thanks to Jump Desktop for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

Leave your laptop behind. Imagine having control over your computer from anywhere. Jump Desktop is a remote desktop application (RDP and VNC) that gets you to your computer from any iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Mac and Android device. With over 4000 reviews, customers have declared it a 5 star app. It is super easy to setup, with automatic configuration you will be up and running in less than 5 minutes.

It is the easiest, the fastest and most secure way to get to your computer.

WIRED:

For most of the demo, we were running between 5 and 10 watts of power into the LS Concerts — all that’s required to drive the speakers this light and fast. Even at that level, they were loud. Like, really loud. We were pushing roughly 120 decibels out of the LS Concerts, and the sound was absolutely glorious.Tim reluctantly turned it down a few notches when a candle came tumbling off the fireplace mantle.

Holy crap. I’d never pay that kind of money for “just” a set of speakers but I’d really like to hear what they sound like in that kind of environment.

The majority of top decision-makers at the Federal Trade Commission believe that an antitrust case should be brought against Google Inc, meaning the search giant could soon be headed into tough negotiations, three people familiar with the matter said.

Om Malik is in Amsterdam and stopped by Heineken. I’m so jealous.

October 12, 2012
Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos confirmed on Thursday that the online retailer sells its Kindle e-reader “at cost”, with profit coming instead from sales of online content.

That’s one way to do it I suppose. Or you could just design great products and make money on all of it.

NextGuide, my personal favorite TV Guide app (that I built at the company I run), is now updated to include Amazon Prime and Amazon Instant Video alongside live TV, Hulu Plus, iTunes, and Netflix. It’s really a great experience to browse all providers simultaneously and to search for shows and actually know where they are watchable.

Looks very interesting.

New Rolling Stones single – Doom and Gloom

Just in case you had any doubt that the old guys can still rock.

Video’s really cool, too.

CNET:

To encourage repeat viewings of his latest flick, writer-director Rian Johnson released an audio commentary track that you can listen to on your iPod.The director of the sci-fi action movie “Looper” wants you to bring an iPod into the theater to listen to details of how each scene was filmed.In a Tumblr post, Johnson, who also directed the AMC TV show “Breaking Bad,” provides a downloadable MP3 file to be played during the movie.

This is a really interesting idea and I wonder if it will catch on. I’m a huge fan of commentary tracks on DVDs.

Huffington Post:

There are large phone bills and then there are insane phone bills. Solenne San Jose, a woman from Pessac, in the Bordeaux region of France, received an utterly insane one.After she terminated a contract with the phone company Bouygues Telecom early, San Jose was told that she would have to pay a cancellation fee. The bill she received was for a mind-blowing €11,721,000,000,000,000, the Herald Sun reported. That’s around $15 quadrillion.

The best line in the story is, “San Jose had a hard time convincing the phone company that was the case.” WHY!? How hard should it be for even a mindless bureaucrat to acknowledge that the bill might just be incorrect?

ThinkGeek:

A Candwich Canned Sandwich is one tasty DIY treat, just waiting for you to crack it open. When you pop the top of your Candwich Canned Sandwich, you’ll hear an audible hiss of magic, and out will spill the contents to make one yummy sandwich. And best of all, each Candwich Canned Sandwich has a 1 year shelf life…

I almost threw up just reading about this.

I don’t think so, and the TechBargains.com survey strongly suggests iPad mini is a foolhardy endeavor.

Don’t blame me when your head hurts. Even his own readers make fun of him.

Larry Magid:

…but let’s not get too excited about Apple once again catching up with its competitors.

Wait, Apple invented the modern tablet and yet they are catching up to the competition?

I’m predicting a snooze fest not because of lack of interest in the product or lack of theatrics during the announcement but because I’d be very surprised if we see anything incredibly revolutionary relative to what we’ve seen in other tablet announcements.

So let me get this straight. If Apple sells a gazillion new tablets and people are excited, it will be a snooze fest? But if they don’t sell any, it will probably be a failure, right?

The only snooze fest is that article.

The Verge (via Daring Fireball):

Apple has agreed to pay the Swiss national railway (SBB) for use of its iconic clock design in iOS 6’s Clock application.

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.

The iOS 6 clock design was unmistakably the same as the Swiss national railway’s design. Glad to see Apple do the right thing.

One-third of consumers likely to buy an iPhone 5

New research from 451 Research/ChangeWave Research shows that demand for Apple’s new iPhone 5 is strong and will remain that way.

The survey of 4,270 primarily North American consumers shows an “unprecedented degree of consumer interest” in the iPhone 5. Results show that one-in-three people are “Likely” to purchase the new iPhone, while 19% are “Very Likely” and 13% said they were “Somewhat Likely” to buy the iPhone 5.

To put these numbers in perspective, Changewave did the same survey when the iPhone 4S was released and 10% said they were “Very Likely” and 11.5% said they were “Somewhat Likely” to buy.

Even though some reporters made a big deal out of Apple’s change to the Lightning connector in the new iPhone, consumers don’t agree. The majority of respondents said it was “Not Much of a Problem” (31%) or “No Problem At All (26%),” according to the survey.

Of course, the biggest knock on the iPhone 5 so far has been with Maps, but again consumers had a different view. Nine-in-ten users (90%) reported it was “No Problem at All” or they “Haven’t Experienced Any Problem”, while 3% characterized it as a “Very Big Problem” and 6% said it was “Somewhat of a Problem.”

Partysaurus Rex

New short film by Pixar. You’ll see it in theaters if you go to see Finding Nemo 3D.

Partysaurus Rex on Disney Video

John Paczkowski:

People familiar with Apple’s plans tell us that the company will unveil the so-called “iPad mini” on Oct. 23 at an invitation-only event.

Yep.