GigaOm went on a road trip to investigate North Carolina’s big data centers.

Federico Viticci:

While most of our emails bounced, we heard back from one of the site owners (who asked to remain anonymous), who confirmed his hosting provider took down the site after a complaint for copyright infringement by Apple.

This is a good thing. You’re not allowed to sell access to the beta, so they should be shutdown. Here’s the thing — these OS updates are betas and most people don’t realize the damage they can do to their phones if something goes wrong. As a developer, I have full access to the beta, but I still don’t have it on my phone.

Samsung Electronics defeated Apple in the latest spat in the rivals’ patent wars when a British judge ruled Samsung’s Galaxy tablets did not infringe the U.S. company’s designs for the iPad because they were “not as cool”.

I laughed. Hard.

Abdel Ibrahim:

But unfortunately for Amazon and Google, as good as their impending tablets are shaping up to be, Apple’s got something up its sleeve, too.

I agree with Abdel on Google, but not as much with Amazon. When Apple releases its smaller iPad, all tablet manufacturers are going to feel the heat — there is no doubt in my mind about that. However, I believe people purchase the Amazon products for a different reason. They buy into the Kindle brand as opposed to just purchasing a tablet. While some people may choose to buy the smaller iPad, many will continue to buy the Kindle because it does the one thing they really want from it — read books.

I mentioned Canadian weather on Amplified the other day, which lead Dan Ruswick to make this funny page.

It’s an honest mistake, assuming that the Constitution only protects your own personal megachurch faith. But one Louisiana Republican is learning the hard way that religious school vouchers can be used to fund education at all sorts of religious schools, even Muslim ones. And while she’s totally in favor of taxpayer money being used to pay for kids to go to Christian schools, she’s willing to put a stop to the entire program if Muslim schools are going to be involved.

Erin Gloria Ryan:

Obscene images, hate sites and a game where people are invited to beat you up have been inflicted on Anita Sarkeesian.

Just terrible.

There’s a a lot of shit stories out there, but a site called “Trusted Reviews” outdid everyone. They actually did a comparison between the Microsoft Surface and the iPad to see which one was better.

How in the sweet hell do you compare a product that isn’t on the market, nobody has touched and we don’t know the full specs or even price.

Bullshit.

BuzzFeed:

I honestly can’t believe this was approved by such a major company as Toshiba (212,000 employees worldwide). This is 2012, right? Anyway, creatively, the videos are basically lame. The double entendres are lame. The ending jokes are really lame. If you’re going to be sexist morons, at least push the idea a bit. `

` Agreed. If you’re going to be sexist morons, at least put some effort into it. Thanks to Michael Gartenberg.

One of the most classic album covers of all time.

I’d like to thank Marketcircle for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.

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“Our contract is such that they can’t do anything with our music without our permission, not a thing. So we just sent them a letter saying, ‘No matter what you want, you are going to get “no” as an answer, so don’t ask.’ That’s the way we’ve left it. We’ll just replace our back catalog with brand new, exact same versions of what we did.”

The band doesn’t like the way the record company is paying them (or not paying them) for digital downloads, so they will re-record and bypass the company altogether.

Buzzfeed:

These easy and clever bookshelves look so much cooler than anything you can buy from a store. Finding creative ways to display books can be just as alluring as any kind of art.

I love books and love displaying them. Some of these designs look so simple even I could make them.

Antivirus researchers at Kaspersky say they’ve spotted an app known as “Find and Call” in both the iPhone App Store and Google’s Play market that secretly uploads all of a user’s contacts to a remote server and then sends text message and email spam to every number and email address listed in his or her phonebook.

I hate Malware. I wonder if Apple will change the way it does app reviews now that someone found a way to get through the walled garden?

Good Education:

Dying to become a master of Google’s search engine? If so, look no further than Power Searching with Google, a new, free class offered by the tech giant starting July 10th. The course promises to teach users “tips, tricks and tactics” that’ll help you “find exactly what you’re looking for, when you most need it.” Real talk: Even if you don’t spend your time dreaming about how to improve your searching skills, you should take Google up on their offer to teach you. Google’s education program manager Terry Ednacot writes on the Google Blog that no matter what your current searching ability may be—from those of us who have no idea you can use the search box as a calculator to folks who are already masters of Boolean logic—through the six 50-minute lessons of the class, you’ll learn how to use the search function to “solve everyday problems” and help you “find what you need faster.”

You would be surprised at how much better your search results, whether for school, work or play, will become if you know how to use and access Google more efficiently.

Here’s what he told an engineer who left for Google in 2004, after hurling a chair:

“Fucking Eric Schmidt is a fucking pussy!” Ballmer yelled, according to the court document. “I’m going to fucking bury that guy! I have done it before and I will do it again. I’m going to fucking kill Google.”

Reminders — when and where you want them.

The app is coming soon and I’m excited to see it.

From my latest column on Techpinions:

By trying to combine what people do on their PC with what they want to do on a tablet, Microsoft feels it is offering the best of both worlds.The problem with that, as I’ve said before, is that people interact differently with a tablet than they do a computer. So, in reality, you don’t get the best of both worlds, but rather a mishmash of each.

Associated Press:

Tens of thousands of Americans may lose their Internet service Monday unless they do a quick check of their computers for malware that could have taken over their machines more than a year ago. Despite repeated alerts, the number of computers that probably are infected is more than 277,000 worldwide, down from about 360,000 in April. Of those still infected, the FBI believes that about 64,000 are in the United States. Users whose computers are still infected Monday will lose their ability to go online, and they will have to call their service providers for help deleting the malware and reconnecting to the Internet.

It’s unlikely any of you are affected by this issue but it’s easy to do a quick check. Go to The DNS Changer Working Group site and click on the “Detect” button.

This week, Dan and Jim tackle the latest rumors of a 7″ iPad. They also compare RIM’s BlackBerry 10 transition to Apple’s shift to Intel processors, and more.

Sponsored by Zoompf, Sifter Stickers, and Dark Sky.

Industry analyst Ben Bajarin takes a look at the fluctuations in Apple’s stock.

An explanation from Marco Arment about what happened to his Instapaper update for iOS last night. After downloading the update, the app would just crash on launch.

Lukas Hermann has quite an in-depth piece on MacStories today about music apps for the iPad. I’ll be honest — I skipped the discovery content and moved right into what he had to say about creation. I agree with his choice of apps, although I would have added the Apogee JAM to the list of hardware devices.

Definitely a worthwhile read.

Tips straight from the guys who made the app.

[Via 52 Tiger]