Written by Peter Cohen
Dana Mattiolo for the Wall Street Journal:
Orbitz Worldwide Inc. has found that people who use Apple Inc.’s Mac computers spend as much as 30% more a night on hotels, so the online travel agency is starting to show them different, and sometimes costlier, travel options than Windows visitors see.
Orbitz says that users can overcome the issue by ranking results by price. If this leaves as nasty a taste in your mouth as it does in mine, though, the better solution might be to skip Orbitz all together in favor of a different site that doesn’t discriminate based on your platform. (The article suggests that Expedia, Priceline and Travelocity do not, by the way.)
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Byron Kutchera and Ian Fleming (my daughter’s longtime boyfriend) are premiering their DVD this Friday. They are having a Facebook event as well. Very talented guys.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Kyle Baxter on building products to last:
The issue is that the computing industry, and especially the mobile computing industry, are developing very quickly, so hardware and software that’s as good as it gets today simply won’t be in a year’s time.
Good point.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I love seeing schools using the latest technology to teach students.
June 25, 2012
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I agree with Gruber on this.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I just finished reading TechCrunch Managing Editor Peter Ha’s “The Future Of Microsoft Is Sunny With A Chance Of Thunderstorms,” which is his take on the Microsoft Surface announcement. I wanted to reach out and strangle him when he said the iPad is a consumption, not a creation device though.
Overall, this is probably the most balanced article I’ve read on the subject.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I’ll admit it, I laughed.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I’ll be honest, I had no idea you could do this.
[Via DF]
Written by Jim Dalrymple
I’ve never owned a V, but that looks really nice.
Microsoft announced Monday plans to acquire Yammer, a maker of enterprise-based social networks, for $1.2 billion. Yammer will become part of Microsoft’s Office division.
Yammer has about 5 million users and excellent penetration in Fortune 500 companies – about 85 percent of them, according to Yammer’s own estimates. The service lets enterprise users create private social networks.
Microsoft says that it plans to “accelerate Yammer’s adoption” through complementary offerings already available from Microsoft, like SharePoint, Office 365, Dynamics and Skype.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Sounds to me like this is a no-brainer purchase.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
A good bit of humor on a Monday. I especially like the “Find My Socks” feature.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
The report mentions Facebook and Amazon as potential buyers, but on Sunday several people close to RIM dismissed the news as “a silly fantasy,” and “one of the most ridiculous ideas I have heard in a while.”
The Globe and Mail’s headline says that “RIM dismisses report of splitting firm in two,” but that’s not actually true. It’s unnamed sources that said that.
So if they’re not going to split the company, how about just shutting it down.
June 23, 2012
Written by Shawn King
Marketing Land:
After seeing yet another “hands-on” review of the Microsoft Surface tablet, I thought it would be interesting to shed more light on what exactly the journalists who assembled in Hollywood this week for the Surface launch event actually got to do with the tablets. In short, not a lot. Come along as I explain the hands-off reality of what I saw.
Nice to see someone calling a spade a spade. No matter what you’ve read, none of the assembled media got any real “hands on” with the Surface.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Renena Joy talked to iPhone in Canada about how she uses the iPad as a learning tool for her daughter.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Om Malik:
Google is very likely to launch a cloud services platform at its annual developer conference, Google I/O next week in San Francisco. It was one of the topics of discussion in the hallways of our Structure 2012 conference. We have since confirmed with multiple sources who are familiar with Google’s plans which include a more comprehensive offering that its current app engine and storage offerings.
This will be very interesting.
Written by Jim Dalrymple
Many thanks to Sidecar.me for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week.
Sidecar re-imagines the traditional phone call for your smartphone.
Sidecar lets you call and share:
See What I See Video: Share amazing real-time videos.
Photos: Snap brilliant pictures, or share photos from the phone’s gallery.
Locations: See where you are in relation to others, and share locations.
Contact: Information: Pass along and integrate contacts from their phone’s address book.
Whisper Text: Send a private text message to another Sidecar user during a call.
And the price is unbeatable:
Download the app for free in the App Store:

Written by Jim Dalrymple
Nick Bilton:
Why? Well, I didn’t knock their baby teeth out, that’s for sure. Instead, I said something slightly negative about an Apple product.
First of all, when you title your follow-up article “When Apple Fanboys Attack,” you’re probably going to get some shit.
Second, it wasn’t a negative article about Apple that I had a problem with. It’s the fact that you seemed to ignore all of the creation possibilities on the iPad.
You said:
Although there are hundreds of third party products available, Apple doesn’t seem to want the iPad to be a creator, but more of a consumer.
That’s just not true.
Nick appeared to narrow the focus of what he considers creating content means in his article today to typing. Clearly you can do more than that.
I asked Nick on Twitter if he had a chance to actually use the Surface1, but he didn’t respond.
Update: Nick Bilton changed the headline of his article from “When Apple Fanboys Attack” to “When Zealots Attack”