Reuters:

Staffers for Senator Charles Schumer, a Democrat from New York, met with Google officials on Monday to discuss privacy issues related to the camera-equipped planes. They plan to meet with Apple on Friday.

This is a very cool trick to creating pre-done tracks in Pro Tools.

Parislemon:

I’m just now catching up on the news about the new Microsoft Surface. Reactions seem mixed, tilting slightly positive or at least hopeful. People seem to want to believe Microsoft can pull this off and that’s understandable — competition is good, and right now, the iPad has no competition. My hunch is that whatever tablet Google announces shortly will be more of a Kindle Fire competitor than an iPad competitor. This Surface is a full-on iPad competitor.On the surface — see what I did there? — the thing seems compelling. It’s a tablet that runs Windows, and Office, and has a keyboard. There’s no denying that the keyboard/cover hybrid is a smart thing to try.Two years ago, I think this thing would have been pretty competitive. Today? Color me very skeptical.

Everyone, especially the tech media, should be skeptical about this tablet. Microsoft? Shut up and ship.

AJ for OSXDaily:

The MacBook Air 2012 is a screamer, and though the CPU-based benchmarks show about a 15-20% improvement over the MacBook Air 2011 models, by far the biggest performance boost comes from the new flash memory (SSD) that Apple is using for storage on the 2012 models. In our tests, the disk used in the newest MacBook Air models is up to 217% faster than the previous model years drives.

iFixit’s breakdown shows that the new MacBook Air employs an SSD made by Toshiba, with a different connector than last year’s model – and a SandForce controller.

MG Siegler:

Most are stories written with little or no research done. They’re written as quickly as possible. The faster the better. Most are just rehashing information that spread by some other means. But that’s great, it means stories can be written without any burden beyond the writer having to read a little bit and type words fast. Many are written without the writer even having to think.

I am glad that I don’t make my money based on pageviews. I say what I want, when I want because I believe it to be true. That’s it.

Justin Watt, via Daring Fireball:

Integrating iOS and thinking of mobile development in parallel with desktop software development for this many users isn’t an easy or quick task and for that reason the Surface may succeed very well in the enterprise. It’s more of the same.

This really goes to the heart of where Microsoft’s strength may be with Surface: It’s running Windows. And while it’s a new version, it’s essentially the same operating system (and ecosystem) that IT people around the world have depended on since the early 1990s. That’s why Watt entitled his post “Goliath Wants David’s Market,” and there’s a big grain of truth there.

This time with CNN’s “5 ways Microsoft’s Surface may be better than an iPad.” It’s like they are searching for things to write about today.

io9:

Check out this elegant infographic by Invader Xan, molecular astrophysicist and master of ceremonies at astronomy blog Supernova Condensate. Here, silhouetted in colors that correspond to their present state of operation, you’ll find twenty iconic spaceships and space stations situated beneath the only fictional spacecraft of the bunch: the U.S.S. Enterprise.What’s great about this image is that all the spacecraft have been drawn to scale. This gives you a real sense of perspective.

I love that he has listed the Starship Enterprise as “in development”.

Jesus Diaz for Gizmodo:

That weapon is Microsoft Surface. And it is beautiful. Beautiful and functional and simple and honest. Surface just bumped the MacBook Air and the iPad to the back seat…

Really? Remember this morning I said that New York Times article was really stupid — Jesus just took the stupid to a whole new level.

Then again, Giz seemed to like the PlayBook too.

Dermot Daly on the differences between Microsoft’s and Apple’s strategy of announcing products:

People’s reactions are then about sprinting to their local Apple store, or reaching for their credit card.

He’s right. Apple creates a furor around its products and people race to buy it. It shows a real lack of planning and knowledge when you don’t even know how much it’s going to cost.

Jonathan Stempel for Reuters:

Photography pioneer Eastman Kodak Co sued Apple Inc to stop it from interfering with plans to sell a large patent portfolio, a significant part of its bankruptcy restructuring.

Kodak announced plans in February to phase out of the consumer camera business. As part of its massive bankruptcy restructuring, the company sought to sell digital imaging patents. Apple tried to sue Kodak to stop the sale of those patents, but a judge blocked their attempt.

Michael Fey was kind enough to post some pics from the beard WWDC party last week.

These are very cool.

This robust expansion covers the entire scope of time from founding your first Pantheon of the Gods and spreading religion across the world, to deploying your spies in enemy cities in order to steal information and technology.

Sam Grobart for The New York Times:

Microsoft’s answer to this question seems to be: “Of course you can!” The new Surface runs Windows — either a lightweight, tablet-friendly Windows RT version or the original gangster Windows 8. It has a keyboard. The Pro version has a stylus.

Usually with these stupid articles, I highlight a paragraph for the readers. With this one, I could have just put brackets around the whole thing.

Sam, Microsoft and its partners tried the tablet-as-a-PC-replacement thing for a decade and it didn’t work. Consumers didn’t like it because tablet computing is different than desktop computing.

Apple knows that it’s different and so do consumers — it’s time Sam and Microsoft faced that too.

Well, here it is if you’re interested.

Jessica E. Vascellaro for Wall Street Journal:

Paul Dunahoo went on a business trip to San Francisco last week, where he attended technical sessions at Apple Inc.’s AAPL +2.03% developer conference, networked with other programmers and received feedback from Apple engineers on his six productivity apps.

Then, Mr. Dunahoo, chief executive of Bread and Butter Software LLC, returned to Connecticut to get ready for the eighth grade.

For the first time this year, Apple opened up WWDC to the 13-17 year old set by providing student scholarships. They even set up a special area for them at the show. The 150 teens joined other underaged developers who attended the show. Most of them were attracted to it by their experience developing apps for iOS.

Andrew Wallenstein for Variety:

CBS has emerged the winner of a bidding war for the pilot of a primetime gameshow based on the Zynga mobile game “Draw Something” from Sony Pictures Television, Ryan Seacrest Prods. and Embassy Row.

The pilot is in development, but that doesn’t mean the show will actually be broadcast (yet).

Draw Something made a huge splash earlier this year – the game pairs players who take turns drawing pictures based on clues, then guessing the clue based on the picture. Unfortunately Draw Something hasn’t sustained the same huge interest as it saw at the outset – many players have cast it aside for more novel game experiences.

Will Draw Something have any staying power as a game show? We’ll see.

Reuters:

Ebrahim was part of a so-called expert-network ring where some employees of specialized firms such as Primary Global Research (PGR) helped funnel corporate secrets from consultants at companies to hedge funds.

It must have been pretty easy to calculate RIM’s sales figures.

Gruber got this right calling the Netflix API changes a “huge shit sandwich.”

Neil Hughes:

Developers were asked to indicate, on a scale of one to 10, how difficult it might be for them to change their applications for the new screen sizes. On average, developers at WWDC said the difficulty would be just a 3.4 out of 10, suggesting they don’t see it as a major issue.

I’m not a developer, so I don’t know how difficult this would be, but if they’re not worried, neither am I.

“After investigating isolated reports of WiFi connectivity issues in the HTC One X, we have identified a fix that strengthens the area of the phone around the WiFi antennae connection points.”

I’m sure Consumer Reports is all over this.

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:

• Sidecar users can call each other anywhere in the world for free

• Sidecar users can call regular phones numbers in the US or Canada for free over Wi-Fi.

Download the app for free in the App Store: