Mikey Campbell:

Tuesday’s filing saw Apple categorically dismiss accusations from the class, which now includes 31 states, stating several times that the evidence will “speak for itself.” The response breaks down the complaint paragraph by paragraph, challenging the charges by either citing a lack of “sufficient evidence and belief” or denying them outright.

Dan and Jim read the tea leaves from Tim Cook’s D10 interview. They also discuss Facebook phone rumors, guitar pedalboards, and more!

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Steve Knopper for Rolling Stone:

Mastered for iTunes unofficially began last year, when producer Rick Rubin was frustrated with his inability to make the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ I’m With You sound as dynamic in the AAC format as it did on a CD. Working with Apple, he tinkered with the master recording, landing on a higher-than-usual bit rate – so when he sent it to iTunes for encoding, it sounded considerably better than a typical compressed audio file. “It’s much closer to the sound of the CD and it took several weeks of additional experimentation and mastering to reach the final iTunes master,” Rubin told MTV News at the time. Some interesting nuggets in here, including news that legendary jazz label Blue Note is reissuing its entire catalog in the new format.

Jim Dalrymple offered his own thoughts on the Mastered for iTunes program back in March. If you missed it, make sure to check it out – Jim explains how the process works.

If you haven’t already checked out Mastered for iTunes albums, chances are there’s something in there for you – already 300 albums (new releases and reissues) have gotten the treatment, with more coming all the time.

Micah Lee and Peter Eckersley for the Electronic Frontier Foundation:

Apple’s recent products, especially their mobile iOS devices, are like beautiful crystal prisons, with a wide range of restrictions imposed by the OS, the hardware, and Apple’s contracts with carriers as well as contracts with developers. Only users who can hack or “jailbreak” their devices can escape these limitations.

“Join us now and share the software, you’ll be free, hackers, you’ll be free-ee-eee!” – Some crazy-eyed old neckbeard.

Seriously, EFF, just shut up.

AllThingsD:

Tim Cook learned a lot from Steve Jobs, and one of the big takeaways seems to be: Don’t tip your hand. The Apple CEO was unwilling to tackle questions about any future product plans during his first appearance on the D10 stage Wednesday night.

Shawn Blanc:

When I redesigned this site I considered every element and asked myself why it was there and what purpose it served.

I did the same thing when I redesigned The Loop last September, but I kept the Tweet and Google+ buttons because I thought readers used them. If nobody is using the buttons on the page, I’d gladly get rid of them.

This is a great app that I use every day. Now it has reminders too.

Om Malik:

However, its position at the top isn’t cemented. There are dozens of upstarts who want to eat into Skype’s future growth.

I don’t think there was ever a time when I liked Skype. It’s necessary sometimes, but I’d gladly use a startup that knew how to build software.

A very nice Apple-like product.

The folks at Macworld have a great story summarizing Tim Cook’s conversation at D10 last night. Cook talked about Steve Jobs, the Apple TV, Macs, iPad, and a number of other topics.

Mac Rumors is providing a live update of Tim Cook’s interview at the D10 Conference. The talk started at 9:00 ET.

Update: Macworld’s Jason Snell is also liveblogging Cook’s talk.

Digital Trends:

It’s no secret that branding is powerful: Fonts, shapes, colors are all part of what we associate with certain brands. Without the words, we can tell the swoosh is part of the Nike franchise, and a yellow M is a straight sign to your local McDonald’s. But can you recognize these brands and objects if you take the colors and logos away? That’s the idea behind the project Brand Spirit by Andrew Miller.Every day for 100 days, Miller has taken a random object and paint it completely white to strip it of the branding we’ve come to know like the back of our hands. By removing the visual branding, Miller says this ”reduc[es] the object to its purest form.”

Many of these are utterly generic but it’s interesting to see how many you can identify simply by their shape.

Brent Simmons looks at the way Web sites display ads and how it relates to Facebook.

The on-going competitive environment is impacting our business in the form of lower volumes and highly competitive pricing dynamics in the marketplace, and we expect our Q1 results to reflect this, and likely result in an operating loss for the quarter. We are continuing to be aggressive as we compete for our customers’ business – both enterprise and consumer – around the world, and our teams are working hard to provide cost-competitive, feature-rich solutions to our global customer base.

Translation: We’re fucked.

I definitely want this.

John Kell and Kaitlyn Kiernan for the Wall Street Journal:

Facebook Inc. shares continued to show weakness Tuesday amid a swirl of uncertainty and rumors, with the social network’s stock sliding below $30 and now more than 20% off from where it debuted less than two weeks ago.

The article notes that option trading on Facebook started today, in which investors can bet on the future of the stock. According to the report, “The largest option trades, however, bet on Facebook seeing more downside this summer, pegging a $25 share price by mid-July.”

The folks at Flattr describe what happened and why apps including the functionality are being rejected from the App Store.

Marcelo Somers:

Facebook is no better at advertising than ValueClick or any other online ad network. They just happen to be able to correlate their customers slightly better than everyone else. That’s not the formula for a $100 billion business, just click through rates closer to 1%.

There are many great points in this article.

Mike Rose for Gamasutra:

Elsewhere, Schilling said that Governor Chafee’s public remarks about the studio’s issues were “devastating,” and he claims that a publisher pulled out of a $35 million deal to finance a sequel to Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning as a result of the comments.

Ex Major League Baseball pitcher Curt Schilling is in hot water because his video game company, 38 Studios, failed spectacularly after taking a $75 million relocation deal from the state of Rhode Island, then being unable to pay it back on time.

Schilling should know better than anyone about running one’s mouth off, because he’s famous for doing it – but that’s not the only reason he’s a hypocrite. Schilling has preached the small government mantra for years, yet he was only too happy to take government money to relocate his business from Massachusetts to Rhode Island when then-governor Donald Carcieri cemented the deal.

I feel badly for the employees of 38 Studios and their families, as well as the Rhode Island taxpayers who are on the hook to pay for this pig, but I have nothing but enmity for Schilling, who’s been hoist by his own petard.

Maybe next time Schilling should take his own advice and seek to succeed in business on his own, rather than suckling at the government teat like a greedy little piggy.

Weldon Dodd has a look at Marketcircle’s new Daylite 4 for Mac and iOS. Marketcircle is one of those companies that I really like — they care about their products and customers.

24/7 Wall Street:

For the second year in a row, 24/7 Wall St. examined the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s report on life satisfaction in the developed world. Economic prosperity, health and a strong social support network continue to correspond highly with happiness. Once again, the United States fails to make the top 10 happiest nations in the world, while countries like Australia, Israel and all of the Scandinavian nations do.These are the happiest countries in the world.

Before you read the article, take a guess where the US falls in the list.

Cook wants key players in Washington to know they now have an open line to the chief executive in Cupertino.

That was the message aides briefed on the meetings said Cook conveyed in sit-downs with House Speaker John Boehner (R-Ohio), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.). Cook didn’t connect with the top House Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, who hails from neighboring San Francisco, because she was traveling back from an official trip to Afghanistan when he made his rounds.

Ultimate file manager for iOS. Connect, browse and edit your files in the cloud.

Jean-Louis Gassée takes a look at Apple, Amazon and Facebook and the things that affect their share prices.

But if you don’t have a lot of experience with CSS, then you’re probably trying to figure out what is the best way to handle some of the challenges that arise from using multiple vendor prefixes, dealing with older versions of Internet Explorer, and other CSS3-specific dilemmas.

The company has already hired more than half a dozen former Apple software and hardware engineers who worked on the iPhone, and one who worked on the iPad, the employees and those briefed on the plans said.

I think Facebook could build a good smartphone — certainly better than many that are on the market now.

There have been many imitations – Fancybox and Thickbox to name just two – but Lightbox still remains as the favoured way to present images to a user. This, primarily, is due to its 3d animation and background dimming which allows the user to view the image without any distraction. It’s a useful, timeless technique.

CNET:

On May 27, 1937, a brand new bridge opened to the public for the first time. Connecting San Francisco to its northern neighbor, Marin County, the new bridge — controversial at the time — became one of the most photographed man-made projects in history. The Golden Gate Bridge is now a worldwide icon, and this Sunday, it turns 75.

We usually hate slideshows but there are some fantastic pictures of the beautiful Golden Gate Bridge included here.

Smithsonian:

Chicken is the ubiquitous food of our era, crossing multiple cultural boundaries with ease. With its mild taste and uniform texture, chicken presents an intriguingly blank canvas for the flavor palette of almost any cuisine. Long after the time when most families had a few hens running around the yard that could be grabbed and turned into dinner, chicken remains a nostalgic, evocative dish for most Americans. When author Jack Canfield was looking for a metaphor for psychological comfort, he didn’t call it “Clam Chowder for the Soul.”How did the chicken achieve such cultural and culinary dominance?

An interesting, if not very detailed, look at how the chicken became such a staple of our diets.