Erica Ogg:
But what do the developers who will have to deal with the implications of a larger screen think? I talked to a few iOS app makers, and interestingly, many of them are not convinced Apple would actually “pull an Android,” as one developer put it, and make it more complicated to design for a bunch of different screen sizes (iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4/4S and something new).
Love it.
The initial challenge was to create a classic semi-transparent 3D box with 6 sides. The final challenge was to create a complete 3D bar chart which we will create in this tutorial.
So much better than plain images or using JavaScript.
The 336 New Colors enrich the current PLUS SERIES palette, providing a more comprehensive selection. All color families are extended to include a wider variety of values, saturation and undertones – from subtle pastels and reliable mid-tones to the intensity of deep tones, vivid brights and vital, nuanced neutrals.
Reuters:
The chief executives of Apple Inc and Samsung Electronics Co Ltd are used to running the show at their global tech empires, but they will be in for a different experience when they arrive at a San Francisco federal courthouse on Monday.Apple’s Tim Cook and Samsung’s Choi Gee-sung, whose companies are embroiled in bitter patent litigation, have been instructed by a federal judge to appear for court-supervised mediation. A joint court filing in April said that “as directed by the Court, Apple and Samsung are both willing to participate” in the discussions. In other words, it was not exactly their idea.
I wonder if the judge will make them hug it out?
Space.com:
Solar eclipses such as annular eclipse on Sunday can be treacherous for the inexperienced. A ring (“annulus”) of the sun’s disk remains in view even at the moment of maximum coverage by the moon. Your eye’s iris will be fooled by the relative darkness of the moon’s silhouette. But dangerous direct sunlight appears around the edges and can hurt you badly without precautions.Experienced eclipse chasers watching a total solar eclipse will have a short time — during totality only — when they may view the eclipse directly. Don’t try this unless you are with someone who has done it before and can still see. But don’t try it at all under Sunday’s annular solar eclipse.If you’re planning to watch a solar eclipse or look for sunspots, what is the proper optical filter material for sun-watching?
Om Malik on Facebook back in the day:
when asked how the company will make money, Mark apparently said the company isn’t currently focused on monetization and will be looking to extend their platform’s reach. He doesn’t have to – if Facebook Connect works, the money will follow.
Rolling Stone:
Beards have been a hallmark of rock style since the Sixties, when the Beatles announced their adulthood by getting very, very shaggy. Facial hair on rock stars can range from the theatrical (Rob Zombie, ZZ Top) to the artfully scruffy (Thom Yorke, Bon Iver) to the meticulously detailed (pretty much any nü-metal band). We asked you to name your favorite rock beards; you can click through to see who you picked.
I call bullshit. Jim’s beard isn’t included. Hard to argue with Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top, though.
A classic from FAIL Blog.
Many thanks to SuperMegaUltraGroovy for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week with Capo.
Reverse Engineering Rock and Roll: Capo is a revolutionary tool that helps you learn the music in your iTunes library. Available for your Mac, iPhone, iPod, and iPad.
Download the free trial for the Mac, and check out the new mastering-quality slowing engine that retains the detail in your music all the way down to quarter-speed!
Federico Viticci’s incredibly in-depth look at Apple’s App Store.
Premiering in June of 2012, Big Week is hosted by Dan Benjamin and features the news that matters, regular segments, interviews, reporting from 5by5 Newshounds, listener feedback, and discussion with an all-star panel
Everyone is talking about Samsung’s third-generation Galaxy smartphone and the extraordinary number of pre-orders the company received for the new device. It’s bullshit.
The media is reporting that the company has already received 9 million pre-orders for the device. On the surface, that sounds impressive, but read this paragraph from the original Reuters report again.
Samsung Electronics Co has received some 9 million pre-orders for its third-generation Galaxy S smartphone from more than 100 global carriers, the Korea Economic Daily reported on Friday.
Those are orders from its global carriers, not customers. Come on people.
When Apple reports its pre-orders for a new iPhone, it uses the number of phones ordered by end users. If Apple played this type of silly game, they could add on all of the orders from AT&T, Verizon and all of its carriers from around the world. And if they did that, the number of pre-orders would still be skewed in Apple’s favor.
There is no guarantee that carriers will sell all of the Samsung phones they ordered to end users. In fact, there is no guarantee they will sell even one phone.
What happens to all of the unsold inventory? They go back to Samsung, but they still count as pre-orders.
The lesson of the day: Don’t be fooled by bullshit.
Over the past five quarters, the onetime darling of mobile telecoms has eroded its cash pile by 2.1 billion euros ($2.7 billion) – a rate that would wipe out its entire 4.9 billion euros reserves in a couple years.
Truly amazing how far they have fallen.
Building on state-of-the-art encryption standards, DropKey quickly and easily encrypts any file specifically for your recipients — without the need for a password or the hassle of juggling a bunch of keys!
They are giving away the app until May 20.
Update: 5/8/2015 This product is no longer available.
Jeremy Stanley:
Lots of tinfoil hat, bat-shit insane talk right there. What annoys me to no end is that Curtis omits an important part of this story.
Dustin Curtis:
I’m not particularly surprised that Twitter is doing this kind of data analysis or collection. Facebook is almost certainly doing the same thing. But it is wrong. People do not expect Twitter or Facebook to know about their movements on the web. But they do. And that information is being stored somewhere. It is a violation of privacy and trust.
After almost forty five years of ownership rock superstar Jay Geils is selling his 1959 Gibson Les Paul Standard. He has owned it since 1967 and it has appeared on every single J.Geils Band recording as well as on live shows around the world. Jay has played it on stage with bluesman B.B King, Duane Allman from the Allman Brothers Band, Muddy Waters, Buddy Guy and Junior Wells . Jay affectionately calls it his “lunch pail” Les Paul because he made his living for so many years playing it.
Somebody needs to buy this for me.
Austin Carr:
And, according to J. Crew CEO and Apple board member Mickey Drexler, Jobs even envisioned rethinking the automotive industry. Speaking at Fast Company’s recent Innovation Uncensored conference, Drexler clued the audience in on some insider Apple knowledge.“Look at the car industry; it’s a tragedy in America. Who is designing the cars?” Drexler said. “Steve’s dream before he died was to design an iCar.”
“Every man looks better with a beard. Here’s proof.”
It’s what Jim and I have been saying for years.
Poornima Gupta for Reuters:
Apple Inc plans to power its main U.S. data center entirely with renewable energy by the end of this year, taking steps to address longstanding environmental concerns about the rapid expansion of high-consuming computer server farms.
Apple has been the subject of protests by Greenpeace for using so-called “dirty” energy – power generated by the burning of coal – rather than through the use of renewable resources such as wind or solar.
The company said it’s buying equipment to power two solar farms to be built near its Maiden, NC data center. Once they’re operational they’ll generate 84 million kWh annually, according to the report. A small “bio-gas fuel-cell plant” will also be constructed.
Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer told Reuters the company’s goal is to make all three of its data centers coal-free. He added that he’s unaware of any company working on onsite energy generation at Apple’s scale.
Of course, Greenpeace wants more.
“… Apple must adopt a firm siting policy to prioritize renewable energy when it chooses locations for new data centers. Only then will customers have confidence that the iCloud will continue to get cleaner as it grows,” said Greenpeace International Senior IT Analyst Gary Cook.
DVICE:
…financial institutions, mobile handset makers and carriers have dreamed of turning your cellphone into a mobile wallet, to use your smartphone the same way you use a credit or debit card.Finally, this year we may finally reach this near field communication (NFC) nirvana, of simply waving our smartphone over a retail payment terminal instead of a credit or debit card to pay for our copiously consumed commodities.There’s only one problem. Using your smartphone as a credit or debit card replacement may be more trouble than it’s worth.
I can’t imagine doing this on a regular basis. Too many concerns about security and data integrity for me.
U.S. Senators on Facebook co-founder Eduardo Saverin’s decision to renounce his citizenship to avoid paying taxing:
“It’s infuriating to see someone sell out the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire,” said Senator Charles Schumer at a news briefing. “We plan to put a stop to this tax avoidance scheme.”Facebook plans to raise billions of dollars in an initial public offering that could leave Saverin, still a part-owner of the social networking company, with a big capital gains tax bill, estimated to be $67 million.
Cable and Internet service provider Comcast on Thursday announced plans to replace its broadband usage cap with what it calls an “improved data usage management approach.” The bottom line: If you’re a heavy user of Comcast’s broadband Internet services, you may be paying more for the privilege. The news comes from a post to Comcast’s blog attributed to executive VP and general manager of communications and data services, Cathy Avgiris.
Comcast has been under fire in recent weeks after Netflix CEO Reed Hastings and others suggested that Comcast’s “Xfinity for Xbox” app violated the spirit, if not the letter, of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) policy on “net neutrality” – the principle that Internet service providers such as Comcast should not restrict communication from some services over others. Comcast doesn’t count data transmitted through the Xfinity app against the user’s bandwidth cap, unlike similar software from other companies, including HBO and Netflix.
Comcast, for its part, denies that this is the case, and has said in statements that Xfinity for Xbox is run on its own private IP network, and is therefore not subject to net neutrality rules. This point is underscored by Avgiris, who wrote, “…for the last six months we have been analyzing the market and our process and think that now is the time to begin to move to a new plan. This conclusion was only reinforced when, in recent weeks, some of the conversation around our new product introductions focused on our data usage threshold, rather than on the exciting opportunities we are offering our customers.”
Avgiris tacitly admittedly that Comcast’s bandwidth usage cap hasn’t kept up with technology. “Four years ago, when we first instituted a broadband Internet data usage threshold, the iPhone had just been introduced…the iPad didn’t exist…and the experience of watching streaming video on your home PC or through a Roku box or direct to an Internet-capable TV was much different than it is now.”
Avgiris said that over the next few months, Comcast will trial its new data usage management policy, starting with new tiered “usage allotments.” The good news is that everyone will get more bandwidth to play with: 300 GB per month, up from 250 GB. Users who opt for Comcast’s Blast and Extreme services will have higher allotments, and users who require additional bandwidth will be charged $10 per 50 GB.
“In markets where we are not trialing a new data usage management approach, we will suspend enforcement of our current usage cap as we transition to a new data usage management approach, although we will continue to contact the very small number of excessive users about their usage,” wrote Avgiris.
(Thanks to Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle for first alerting us of this change via Twitter.)
GamePolitics.com:
Blizzard has issued an apology to all the players all over the world that suffered through trying to log onto Battle.net to play Diablo III over the last few days. The company says that they have been humbled by players and by the gargantuan task of trying to keep Battle.net servers up and running as millions of people (many in vain) attempted to play the game. As of now, they say everything is stable and players should have no problems logging in.
Some Mac users have also complained about the performance of Diablo III’s Mac version. Anecdotal reports suggest that Diablo III performs better on some Macs running Windows in Boot Camp than natively in OS X.
After almost 20 years of writing news stories and blogs about Apple, it’s become very clear to me that large media companies do not get blogging. This isn’t new, but it’s not changing either.
Setting up a section of your Web site and giving it a different name does not make you hip and cool. You don’t all of a sudden become a blogger one day because you call something a blog.
What these organizations don’t seem to realize is that a blog is more about attitude than the real estate it takes up on your servers.
A blog isn’t about the feelings of the company, but rather a personal look at the writer. You can’t assign a blogger a story and hope the audience doesn’t get the fact that they have no idea what they’re talking about or worse yet, they don’t really care.
Readers connect with a blogger. They know things about them, they laugh together and sometimes argue over points in a story. It’s a give and take relationship that not everyone can handle.
Blogging is not about being stiff and rigid in your writing, but being flexible and flowing with ideas. It doesn’t matter if everyone agrees with your thoughts. In fact, that would be really boring — but you write it anyway.
If large media companies want their writers to be bloggers, they need to let them go. Bloggers need to feel free to express themselves and their opinions. There are plenty of great bloggers on the Internet — many of them came from these large organizations, but weren’t allowed to post their thoughts.
Blogging is also about trust. If you’re readers know that you are writing from your heart, they will listen. They will engage you, and in the process you will learn something new. That, in turn, will help shape your opinions.
Blogging doesn’t have an agenda, other than expressing your true thoughts on a subject.
This update enables sandboxing for OS X Lion and improves overall stability.
This is the very first app I’ve heard of that implements sandboxing.
According to Apple, “sandboxing protects the system by limiting the kinds of things an application can do, such as accessing files on disk or resources over the network. Limiting the capabilities of an app to just those operations that it needs to perform helps keep the rest of the system more secure in the event that an app is compromised.”
Not a big surprise to see the Pixelmator team ahead of the curve on implementing new features.
Philip Michaels:
Verizon wants more of its subscribers to opt for shared data plans which cover multiple devices like smartphones and tablets. To convince subscribers who’ve clung to their unlimited data plans to move to this new setup, Verizon is taking much of the choice out of the decision process: If you want to upgrade to a new 4G-compatible phone, you’re going to have to give up that unlimited data.
The carrot and stick.
Joe Palazzolo:
Apple, which hired Gibson Dunn & Crutcher LLP to fight the claims, said in a recent court filing that Siri may not be perfect — in fact, she is a Beta release, something the company has been upfront about — but she’s still “cutting edge.”
I don’t believe these blood sucking fools are suing for this. They should be sued for being stupid.