This is a great article by Dave Caolo. Definitely worth a read.

Nick Bilton for The New York Times:

Girls Around Me uses Foursquare, the location-based mobile service, to determine your location. It then scans for women in the area who have recently checked-in on the service. Once you identify a woman you’d like to talk to, one that inevitably has no idea you’re snooping on her, you can connect to her through Facebook, see her full name, profile photos and send her a message.

C.R.E.E.P.Y.

During a match against Berliner AK 07, a group of fans stood behind the visiting team’s goal, each with a large, brightly colored arrow pointing to the net so their team would know where to shoot. And just to clarify their intentions, another group of fans held up a banner that read, “We’ll show you where the goal is!”

WOW, BRUTAL!

Apparently the team hadn’t scored in five games.

. Matthew Humphries for Geek.com:

Jordan Mechner may not be a name many of you know unless you are up-to-date with your video gaming history. He’s probably better known as the creator of Prince of Persia.

Jordan Mechner reports on his blog that his father discovered a treasure trove of floppy disks from Mechner’s early time in the video game industry. Among the disks recovered were ones containing the Apple II source code from Prince of Persia itself.

Mechner is working with a friend to recover the files to a MacBook Air, where he’ll be working to turn them “into some kind of 21st-century-readable format.”

It’s strictly a labor of love for Mechner, so don’t expect to download that converted source code in a useable format any time soon, but he advises to keep your eyes peeled on his social media presences to get the latest updates.

(Via Engadget)

TIME:

With a half-billion-dollar multistate lottery jackpot up for grabs, plenty of folks are fantasizing about how to spend the money. But doing it the right way — protecting your riches, your identity and your sanity — takes some thought and planning.Making sure you don’t blow the nation’s largest-ever lottery jackpot within a few years means some advice is in order before the Mega Millions drawing Friday, especially if you’re really, really, really lucky.

I got my ticket – how about you?

Patrick Spence, its managing director of global sales and regional marketing, told British news site Pocket-Lint that “The claim that RIM has said it will withdraw from the consumer market is wholly inaccurate.” He says that the company will still go after “targeted consumer segments” but may seek partners for stuff such as media-consumption apps.

Come on RIM, seriously?

Marcelo Somers:

Unfortunately, most organizations and even start ups still start with a list of features or things they want to build. People don’t consume features. They experience activities that add to their lives.

This is why Apple has been so successful. They build a product to solve a problem and make our experience better. Consumers may not understand that’s what happening, but when they use an Apple product, they immediately get it.

Apple makes the difficult look very easy. There’s a lot going on under those simple-to-use apps, but they hide all of that from us so we can just get things done.

Chris Ziegler for The Verge:

In the hours since RIM’s fiscal Q4 2012 earnings call with newly-minted CEO Thorsten Heins yesterday, there’s been a lot of talk about the company’s “focus on the enterprise” — and we’ve seen a number of headlines flatly saying that RIM is abandoning the consumer market.This simply isn’t the case.

Regardless of RIM’s intentions, the problem is that they’re not making products that consumers want. Which is why they’re circling the drain.

Many thanks to Oomph software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. If you haven’t seen the special “beard page” they made, you really have to take a look.

This has to be the most amazing sponsor page ever made. The guys at Oomph made this page to promote Sidekick as the sponsor on The Loop this week. (Tip: click on the lightning bolt on the right hand side).

Sidekick is a stealthy little Mac app that automatically updates laptop settings based on where you are. It takes care of annoying tasks so you can focus on what you need to do.

Reuters:

But at the Foxconn factory gates, many workers seemed unconvinced that their pay wouldn’t be cut along with their hours. For some Chinese factory workers – who make much of their income from long hours of overtime – the idea of less work for the same pay could take getting used to.

What would people in North America or Europe think if a Chinese company came over and said “we’re cutting back your hours and the amount of overtime you can work.” I’m betting it wouldn’t be a welcomed decision.

I understand what Foxconn is doing and if the workers end up benefiting from it, then that’s good.

The original rocket engines — “one and a half million pounds of thrust, 32 million horsepower, and burning 6,000 pounds of rocket grade kerosene and liquid oxygen every second” — that powered that historic launch fell to the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean and have not been seen in the four decades since. But that won’t be the case for long. Today on his blog, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos announced that he has located the rockets, and he plans to bring them to the surface.

Wow, that’s impressive.

Apparently he forgot to put license plates on the car.

That’s not good.

New York Times:

Foxconn, which manufactures more than 40 percent of the world’s electronics for such companies as Apple, Dell, Amazon and others, has pledged to sharply curtail the number of working hours within its Chinese factories and significantly increase wages, a move that could improve working conditions across China.The shift comes after a far-ranging inspection by the Fair Labor Association, a monitoring group, found widespread problems.Apple, in a statement, said the company fully supports the monitoring group’s recommendations. “We think empowering workers and helping them understand their rights is essential. Our team has been working for years to educate workers, improve conditions and make Apple’s supply chain a model for the industry, which is why we asked the F.L.A. to conduct these audits.”

Selected from a pool of six finalists among more than 30,000 entries from 100 countries, design student Rodolfo Kusulas of Monterrey, Mexico and freelance designer Lee Dunford of Sydney took top honors in the Heineken Limited Edition Design Contest, and their winning design will be featured on the brand’s 140th anniversary bottle.

No, no, no! I like my Heineken in a green bottle.

Charles Arthur:

Android generated less than $550m in revenues for Google between 2008 and the end of 2011, if figures provided by the search giant as part of a settlement offer with Oracle ahead of an expected patent and copyright infringement trial are an accurate guide.

Overall, Android continues to lead the smartphone market in the U.S., with 48 percent of smartphone owners saying they owned an Android OS device. Nearly a third (32.1%) of smartphone users have an Apple iPhone, and Blackberry owners represented another 11.6 percent of the smartphone market. Among recent acquirers who got their smartphone within the last three months, 48 percent of those surveyed in February said they chose an Android and 43 percent bought an iPhone.

MailTags 3 is an enhancement for Apple’s Mail client in OS X 10.7 to add powerful tagging and search capabilities. MailTags 3 seamlessly integrates into Mail.app to make the attachment, search, and collation of tags, such as keywords and notes, a powerful part of email management.

I’ve heard a lot of good things about MailTags.

I don’t know what to say about this comparison.

Apple’s newest iPad hit the market three weeks ago and already their have been a number of controversies surrounding the device. As expected, all of the issues fizzled out because there was really nothing there in the first place.

My latest column on Techpinions.

Macworld:

Samsung Electronics has shipped 5 million units of its “smart notepad”, the Galaxy Note, surpassing most expectations, according to analysts.

How can shipping 5 million units possible surpass anyone’s expectations? That is not the number of Galaxy Notes sold, that’s just the number that Samsung managed to get out of its factory.

Samsung could ship 100 million Galaxy Notes and have them sit in a warehouse somewhere — that doesn’t mean they sold 100 million. I’m never impressed with shipped numbers because they don’t mean anything.

Update: A number of sites are updating their stories noting that Samsung told them its 5 million sales, not shipments.

It was recorded before this became news (about a week ago actually), so it’s kinda weird it came up in this chat! Loren talks about how he came up with it and about the patent itself, but also talks about much more interesting things regarding being an indie dev, supporting your apps, paid upgrades and dispenses some sage wisdom on those topics.

Loren is the guy that came up with the concept. Worth a listen.

Reuters:

Apple Inc’s Tim Cook, on his first trip to China as the chief executive officer, has visited an iPhone production plant run by the Foxconn Technology Group, which is being accused of improper labor practices.

Adobe’s John Nack:

I’m delighted to see that the Photoshop CS6 beta has been downloaded more than half a million times in less than a week! The response I’ve seen so far has been overwhelmingly positive.

I’m in good company.

Jim Dalrymple is back with Dan Benjamin to talk about journalist responsibility in the wake of Warmgate, international 4G and things Apple didn’t think of, patents and trademarks and how much care Apple gives them when naming products, guitars, domains, and a major announcement.Sponsored by Studio Neat and AppsFire