Twitter now owns this patent. I use pull-to-refresh all the time — I even try to use it on apps that don’t have it, which annoys me.

Update: The patent hasn’t been approved yet. It’s technically a patent application.

I used to love this cartoon.

Jeff Foster:

Paul Vlahos, son of Petro Vlahos and co-founder of Ultimatte Corp. in 1976 and continues as CEO. Paul founded iMatte Inc. in 2000 and serves as CEO. He has made many inventions over the years have resulted in over twenty patents. Besides the Ultimatte matting devices used in the broadcast industry Paul pioneered the Virtual Studio in 1989.

WOO HOO! It’s time for March Madness! We’re down to the Elite 8!

Final Four? No – we’re not talking about Ohio State, Louisville, Kentucky or Kansas. We’re talking about The Consumerist’s “Worst Company In America” contest.

Companies like Wells Fargo and Netflix, UPS and Comcast, even Apple have been voted on at The Consumerist web site all month. There are only eight wide ranging companies left vying for the title – Bank of America, AT&T, Ticketmaster, Paypal, Walmart, Facebook, Comcast and Electronic Arts.

This is a contest none of these companies wants to win.

Craig Grannell:

The net result is that Tap! looks great on the new iPad, largely because it’s using native text rather than rendering to flat images.

Nice.

“We decided to make BlackBerry World more focused on customers, developers and partners,” RIM spokeswoman Tenille Kennedy said on Tuesday. “We will hold a separate session targeted at the interests of the investment community later this year, once BlackBerry 10 is launched.”

Translation: We’re so screwed right now and we want to have something — anything — to show analysts.

Do you have a cool grandfather? Do you think you are a cool grandfather? Well, you’ll have to go a long way to beat this guy.

He’s built an absolutely amazing remote controlled plane – a scale model of the SR-71 “Blackbird”. Not only did they build its jet engines and include retractable landing gear, the thing sounds amazing.

My grandfather made aquariums. Nice but not nearly as cool as jet planes!

While J.K. Rowling’s Pottermore web site is still in beta, the store to sell you stuff is up and running.

If you have an EPUB reader and a Harry Potter fan in your life, the Pottermore Shop is the only place you can buy the Harry Potter series digitally.

The EPUB format is “the world’s most popular and open eBook standard” and the files are compatible with the vast majority of computers and devices. The eBooks are also in Kindle format for use on Amazon devices and on your iOS devices.

The individual eBooks are between $7.99 and $9.99 but you’ll want to buy “The Complete Harry Potter Collection” for $ 57.54.

Also fixed missing folders when adding new subscriptions and improved launch time. I love this app and use it every day.

Michael Mulvey:

How about publishers stop making their magazines a big, fucking stack of PNGs and start to use actual text. The kind of text you can select and copy and paste. And look up in in-app dictionaries.

Exactly. Magazine publishers that use giant PNG images just don’t give a shit about their customers.

David Smith:

The current adoption rate hits a significant milestone. It took iOS just 15 days to get the same percentage of users on the latest OS version as are currently on any single version of Android.

And this is what happens when you don’t screw your users with fragmentation.

Steve Peterson for Gamesindustry International:

“It’s awesome, a strong evolution. I’m really looking forward to what they do with TV. That has the ability to complete the loop for Apple.”

Ngmoco made a big impact on iOS gaming in the early days of the App Store and was acquired by Japanese firm DeNA in 2010 (after they acquired stalwart Apple developer Freeverse). The company’s worked since then to develop a core technology framework to support apps across multiple platforms; the first iOS titles based on that new technology were recently released.

The Week:

Apple has no shortage of cash in its vaults, so it’s pretty easy to see why the tech giant is constantly slapped with lawsuits of questionable merit. From disillusioned complaints of Siri’s capabilities to a bizarre sodomy suit filed against late founder Steve Jobs, here, seven of the sillier challenges the Cupertino powerhouse has faced through the years.

Apple gets sued frequently by other entities – Motorola, Samsung, the Australian government, etc – and you’ve all heard about the unfortunate grandmother who broke her nose walking into the glass window of a Long Island Apple Store (she is now suing Apple for $1 million dollars). But that’s not even the oddest lawsuit served against Apple. Did you know that one person sued Apple because he alleged O.J. Simpson had been working as a hit man for Steve Jobs?

Jason Ankeny:

Any discussion what’s hot is inevitably followed by a conversation around what’s not, and that’s Android. Appcelerator reports that 78.6 percent of developers expressed interest in building apps for Google (NASDAQ:GOOG) smartphones during the first quarter, down from 83.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2011 and down from around 87 percent a year ago. Given that Android’s market share has continued to explode over the last 12 months, you can’t blame consumer disinterest for developer apathy in the platform; the culprit is–you guessed it–fragmentation.

Can’t blame them.

Written by Macworld’s Lex Friedman, the book covers signing up, upgrading your music library, understanding various iTunes Match settings, getting around the 25,000 song limit, using the service with Apple TV, troubleshooting problems, using it with iOS devices, and plenty more.

It’s also available on iBooks.

The main theme I go for when building (or reworking) an amplifier is increased musicality. What this means is the amp is much more enjoyable to play through. Almost all of us have had those special experiences where you are playing through a certain rig, and it draws you in to the point where you literally cannot stop playing your guitar. Soon, it’s 4 am, and your significant other is wondering where you are.

Scroll down and watch the video. That’s some meaty tone right there. Beautiful sounding amps.

Good news for Apple, bad news for its competitors.

Around the world, companies have invested time, talent and treasure in social and environmental efforts for a range of complementary reasons. For many companies, cause marketing—the use of social and environmental efforts to build a brand and increase profits—has been a secondary if not primary motivation.

When it comes to acoustic guitars, I only play a Taylor.

This is my favorite audio company. They make the best audio plug-ins on the market today.

Stéphanie Walter:

In this tutorial we are going to create two HTML5 forms that will switch between login and registration using the CSS3 pseudo class :target. We will style it using CSS3 and an icon font. The idea behind this demo is to show the user the login form and provide a link to “switch” to the registration form.

I don’t like the login form much, but the transitions and idea to make it easier for the user are appreciated.

I wonder if it would work if you were in a plane.

Lex Friedman:

Your new iPad’s battery is fine. Despite some media reports suggesting that Apple’s newest tablet suffers from a pair of battery-related issues, Macworld’s own research concludes that the third-generation iPad’s battery works as designed, and that customers needn’t fear harming the battery by over-charging it.

AmpKit is the ultimate guitar amps, effects and recording app for iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch, now with iPad Retina display graphics and an even greater selection of gear in the Gear Store, including the first full-featured, modern bass amp available on iOS.

I love this app.

Loretta Chao for the Wall Street Journal:

A spokeswoman said Mr. Cook— who is on his first trip to China since becoming chief executive of the Cupertino, Calif., company— “had great meetings with Chinese officials today.”

Apple declined to offer details about the meetings – either who they were with, specifically, or what was discussed.

M.I.C Gadget:

Fu Chunli, a citizen of Qingdao, China, downloaded the 25 billionth app from Apple’s App Store early this month, pushing the mobile software store to a new milestone. The young lady downloaded a free version of Disney’s popular mobile game ‘Where’s my water?’As the winner, she received an iTunes gift card worth 10,000 US dollars. Last week, Apple invited her to the Beijing Apple store to collect her prize.

TIME:

An annual Easter egg hunt attended by hundreds of children has been canceled because of misbehavior last year. Not by the kids, but by the grown-ups.Too many parents determined to see their children get an egg jumped a rope marking the boundaries of the children-only hunt at Bancroft Park last year. The hunt was over in seconds, to the consternation of eggless tots and the rules-abiding parents.

One four year old’s dad is quoted as saying, “You have all these eggs just lying around, and parents helping out. You better believe I’m going to help my kid get one of those eggs. I promised my kid an Easter egg hunt, and I’d want to give him an even edge.”

“An edge”? It’s an Easer egg, not a college scholarship.

There is just too much stupid to mention with this one.