Jessica Chou, the Daily Meal:

We guess a delivery car or bicyclist was too pedestrian for tech folks; over in San Francisco, something called TacoCopter has popped up, delivering online orders of tacos via helicopter — an unmaned, robotic one, to be exact.

TacoCopter. The concept fills my imagination with gleeful images of fleets of robotic drones delivering packages of all sorts. We live in the future!

AT&T made it pretty clear it would work to avoid exactly this from happening if its acquisition of T-Mobile were approved. This blog post is AT&T’s “I told you so” moment.

Many thanks to Edovia for sponsoring The Loop this week with Screens.

Screens VNC for iOS and Mac. It just works.

Josh Topolsky:

Mike Daisey is not a hero, but I’m not sure he’s a villain either.He leaned into his lies to sell tickets to a show, to get on network TV, to make money and get famous. But along the way — either on purpose or by accident — he opened a lot of eyes.And that’s the truth.

Bullshit.

Daisey made up some horrendous lies about Foxconn and Apple that never should have been told. He didn’t open anyone’s eyes. Rather, he infuriated the population with false stories of abuse, caused harm to the reputations of both companies and many of its executives, including Steve Jobs and Tim Cook.

Apple has been auditing its factories since 2007 and making conditions better for workers — that’s before Mike Daisey came along and they’ll be doing it after he leaves the public eye. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. In fact, much of the information that media organizations use against Apple comes from the reports it makes public.

There is no reason to make excuses for Daisey or his lies.

SlashFilm:

Disney is a prolific company with its name on a great many successes, and it likes to hide its missteps and failures. The process of doing so sometimes helps those mistakes become things of legend. Song of the South, with its politically incorrect and racist portrayals of certain characters, is likely the most famous example. Another example might be The Sweatbox, a very rarely-seen documentary about the failed making of an animated film called Kingdom of the Sun, which eventually morphed into The Emperor’s New Groove.The Sweatbox filmmakers John-Paul Davidson and Trudie Styler were given unprecedented access to Disney’s process and the resulting film painted the executives in such a negative light, they more or less made sure the film would never been seen in public.

A harsh look at the process of making movies with some cool behind the scenes footage.

Om Malik:

Unlike the past, when Coca Cola, Levi’s and McDonald’s were icons of globalization, today the brands are very different. They aren’t entirely American, but instead very global.

I remember when seeing a European brand was odd, but not so much anymore. It really is becoming a small world.

Chris Ziegler for the Verge:

T-Mobile USA CEO Philipp Humm has sent a memo to his employees today announcing the net elimination of around 1,900 jobs nationwide, primarily resulting from the closure of seven call center facilities…3,300 positions are being slashed in total, with 1,400 being added at the company’s remaining 17 call centers.

The company has to contract before it can grow again, provided it can survive the LTE migration. Big challenges ahead for T-Mobile and for Humm. In some ways, he’s in the same unfortunate position as Gil Amelio was before Steve Jobs returned to Apple.

Stock that baby up with Heineken and we’re on the road.

Imagine you have a tool to express your talent with the best tone ever. Imagine people listening to your guitar tracks and saying “wow! how did you get that killer tone?!”Imagine you have more than 160 models including Randall, THD and Brunetti amplifiers. And that these, for the first time in software form, cannot be distinguished from the real ones. That’s Overloud TH2.

I just got this software this afternoon, but holy shit is it ever good. I need to dig into it some more, but I’ll give you some more detail and a buying recommendation when I do.

I joined host Chuck Joiner and book author/TUAW’s Steve Sande on this week’s MacJury to discuss Apple’s dividends and stock buyback program, the new Apple TV and other issues of the day.

Would you like a new desk or cubicle? What if you could have one of these two designs? The Blackhawk Trunk is “inspired by the gleaming nose cones and fuselages of mid-20th-century aircraft” and the Mayfair Trunk “spares no detail with handmade distressed cigar leather, a solid wood frame and over 3000 hand-hammered brass nail heads.” Both are gorgeous and would look great in your home or office!

Adam Satariano for Bloomberg:

To many, the incident showed Consumer Reports is now chasing page-views on the Web instead of actually doing a public service.

Satariano quoted me, Marco Arment and MG Siegler.

Heineken everything!

Meghan Keneally for The Daily Mail:

There is still an aura of mysticism that remains around that fateful ship and new photos that will be published in the April 2012 edition of National Geographic Magazine provides for the first time a sense of what the wreck looks like today.

The images included on the page are breathtaking – it gives you a sense of the wreck that you’ve never seen before. The April issue of National Geographic will be one for the archives, that’s for sure.

The following pie chart and table is based on the number of Android devices that have accessed Google Play within a 14-day period ending on the data collection date noted below.

Collection date was March 5, 2012.

This update provides the following new features, fixes and improvements:Mid/Side Splitter: Split the signal into mid and side channels for a whole new approach to stereo processing.Global Sidechain: This global component applies sidechaining to the whole signal chain. Essential for frequency-specific compression and more.Favorites Tab: Fast access to the components you use most. This new tab automatically groups the components and presets you use regularly.New Demo Mode: Just drag the effect you want to try into your rack and take it for a spin. No re-starting, no need to change modes.

Guitar Rig is one my favorites.

For some folks, Wi-Fi isn’t the optimal solution – you want a wired network because it’s faster, safer and don’t want to deal with the problems associated with wireless. How do you wire up an existing house without making it look like crap, or doing it wrong?

Writing for TechNewsWorld, Patrick Nelson offers some practical advice for tips you can learn from the pros on how to create an elegant, adaptable and workable wired environment.

(Via LifeHacker)

SWEET MOTHER OF GOD!

But Bud? Really?

Good point.

Mobile World Live’s Matt Ablott has posted an interview with Sprint CEO Dan Hesse in which he talks about the company’s decision to sell the iPhone. Hesse noted that iPhone sales have exceeded Sprint’s expectations. And four out of every 10 iPhones sold by Sprint are to new customers, roughly double the rate of AT&T and Verizon – implying that Sprint is taking customers away from the competition.

Hesse also addressed analysis that Sprint and others pay heavier-than-typical subsidies to sell the iPhone. He said that iPhone customers are more profitable than others because there’s lower “churn” – the term the industry uses to describe the rate at which customers leave services over time. Hesse added that Sprint iPhone 4 users are using less data on average than high-end Android 4G device.

(via BGR)

TNW:

The patent discusses the technology to analyze the background noise during your phone call and serve up ads for you based on the environmental conditions Google picks up on. Yeah, that’s creepy.

Don’t be evil.

[Via Ben Brooks]

Jim and I were Gene Steinberg’s guests for the March 17th edition of the Tech Night Owl Live podcast and radio broadcast. Also present was Daniel Eran Dilger of AppleInsider and Roughly Drafted fame. We were all on individually, so there were no pillow fights.

That’s pretty impressive. It shows what’s really important to a lot of users.

Bloomberg:

Microsoft Corp. (MSFT), the world’s largest software maker, said its Windows Phone operating system will propel it past Apple Inc. (AAPL) in China’s smartphone market as its partners release devices costing as little as $158.

Microsoft is losing its mind. Maybe they’ll hold another mock funeral for the iPhone because that worked so good for their iPod strategy.