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.

Troy Wolverton for the Mercury News:

My conclusion: For PC users, Windows 8 is a major misstep.

Tim Bajarin:

This is a very important OS for PC vendors and most are betting their companies on it for any future growth. I am just not convinced that it will be a raging success out of the gate without the proper optimized alternate input that matches the touch input that is supposed to be the center of Metro’s real user value.

Windows 8, the new Vista.

Julien’s Auctions is proud to present Property From The Estate of Les Paul. Les Paul not only revolutionized the sound of the electric guitar, but also the technology behind modern day sound recording.

Incredible.

Nathan Ingraham for The Verge:

Microsoft’s working quickly to counter backlash it’s receiving after denying a user who won a Windows Phone challenge his just reward. Yesterday, Sahas Katta won a “Smoked by Windows Phone” challenge when his Galaxy Nexus displayed the weather of two different cities faster than the Windows Phone he was up against, but the Microsoft store claimed that he had to show weather from two different states. Microsoft has been roundly bashed for this technicality since then, so Windows Phone evangelist Ben Rudolph has just taken to Twitter to apologize and offer Katta a new laptop and Windows Phone, as well as an apology.

I’m unclear why the idiots at the Microsoft Store thought they could or should have gotten away with this on a technicality; the “Smoked by a Windows Phone” campaign is there simply to draw attention to the devices to encourage people to try them. But Microsoft’s ways are often indecipherable to me, so I guess I shouldn’t be surprised.

Mike Daisey, on his own blog:

When I said onstage that I had personally experienced things I in fact did not, I failed to honor the contract I’d established with my audiences over many years and many shows. In doing so, I not only violated their trust, I also made worse art.This is not the place for me to try and explain my good intentions. We all know where the road paved with good intentions leads. In fact, I think it might lead to where I’m sitting right now.

Aww, poor baby.

Mike Daisey, for the uninitiated, is the activist stage performer whose one-man act, “The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs,” sought to turn the spotlight on the treatment of workers in the Chinese factories where Apple products are made. A reporter at NPR’s Marketplace discovered that Daisey fabricated his description of his trip to China and the meetings he had, despite Daisey’s insistence to attendees of his performances and journalists alike that it was true.

Now that he’s been exposed as a liar, his colleagues and – perhaps more importantly – the venues willing to pay him for his work are pulling away from him, and he is finally able to understand what he’s done.

This isn’t to diminish the very real issue of factory conditions at Foxconn and other Apple-contracted facilities. They’re certainly not ideal by Western standards.

But that doesn’t mean liars should be able to make money by exploiting people’s good will, either.

Michael Kan for Computerworld:

The iPad device was granted the China Compulsory Certification by the China Quality Certification Center according to the regulator’s website. The certification is a mandatory stamp necessary for Apple to sell the device in the country.

The new iPad is already available in China via the black market. This regulatory hurdle doesn’t affect Apple’s standing in Chinese court, where it is being sued by the Chinese firm Proview for trademark infringement. Apple says it paid Proview to use the name; Proview claims that Apple paid its Taiwanese subsidiary, not the parent company.