Sara Forden and Jeff Bliss for Bloomberg:

The U.S. Federal Trade Commission subpoenaed Apple Inc. (AAPL) as part of its antitrust probe of Google Inc. (GOOG), seeking information on how the computer maker uses the search engine on the iPhone and iPad, two people familiar with the matter said.

The FTC wants to find out if Google is abusing its position as dominant Internet search tool to boost its revenue in the mobile phone market, according to an expert consulted for the article.

As we look around the web, we see so many examples of designers who have brilliantly used color in web design projects to make the page or various page elements really pop. Even in some cases when we see designers opting for more minimal designs, using bold splashes of color can really take the look to fantastic new heights in very simple ways.

And I thought I was being bold with The Loop’s purple.

CNN:

The United States, the European Union and Japan filed a trade case Tuesday over China’s export restrictions on minerals that are crucial for the production of many high-tech devices, according to EU and U.S. officials. The case aims to pressure China to lift export limits on certain minerals known as rare earths, a senior Obama administration official said.

China mines a huge percentage of rare earths used in high-tech manufacturing, and has gradually reduced the amount of material it will export. The United States claims China is hoarding the minerals; China defends its decision, and says its doing it out of environmental concerns and in-line with World Trade Organization (WTO) guidelines.

Steve Peterson for Gamesindustry.biz:

Some predicted that established publishers with big budgets, experienced developers, and huge brand names would quickly dominate the mobile markets.But a new analysis by mobile analytics firm Flurry completely demolishes that prediction, showing that established publishers only control about one third of the games being played on mobile platforms.

Big console and PC game publishers have certainly tried to muscle their way in, but iOS and Android have given rise to new publishers that dominate the platform.

Ben Brooks brings up some good points about this “via” and “hat tip” debate.

Om Malik:

It is my belief that in modern times, no success goes unpunished. Infographics, too, were “punished” for their success.

Agreed.

On Sunday, HH Sheikh Mohammed tweeted the launch of the iPad “Minister e-briefcase” for UAE Cabinet members.

Every government should do this.

Apple soon changed the codename to “BHA.” Upon learning that it stood for “Butt-Head Astronomer,” Sagan filed a lawsuit for defamation of character, and lost.

I can just see Steve giggling as he changed the codename.

Update: As many of you noted, Steve wasn’t at Apple during this time.

Going forward, better than one-in-five companies (22%) say they’ll be purchasing tablets for their employees during 2nd Quarter 2012, and the percentage reporting they’ll buy Apple iPads has jumped to the highest level of corporate iPad demand ever seen in a ChangeWave survey.A total of 84% of companies planning to buy tablets next quarter now say they’ll purchase iPads – a 7-pt leap since the previous survey.

I agree with Marco.

Jenna Wortham for The New York Times:

A marketing agency touched off a wave of criticism and debate when it hired members of the local homeless population to walk around carrying mobile Wi-Fi devices, offering conferencegoers Internet access in exchange for donations.

On one hand it seems exploitative, but clearly the homeless people recruited for the effort don’t mind, and the marketing company that arranged the program worked with a homeless shelter as well. The director of the shelter is surprised at the blowback as well.

I look forward to people asking Jim how they can access his wireless hotspot at the next tech event he’s at. He’ll either punch them in the face or he’ll make some extra money.

Yahoo! Travel:

While staircases are fundamentally a means to get from one point to another, they become cool—and worth seeking out—when the form is made at least as important as the function. Whether in shops, museums, or the great outdoors, the staircases we’ve found are inspiring works of public art and provide interesting perspective on a destination.

Even us lazy guys would enjoy taking some of these stairs.

In addition to the list of bug fixes, Apple posted the security improvements in the new version of Safari.

Gadling:

In honor of its upcoming 100-year anniversary, the Château Laurier Hotel in Ottawa is offering an amnesty for anyone who has pilfered something from the hotel over the last century. The historic, castle-like hotel in the Canadian capital has already received more than 60 items from people all over North America.“The amnesty part means there are no questions asked,” said Deneen Perrin, the hotel’s director of public relations. “It doesn’t matter whether your grandmother took a silver spoon and put it in her purse or if someone’s parents maybe worked in the hotel and took something, we’ll take it back.”

Shows how nice Canadians are.

The (unofficial) SXSW Torrents:

This torrent includes all the tracks that could be previewed on the SXSW website for SXSW 2012 as of March 6, 2012. This year’s collection includes 1,219 files totaling 7.52GB. Torrents for 2005-2011 are also available.

Would you like a buttload of free (and legal) music, from (mostly) undiscovered bands? These torrent files are your ticket.

Sachin Agarwal on the official Posterous Space:

The opportunities in front of Twitter are exciting, and we couldn’t be happier about bringing our team’s expertise to a product that reaches hundreds of millions of users around the globe. Plus, the people at Twitter are genuinely nice folks who share our vision for making sharing simpler.Posterous Spaces will remain up and running without disruption. We’ll give users ample notice if we make any changes to the service. For users who would like to back up their content or move to another service, we’ll share clear instructions for doing so in the coming weeks.

Exciting news for Posterous and Twitter fans.

Joe Palazzolo for the Wall Street Journal:

A New York man represented by Robbins Geller is suing Apple for false advertising, alleging that the company’s commercials convey a “misleading and deceptive message” about Siri’s capabilities.

I guess people will sue over anything these days.

Tether’s new version for the iPhone is purely based on HTML5 and creates a completely wireless connection over AdHoc. This circumvents the need of buying the application directly from Apple’s App Store and allows any iPhone or iPad with a data connection to allow tethering.

No need for an iPhone app anymore.

Reuters:

Apple Inc’s faster and sharper-looking new iPad is drawing the notice of the traditional video game industry, as developers are envisioning games for it that have more in common with the visceral 3D shooter “Call of Duty” than “FarmVille.”

This could be a huge market for Apple. Instead of coming straight at it, Apple is outflanking everyone — the next year or so will be very interesting.

The Atlantic Wire posted its own roundup of iPad rumors and how sites did in calling the features.

Joseph Volpe for Engadget:

With almost two years to go before it reaches that end-of-year 2013 expansion target, the carrier’s flipping the switch on an additional eleven markets across the US, as well as completing coverage in New York City.

This isn’t related to Apple’s questionable decision to let the iPhone 4S display “4G” in its status bar since the iOS 5.1 update. 4G LTE isn’t yet supported on any Apple iPhone, though it is supported by the new iPad which ships this Friday.

Sidekick is a stealth 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.

By controlling a huge variety of settings, Sidekick makes your laptop more secure, efficient, portable, and personalized. It can automatically change your default printer, connect to a server, run a command in Terminal, lock the keychain, change the system location…the list goes on. Visit the Sidekick website to learn more.

Try Sidekick 4.0 for free. It’s super powerful and very easy to use.

Use the coupon code THELOOP to save 20% on Sidekick.

Matt Brian:

Commencing on September 29 at the South San Francisco Conference Center in California, JailbreakCon welcomes back many of the speakers that travelled from the US to London last year, including Cydia creator and prominent Jailbreak activist Jay “Saurik” Freeman, members of the Chronic Dev Team and Barrel tweak creator Aaron Ash.

Joel Rosenblatt for Bloomberg:

Samsung Electronics Co. (005930) was accused by Apple Inc. of violating a court order in a patent- infringement case by failing to produce source code as directed by a judge. Samsung “only partially complied with” a court order requiring the company to produce source code for products such as its its 4G smartphone and Galaxy Tab 10.1 tablet computer, which Apple claims violate its patents, according to a filing yesterday in federal court in San Jose, California.

Q: What are your goals when setting out to build a new product?A: Our goals are very simple — to design and make better products. If we can’t make something that is better, we won’t do it.

And that, in a nutshell, is what Apple’s competition doesn’t get.

For one, we’re in the middle of production on another game, and can’t simply drop everything to implement this because Google finally delivered on a year-old promise. And secondly, as I mentioned on Twitter, our Android apps aren’t making money.

Winning.

[Via DF]

In his diary, Warhol later wrote, “I said that once some man had been calling me a lot wanting to give me one [a Macintosh], but I’d never called him back or something, and then the kid looked up and said, ‘Yeah, that was me. I’m Steve Jobs.’”

Scroll down the page to No. 11 on the list.

New York Times:

The Curator’s Code will use a symbol resembling a sideways S to express that a piece of content came directly from another source, and a different figure — a curved arrowlike symbol — to signal what is commonly known as a “hat tip,” or nod to a source that inspired a further thought. The Curator’s Code supplies the appropriate symbol and then the blogger or writer simply puts in a hyperlink behind it as they normally would.

How about just stop stealing other people’s shit.

All told, STAR went through almost a thousand rumor stories over the past six months.

The only problem I have with this is including Mac Rumors and AppleInsider.I know that sounds strange, but you expect to see rumors on those sites. They report and aggregate rumor stories for us, which is their whole model.

What I’m more interested in is the sites that publish rumors that don’t say they are rumor sites, but rather reporting news.

Still, fascinating findings.