These days, owning an analog tape machine is somewhat akin to driving a classic car, with ongoing maintenance, scarcity of parts, and exotic fuel (analog tape) that’s expensive and hard to find. So while a handful of top studios still offer those classic spinning reels (and the engineers to maintain them), the good news for the rest of us is that there are now more convenient ways to achieve that classic magnetic sound.

So the bookmarklet now sports a completely new design that’s highly visible at every screen size, and works in more browsers, too.

The new version also supports multi-page articles. I didn’t even have to do anything, it just updated. I use Instapaper every single day and love it.

Hazel watches whatever folders you tell it to, automatically organizing your files according to the rules you create. It features a rule interface similar to that of Apple Mail so you should feel right at home.

My desktop is begging for this app.

Steve Lohr for the New York Times:

Remember when you were willing to wait a few seconds for a computer to respond to a click on a Web site or a tap on a keyboard? These days, even 400 milliseconds — literally the blink of an eye — is too long, as Google engineers have discovered. That barely perceptible delay causes people to search less.

Google’s research indicates that people will visit a Web site less frequently if it’s slower than a competitor’s page to load by 250 milliseconds. This is important to keep in mind for anyone doing Web publishing these days, as this isn’t just a factor of how powerful your servers are, but how well laid out your pages are, how optimized the graphics are, and how quick the ads are to load.

This silly plan by AT&T has been out for a few days but Matt Alexander summed up my feelings nicely:

Although AT&T might frame this as innovation, such maneuvering is transparently self-serving. Evidently tired of having the customer blame them for high costs and decreasing data allowances, AT&T can place the blame elsewhere.

There are so many considerations in design, color being only one.

Federico Viticci posted his in-depth review of the app. Great stuff.

Reuters:

Blackberry maker Research in Motion Ltd (RIM) is likely to preannounce poor February quarter results and forecast a “very weak” May quarter on lower sales of its phones, according to Jefferies & Co analysts.

I kind of feel bad.

TUAW:

Ever wanted to use AirPlay mirroring to show the screen of your iPad 2 or iPhone 4/4S on your Mac? Just released, Reflection ($14.99 for a single license, $39.99 for a 5 pack) offers a well-featured mirroring receiver for OS X, ideal for education and demos — and a great way to eliminate the Frankencable for iPad video capture.

Sounds cool.

The Verge:

The self-titled Lytro camera, a digital camera that neither looks nor operates like any camera you’ve ever seen: it measures megarays instead of megapixels, captures light fields instead of light, and lets you focus your pictures after you’ve taken them.We’ve been following the Lytro since its inception, and there’s absolutely no doubt that the camera represents a huge technological achievement, but will you be ditching your DSLR for a Lytro, or even your point-and-shoot? Read the full review to find out.

If you find Apple’s iPhoto not powerful enough for your photo editing needs, take a look at both Apple’s Aperture and Adobe’s Lightroom apps. Both apps have free 30 day trials you can download and play with.

Aperture is available on the Mac App Store for the ridiculously low price of $80.00 and Amazon has Photoshop Lightroom available for a limited time for only $90.00.

Neither application has won the war of “Which is Better”. Both have their plusses and minuses. I’ve used both and like Lightroom better but for no other reason than a preferred interface, not functionality.

For those who want to play on the bleeding edge, Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom 4 is now in public beta.

Go watch it.

Interesting stuff from Jason Kottke.

With 400 live acoustic grooves to inspire any songwriter looking for a strong rhythmic foundation, this collection takes the atttiude of rock and pop and infuses it with the groove-centric vibe of funk.

Beta Monkey makes the best drum loops in the business. These are real drums, recorded in a studio with a drummer.

Joy of Tech:

iPad 3 is so kickass it comes with Chuck Norris action jeans.

Samsung Electronics admitted that its attempt to breach the tablet market has largely been a flop, with one executive offering a sobering summary of its performance.“Honestly, we’re not doing very well in the tablet market,” Hankil Yoon, a product strategy executive for Samsung.

So, to boost sales you release a stylus?

David Goldman for CNNMoney:

Apple’s valuation is now higher than the gross domestic product of Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, or Taiwan.

Apple’s stock market value reached more than $500 billion in pre-market trading on Wednesday. It was only last month that Apple’s valuation hit the $400 billion mark.

Lee Chyen Yee and Huang Yuntao for Reuters:

Lawyers for Apple Inc. argued for its right to use the iPad trademark in China on Wednesday, as a higher court began a crucial hearing that could result in sales of the wildly popular tablet computer being halted throughout the Chinese mainland.The Higher People’s Court of Guangzhou is hearing an appeal by the U.S. firm after a lower court ruled in favor of debt-laden Chinese tech company Proview Technology (Shenzhen), which says it owns the trademark in China.

Apple used a shell corporation to secure the iPad trademark from Proview, a financially-troubled computer peripheral maker based in Shenzhen, China. But the company claims that Apple negotiated a deal with its Taiwanese subsidiary, not the Shenzhen headquarters, and claims that Apple’s trademark is invalid in mainland China. The legal dispute has led to the iPad being pulled from store shelves in some parts of China.

If it is ultimately victorious, Proview is expected to try to negotiate a financial settlement with Apple, based on recent comments made by Proview’s chairman.

iFilm:

When Steve Jobs died in October of last year, it was a blow to us all. The loss was felt especially hard at Pixar, the successful film company he helped not only create, but isolate from the Hollywood machine. John Carter, directed by one of Pixar’s most prolific directors, Andrew Stanton, comes out next week and though it’s not Pixar, the film is dedicated to the memory of the legendary businessman and inventor. During the credits, a card says:Dedicated to the Memory of Steve Jobs, an Inspiration to Us AllAt a recent press junket, Stanton was asked why he decided to dedicated Carter to Jobs and his answer was both logisically sound and beautifully poignant.

The Atlantic:

I do have to wonder what Steve Jobs would have thought if he had lived long enough to see this video – which is Rick Santorum’s application of the 1984 motif in his campaign.

It also has echoes of Apple’s much disliked “Lemmings” ad.

Animal:

The Department of Homeland Security monitors updates on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter, to uncover “Items Of Interest” (IOI), according to an internal DHS document released by the EPIC. That document happens to include a list of the baseline terms for which the DHS–or more specifically, a DHS subcontractor hired to monitor social networks–use to generate real-time IOI reports.

So – don’t use those words.

New York Times:

Developers of applications for Apple’s mobile devices, and Apple itself, came under scrutiny this month after reports that some apps were taking people’s address book information without their knowledge.As it turns out, address books are not the only things up for grabs. Photos are also vulnerable. After a user allows an application on an iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch to have access to location information, the app can copy the user’s entire photo library, without any further notification or warning, according to app developers.

AllThingsD:

Twitter is expanding its ad program to iPhone and Android handsets, as the company gets more aggressive about ramping up revenue. Twitter has already been showing some limited advertising on its mobile apps.Just like the Promoted Tweets that Twitter shows on its primary Twitter.com site, these ads will show up in users’ “timelines.” At first Twitter will only allow advertisers to place the ads in front of users who already following their accounts. But within months it will expand the program to allow marketers to reach people who don’t follow them — just as it does on the Web.