Reuters:

Nintendo Co Ltd posted a sharp drop in quarterly profit and forecast a bigger-than-expected full-year loss, its first at an operating level, as it battles a strong yen and its games devices lose ground to gadgets such as Apple’s iPhone.

Nintendo profit dropped for the October-December quarter, showing fewer people than expected bought Nintendo’s game systems. The company’s 3DS handheld system hasn’t sold nearly as well as it expected, and it’s going to replace its aging Wii system with a new product, the Wii U, later this year.

PrivacyScan works by searching for known applications which leave files on your computer that could lead to privacy concerns. PrivacyScan offers support for a wide range of items, including popular web browsers such as Camino, Chrome, Firefox, Flock, iCab, OmniWeb, Opera, Safari, SeaMonkey, and Shiira, privacy threats presented by Flash Cookies, as well as standard apps such as Finder, Preview, and QuickTime. Once a scan has run its course and privacy threats have been detected, PrivacyScan offers a variety of choices for cleaning — from a standard quick delete to one of the many secure delete shredding options.

Made by the same people that make MacScan.

AppleInsider:

The iPhone was dominant at AT&T, accounting for 80.8 percent of the 9.4 million smartphones sold through the carrier.In the previous quarter, the iPhone represented 56 percent of AT&T’s smartphone activations with 2.7 million units. The wireless carrier revealed that a majority of the 7.6 million iPhones it activated in the quarter were the iPhone 4S.

That’s impressive.

Horace Dediu:

The evidence I see is that Apple does not change pricing but rather stakes out a specific price point as resonating with consumers given their positioning. They then doggedly stick to it. Competitors tend to exploit open price points or try to position with specs on the same spots Apple occupies.

Apple doesn’t do anything based on what its competition does, including price. Apple’s products are priced fairly and at what consumers can afford, and are willing to pay. The proof is the 37 million iPhones, 15 million iPads, 15 million iPods, and 5 million Macs the company sold last quarter.

Priceless cartoon.

[Via DF]

Mustang Floor features include nine footswitches and a solid aluminum treadle-style control pedal, intuitive Mustang III control panel and LCD window, 12 amp models, 37 effects, 100 onboard factory and user presets, “individual stompbox” mode in which amp models can be bypassed, headphone output and auxiliary input, dual XLR and dual 1/4-inch line outputs with level control (outputs can be programmed for optimal response with PA system, power amp or guitar amp), chromatic tuner, and easy USB connectivity for high-quality low-latency audio output and interface with free Fender FUSE application.

Notating music doesn’t get simpler, faster or more musical than with ScoreCleaner. After opening the software, simply connect your MIDi instrument and start playing. The piece you’ve played is notated in the “listening window”. Double click on it and ScoreCleaner converts it into notation, automatically detecting time signature, key, tempo, polyphony, smallest note value, and much more.

Doesn’t get any easier than that.

ReadWriteWeb’s Dan Frommer:

There are plenty of impressive stats in Apple’s December quarter earnings report, such as 37 million iPhones shipped, $46 billion of overall sales, and $13 billion of profit.But Apple’s most impressive stat continues to be its growth rate: Apple is not only huge, but it is growing at a rate far greater than its peers. And, even more incredible, its growth rate is accelerating.

Keep that in mind. Apple has a huge amount of room to grow, whether it be in the PC, phone or tablet market.

At show close, NAMM reported 95,709 registered attendees, a six percent increase from last year and representing a new record for the 110-year-old show. International registration also experienced a 15 percent increase from last year to 11,981. The association previously reported strong exhibitor numbers, with 1,441 exhibitors at this year’s show, including 236 new exhibitors.

NAMM is a great show and I had a blast there last week. So many great new products for musicians and audio engineers from every major company in the music business.

Matt Richman:

On Apple’s earnings call, Tim Cook told analysts that Apple sold over 62 million iOS devices during the fourth quarter, which is about 4 percent more than all of the Android devices sold during the same time period.

Clearly Apple is screwed and Android is winning.

The Verge:

William Gibson famously coined the term “cyberspace,” and gave us a singular vision of the future in early cyberpunk novels Neuromancer, Count Zero, and Mona Lisa Overdrive.During his recent book tour, he took time to talk about writing nonfiction, his love of cities, and his particular view of the present – all delivered in careful, precise words barely tinted with Southern accent.

If you are a science fiction fan, you’ve read and undoubtedly enjoyed Gibson’s work. I once helped him fix his Mac when I lived in Vancouver, BC. and you won’t find a more interesting or gracious guy.

From NASA:

A ‘Blue Marble’ image of the Earth taken from the VIIRS instrument aboard NASA’s most recently launched Earth-observing satellite – Suomi NPP. This composite image uses a number of swaths of the Earth’s surface taken on January 4, 2012.

The “Blue Marble” is one of NASA’s most famous images. There’s a whole Flickr set of NASA photos to check out.

Chris Ziegler for The Verge:

Following up on its December announcement that it would open source the platform — a last-ditch effort to make it viable — HP has gone into detail today on exactly when and how developers will be getting access to webOS code. The company expects the entire open sourcing process to be complete by September, while Enyo, the application framework that debuted on the TouchPad and underpins webOS 3.0, is available as of today along with related developer tools. When open sourcing is complete, the finished product will be known as Open webOS 1.0.

HP’s got a pretty interesting webOS development roadmap planned for this year – the company plans to gut some of webOS’s underpinnings and replace it with a Linux kernel, which will make it easier to get webOS onto a wider variety of hardware.

Ken Segall’s Observatory:

…it was a big blow to Apple when Ron left after 11 stellar years. And it was a big wow for JCPenney when Ron signed on as their new CEO.For many, Ron’s move was a disconnect. Why would someone jump from the world’s coolest retail store to a stodgy department store chain?Well, you’re about to find out. Today is the day that Ron, after less than three months on the job, unveils his plans to turn JCPenney into … well, I wouldn’t want to spoil the surprise.

Johnson is the guy who led Apple’s Retail Store initiative and helped revitalize the company. His first move at JCPenney is described as his “Think Different” moment. I wouldn’t bet against him.

AllThingD:

Asked about his first four months as Apple chief executive, Tim Cook stressed that what he feels most is lucky to be surrounded by his talented colleagues.“You can see our results,” Cook said during a conference call with analysts. “I think the team is doing a fantastic job. We feel really good about where we are.”

That might just be the understatement of the year.

Foss Patents:

The latest hostility is a new lawsuit filed by Motorola Mobility, with green light from Google, in the Southern District of Florida, seeking an injunction against the iPhone 4S and the iCloud over a package of six patents previously asserted against older Apple products in the same court.

Sounds interesting. It lets you create templates on the Web site to use on the iPhone, track clicks and views and schedule emails.

9to5Mac:

Perhaps most enticing, Cook tells all to report to Town Hall tomorrow either in person or via AppleWeb at 10AM PT to discuss ‘some exciting new things going on at Apple’.

CNNMoney:

The Cupertino, Calif.-based company said its fiscal first quarter profit rose to $13 billion, or $13.87 per share, more than double the profit Apple booked a year earlier.It was one of the most profitable quarters ever for any U.S. company, trailing only ExxonMobil’s record-setting $14.8 billion quarter from the fall of 2008, when oil prices were at an all-time high.Apple is sitting on most of those profits. It now has $97.6 billion in cash.

You might want to read that again. Apple, a company many left for dead in 1996, a company who’s share price was less than its cash on hand at one point in the 1990s, a company that once desperately hoped to be bought by Sun Microsystems, just had the second greatest quarter in US financial history. Congratulations to everyone at Apple.

The Verge:

There’s definitely a huge market for used lenses in great condition, at bargain prices. This guide will hopefully arm you with the knowledge and just the right amount of paranoia to separate the gems from the dogs.

In another life, I’m a budding photographer with an incurable case of “lens envy”. This guide is a great read to help you make sure you’re getting the best deal possible.

NetworkWorld:

Adam Lashinsky’s upcoming book, Inside Apple, provides an intriguing look into the inner workings at Apple while examining the management and product development strategies they’ve implemented to create numerous game-changing devices.Now it’s no secret that Apple sweats every last detail when it comes to their products – which if anything, is actually an understatement.To fully grasp how seriously Apple executives sweat the small stuff, consider this: For months, a packaging designer was holed up in this room performing the most mundane of tasks – opening boxes.

Always sweat the small stuff.

Dasient Blog:

The Dasient team is excited to announce that we have been acquired by Twitter! Effective immediately, we will be bringing our technology, tools, and team to the revenue engineering team at Twitter.Dasient has been focused on solving web-scale security problems involving malware and other types of online abuse.

Let’s hope Twitter uses this acquisition to clamp down on the Twitter spam so many of us are subjected to.

Bloomberg:

Verizon Communications Inc, the second-largest U.S. phone company, reported a fourth-quarter loss after booking a pension charge and having higher subsidy costs for rising iPhone sales.While iPhone sales more than doubled from the third quarter to 4.3 million units, total smartphone sales fell short, signaling waning demand for handsets that run on Google Inc.’s Android operating system.

Because of the subsidies the carriers pay to Apple, higher sales of the iPhone mean more upfront costs but, in theory, more profits long term.

Declan McCullagh for CNet:

American citizens can be ordered to decrypt their PGP-scrambled hard drives for police to peruse for incriminating files, a federal judge in Colorado ruled today in what could become a precedent-setting case.Judge Robert Blackburn ordered a Peyton, Colo., woman to decrypt the hard drive of a Toshiba laptop computer no later than February 21–or face the consequences including contempt of court.

Blackburn says that the Fifth Amendment – the right to avoid self-incrimination – doesn’t apply, and cited a 1789 act to bolster his position. My best is that we haven’t heard the last of this.