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.

Jean-Louis Gassée’s Monday Note:

What’s the use of offering more than 500,000 wares if customers can’t find their way through the gigantic bazaar?…the iPhone has sold in ever larger numbers (we’ll soon see if the December quarter number crossed the 30 million units line, and by how much) and with more than 18 billion downloads, the App Store is an unmitigated success. If this is what “broken” looks like, why fix it? And how?

Hard to argue the App Store is “broken” but the kind of additional curation Gassée argues for might be welcome to many.

Freakonomics:

Supporters of stronger intellectual property enforcement argue online piracy is a huge problem, one which costs the U.S. economy between $200 and $250 billion per year, and is responsible for the loss of 750,000 American jobs. These numbers seem truly dire: a $250 billion per year loss would be almost $800 for every man, woman, and child in America. And 750,000 jobs – that’s twice the number of those employed in the entire motion picture industry in 2010.The good news is that the numbers are wrong.

Read the article to see why the Freakonomics guys believe that.

Greg Bensinger for the Wall Street Journal:

T-Mobile USA and AT&T filed a request with the Federal Communications Commission for approval of the transfer of $1 billion in wireless airwaves AT&T promised as a result of the failure of its $39 billion bid to take over its smaller rival.

T-Mobile also gets $3 billion in cash; its consolation prize for having the acquisition deal with AT&T fall through. T-Mobile has said in the past its limited spectrum has hampered its growth, so agreement with AT&T should help.

(Hat tip: Engadget)

AllThingsD:

Within days of its debut, Apple’s iBooks textbook store had already racked up a significant number of downloads.According to Global Equities Research, which monitors Apple’s iBook sales via a proprietary tracking system it doesn’t much care to discuss, more than 350,000 textbooks were downloaded from the company’s iBooks Store within the first three days of availability.…There were some 90,000 downloads of iBooks Author, Apple’s free textbook-creation tool, during the same time.

As usual, these numbers should be taken with a little salt – Global Equities Research doesn’t disclose how they came about the number and many downloads may be from those of us long past the days when we needed, used or bought textbooks.

Mobile Nations:

Birkley (sic) Breathed’s Bloom County was my two favorite comic strips growing up, and now it’s starting to become available in iBooks. From Bill the Cat’s run for president to Milo’s skewering of Senator Bedfellow to Oliver’s landing the space shuttle to Opus’… everything, it delighted me on a daily basis.

If you are as much of a Bloom County fan as I am, you probably already went and grabbed this from iBooks. But get the free samples first and check them out. You may not be crazy with the way the strips are presented.

Remember the story from earlier this month of the “iPhone that stopped the “New York Philharmonic”? It has happened again but with much more amusing results.

Slovakian musician Lukáš Kmit was play a solo on his viola in a synagogue in Presov, Slovakia when a ringing phone brought his performance to a screeching halt. But, unlike the New York Philharmonic, he quickly started again – but with a twist.

Watch the video to see how he reacted.

The Pew Research Center:

The share of adults in the United States who own tablet computers nearly doubled from 10% to 19% between mid-December and early January and the same surge in growth also applied to e-book readers, which also jumped from 10% to 19% over the same time period.The number of Americans owning at least one of these digital reading devices jumped from 18% in December to 29% in January.These findings are striking because they come after a period from mid-2011 into the autumn in which there was not much change in the ownership of tablets and e-book readers.

The introduction and pricing of devices like Amazon’s latest line of Kindles certainly helped spike those numbers but Apple’s Q1 2012 Earnings Call tomorrow will likely show a uptick in iPad sales over the same time frame too.

Peter Kafka for AllThingsD:

Research In Motion isn’t broken, so no need to break it up. But it needs better internal focus, and better external focus, too. That’s the takeaway from new RIM CEO Thorsten Heins, who told analysts this morning that he thinks the company is in pretty good shape, all things considered.

RIM stock dropped sharply following his analyst call, which tells you what Wall Street thinks of Heins’ plan.

Meet Apollo, the first professional, high-resolution computer audio interface that delivers the sound, feel, and flow of analog recording. This 18 x 24 FireWire/Thunderbolt – ready interface combines genuine UA analog design with class-leading 24-bit/192 kHz sound quality and onboard Realtime UAD Processing.

New York Times:

Jim Balsillie and Mike Lazaridis, who made the BlackBerry a leading business tool but then presided over its precipitous decline, said they would step down on Monday as co-chairmen and co-chief executives of Research in Motion.

BWHAHAHAHAHA!

Many thanks to Bare Bones Software for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed.

BBEdit 10 from Bare Bones Software — The leading professional HTML and text editor for the Mac just keeps getting better, with more than one hundred new features. Download the demo and see for yourself!

Mashable:

Kodak has finally formalized what had been expected for years — it’s gone bankrupt. In the past 15 years, digital technology changed photography dramatically, and Kodak, a former heavyweight in the analog film business, got left behind.In fact, Kodak missed the boat on digital not once, but at least three times. Besides never capitalizing on the digital-camera tech it helped create, Kodak also gravely misunderstood the new ways consumers wanted to interact with their photos, the technologies involved, and the market forces surrounding them.

It’s sad how a company that once represented photography to so many of us and helped just as many capture important moments may end up in the dustbin of history. And worse because it seems like it was their own fault.

KQED’s interview with John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt:

Since last fall, 400 California middle school students have been using the iPad to learn Algebra with Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Fuse program. This first app, Holt McDougal Algebra 1, is an interactive version of the textbook, and with it, students get feedback on practice questions, they can write and save notes, receive guided instruction, and access video lessons.“We like to say that the course is ‘re-imagined,’” said John Sipe, senior vice president, national sales manager at HMH. “It’s a lot more than just adaptation. We know that it’s a more iterative process than a revolutionary process in moving things to mobile delivery to a place like iPad.”

Preliminary results show that 78% of the students using the iPad app scored Proficient or Advanced on the California Standards Test, while the traditional textbook using students scored 59% Proficient or Advanced.

Star Wars Uncut:

In 2009, Internet users were asked to remake “Star Wars: A New Hope” into a fan film, 15 seconds at a time. Contributors were allowed to recreate scenes from Star Wars however they wanted. SWU has been featured in documentaries, news features and conferences around the world for its unique appeal. In 2010, it won a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Creative Achievement In Interactive Media.

Your reaction/appreciation of this will depend entirely on your feelings about Star Wars in general. For me, the “Star Wars Uncut” video is so bad it’s good but I couldn’t sit through all two hours of it.

Smart Movie Making’s Tony Myers:

Going to San Francisco for the 2012 Macworld | iWorld expo? Here’s a list of useful apps to help you get the best out of the city, especially if you are new in town.

San Francisco is a great city made even better if you know where to go, what to see and how to get there. These apps, both free and paid, will help a lot.

Yanko Design:

All ye weary travelers with a strolley in tow; I understand your pain for finding available sockets, just to juice up ye gadgets. Ah, I suck at poetry but you get my drift right? So here we have a trolley suitcase that harnesses kinetic energy via its wheels and then with an easy dock, juices up your gadgets. Even if it’s just for few precious minutes, I think it’s a neat-o idea!

It’s just a concept/prototype design but it’s an interesting idea to think about for you road warriors. If you want something you can use right now, check out the line of luggage from Powerbag.

Reuters:

China Communist Party members can now carry tablet PC to verify identification cards, read the blogs of cadres and manage state-owned firms without fretting that using a bourgeois Apple Inc iPad will ruin their street cred.Enter RedPad Number One, an Android-based tablet computer filled with software applications catered to a party official’s every need for control. Delivered in a decadent leather case for 9,999 yuan ($1,600), it is twice the price of Apple’s most expensive iPad 2.RedPad’s price was high, RedPad Number One spokesman Liu Xianri said, because of the number of pre-installed apps that cater to bureaucrats and state-owned company managers.

Sounds like a “third party opportunity” for Apple.

International Space Station:

This video was taken by the crew of Expedition 30 on board the International Space Station…The complete pass is over southern Africa to the ocean, focusing on the lightning flashes from local storms and the Milky Way rising over the horizon. The Milky Way can be spotted as a hazy band of white light at the beginning of the video.

What was your view when you woke up this morning?

The “Matriarch of the Blues”, Etta James, died on Friday morning. She toured with Little Richard while still a minor and had her first hit at 15. She was a six time Grammy winner and one of the few artists to be inducted into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Blues Hall of Fame.

She will be forever known for the classic song, “At Last” – originally written for the Glen Miller Orchestra in the 1940’s. She first recorded it in 1961 and it is still one of the most achingly beautiful renditions of a love song you’ll ever hear.

When you hear Adele, Christina Aguilera, Beyonce et al try and wring emotion out of a song, you’re hearing Etta James. And she did it better.

The Telegraph:

A year and a day after she set out to sail single-handed around the globe, Dutch teenager Laura Dekker finished her 27,000 mile voyage on Saturday night.Miss Dekker has had to cope with weeks of solitude, ocean storms and a fear of pirates while navigating and sailing a 38-foot yacht called Guppy, all the time trying to keep up with her schoolwork.

I couldn’t keep up with my schoolwork at sixteen on dry land! What a remarkable feat and a remarkable young woman.

Obama for America:

President Obama was inspired to sing a bit of Al Green during a recent campaign stop at the Apollo Theater. And now you can have his rendition of “Let’s Stay Together” as a ringtone.

Don’t you hate when politicians pander like this? But, to be fair, POTUS nailed the line.

The New York Times:

Apple had redesigned the iPhone’s screen at the last minute, forcing an assembly line overhaul. New screens began arriving at the plant near midnight.A foreman immediately roused 8,000 workers inside the company’s dormitories, according to the executive. Each employee was given a biscuit and a cup of tea, guided to a workstation and within half an hour started a 12-hour shift fitting glass screens into beveled frames. Within 96 hours, the plant was producing over 10,000 iPhones a day.“The speed and flexibility is breathtaking,” the executive said. “There’s no American plant that can match that.”

Fascinating article on why Apple, and many other companies, build where they build and what it means for the American and world economies.

Microsoft News Center:

As other states recognize marriage equality, Washington’s employers are at a disadvantage if we cannot offer a similar, equitable and inclusive environment to our talented employees, our top recruits and their families. This legislation would put Washington employers on equal footing with employers in the six other states that already recognize the committed relationships of same-sex couples. Passing the bill would be good for our business and for the state’s economy.

Interesting that this support is couched in economic terms and not ethical or moral ones.

Another slightly amusing ad from Samsung poking fun at iPhone buyers. Samsung will supposedly unveil the commercial during the upcoming Super Bowl. Interesting way to blow through $3.5 million dollars – the cost of a 30 second ad during the game.

Network World:

Google CEO Larry Page announced yesterday that Google+ now boasts more than 90 million users worldwide, more than double the number of users it had in the previous quarter. Page also said that engagement on the social networking site has been “growing tremendously” as “over 60% of [users] engage daily, and over 80% weekly.”Page did not provide data for how many user accounts were actually active, however.

Interesting statistics. How many of you are signed up for Google+ and, more importantly, how many of you use it on a regular (daily) basis?

David Smith:

All Apple is doing with this restriction is saying that if you directly profit from this free tool and platform that we have created, then we deserve our cut. Which seems entirely fair to me.

The range of opinion on Apple’s policies regarding distribution of iBooks Author-created content is fascinating and runs the gamut from fair to “APPLE IS EVIL!!!!”.

Yahoo! News:

The camera is normally a big selling point, but in Singapore Apple’s iPhone 4 and 4S are now available without the function — to cater to military personnel banned from taking image-capturing devices into army camps.Camera phones were banned in the city state’s military installations in 2007 after photos of sensitive training activities were posted online.Prices listed on M1’s website showed that adapted versions of the iPhone cost Sg$49 ($38) more.

It’s probably just a matter of time before this model is widely available for other military and business customers.