Businessweek:

Lazaridis said at the time the PlayBook was worth continuing because the tablet market is still “in its infancy and that “based on the positive response to the promotions that are underway in select markets, RIM believes this strategy will accelerate adoption” of its new operating system and help built the application ecosystem for devices planned for 2012.

RIM failed to plan for the future while it controlled the smartphone market years ago. Then it lied to its users, and the market, by saying the PlayBook was planned all along. It didn’t take a genius to see that the PlayBook was thrown together at the last minute to mitigate a threat from the iPad.

Unfortunately for RIM, users were not as stupid as the company thought they would be. If the PlayBook is an albatross, it’s because the co-CEOs strapped it around their own necks and then tried to ignore the stink.

Nobody is that stupid.

AppleInsider:

Microsoft’s Windows 8 is still a year away, but IDC is already predicting that the new release will be “largely irrelevant” to conventional PC users and that its ability to sell tablets will be “disappointing.”

You didn’t need a market research firm to tell you that, did you?

Jean-Louis Gassée:

Back to Facebook. Both Google and Zuckerberg’s company vie for the same advertising dollars. This makes Google Facebook’s biggest, most direct competitor. The Trojan Horse applications on Android-powered smartphones are a direct threat to Facebook’s advertising business. Just like Google, Facebook wants to maximize our exposure to ads that are finely-tuned using the personal data we provide as a payment for the service. For this, the company needs a well-controlled smartphone.

The Register:

Computer scientists have discovered a weakness in smartphones running Google’s Android operating system that allows attackers to secretly record phone conversations, monitor geographic location data, and access other sensitive resources without permission.

Well now, there’s a feature the iPhone doesn’t have.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Photojojo:

Simply put, our sheepishness turned to sheer addiction (the good kind, not the itchy-skinned paranoid kind) — and we started taking our iPhone Telephoto Lens with us everywhere.

Yeah, it may look funny, but if it takes great pics, it would be worth the investment.

[Via TiPb]

Business Insider:

“Some of the concepts we wanted were transparency, openness, representing a very progressive upscale, and a feeling of having one Heineken,” said Heineken VP of Business Integration John Kennedy. “So it’s very tied in with design elements with our offices in Amsterdam, New York and around the world.”

If there’s one thing that could convince Jim Dalrymple to expatriate from Canada, this is probably it.

The law firms of Sianni & Straite of Wilmington, DE, Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow & McElroy of Edison, NJ, and Keefe Bartels of Red Bank, NJ, have today filed a class action complaint in Federal Court in Wilmington, Delaware related to the unprecedented breach of the digital privacy rights of 150 million cell phone users. The complaint asserts that three cell phone providers (T-Mobile, Sprint and AT&T) and four manufacturers of cell phones (HTC, Motorola, Apple and Samsung) violated the Federal Wiretap Act, the Stored Electronic Communications Act, and the Federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act.The carriers and manufacturers last month were caught willfully violating customers’ privacy rights in direct violation of federal law. A technology blogger in Connecticut discovered last month that software designed and sold by California-based Carrier IQ, Inc. was secretly tracking personal and sensitive information of the cell phone users without the consent or knowledge of the users. On Nov. 30, 2011, the United States Senate Committee on the Judiciary said in a letter to Carrier IQ that “these actions may violate federal privacy laws.” It added, “this is potentially a very serious matter.”

It wasn’t hard to see this coming.

I’m convinced that the people who actually write for magazines, edit them and publish them have never actually tried using their iPad versions for more than a few moments. If they actually did try to use their publication’s app as the actual means to read each issue, things would have to improve. Right? RIGHT?!

Justin Williams tears apart GQ, Esquire and Sports Illustrated for their poor implementation on the iPad. He also offers 10 solutions magazine publishers could use to help themselves.

The iPad should be a great device for reading a magazine, but publishers take old school thinking into a new medium, and that’s just not going to work. Remember all of those subscribe cardboard ads that would fall out of your paper magazine? Publishers are looking for the digital equivalent of that.

What they will find is that many of their users will just stop downloading and subscribing.

The first rule of any business should be “don’t piss off your customers.” Many publishers are failing.

Typing the same things over and over? Get TextExpander from Smile. You’ll save time and tedium by using short abbreviations to insert frequently-typed text. Use it for email addresses, company names, boilerplate paragraphs — there’s even special snippet libraries for correcting typos or coding HTML. The more you use TextExpander, the more uses you’ll find for it. Get a free demo of TextExpander: if you’re not using it, you’re wasting time.

Electronista:

Dell on Monday confirmed that it had stopped selling the Streak 7. The tablet is no longer available online and is withdrawing just months after Dell axed the Streak 5. In a statement, it said it would still be involved in the mobile space but conspicuously referred to the Streak 7 in the past tense, suggesting it was being phased out.

It’s a capitulation for Dell, which says it’s still dedicated to the mobile market, just not in the US.

If I were Michael Dell, I’d just shut the whole business down and give the money back to shareholders.

I looked through the images and was impressed with the photography. When I got to the one of the dog and the navy seal, I felt it tugging at my heart.

Shirley Wibisono:

Indonesian police named Research In Motion’s country director a suspect for negligence Monday after a BlackBerry promotion turned chaotic and left dozens injured and others knocked unconscious.Andrew Cobham, president director for Research in Motion (RIM) in Indonesia, and British security consultant Terry Burkey were named as two of four suspects in the incident at a Jakarta mall and could face five years’ imprisonment.

Just when you think things can’t possibly get worse for RIM.

Matt Alexander:

I have no doubt that QNX is promising, but why on Earth would you push it when it’s not even compatible with your flagship email software? Why would you build Android emulation when you’re looking to develop your own App Store?The whole project screams of mismanagement, and it’s time to stop. Stop trying to peddle subpar products to the unsuspecting Christmas shopper, stop advertising it, and stop defending it.

I only disagree with one thing Matt said in this article — I don’t believe RIM will mount an offensive in the coming months. It seems to me the problems with RIM come from the top and until the co-CEOs are replaced, the company doesn’t stand a chance of making a comeback.

The editors of Rolling Stone bring you the essential Beatles experience. From Please Please Me to Let it Be, Rolling Stone’s “Beatles Ultimate Album-by-Album Guide” takes you on a journey deep inside the Beatles catalog. Read about the inspiration and inside story behind each album, listen to audio samples of every song and view iconic photographs that bring the whole experience to life.

Hilarious.

I’d like to thank Fantastical for sponsoring this week’s RSS on The Loop.

Fantastical is the Mac calendar you’ll actually enjoy. Create events with simple sentences like “Go to lunch with John on Tuesday” or “Summer vacation 6/9-6/16.” Easily locate and search for your events with Fantastical’s beautiful and easy to navigate calendar. Fantastical works with iCal, BusyCal, Entourage, and Outlook and is compatible with OS X Lion and Snow Leopard.

Try Fantastical now for free, or purchase it from the Flexibits Store or on the Mac App Store for only $19.99.

CNN:

Most of Gowalla’s employees, including founder Josh Williams, will move to Facebook’s offices in Palo Alto. The team will work on Facebook’s Timeline feature, which launched at this year’s F8 conference and is gradually rolling out to Facebook’s 800 million members.

Probably a great deal for Gowalla.

Marco Arment does an extensive review of each device.

Erik Sass:

But cash flow remained absurd, with revenues of $3 billion in 1983 and $2.3 billion in 1984, netting Escobar alone at least $1.3 billion in profit.Around this time he bought a Learjet to fly cash out of the U.S., and the Cartel’s expenses included $2,500 per month for rubber bands for bricks of cash.

That’s a lot of rubber bands.

[Via Matt Alexander]

Wow, so many beautiful cars.

The Star:

George Campbell, 45, of Conestogo, Ont., and Paul Alexander Wilson, 38, of Kitchener, pleaded guilty to one charge of mischief in Richmond Provincial Court on Wednesday.They were each given suspended sentences and one year’s probation, and ordered to pay restitution to Air Canada of $35,878 each, and barred from having any contact with Air Canada crews or flying that carrier during the probation period.

They certainly weren’t celebrating record PlayBook sales.

Dan Frommer gives his advice on how to write a better blog. There are definitely some good tips in here.

One of my main rules for writing: Be honest with yourself and your readers.

Mashable:

On Thursday, Napster will officially merge with Rhapsody, the largest on-demand music service in the United States. Rhapsody signed an agreement last month to purchase Napster for an undisclosed sum from its parent company, Best Buy.

I didn’t even know Napster was still around.

Ian Hamilton:

But a roof with solar panels that help extend the range of your vehicle? Instant feedback so I can tell exactly how much my driving style impacts my mileage? An electric car that feels perfectly smooth as you drive? When you press the accelerator (not the gas pedal) it instantly moves? It doesn’t require gasoline but can use it if you need it? And it rides so silently it needs a noisemaker to let pedestrians know it’s coming?

I’m so jealous of Ian right now.