At the top you’ll notice categories for Newsstand, Books, Music, Video, Docs, Apps, and the Web browser. With the exception of Docs and the Browser, each of those menus also include direct links into Amazon’s digital store for that content.
TNW:
The UAE is now turning its attention to Apple’s iMessage service as well as Facetime, with Mobile carriers Etisalat, followed by Du, suspending the Apple services.
Absolutely incredible. Thanks for the link Brian.
Apple is warning users of its 1st generation iPod nano of potential overheating problems.
According to Apple, the nanos in question were sold between September 2005 and December 2006. While the problem only happens in “very rare cases,” Apple does recommend customers stop using the 1st generation iPod nano.
Apple posted a note on its Website with instructions on how to order a replacement unit. There are also instructions on how to identify your iPod as one of the affected models.
I mentioned last night that I didn’t get why the world’s most expensive photograph sold for so much, so I thought I’d show you so photos that I do like. These are shots from self-taught photographer Joshua L. Smith.
I’d like to thank Sparrow for sponsoring this week’s RSS Feed on The Loop.
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Michael Zhang:
Titled “Rhein II”, it’s a 1999 photograph by Andreas Gursky showing the Rhine river. Last night it sold for a whopping $4,338,500 at Christie’s.
Shawn King sent this to me tonight. I have to say, I just don’t get it.
My friend Anthony Stauffer takes a break from Stevie Ray Vaughan to teach us a Blues lick from one of my favorite guitarists, Jimmy Page.
Following today’s entirely unsurprising revelation that Logitech lost $100 million, in part, because of its Google TV partnership, Google’s nature as a business partner has (rightly) come into question.
Techcrunch’s Jason Kincaid writes:
Now, Logitech was obviously overambitious when it came to launching the still-unproven product, but they aren’t the only manufacturer that was burned by Google’s overeager desire to ship software before it was ready. Motorola’s Xoom, which was released early this year as an iPad competitor, was one of the worst devices I’ve ever used at launch. That was partially because it was a little too bulky compared to the iPad, but it was primarily because Honeycomb — the tablet version of Android — was a buggy mess.
Kincaid makes an excellent point — hardware manufacturers are coming under fire for software that is largely out of their hands. Google’s primary partners have been putting out products using Google’s software, and virtually all reviews of said products highlight the same, buggy software problems. Accordingly, these products flop. While this is certainly not the only cause of failure, it is certainly a contributing factor, and it may prove costly for Google in the long run.
The response has already begun in the shape of the Kindle Fire and Nook Color. Both Amazon and B&N’s offerings have foregone messy ties with Google in favor of their own revamped flavor of Android, and have substituted Google’s ecosystem with their own.
For the Kindle Fire, at least, its deviation from Google’s vision has become one of its key selling points. Amazon has built a stable, capable operating system for the task at hand (or so impressions indicate), and they are attributing none of it to Google. A quick glance of the Fire’s product page reveals one reference to Android, and it comes merely as a portion of Amazon’s app store name, the “Amazon Appstore for Android.”
If the Kindle Fire finds mainstream success, I would not be surprised if other hardware manufacturers began to adopt a similar approach in future, and that could be extremely damaging for Google.
Although Google has steadily axed and revamped much of its product line in recent weeks, the uproar surrounding some of its decisions is difficult to ignore.
The next test for Google will be its just announced Music event — what will be its first post-Google+ attempt to introduce a new, working, integrated marketplace into its ecosystem. If done correctly, it may inspire some further confidence, but if it simply sinks into the background along with its ebook sibling, don’t be surprised if more questions arise.
Without shaking its “beta” reputation, and the apparent overeagerness to ship products, Google is likely facing a sincere examination of how exactly it deals with its partners and its products, and an ever-increasing amount of scrutiny and hesitance from its customers as well.
Matt Alexander is the owner and editor of ONE37.net, a writer, a technology enthusiast, and a contributing writer for The Loop.
Update: Clarified that the $100 million was not all attributed to LogiTech’s relationship with Google. 3:08 pm PT
With the release of iOS 5 on Thursday, Apple fixed bugs that caused battery issues with some users, but Apple said the investigation is ongoing.
“The recent iOS software update addressed many of the battery issues that some customers experienced on their iOS 5 devices,” an Apple spokesperson told The Loop. “We continue to investigate a few remaining issues.”
Apple confirmed earlier this month that it had found some issues in iOS 5 that caused batteries to not perform properly. While it affected some users, not all users saw the problem.
Apple has updated the Digital Camera RAW Compatibility software used by iPhoto ’11 and Aperture 3 to version 3.9, and with it, added support for 11 more digital cameras. They include:
The software requires Mac OS X 10.6.8 or Lion to be installed. You can find it either from Apple’s Web site or through the Software Update system pref.
Black Sabbath on Friday announced in 2012 the band will record its first studio album in 33 years. The band will also headline Download Festival on June 10, 2012 and will follow that up with a worldwide tour.
This is a tool to help you find Unicode characters. Finding a specific character whose name you don’t know is cumbersome. On shapecatcher.com, all you need to know is the shape of the character!Draw your character as best you can in the “drawbox”. You can do this by clicking and holding the left mouse button and moving around. Draw as many strokes as you need to, then click “Recognize” to start the recognition.
Very cool.
Playdead, the Danish indie game developer behind the million-selling title Limbo, has announced plans to bring it to the Mac before the end of the year.
Limbo is a puzzle-based platformer that made its debut in the summer of 2010 for Xbox 360, through Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade service. It’s a dark game that features black and white artwork to create an eerie atmosphere.
The company announced the million sales mark on Thursday, and indicated they’d release a Mac version to join the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows releases. Playdead counts the million players in 153 countries.
The Windows version of the game has been released using Valve’s Steam platform – recently the victim of a hacker attack that may have exposed user account information. The good news for PC players of the game is that Steam’s “SteamPlay” service will enable cross-platform play between Mac and PC at no additional cost.
The new version of Agenda adds themes from the developers favorite Apple-related Web sites, including one for The Loop.
We want to see how talented you are! Sourcebits is giving you the chance to strut your stuff in the most epic job hunt ever. We’re looking for two designers, two engineers and one quality assurance/project lead to help us break in our new San Francisco headquarters, and we only want the best.
Sourcebits is a very talented group of people and it’s nice to see them grow and open a new office. This is a very cool way to recruit some of the talented designers and engineers out there.
Guy English:
Henry Bloget [sic] is an easy target. He’s wrong more times a minute than his heart gets a chance to beat blood to his atrophied brain. Which is a very harsh thing to say about someone struggling with that sort of disorder, but I can’t always be the nice guy.
From Life.com.
Shattering its own day-one sales records, Activision Publishing, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, announced that its highly-anticipated Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 has become the biggest entertainment launch ever with an estimated sell-through of more than $400 million and more than 6.5 million units in North America and the United Kingdom alone in the first 24 hours of its release, according to Charttrack and retail customer sell-through information.
Wow, incredible sales.
November 11 is a day of remembrance. In Canada it’s Remembrance Day, in the US it’s Veterans Day — whatever it’s called, today we remember the sacrifices of the men and women that protect our countries. This is not a day to remember or celebrate war, but rather a day to be thankful that so many people believed enough in our freedom that they were willing to fight for us to keep it.
I would like to thank all veterans and currently serving military personnel for your sacrifice.
The Slam Tracks Hard Rock Grooves Pack 1 features 527 MIDI files divided between 10 different groove genres. All grooves come with multiple variations, allowing users of all popular virtual drum instruments like BFD2, EZdrummer, Superior Drummer, Addictive Drums, Cakewalk Session Drummer to create quickly and easily complete hard rock and rock drumtracks. This library also includes multiple drum fills as part of the groove phrases — a dedicated collection of Hard Rock MIDI drum fills can be found in our Slam Tracks Hard Rock MIDI Drum Fills Pack 1.
Nice sounding grooves at the bottom of the page.
Looks like Steam, the popular game download service from Valve Software, is the victim of hackers. This message was posted to the service today by Valve founder Gabe Newell:
Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users:Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums.We learned that intruders obtained access to a Steam database in addition to the forums. This database contained information including user names, hashed and salted passwords, game purchases, email addresses, billing addresses and encrypted credit card information. We do not have evidence that encrypted credit card numbers or personally identifying information were taken by the intruders, or that the protection on credit card numbers or passwords was cracked. We are still investigating.We don’t have evidence of credit card misuse at this time. Nonetheless you should watch your credit card activity and statements closely.While we only know of a few forum accounts that have been compromised, all forum users will be required to change their passwords the next time they login. If you have used your Steam forum password on other accounts you should change those passwords as well.We do not know of any compromised Steam accounts, so we are not planning to force a change of Steam account passwords (which are separate from forum passwords). However, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to change that as well, especially if it is the same as your Steam forum account password.We will reopen the forums as soon as we can.I am truly sorry this happened, and I apologize for the inconvenience.Gabe.
There’s a bit of a disconnect in what Valve is saying here – a database was accessed that contained encrypted passwords and credit card data, but there’s no evidence the data was taken.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s Gabe Newell’s comment about the password data being “hashed and salted” – salted passwords are much more difficult to decrypt – and the credit card data being encrypted.
Still, proceed with caution.
The Guardian:
RIM lost 1.8m subscribers in the US in the three months to September despite its new BlackBerry 7 phones going on sale in the final month, according to new data from comScore’s MobiLens survey of smartphone users.
That’s what happens when you release shit and you can’t keep your network up.
I was fortunate enough to test a new app from former New York Times digital design director Khoi Vinh before its release today. I also had the opportunity to speak with Khoi about the app and why he made it.
Built for the iPad, Mixel allows users to follow friends, browse, create and share digital collages. Khoi calls these collages Mixels.
What immediately struck me about Mixel is that it was easy enough for a non-artist like me to use, and it was fun. I’m usually not interested in these types of apps because my talent for making a piece of digital art is close to zero. However, I can make a Mixel.
Khoi recognized that there are a lot of people like me out there that may be interested in contributing if the app was simple enough to use. One of the first things he did was look at the other art apps available for the iPad.
“We took a look at as many apps as could get hands on,” Vinh told The Loop. Our conclusion was the apps were either too complex or they really left out the social aspect of it.”
Users can share, like and even love another users Mixel.
You don’t have to start from scratch to use Mixel — you can add or change another user’s Mixel. All of the components can be reused to make your own piece of art.
“We want the doodlers, the photo-book-makers, anyone who loved making art as a kid but along the way, lost the social context that encouraged them to keep creating,” said Vinh. “Mixel is incredibly easy to use and unintimidating, yet at the same time it sparks creativity that many people haven’t tapped since childhood.”
Mixel is a free app available from the App Store.
Giz China:
Last night fights, a riot and a police evacuation were the results of a clash between a group of professional South Asian ‘queuers’, whose job it is buy large quantities of new products at launch, and Hong Kong citizens.
The iPhone 4S officially goes on sale tomorrow in Hong Kong.
[Thanks Shawn King]
Reuters:
Investigations into scandal-hit Olympus Corp revealed an elaborate scheme for concealing losses on risky bets behind a facade of inflated bank deposits and securities holdings
This is going to be painful.
Mat Honan, for Gizmodo:
Bullshit, Ashton. You weren’t “spreading gossip or rumors” through your Twitter feed. There was no “misinformation.” You were voicing an opinion that turned out to be unpopular. Now, you may have been ill-informed about why Paterno was out, but you weren’t spreading misinformation. He really was gone. You just said something stupid and got shit all over in response. And so now you want to take your ball and go home? It’s an easy and cowardly thing to do.
This goes back to a couple of items Jim and I have posted this week about appropriate behavior for journalists on Twitter. TV show celebrity Ashton Kutcher’s evasive language belies his behavior, and Honan has rightly called him on it.
If you’re going to use a social network to push your agenda or to entertain an audience, have enough sense to know when you’re going to piss people off. Have the stones to stick by your comments, even if you have to apologize later.
By farming out his Twitter account to a PR team, Kutcher is basically throwing in the towel and making a conscious decision to use Twitter as a marketing vehicle, nothing more. I hope his subscribers enjoy their homogenized, pasteurized, sanitized pablum.
Russ takes you step by step showing you things like how to make beats using Boom and MIDI, getting your virtual instrument sounds down onto audio tracks, how to use basic effects to transform the stock sounds and extract grooves from one beat and then use them on other beats to lock their grooves together. Russ also shows you how to pitch shift beats, use gates and side chains to create fantastic new electro drum beats, how to destroy beats and mash them up as well as slice beats and rearrange them using Structure
The Atlantic:
Imagine you’ve got a shiny computer that is identical to a Macbook Air, except that it has the energy efficiency of a machine from 20 years ago. That computer would use so much power that you’d get a mere 2.5 seconds of battery life out of the Air’s 50 watt-hour battery instead of the seven hours that the Air actually gets.
[Via Shawn Blanc]
New amps include models from Jet City: the JCA100H and the JCA20H. Two new amps, one new cab and two new microphone gear models have been added as well: the German Gain amp, HiAmp with Cabinet, Bottle 563 mic and Tube VM mic.