Silverlight.net now redirects to a page on MSDN. Some but not all of the content has been migrated to MSDN, but Microsoft has not bothered to redirect the URLs, so most of the links out there to resources and discussions on Silverlight will dump you to the aforementioned generic page.
That’s one way to end a technology.
Great interview.
She helped Microsoft plug Windows Phone 8 when it was released just over a month ago. She must have dumped that thing like a hot potato as soon as she got off the stage.
What a great looking game. It uses iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, Apple TV, AirPlay and it’s good for the whole family. It doesn’t get much better than that.
Corey Tamas, my brother from another mother and long time friend of The Loop, is raising money to get his band Dragonfly’s album Amplification off the ground. It’s an original work – fourteen songs that combine rock, jazz, blues and electronica into a pretty awesome and interesting mix.
If you follow the links you can watch a 20-minute video documenting the making of it so far, to hear a taste of what the music will sound like once it’s done.
This is the second round of Indiegogo funding Dragonfly has sought out. The first successful round got Dragonfly into the studio to record; now they just need a bit more to get some additional musicians involved and secure some more studio time to finish the project.
If you can pitch in, great. Perks for helping out range from download codes to Corey personally coming out and shooting a video on the hood of your car in a billowy white dress like Tawny Kitaen in that Whitesnake video. (OK, that last part I made up, but I’m relatively certain Corey would agree to it for the right price.)
A good article for those considering a CMS tool. I’ve thought for a while now that WordPress is getting too big to be a simple blogging tool. I’ve been wondering about the benefits of Movable Type, a tool that I used many years ago. After all, MT does power Daring Fireball and Kottke.org.
Alex Saretzky took a shot at redesigning the Notification Center for Mac and iOS. I really like some of his ideas. Tip: Click on the iPhone to play the movie and click on the links to see animations of his ideas.
With each smartphone upgrade cycle from Apple and other manufacturers, tech bloggers spend countless hours writing countless words about whether this phone is better than that one, what operating system is best and which carrier is best.
To hell with all of it. I have removed myself from that rat race all together.
This past fall I got rid of my iPhone and replaced it with a “dumb” phone. It can make calls. It can, after a fashion, produce text messages. That’s it.
There are a lot of upsides.
For one thing, it’s incredibly cheap to operate. No data plan to manage, shared or otherwise. No long list of features I get nickled and dimed for by the carrier. No more concerns about whether I go with the carrier who has the best coverage, or the one that lets me make calls and use data at the same time.
I don’t have my face stuck in my phone wherever I go, social network or playing games or checking e-mail. I have better situational awareness. I’m more present. I don’t take pictures of my food before I eat it, or tweet about how delicious this skinny vanilla latte and pumpkin scone are.
I no longer blankly pull out my phone and start fiddling with it mid-conversation with friends. If you do that, by the way, stop. It’s really rude.
The phone needs to be recharged, on average, maybe once per week. Sometimes twice if I’ve used it a lot.
What I discovered is that I just don’t need the level of connectivity I used to assume was a now indispensable part of daily life. If people e-mail me, they have to wait until I check e-mail. If people need to get a hold of me, they can, but it better be damned important.
I just don’t want to be tethered to the giant, pulsating übermind of the Internet 24/7 anymore. It was making me dull and more than a bit stupid.
Sure, there are a few downsides. I’ve gotten lost a couple of times. Once I needed to know a store’s hours and had to actually call them using my voice, like a cave-dwelling neanderthal.
In fairness, it’s not like I’m Grizzly Adams living off the land, making fire by sparking rocks together and gathering berries and moss. In some cases, I’ve migrated tasks I used to do on my phone to my iPad, for example. I don’t take my iPad with me wherever I go, like I do with a phone, but if I know I’m going to be waiting around for a while, like, say, at a doctor’s office, I’ll bring the iPad with me to keep me distracted.
But for the most part, I’ve reverted back to the way life used to be for me before 2007, when the iPhone became part of it.
And I can’t say I’m in a big hurry to go back. I’m enjoying my freedom. I’m enjoying just a tiny bit more self-reliance. I’m certainly enjoying lower phone bills every month.
And the endless squawking about which smartphone is better has become a lot of chatter that has absolutely no relevance to the quality of my life. Watching people howl and wail about Android, iOS and Windows Phone 8 has become almost comical. You’d think they were talking about something that mattered.
Try it some time. You might find life without your smartphone is still manageable. Enjoyable, even. Take a walk. Breathe fresh air. Live life.
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Eric Slivka:
The new store will cover three levels and has been reported to encompass approximately 20,000 square feet of space, with the facade including 30-foot tall glass windows currently covered by the curtain graphics. Playing upon the large facade, Apple’s tagline for the premiere is “An opening you simply can’t miss.”
Wow.
I love the detail that goes into these designs. The shadows and buttons — just great.
I love Zakk’s playing.
Michael Lopp has a great article on using photo filters and what to look for when taking a photo with your iPhone.
Jean-Louis Gassée, former Apple vice president, opines on the state of television and what’s to be made by Tim Cook’s recent comments in an NBC interview about television being “an area of intense interest” for Apple.
There aren’t any really pithy quotes I can pull from here, but Gassée makes some excellent points in his essay, including an analysis of the Apple TV (the real one, the black box you can buy today) and its impact on Apple’s bottom line, and its potential role in Apple’s ecosystem.
Well worth a read, as are most of Gassée’s “Monday Note” blog posts.
Mildura Police are urging motorists to be careful when relying on the mapping system on the Apple i-phones operating on the iOS 6 system after a number of motorists were directed off the beaten track in recent weeks.
Local Police have been called to assist distressed motorists who have become stranded within the Murray-Sunset National Park after following directions on their Apple i-phone.
My parents are heading to Australia on vacation in January for more than a month. They will be driving around the country, but I’ll have to recommend they purchase a different mapping system. This is just terrible.
Alexa’s boyfriend got an iPad for Christmas from his mother. Well, that’s not quite true. His mother ordered one iPad, and had it shipped to him. What arrived on their doorstep was a very large and heavy box that was big enough to hold five iPads. Because it did.
Thanks Best Buy.
Jenni Sparks:
Here is the hand drawn map of New York that I’ve been working on for what seems like FOREVER! Thanks to New York for being a great city and surviving Hurricane Sandy.
I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler so I’m always amazed at this kind of hand drawing. I was disappointed to not see the Bronx and Yankee Stadium (among other places) in this print but even without them, she still captured an incredible level of detail.
Jason Snell for Macworld:
Now, even on the iPad’s screen I’m a decently fast typist. (The iPad mini, not so much, at least not yet.) I certainly can type on an iPad much faster than I can write with a pen on paper. But it’s nowhere close to my speed on a MacBook keyboard. Using the iPad slowed me down and got me to think about what I was writing in a way that using my trusty MacBook Air never would.
I’m no Oliver Sacks, but I’d wager that I’m just not taking more time to choose my words, but I’m actually using different parts of my brain when I write this way. And not only does the actual act of writing feel different, but the end result feels different to me too.
Like Jason, I’m an iPad early adopter. I got mine the same day they came out in 2010. I’ve found a very different use case for it than my Mac – I use it more as an information appliance and a gaming system, but when it comes to writing, something I do practically every day, I use the Mac.
One of the first things I noticed when I got my iPad was how different the writing experience was from a Mac or PC. Quite frankly, I’ve never cottoned to it – without exception, any writing longer than brief e-mails or tweets and other social media posts still end up being done on my computer.
So it’s interesting to read about his experience and compare it to my own. I have to give Jason credit for trying to understand why iPad writing is so different than keyboard writing. For me, it was simply an exercise in frustration that I gave up on, perhaps sooner than I should have.
Matt Macari for The Verge:
The internet was abuzz yesterday with reports that Apple’s infamous “bounce-back” patent, US 7,469,381, was “tentatively invalidated” by the US Patent Office. That’s one of the patents Samsung was found to infringe, and any action by the USPTO will have major consequences. Unfortunately, all those reports were extremely premature —patents can’t be “tentatively invalid,” just like people can’t be “tentatively dead.”
Great explanation of what’s going on and the process involved.
The goal is to release the camera filters in an application update in time for the holiday season, these sources say.
I’d rather see Twitter release the grip on developer’s balls.
The two companies, competing for dominance of the smartphone market, have partnered after leading two separate groups this summer to buy some of Kodak’s 1,100 imaging patents, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the process is private.
This week, the USPTO issued a first Office action rejecting all 20 claims of U.S. Patent No. 7,479,949 on a “touch screen device, method, and graphical user interface for determining commands by applying heuristics”, which has been referred to by many people, including Apple’s own lawyers, as “the Steve Jobs patent”.
This isn’t a final decision, but it’s certainly an important one for Apple.
I’d like to thank Anytune for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. I’ve tried this app myself and really like it.
Musicians of all kinds use Anytune to learn, transcribe and practice their favorite songs!
Check out Jim’s guitar stylings in a rare solo version of a theme that fans of The Loop should recognize. Something unexpected happened when tuning the track that hints at the source of Jim’s power… You’ll have to watch the video on this page to find out what it might be.
Music Practice Perfected.
Jonathan Sutter has written up a counterpoint to Brent Caswell’s article that I linked to earlier this week.
The Verge:
Isaac Asimov’s Foundation novels are a cornerstone of science fiction, but getting into a vast series about, among other things, mathematically predicting the rise and fall of entire civilizations isn’t always easy. In 1973, however, the BBC adapted Foundation into a serial radio drama, capturing the original trilogy in eight hour-long episodes. These are available on the Internet Archive, which means that you can listen to them online or download them in all their slightly scratchy glory.
I first read The Foundation Trilogy as a young teenager and loved them. I come back to re-read them about every decade. I’ve been thinking it’s about time to read them again but maybe I’ll just let the folks at the BBC entertain me this time.
Esquire:
Ever wonder what whiskey-industry insiders are drinking around the holidays? Us, too. Eat Like a Man’s 12 Days of Whiskey asks the craft’s most respected master distillers what bottles are on their holiday wish lists.
One of the great parts of the turning of summer into Fall/Winter is indulging in delicious and warming bourbons and whiskeys. They always seem perfect on a chill evening. In honor of the anniversary of the repeal of the 18th Amendment earlier this week, enjoy the “The 12 Days of Whiskey”.
Good news for fans of Square Enix’s classic adventure game titles: Final Fantasy IV is headed to iOS this month. The company has listed December 20, 2012 as the release date for the new version of the game that originally came out in 1991.
Final Fantasy IV follows the story of the dark knight Cecil as he tries to stop Golbez, a sorcerer with vast powers, from destroying the world. It’s a favorite among Final Fantasy fans for its diverse collection of characters, intricate plot details, and for the first use in a Final Fantasy game of the “Active Time Battle” system that would become a staple of the series for many subsequent titles.
The original game was produced for Super Nintendo home game consoles, but the iOS version is based on the 3D version Square Enix engineered for Nintendo’s DS handheld in 2008.
Square Enix tends to price their iOS releases rather high, so be prepared to pay a premium. So if you’ve been waiting to purchase Square Enix games because of the price, now may be the time to strike: through December 14th Square Enix has cut the price of some Final Fantasy games in half or less. Final Fantasy I and Final Fantasy II, normally $8.99, are now $3.99 each. Final Fantasy III dropped from $15.99 to $8.99 for iPhone and iPod touch, or from $16.99 to $9.99 for iPad. And Final Fantasy Dimensions is on sale from $28.99 to $16.99.
Rani Molla for GigaOM:
So why haven’t wireline broadband prices budged in recent years? The high, fixed costs of broadband means that there hasn’t been a big rise in competition among providers, according to Scott Wallsten, Vice President for Research and Senior Fellow at Technology Policy Institute. Indeed, most Americans don’t have more than two options when it comes to wireline broadband providers.
So costs remain high because of scarcity of competition and an ever-increasing consumer dependence on the technology. Where I live, I have two choices for wireline broadband: my cable provider, or DSL (FIOS isn’t an option). So really, just one option. Because DSL sucks.
The potential for disruption, according to the article: the increasing deployment of LTE services. I doubt that’s realistic for quite some time: LTE service providers offer a fraction of the bandwidth caps that most wireline broadband service providers do.
James Allworth, posting to Asymco:
While there’s no doubt that Google has played a key role in Samsung’s success by handing out a free mobile operating system to pretty much anyone who wants to build one — it is actually Apple, more than any other company, that is responsible for Samsung’s present success.
How? By outsourcing as much work to Samsung as they have. And it’s impossible not to wonder whether Tim Cook’s announcement yesterday on bringing back Apple’s manufacturing to the USA is the beginnings of an attempt to rectify the problem.
Allworth provides a very thought-provoking argument to explain why Apple may have inadvertently helped to create its single biggest competitor in the phone market right now. Though the analogy isn’t perfect (and Allworth is quick to point out where it fails), he compares the situation to that which Dell created by outsourcing work to Asus, which later challenged Dell’s market position by releasing its own computers instead of just doing manufacturing for Dell.
Certainly worth a read.