Cyber Monday spending hits $1.25 billion

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For the holiday season-to-date, $15 billion has been spent online, marking a 15-percent increase versus the corresponding days last year. Cyber Monday reached $1.25 billion in online spending, up 22 percent versus year ago, representing the heaviest online spending day … Continued

MarkdownMail for iOS

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MarkdownMail is the easiest way to compose HTML emails and blog posts on your iPhone or iPod touch. Based around John Gruber’s popular Markdown markup syntax, you can now send emails with bold text, italics, bulleted lists and more. MarkdownMail will convert your Markdown formatted messages into an HTML message that you can send to your friends, family or colleagues.

Justin makes great software.

HP admits Apple could be leader in PC market

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HP CEO Meg Whitman: “It’s possible if you integrate the tablets,” she was cited as saying by the French daily. “We will try to be champion again in 2013. It will take time for the products that I have influence … Continued

Shit-ass Websites

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Last night John Gruber pointed out how bad The Next Web was to load in a Web browser. Here’s what Gruber found using Safari’s inspector on The Next Web: I measured a few of their articles using Safari’s web inspector, … Continued

Apple to participate in World Aids Day

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ifoAppleStore.com: As a demonstration of Apple’s low-key philanthropy, the company will mark the occasion of World AIDS Day in its retail stores on December 1st by spotlighting special (RED) products that generate donations to fight AIDS in Africa. Apple created … Continued

MacLegion bundle — 10 Mac apps for $50

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There’s something in this bundle for everyone… Whether they’ve been naughty or nice. So don’t waste your time waiting in line this Holiday season, give the gift of software! You can get all your holiday shopping done while sitting in your pajamas sippin’ eggnog in front of your computer screen.

The first 10,000 people also get MacScan free.

Letterpress Tuesday

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I’m a bit late with this link, but there’s still time. Cameron Moll has put together a number of letterpress designers that will give you a discount today only.

Turning off blog comments

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Matt Gemmell on the decision to turn off comments on his blog:

It’s been a very difficult decision (I love reading comments on my articles, and they’re almost unfailingly insightful and valuable), but I’ve finally switched comments off. Since I used the excellent Disqus service, the easiest way was simply to disable it globally, which also removes (but doesn’t delete – I still have them) comments on all previous posts too.

I must admit, I’ve considered this approach too, but decided to leave them on.

Facebook settles with the FTC

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Reuters: Facebook has agreed to settle an investigation by the Federal Trade Commission into deceptive privacy practices, committing to cease making false claims and to submit to independent audits for 20 years.

Apple pulls iTether from App Store

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Around 12PM EST, Apple called our head office to let us know they were going to go ahead and pull our app iTether from the App Store. They stated it was because the app itself burdens the carrier network, however … Continued

30 high speed photographs

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High speed photography is a technique in which a camera is set up to take pictures of objects in motion that would normally be too fast to be seen by the naked eye. It usually involves a tremendous amount of … Continued

American Airlines files for bankruptcy

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American Airlines and its parent company are filing for bankruptcy protection as they try to cut costs and unload massive debt built up by years of high fuel prices and labor struggles. There will no impact on travelers for now.

Malls cancel plans to track shoppers

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Maggie Shader: Remember how two malls annoyed more than a few people by announcing that they would be tracking shoppers’ movements via their cellphone signals? Yeah, well that’s no longer happening — at least for now. The malls have suspended … Continued

Facebook’s $100 billion IPO

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WSJ: The social networking firm is now targeting a time frame of April to June 2012 for an initial public offering, said people familiar with the matter. The company is exploring raising $10 billion in its IPO—what would be one … Continued

iPhone 4S dominates sales in the UK

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The release of iPhone 4S was enough to propel Apple into the smartphone sales lead in the UK for October. According to data from market research company Kantar, Apple’s iPhone sales accounted for 42.8 percent of sales during October. Apple’s … Continued

∞ Copycats

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Matt Gemmell: There’s an entire spectrum of terms available besides ‘copied’, ranging from “inspired by” to “plagiarised”, and it’s not necessarily a bad thing to be influenced by the work of others. The key is to ensure that you’re consciously … Continued

∞ Elvis Costello: Steal this record

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Elvis Costello on the pricing of his new box set: Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire. All our attempts to … Continued

∞ Fantastical [Sponsor]

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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. … Continued

∞ My Living Desktop

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I’d like to thank My Living Desktop for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop.

Time to bring your desktop to life. Since 2005 My Living Desktop has been bringing a unique cross between a Video Desktop (moving wallpaper) and a traditional screensaver to your Macintosh. My Living Desktop adds a whole new dimension to your computing experience by turning your Mac’s desktop into a beautiful, moving environment… complete with soothing sounds.

My Living Desktop provides a wide array of stunning, relaxing high definition video scenes shot from all over the world that you can use on your desktop and as a screensaver. You can even import your own movie segments to create a truly personal and unique desktop environment.

∞ Returning the Jawbone UP

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Michael Surtees: Ultimately I really liked the concept of collecting information without having to do much at the time of it being on. Up hasn’t gone far enough with creating options for the person using the device to start slicing … Continued

∞ TellMe vs. Siri

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Remember when Microsoft said they’ve had Siri technology for more than a year? I wonder if they actually tried it.

∞ RIM offers free PlayBooks

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If you’re an IT manager considering whether to update your organization to BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0, you may want to act now. If you upgrade to BlackBerry Enterprise Server v5.0 before December 31st, 2011, you’ll receive a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet

Because $300 off just wasn’t enough.

∞ AT&T withdraws FCC application for T-Mobile merger

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BGR: AT&T said Thursday that it has withdrawn its application from the Federal Communications Commission to acquire T-Mobile USA. AT&T and Deutsche Telekom said they will instead focus on fighting an antitrust lawsuit brought against the proposed $39 billion merger … Continued

∞ The problem with Stamped

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The problem with Stamped is that it correlates popularity of your stamps to quality. It makes the assumption that because you like something – and use up one of your “limited stamps” to demonstrate this as a showing of quality – that others will be inclined to agree or incited to try out whatever you stamped. I don’t think that could be further from the truth.

I agree.

∞ Five ingredients for a great WordPress theme

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Aravind Ajith:

In order to save some time the next time you go hunting for WordPress themes be sure to note these five essential ingredients that make up a great WordPress theme – for any type of website.

The Loop uses WordPress, but we used a custom designed theme.