Uncategorized

Vice:

It wasn’t just a smell; it was a force. With the first whiff, I thought, Camembert. But as the golf cart got closer, the smell became sweeter—noxiously sweet. You could call it the smell of death, but really it was the smell of what comes after: an obscene eruption of microbial life.

In the driver’s seat was Dr. Daniel Wescott, director of the Texas State Forensic Anthropology Centre.

He pointed to the corpse at our feet—one of the dozens of donor bodies exposed to the elements here in the forests and fields of Texas State University’s 26-acre decomposition research facility. Most of the local kids who tell ghost stories about the place just call it “the body farm.”

I had the opportunity to see the University of Tennessee’s version of this but chickened out.

The Guardian:

A coalition of technology and internet companies is lobbying to curb US National Security Agency surveillance powers and for more transparency on government data requests.

The Reform Government Surveillance coalition, including Facebook, Google, Twitter, Microsoft and Apple, added its support for the race to pass a bill through the US Senate before the end of the year, which would inhibit mass data collection from emails and internet metadata.

Even if their motives aren’t 100% altruistic, it’s still good to see these companies shining a light on the issue.

TechCrunch:

I’m fascinated by the reviews left by Monument Valley players in the wake of the decision by the game’s developer (ustwo) to price a recent content update at not-free. Ustwo had released the original game at $4 featuring 10 levels. The game was a labor of love and earned many just awards. It also went to sell in excess of 1.4 million copies – a feat that exemplifies how arty mobile gaming can work very well. This latest pack brings 8 new levels to the game and costs a pretty trivial $2. And yet in its wake came a surge of 1-star reviews. But why?

First lesson is people can be cheap and petty.

Sixty-two percent of the weight of the web is images, and we’re serving more image bytes every day. That would be peachy if all of those bytes were being put to good use. But on small or low-resolution screens, most of that data is waste.

A phone leash that fits your lifestyle.

I’m not sure how popular those iPod touch loops were that Apple released, but perhaps popular enough to make it worthwhile for these folks to make it for the iPhone.

A great post here from Allyson Kazmucha, Serenity Caldwell and Rene Ritchie on how to use Apple Pay. I used Apple Pay at Home Depot, Whole Foods and Peet’s Coffee and it always works great for me. Getting your card into the iPhone and using it at a store is easy as can be.

From The New York Times:

Samsung Turns to BlackBerry for Better Security

Dumb and Dumber

Great stuff.

I installed it and am having no issues so far.

You can download the update by going to Settings > General > Software Update on your iOS device.

“Dollar for dollar, the Sound Blaster ROAR produces the best sound of any portable Bluetooth speaker I’ve heard.”

– Tom’s Guide

Thanks to Creative for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. The compact Sound Blaster Roar boasts of two 1.5-inch high-frequency drivers, a dedicated 2.5-inch subwoofer, and a pair of side-firing passive radiators. Now, all these drivers will only sound as good as the music you play through them, and the Roar supports aptX and AAC over Bluetooth for high-quality audio streaming.

All this, while adding other features like NFC support, a USB port for charging, an integrated MP3 player through its microSD card slot that also allows you to record calls taken with the built-in speakerphone.

The Red Dot Design Award-winning Roar has received consistent 5-star reviews on Amazon since its launch. Now available at $149.99 via Creative.com and Amazon.com.

Grantland:

Nelly Bly’s idea was to try to beat the time of Phileas Fogg, the hero of Jules Verne’s massively popular 1873 novel Around the World in Eighty Days. She’d send dispatches back to the paper, make an adventure out of it. Her editor was in favor, but the World’s business manager — who liked the concept — wanted to send a man.

“It is impossible for you to do it,” he told her. “You are a woman and would need a protector.” Even if she could travel alone, he said, she’d want to take too much baggage. “There is no use talking about it,” he insisted. “No one but a man could do this.”

“Very well,” she said. “Start the man, and I’ll start the same day for some other newspaper and beat him.”

With our world considered made so small with instantaneous communications, high speed train, plane and car travel, it’s hard to imagine what kind of true adventure, in every sense of the word, this would have been in 1889

Heyday:

Heyday transforms the photos and videos on your iPhone into a beautiful journal, presenting you with a delightful way to rediscover your most important memories. And since life happens when you least expect it, Heyday automatically chronicles the places you go and the things you see so you’ll never forget a meaningful place or moment again.

I mentioned and did a bit of a video review of Heyday on the Your Mac Life show last Wednesday. I’m not a “daily journal” kind of guy but Heyday is great for “following you around” and noting the places you’ve been, collating the pics you took and, at your leisure, allowing you to add notes, thoughts and impressions after the fact. Free in the iOS Store.

As Manley Labs’ flagship compressor since 1994, the Variable Mu is a tube and transformer-driven classic that exudes hand-made craftsmanship. A gold standard among mixing and mastering engineers, the Variable Mu adds clarity and cohesion to stereo buses or your entire mix.

I love Manley gear and Universal Audio—I can’t wait to load this one into a project.

…estimates that 30% of American smartphone owners plan to use either Apple Pay or Google Wallet to buy things this holiday shopping season. What’s more, 17% of smartphone users surveyed said having the option to buy things with Apple Pay or Google Wallet would cause them to spend more money than they normally would.

Be smart Walmart. Nobody wants your shitty payment service.

Chris Bank does a great job of tackling UX and UI in this post.

When designing a website, you want your UX to be as positive as possible — you want your users to enjoy being on your website, that’s kind of the whole point. But you can’t just say “let’s improve our site’s UX” any more than a business can say “let’s make more money.” It’s the strategies you use to create your UX, namely the UI, that can enhance (or weaken) it.

I love listening to these isolated tracks. There’s some great information about the session here as well.

Anthony Colangelo:

The difference between knowledge and intelligence is key here. Knowledge is the collection of skills and information a person has acquired through experience. Intelligence is the ability to apply knowledge. Just because someone lacks knowledge of a particular subject doesn’t mean they can’t apply their intelligence to help solve problems.

I love that.

Google has quietly revealed it plans to retire the Google Wallet API for digital goods on March 2, 2015. The company plans to continue supporting the sale of apps on Google Play as well as in-app payments, but users will not be able to purchase any virtual items offered on the Web through Google Wallet.

You have to love Heineken.

[Via psfk]

Vox:

This chart, from David McCandless’ fascinating new book Knowledge is Beautiful, ranks 87 dog breeds and compares those rankings to the actual popularity of those breeds in the US.

The ranking is based on a number of factors: trainability, life expectancy, lifetime cost (including the price of food and grooming), and suitability for children, among others.

The result: Border Collies, according to McCandless, are the finest dog breed in existence. Labs, Beagles, and Golden Retrievers, while not at the very top, are other popular dogs (at the top right of the chart) that he rates highly.

Where does your dog fit into this chart? If I had a dog, it would likely be a Labrador. Happily, they score highly on this chart.

I totally agree with Gruber here. Flooding the App Store with one-star reviews because a company needs to make money is wrong.

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk shook up the automotive and aerospace industries with electric cars and cheap rockets. Now, he is focused on satellites, looking at ways to make smaller, less-expensive models that can deliver Internet access across the globe, according to people familiar with the matter.

Elon is definitely as visionary and the man get’s shit done.

It was one of the most hilarious (and important!) moments of the year: Zach Galifianakis interviewing President Obama about…the Affordable Care Act. And it vaulted Funny or Die—the world s greatest comedy site, brought to you by Will Ferrell and friends—to such stratospheric heights of viral-video dominance that the site has now hired some Wall Street guys to evaluate potential buyers. Amy Wallace embeds in the company’s Hollywood HQ and learns why FOD may soon be laughing all the way to the, well, you know

Joe Wilcox:

Clickbait and linkbait also corrupt longstanding, and sensible practices regarding headline writing that negatively affect audience attitudes about what is valuable content. Good headlines should be aggressive or provocative, such that they pull people to read the story. Emphasis: Read. Deliver value. Clickbait and linkbait headlines and stories aren’t written for people but for Google—to capture search ranking and pageviews.

This is worth a read.

3,000,000,000 can now access the Internet.

[Via Swissmiss]

BlackBerry’s new devices suck so bad, they are releasing the “BlackBerry Classic.”

The two people, both familiar with the FTC’s thinking, said Apple representatives have met on multiple occasions with agency officials in recent months, to stress that it will not sell its users’ health data to third-party entities such as marketers or allow third-party developers to do so.

Someone at the FTC confused Apple with Google.

Jason knows all too well that I don’t get the Kindle—never have, and probably never will. Still, I enjoyed Jason’s review. I should note that this is Jason’s new site since he left Macworld—congrats, it looks great.

PetaPixel:

If you’ve never thought to find out why aperture works the way it does, you should definitely check out this simple explanation of optics, aperture and pinholes by MinutePhysics.

As a photographer, I knew this information but this video explanation is the best, clearest I’ve seen.