Very impressive.

Finally, learning and practicing a new language is easier and more intuitive than ever before. Introducing HelloTalk, the language app where your teachers are native language speakers from around the world. You just pick the language you want to learn—there are over 100 from which to select—and almost instantaneously you’ll be in touch with native speakers of that language … and you’ll start learning and practicing immediately.

HelloTalk isn’t a course you strictly follow; rather, you learn and practice at your pace and in the manner that best meets the way you learn. Practice foreign languages with people around the world. Simultaneously speak and type the language you’re learning. Record your voice before speaking to your HelloTalk friends and compare your recording to standard pronunciations. Change your friends’ audio messages to text for better understanding, and receive help to improve your grammar. Easily translate whenever you don’t understand, and so much more.

With HelloTalk, you’ll discover learning a new language is fun … and fast. Download your copy for iPhone or Android today.

Netflix is taking a pretty big gamble, albeit with other people’s money. They’ve floated two senior notes totaling $1.5 billion in debt. The goal is to ramp up their content production. At the center of all this is a live action “Legend of Zelda” series.

So far, Netflix has kept the bar raised pretty high, with series like House of Cards and Orange is the New Black. The question is, can they find a way to bring Zelda to the small (but growing) screen without dissing legions of Zelda fans.

Netflix is said to be working closely with Nintendo, the Japanese game developer that has made about 20 “The Legend of Zelda” games since the original, which was released in the U.S. in 1987.

Nintendo is very protective of its intellectual property and has allowed few adaptations over the years. An animated “Legend of Zelda” series ran for just one season in 1989. A 1993 movie based on Nintendo’s “Super Mario Bros.” was an infamous bomb.

Netflix has shown they have a solid sense of pitch when it comes to original content, earning them a big benefit-of-the-doubt here. Here’s hoping this follows the House of Cards path and doesn’t end up on this list.

New York Times:

A little over 30 years ago, the Japanese photographer Kishin Shinoyama walked through Central Park with one of the most famous couples in the world. It was sunset, autumn; they sat on a bench just in front of the pond, bordered by trees, a sliver of New York skyline visible in the distance, including the building where they lived. He asked them to kiss, and he clicked the shutter. Three months later, on Dec. 8, 1980, John Lennon was fatally shot at the entrance to the Dakota, home to him and his wife, Yoko Ono. Just three weeks prior to Lennon’s death, Shinoyama’s photograph of John and Yoko’s kiss at Central Park Pond had appeared on the cover of what would be their final studio album, “Double Fantasy.” Shinoyama made other photographs that day, of course — 800 in all, in fact — but many of them have never been shown until now, on the occasion of Taschen’s forthcoming publication of “Kishin Shinoyama. John Lennon & Yoko Ono. Double Fantasy” ($700), out this month.

I find this appalling. Who would buy such a book? Someone with strong emotional ties to John Lennon (and, of course, with $700 to burn). This feels like emotional blackmail. I have rare photos of your hero. You will only see them (and copies of them, not original prints you might hang in your home) if you pay out $700.

Amazing to me that the review makes no mention of the price.

This is not necessarily my cup of tea as an iPad stand (the angle is not adjustable), but I find the technology behind the stickum fascinating.

Slope is an elegant, minimal tabletop stand that gets your tablet upright and out in front of you with an easy in/out attachment. It works by way of a unique suction technology, mimicking the specialized toe pads common to the Gecko lizard. The foam of the two pads grip the flat surfaces of both table and tablet with microscopic suction to give a firm mounting experience and solid feel. The pads are extremely durable and replaceable.

Dust and dirt have got to be the big bugaboos here. Interesting idea.

[Hat tip to Mike Russell]

Geoffrey Goetz, writing for GigaOM, digs into the concept of code signing:

One of the benefits that curators like Apple and Google can gain from code signing apps is that it provides a means of stopping malware from spreading, especially when the platform only allows code signed apps to be installed. Just this past week Google took measures to suspend a particularly malicious group of apps labeled as malware from being distributed in Google Play. With 99 percent of all mobile malware targeting the Android platform, preventing such threats from spreading is something that any app store operator like Google would want to ensure its customers it has the situation under control.

If Apple and Google both use code signing, why does “99 percent of all mobile malware” target Android?

On the one hand, Apple enforces code signing and they completely control the code signing process. Apple is the only code signing authority. Short of jail-breaking your phone, if you are running an iOS app, Apple has vetted that app.

Android, on the other hand, offers code signing as a suggestion:

While it is true that Android developers can sign apps before deploying them to device, they don’t really have to. There are plenty of ways that developers can deploy apps to Android devices that do not require any level of code signing at all. Side-loading apps by tethering the device with a USB cable, downloads apps from web sites or even install apps from an attachment in an email message are some examples. While Google may have some control over Google Play, it does not control the Android platform as a whole.

Apple’s insistence on total control is an inconvenience for developers, certainly, but it is a boon to users and the ecosystem as a whole. If you care about security, the best existing solution requires this level of control.

The article makes the case that the process of getting your app on the App Store is a difficult, arcane process:

The goal of most developers is getting their app into the App Store. This requires one to work through the intricacies of creating an AppID, TeamID, Distribution Certificate, and Provisioning Profile from within an Apple Developer account. Once this is completed, developers soon realize that the battle is only half over, as they then need to create an iTunes Connect account and register for an available App Record which is necessary to upload and submit your app for review. It never goes quite as planned the first time around and you end up spending a fair amount of time troubleshooting what step you missed. When all is said and done, you realize that you could actually make a career out of helping developers shepherd their apps through this process.

All I can say to this is, when the App Store launched (along with iPhone OS 2.0) back in 2008, the process of getting an app on the app store truly was an incredibly arcane, confusing process. The current process does feature hoops to jump through, but in my opinion, it is head and shoulders better than the way it used to be.

Many thanks to Elgato for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed this week. Elgato Thunderbolt 2 Dock enables you to connect everything to your MacBook or Ultrabook at once. With two Thunderbolt 2 and three USB 3.0 ports, simultaneously connect all of your devices with only one cable. Built-in HDMI enables you to directly connect a display of your choice up to 4K resolution, while enjoying increased network performance with built-in Gigabit Ethernet and crystal-clear conference calls through the separate microphone input and amplified audio output.

VanCityBuzz:

This time every year, the Sapporo Snow Festival draws millions of people to Sapporo to see hundreds of intricately detailed snow sculptures and to participate in snow-themed cultural festivities.

The festival features an International Snow Sculpting Contest with teams from 12 countries around the world. 6,500 tons of snow is transported to the three festival sites throughout the month of January from locations in and around Sapporo.

The Star Wars sculpture is epic.

New York Times:

Researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College released a study on Thursday that mapped DNA found in New York’s subway system — a crowded, largely subterranean behemoth that carries 5.5 million riders on an average weekday, and is filled with hundreds of species of bacteria (mostly harmless), the occasional spot of bubonic plague, and a universe of enigmas. Almost half of the DNA found on the system’s surfaces did not match any known organism and just 0.2 percent matched the human genome.

I’m never taking the New York City subway ever again.

Reuters:

Electronics retailer RadioShack Corp (RSHC.PK) filed for U.S. bankruptcy protection on Thursday and said it had a deal in place to sell as many as 2,400 stores to an affiliate of hedge fund Standard General, its lender and largest shareholder.

Wireless company Sprint Corp (S.N) would operate as many as 1,750 of those stores under an agreement with Standard General, Sprint said separately.

RadioShack’s bankruptcy, which has been expected for months, follows 11 consecutive unprofitable quarters as the company has failed to transform itself into a destination for mobile phone buyers. But its sale agreement with Standard General could spare it the fate most retailers suffer in Chapter 11, liquidation.

RadioShack said in a statement that the Standard General affiliate, called General Wireless, would acquire between 1,500 and 2,400 of its 4,100 stores.

Sprint would occupy about one-third of each RadioShack store, selling “mobile devices across Sprint`s brand portfolio as well as RadioShack products, services and accessories,” Sprint said in its statement.

Well, it’s official. Sigh.

According to Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Apple has made a major push to recruit talent from the electric carmaker, offering massive bonuses and significant salary bumps for those willing to come to work in Cupertino.

Musk said Apple’s attempts have not been successful. I do have a lot of respect for Musk and the work he’s done.

LA Times:

Measles has been a scourge for centuries, afflicting millions of people. It has been blamed, in part, for decimating native populations of the Americas as Europeans explored the New World. In modern times, before a vaccine was developed, nearly every American contracted the virus, with its telltale skin blotches and fever. Measles was declared eradicated in the U.S. in 2000, but has staged a comeback as the inoculation rate has dropped. Here’s a history.

Many people think of measles as an innocuous childhood disease but it’s actually incredibly dangerous and sometimes deadly.

The device will communicate via a form of technology known as NFC and won’t have to be charged, Chief Executive Officer Nick Hayek said in an interview. The Swatch smartwatch will also let consumers make mobile payments and work with Windows and Android software, he said.

I really like the not having to be charged bit.

Hayek is ready to go head-to-head with Apple Inc., which has scheduled its smartwatch introduction for April.

Nobody is truly ready to take on Apple.

Vice:

Between 1974 and 1979, the Canadian government tested the idea of a basic income guarantee (BIG) across an entire town, giving people enough money to survive in a way that no other place in North America has before or since.

For those four years—until the project was cancelled and its findings packed away—the town’s poorest residents were given monthly checks that supplemented what modest earnings they had and rewarded them for working more. And for that time, it seemed that the effects of poverty began to melt away. Doctor and hospital visits declined, mental health appeared to improve, and more teenagers completed high school.

Damn Canadian socialists.

Macworld:

Providing many of the features found in its mobile sibling, the Yosemite-only Photos for OS X offers an interface less cluttered than iPhoto, improved navigation, simpler yet more powerful editing tools, the ability to sync all your images to iCloud (though it doesn’t require you to), and new options for creating books, cards, slideshows, calendars, and prints. I’ve had the opportunity to take an early look at Photos, and this is what I’ve found.

This is the developer preview but, in my experience, it’s pretty stable with few true glitches or bugs. Keep in mind, this is not (yet at least) a professional Aperture or Lightroom level app. But, that being said, it’s still pretty good.

FiftyThree:

Beginning today, the Draw, Sketch, Outline, Write, Color, and Mixer tools in Paper are available for free for everyone.

I can’t draw a straight line with a ruler but Paper is my favourite app for doodling and showing off the iPad’s drawing capabilities to others. Go grab these apps now.

Bloomberg Business:

In the first half of this year, tweets will start to be visible in Google’s search results as soon as they’re posted, thanks to a deal giving the Web company access to Twitter’s firehose, the stream of data generated by the microblogging service’s 284 million users, people with knowledge of the matter said Wednesday. Google previously had to crawl Twitter’s site for the information, which will now come automatically from Twitter.

At the heart of the deal:

There’s no advertising revenue involved in the deal between Twitter and Google, one of the people said. That suggests Twitter will receive data-licensing revenue, which was $41 million in the third quarter, up from $16 million a year earlier.

Your tweets were always searchable. Now they’ll just appear in Google’s results much more reliably and in closer to real time.

Reuters:

Fourteen of 23 top hospitals contacted by Reuters said they have rolled out a pilot program of Apple’s HealthKit service – which acts as a repository for patient-generated health information like blood pressure, weight or heart rate – or are in talks to do so.

The pilots aim to help physicians monitor patients with such chronic conditions as diabetes and hypertension. Apple rivals Google Inc, and Samsung Electronics, which have released similar services, are only just starting to reach out to hospitals and other medical partners.

HealthKit is definitely gaining in traction at prestigious programs, from Duke University in North Carolina and Oschner Health System in Louisiana to Stanford University in Palo Alto, CA and the Mayo Clinic in Rochester Minnesota.

YouTube’s Engineering and Developer’s blog:

Four years ago, we wrote about YouTube’s early support for the HTML5 <video> tag and how it performed compared to Flash. At the time, there were limitations that held it back from becoming our preferred platform for video delivery. Most critically, HTML5 lacked support for Adaptive Bitrate (ABR) that lets us show you more videos with less buffering.

Over the last four years, we’ve worked with browser vendors and the broader community to close those gaps, and now, YouTube uses HTML5 <video> by default in Chrome, IE 11, Safari 8 and in beta versions of Firefox.

YouTube was one of the first major supporters of Flash and one of the last to move on. Flash is not supported at all on iOS. As to Android, there’s this from Adobe’s Flash Player Help document:

Adobe Flash Player is no longer available in Google Play Store for downloading. However, Android users can download and install Flash Player from the Archived Flash Player versions page. This document provides the steps on manually installing Flash Player on Android devices.

And now, the Flash team must be thinking, “Et tu, YouTube?”

Set backstage at three iconic product launches and ending in 1998 with the unveiling of the iMac, “Steve Jobs” invites audiences behind the scenes of the digital revolution to witness an intimate portrait of the brilliant man at its epicenter.

Matt Gemmell:

There’s a lot of misunderstanding out there about mental health. Some people are up, some people are OK, and some people are down. Everyone gets down from time to time. Pull your socks up, and get on with it. Hold it together.

It’s reasonable advice – as long as you’re just feeling down.

For some people, though, down doesn’t cover it. They can’t just get on, because their feet can’t find the bottom.

There’s a predator down there. That’s the truth. Black as pitch, and silent in motion. It can see perfectly even where no light penetrates – in fact, especially there. It’s surprisingly warm to the touch, but it can drain all the heat out of a room in moments.

As one who suffers from depression, Matt’s piece really hit home for me.

It is a pretty damning indictment that Microsoft had to spend hundreds of millions on front end apps for its own platform –Microsoft Exchange — and it should send alarm bells ringing.

Microsoft has a long history of not getting product trends. They didn’t get the iPod, tablets, iPhone and a host of other products that it could have made a lot of money on. Microsoft is profit-focused, which means it makes shitty products. Apple is product-focused, which means people buy the quality and Apple makes a lot of money. Reading this, Microsoft will have no idea what the difference is.

Vice:

On his way to games, while his teammates on the bus would be mentally preparing to take the ice, James had to prepare for something else: the hatred that would inevitably be thrown at him due solely to the color of his skin.

I love hockey but it has a very recent and very ugly history of racism.

Jim and Shawn talk about Super Bowl ads, TUAW, music creation and good bourbon!

Sponsored by lynda.com (Start learning something new in 2015 by visiting the link to get a 10-day free trial and access their 2400+ courses) and Squarespace (use code GUITARS for a free trial and 10% off).

The Verge:

Apple appears to be testing a pool of cars near San Francisco that are equipped with powerful camera rigs. A Claycord blog has published photos of a car that CBS affiliate KPIX 5 has confirmed is leased to Apple. The mysterious cars have been spotted a number of times over the past several months in and around San Francisco. A video, published on YouTube in September, also shows a complex camera rig mounted on the roof of a similar Dodge minivan in New York. Both of the cars near San Francisco and New York appear to be equipped with the same LIDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) camera system.

This is interesting but not hugely surprising. Apple is continuing to make its Map.app and technology behind it better all the time.