I’ve always heard great things about NSNorth, so this year, I’m going to attend. I’ll be joining an amazing line-up of speakers for a few days in Canada.

Parity is a free, web-based puzzle game, in the same class as Threes and the like.

In Parity, you are presented with a three-by-three grid of numbers, with one of the numbers highlighted. You move the highlight into a new square using the arrow keys. When you move into a new square, the number in that square is increased by one.

The goal is to get all of the squares to have the same number. Simple to learn, fun to play.

Want to register a domain name? Now you have one more option. Google Domains is now open for business. The site seems reasonably well designed with a one stop shopping approach, offering a dashboard for managing all your domains and settings, a blogger front end, interfaces to website building shops Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly and Wix, website themes, and dynamic DNS.

I particularly like the front and center placement of a WHOIS button to the right of each result. There seems to be a trend to hide the WHOIS interface, use the search for WHOIS data as clickbait.

Fast Company:

The Apple Watch is not like existing interfaces. Its potential lies in its limitations: It is accessible because it’s tiny and convenient because it’s only meant for seconds-long interactions. Features such as native voice control, haptic feedback, and a digital crown that can be used to magnify, scroll or zoom within apps crack open a whole new world of design requirements and opportunities (see more in sidebar). The smartest companies will do more than offer facsimiles of their existing apps; they’ll create custom experiences that exploit the watch’s unique interface.

This is a really well done piece with some thoughtful Apple Watch mockups for Uber, Foursquare, Instagram, and others.

New York Times:

A new website, called Hacker’s List, seeks to match hackers with people looking to gain access to email accounts, take down unflattering photos from a website or gain access to a company’s database. In less than three months of operation, over 500 hacking jobs have been put out to bid on the site, with hackers vying for the right to do the dirty work.

This is tricky, both ethically and from a legal standpoint. Like torrent sites that offer perfectly legal technology that enable you to do something that crosses legal boundaries, Hacker’s List itself is just a classified ads web site. What you do with it is your business.

A few more bits and pieces. Here’s how they make money:

It is done anonymously, with the website’s operator collecting a fee on each completed assignment. The site offers to hold a customer’s payment in escrow until the task is completed.

And here are a few examples:

A man in Sweden says he will pay up to $2,000 to anyone who can break into his landlord’s website. A woman in California says she will pay $500 for someone to hack into her boyfriend’s Facebook and Gmail accounts to see if he is cheating on her.

And:

a bidder who claimed to be living in Australia would be willing to pay up to $2,000 to get a list of clients from a competitor’s database, according to a recent post by the bidder.

“I want the client lists from a competitors database. I want to know who their customers are, and how much they are charging them,” the bidder wrote.

Others posting job offers on the website were looking for hackers to scrub the Internet of embarrassing photos and stories, retrieve a lost password or change a school grade.

I usually don’t link to things like this, but this one is very interesting.

Glass is moving from the Google X research lab to be a stand-alone unit led by Ivy Ross. Ms. Ross and her team will report to Tony Fadell, a former Apple executive who heads Nest Labs, the smart-home device company Google acquired for $3.2 billion in February 2014. Mr. Fadell will still run Nest, but he also will oversee Glass and provide strategic guidance to Ms. Ross.

Tony made the iPod and founded Nest after leaving Apple. I have a ton of respect for this man.

The report is “groundless,” Samsung said in an e-mail. In a separate statement, BlackBerry said it “has not engaged in discussions with Samsung with respect to any possible offer to purchase BlackBerry.” The Waterloo, Ontario-based company didn’t specify whether it had received a proposal from Samsung, the world’s largest smartphone maker.

Not even Samsung wants BlackBerry.

Jason Snell really knows his way around a podcast. Just listen to the open for The Incomparable. Go ahead, pick one at random. Though, if I might, consider this one, which features one of the greatest songs ever written (well, I like it).

All that said, follow the link to read Jason’s thoughts on podcasting. It’s the first in a series. And you might learn a thing or two.

If you are pulling together a design, say for an app or a web page, and you are relatively inexperienced at working with color, spend a few minutes reading this post. It’s short, and offers some simple techniques to help you make some relatively safe choices.

Wall Street Journal:

Early this month, mobile ad exchange TapSense announced a product it said will allow marketers to place ads in applications created for the Apple Watch by third-party developers. The technology is still being tested, the company said, but it plans to develop new ad formats specific to the wearable device, and to target those ads based on detailed location information.

“We are working in beta with both app developers and brands but have nothing to publicly announce right now,” said TapSense CEO Ash Kumar, in reference to which companies it’s currently working with. “Reception for this has been incredible and we can’t wait to see how location-based services add value to consumers’ in-app experiences.”

From the TapSense press release:

The TapSense SDK leverages new interactive interfaces supported by Apple WatchKit such as watch faces, glances & full-screen experiences while getting rid of banner ads.

And:

Being worn on the wrist, an Apple Watch is more accessible and can leverage the GPS on an iPhone. This makes it an ideal device to deliver contextual and hyper-local offers such as a retail store coupon.

And:

As Apple Watch has full integration with Apple Pay, the hyper-local coupons delivered through the TapSense platform can be redeemed by the consumer right from the convenience of their wrist. As this reduces friction for the consumer, we believe this will have huge impact on brand lift and engagement. Also, marketers would be able to link their marketing spend accurately with offline purchases, which has been a difficult problem to solve until now.

First things first, this whole concept makes me shudder.

That aside, this all seems incredibly speculative to me. If Apple were to allow advertising on the Apple Watch, why would they give up control to an outside agency?

Augusta Chronicle:

Liam Porter stepped out of the movie theater Saturday afternoon and saw the Imperial Stormtroopers descending on him and his mouth dropped open and then slowly spread into a smile.

“Cool,” was about all the normally chatty 7-year-old could manage.

The troopers led him to the Party Room at Regal 20 Cinemas packed with family and friends and there on a table lay his new left arm and hand, done up like the trooper’s arm, and one of their helmets.

The arm was built as part of e-NABLE, an online community that uses 3D printers to make prosthetics for those who need them.

Nicely done.

The idea here is to remove traffic lights from intersections and embed them on your windshield instead. As your car approaches an intersection, a virtual traffic light appears on your windshield telling you to stop, then turns green when it is your turn to go. If there are no other cars approaching the intersection, you roll on through without having to slow down.

Click the link and watch the video to get a sense of how this might work.

The efficiency here is obvious. With the traditional traffic light system, one direction always has a red light, even if no cars are coming in the other direction. Virtual traffic lights can mirror the existing system, but will eliminate the frustration of waiting at a red light when it is obvious there is no competing traffic in the cross street.

The hazards are also obvious. A system like this depends on all cars on the road using connected vehicle technology (CVT), as it is known in the US. CVT is what makes driverless cars possible, allowing multiple vehicles to negotiate with each other to share the road. Until all cars have CVT, a system like this is impossible. But that said, CVT is coming and it will eventually be mandatory.

From Google’s Project Ara Web site:

The smartphone is one of the most empowering and intimate objects in our lives. Yet most of us have little say in how the device is made, what it does, and how it looks. And 5 billion of us don’t have one. What if you could make thoughtful choices about exactly what your phone does, and use it as a creative canvas to tell your own story?

Introducing Project Ara.

Designed exclusively for 6 billion people.

Jim and Shawn talk about the Mac, the iPhone in the past, the Apple Watch in the future, and how to learn to play guitar!

Sponsored by lynda.com (Start learning something new by visiting lynda.com/amplified and get a FREE 10-day trial where you can access all of their 3,000+ courses).

Riveting. Watch Tommy Caldwell and Kevin Jorgeson make their final push for the summit of El Capitan in one of the hardest free climbs in the world. This is being carried live.

Smartphone company Samsung has recently approached BlackBerry Ltd to buy the company for as much as $7.5 billion, looking to gain access to its patent portfolio, according to a person familiar with the matter and documents seen by Reuters.

Patents is about all BlackBerry has left.

Matt Gemmell:

Rumours abound at the moment about an upcoming new 12” MacBook Air, with a Retina display, further-reduced thickness and weight, and of course a slightly larger screen. I’m intrigued, and all other things being more or less equal, I’ll certainly buy one.

It’s tough to see what the next step will be, though. My wish list has been exhausted. Every checkbox is checked.

But what more is there to really do?

Matt makes a good point that, for the vast majority of us, Apple’s present laptops do more than we actually need them to do. I know my next laptop will likely be an Air if only because I no longer need the power of a full desktop CPU.

Google:

We’re taking it to the next level and letting you instantly translate text using your camera—so it’s way easier to navigate street signs in the Italian countryside or decide what to order off a Barcelona menu. While using the Translate app, just point your camera at a sign or text and you’ll see the translated text overlaid on your screen—even if you don’t have an Internet or data connection.

This looks really cool. I remember traveling in Italy and not being able to understand the signs at the train station. This would have come in very handy.

Musicians and songwriters often have trouble with EQing drums so they fit in a track. A lot of that comes from over-EQings already good sounding samples, or having to deal with poorly recorded drums to begin with, but even so, the basic technique isn’t that difficult if you know the basics.

If you are just learning how to EQ drums, bookmark this page and use the recommended frequencies.

Apple Inc sued Ericsson alleging that the Swedish company’s LTE wireless technology patents are not essential to industry cellular standards and that it is demanding excessive royalties for these patents.

These types of “essential” patent lawsuits are always interesting to watch—you never know which way the court will rule.

The Verge:

Set out in a series of detailed renders, the conceptual iMac combines the internal components of an 11.6-inch MacBook Air with the addition of a touchscreen and the new reversible USB connector. Its shape echoes that of the original Mac…There’s nothing particularly practical or realistic about this iMac, which is probably why it feels so sublimely desirable.

Utterly ridiculous. Utterly impractical. Utterly unbuildable. But I still want one.

RazorianFly:

While some are shocked at the sudden demise of Apple’s popular free giveaway promotions, such as 12 Days and the just axed “Single of the Week,” others are seemingly less shocked at the ending of these ‘FREE’ iTunes promotions.

We think MacRumors forum user, fluchtpunkt, nails it:

“I think that entitlement mentality is what has killed these promotions. Getting free stuff is no longer enough. It must be exactly what you want.”

As the piece says, we may never know why Apple has discontinued these giveaways but I would have no problem believing it is, in part, due to the epic amounts of whining from a segment of users.

Shifts is a brand new productivity app for shift workers, designed to help you manage your work schedules and lives more efficiently.

This is a unique take on using a calendar—the first I’ve seen in a while.

John Moltz:

A newsroom can be an environment that benefits from an open floor plan, but this level of exacting control over it is exactly what’s wrong with corporate America. If you’re so concerned about coffee stains, hire someone to clean things up. It’s a hell of a lot cheaper and it sends a better message than spending $3 million to make a 2001: A Space Odyssey set for your employees to spend their days maintaining.

The memo from Wired’s editor-in-chief Scott Dadich has been making the rounds and Moltz, as usual, has a funny and accurate takedown of the attitude and tone of his attempt at controlling the workplace environment.

Bushel is a cloud-based solution designed from the ground up to make it easy for regular people to setup, manage and protect their Apple devices anytime from anywhere.

This looks really nice. You can manage three devices for free, so that’s a bonus.