Shawn Blanc has a very detailed review of his favorite clicky keyboards, including sound recordings of the sound they make when you type. I found the words-per-minute and accuracy were particularly interesting.

Dan Farber:

In 2006 email thread, Rubin said that Sun owned the intellectual property and brand for Java and that the Java.lang APIs were copyrighted. Over the next several years his thinking changed.

Your thinking may change, but the truth remains constant.

I saw Gruber post this today and thought it was great.

Chris Martucci’s Whatblag.com:

In other words, Apple’s agency model required all seven publishers to take away retail price control from other e-book retailers, effectively “stripping them of any ability to discount or otherwise price promote e-books out of the retailer’s own margins” (66).If that’s not price-fixing, I’m not sure what is.

Martucci is quick to discount Crovitz’s Wall Street Journal piece (posted on the Loop earlier today) as “disingenuous.”

Dustin Curtis:

I think Facebook is terrified of the usage transition from desktop PCs to mobile. A billion dollars for Instagram, as an insurance policy to guarantee that the company will have an anchor in content creation on mobile, is worth every penny.

That’s exactly what I think about the deal.

Billy Steele for Engadget:

In Boston this fall, you won’t need to keep up with your train ticket anymore — as long as you don’t leave your smartphone at home. The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA) and Masabi have joined forces to bring a rail ticketing to handheld devices via iPhone, Android and BlackBerry apps.

This is a boon for the many Boston-area commuters who travel into the Hub via Commuter Rail stations that don’t have fare vending machines – less than half of the 140 stations in the MBTA’s Commuter Rail network have them, requiring those passengers to buy tickets from conductors on board.

Instead, you can buy tickets via credit or debit card. You can even link one of the MBTA’s “CharlieCards” to your phone.

Masabi, the company behind the e-ticketing system, says this will be its first deployment in the US. Masabi and the T are hoping to reduce the amount of cash-handling MBTA personnel have to do and other costs associated with ticketing and fare validation.

Research firm StrategyOne conducted surveys of 5,000 adults, 1,000 per country, in the US, UK, Germany, France and Japan.The research was designed to identify attitudes and beliefs about creativity and provide insights into the role of creativity in business, education and society.

L. Gordon Crovitz for the Wall Street Journal:

Whether it’s news, games, apps or books, Apple’s position is the same. The market determines the price, and Apple gets 30%. The Justice Department fails to acknowledge anywhere in its 36-page complaint against Apple and book publishers that this is the standard approach. (Indeed, the government complaint inaccurately refers to “30% margins” for Apple. Operating margins are very different from sales commissions.) The government says this “agency model” is inherently wrong (“per se” wrong, in legalese) and “would not have occurred without the conspiracy among the defendants.”The problem for the government is that there’s nothing wrong with the agency model, which has been upheld by federal courts and is common across many industries. This approach by Apple and the publishers (including HarperCollins, a unit of News Corp., which also owns The Wall Street Journal) replaced the “wholesale model” that market leader Amazon preferred, which had allowed it to sell e-books at whatever price it wanted, including as loss leaders to protect its Kindle against competition from other e-readers.

Bear in mind that Crovitz is the former publisher of the Journal, and that he himself complained to Apple about the 30 percent figure when they met in 2011. Eddy Cue, who runs the Apple’s Internet Software and Services, told him that Apple wouldn’t treat newspapers or magazines any differently than game publishers.

Crovitz raises an excellent point about letting the market decide the price of ebooks. “Consumers should decide, not Amazon or the Antitrust Division.”

Adobe is holding its event to talk about CS6 and Creative Cloud at 10:00 am PT today.

This is what the pros have been waiting for.

DRT is a Pro Tools AudioSuite plugin which effortlessly replaces drum hits with fresh audio samples, MIDI notes or audio “clicks” all with near flawless accuracy.

I have a lot of respect for Steven Massey, a former Digidesign software engineer. He makes some really nice plug-ins.

Jean-Louis Gassée:

Nokia’s results for Q1 2012 are in: They’re not good.Compared to the same quarter last year, Nokia overall revenue is down 29%, to $9.7B. And the company is now losing money, $1.8B, 18.5% of revenue.

Established in 2005, ScreenCastsOnline is acknowledged as one of the primary online training resources for the Mac and iOS, publishing two brand new video tutorials each and every week.

ScreenCastsOnline members automatically receive a new Mac or iOS video tutorial (or both) each week, as well as access to a huge video library of over 340 Mac tutorials and 50 iOS tutorials, covering the latest Apple and third party software.

Special offer for all “The Loop” readers – 20% discount off the first payment for any monthly, quarterly or annual membership.

More recently, ScreenCastsOnline has launched a number of low cost tutorial apps in both the Mac and iTunes App Stores.

SCOtutor for Lion – For Mac users upgrading to Lion SCOtutor for Mac – For new Mac users wanting to learn about the Mac from scratch. SCOtutor for iPad – For new iPad users – all about the iPad and iOS from first principles. SCOtutor for iPhoto on iOS – Learn all about the new iPhoto app for the iPad and iPhone.

All SCOtutor apps include an optimised video player, full chapter navigation, English subtitles and many other unique features. All apps are available on both the Mac and iOS devices.

More information about the special ScreenCastsOnline membership discount or the SCOtutor tutorials apps is available on the Web site.

59% are concerned that Facebook will destroy the simple and elegant Instagram user experience as Facebook begins to integrate the photo service with its platform. 73% think that Twitter as the new Instagram owner would be taken better care of the Instagram users.

This is an old article, but it’s really funny. And true. I have a pair of one-year-old Border Collies and everything in this article describes them perfectly. Luckily my last dog was a Border Collie too, so I know what I’m in for as they get older.

Border Collies have a trait called, “THE EYE.” The eye is a hypnotic stare that the BC turns on anything it wants to control. BC owners talk about “THE EYE” with reverence and love to expound on the way the dogs use it to control sheep. It would be fine if these dogs used “THE EYE” only with sheep, but the BC turns “THE EYE” on anything it might engage to produce fun or work.Recently I dog-sat a BC for the weekend. Two days. Forty-eight hours of being stared at. No blinking. Unwavering scrutiny. In human culture, staring is wrong. Parents invest incredible energy teaching children not to stare. Being stared at briefly is uncomfortable. Try an hour with a Border Collie if you want to experience serious discomfort.

Dan Pearson for GamesIndustry International:

A new, game-specific alternative to Kickstarter is due to launch at this year’s E3, coming from Dutch company Gambitious.The scheme will allow investors to buy shares in game projects, which will translate to paid dividends if the game makes it to market and sees commercial success. The platform will launch in Europe, but the company hopes to spread internationally once some legal barriers are breached.

Double Fine Games saw eye-opening success with Kickstarter earlier this year when it bankrolled development of its game by booking $3.3 million in pledges for a title for which it hoped to raise $400K.

Gambitious aims to make a splash at the upcoming E3 trade show in Los Angeles – the annual games expo and conference.

One of the common challenges when designing responsive design for mobile is the navigation menu. If the site has many sections or pages, it gets challenging to squeeze all the items into a small mobile resolution. The navigation most likely ends up running into multiple lines or the buttons stacking on top each other.

New Pawn Shop Special amplifiers present a cool, unconventional take on amp design by evoking the enjoyably esoteric finds you might discover in a pawnshop or second-hand store.

These look really cool. I’d definitely like to try one of these.

MarsEdit is the best blog editing tool for the Mac and I’ve had it on my computer for years. It was updated to version 3.5 today adding all kinds of new features.

ABC News:

Apple Inc. has agreed to pay local governments $150,000 a year and get a 15-year property tax exemption for the data center it is developing in Central Oregon.In an agreement with Prineville and Crook County, Apple also commits to minimums of 35 jobs at the center, wages 150 percent of the county’s average wage and $250 million invested at its 160 acres of land.The city of Prineville and Crook County will have to work out how to split the $150,000 payment called a “project fee,” The Bend Bulletin reported Friday.

This will likely be the “twin” of the one in North Carolina.

Drum Werks XXII is our exclusive collection of Ska beats played by one of the top session players in L.A., versatile enough for traditional as well as modern interpretations of the ska genre.

Diablo Blog:

We’re pleased to announce the Diablo III open beta weekend, which offers open access to all players with a valid Battle.net account! Beginning this Friday everyone is invited to log in and help us put the game and servers through their paces in this three day stress test as we march toward the game’s release on May 15. You can begin downloading the Diablo III client right now!From Friday, April 20 at 12:01 p.m. PDT (noon), until Monday, April 23 at 10:00 a.m. PDT you’ll be able to log in, team up with friends, and play each of the five heroic classes to level 13 as you fight to save the world from the impending demonic invasion.

Thank goodness I’ve got a friend coming in to town this weekend. Otherwise, it would be completely wasted playing this!

Jim and Dan discuss Apple’s future growth potential, the influence of journalists covering tech, learning guitar through the fundamentals of AC/DC, and more.Sponsored by Hover, FreshBooks, and the One More Thing Conference.

The Irish Times:

Apple is to expand its presence in Cork, creating more than 500 jobs in what is being described as a “huge boost” for the country.The technology firm is expected to construct a new office block to accommodate the additional staff in the coming 18 months.Apple has based its European headquarters in Hollyhill. The technology firm employs about 2,800 people at its distribution, supply chain and back-office operation there.

Another huge boost will be in Heineken consumption when Jim Dalrymple arrives in Dublin next week.

TidBITS:

AT&T offers a way to report unwanted SMS/MMS messages, but I had to ask on Twitter for the instructions, as the steps are not obvious to those of us who don’t use SMS/MMS regularly. The free AT&T Mark the Spot app for reporting bad cell coverage or calls also includes a button for reporting SMS spam that explains, with too little detail, how to do it.Here are the steps for AT&T; I’ll add other carriers as I receive information, as AT&T is the only carrier I have an account with.

As everyone points out, this is an increasingly annoying issue that infuriates customers.

Chicago Tribune:

To the shock of most sentient beings, Facts died Wednesday, April 18, after a long battle for relevancy with the 24-hour news cycle, blogs and the Internet. Though few expected Facts to pull out of its years-long downward spiral, the official cause of death was from injuries suffered last week when Florida Republican Rep. Allen West steadfastly declared that as many as 81 of his fellow members of theU.S. House of Representatives are communists.Facts held on for several days after that assault — brought on without a scrap of evidence or reason — before expiring peacefully at its home in a high school physics book. Facts was 2,372.

A funny, if sad, commentary on our “Post-Facts Era”.

Many thanks to Scoople for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed on The Loop. It’s an app I’ve been using for some time.

Cast your vote on the most relevant Apple stories of the day. Predict how others in the community will vote. Win when you’re right. Get the free Scoople app.

Rob Fahey for GamesIndustry International:

Yet there is actually a massive platform missing from that line-up – the “other” Apple platform, Mac OS X. With the exception of a handful of stand-out developers, perhaps most notably Blizzard, PC game developers have traditionally ignored Apple’s computers in creating their games.

Most of Fahey’s observations are old hat to Mac veterans who only too well understand the economic, logistical and historic reasons why Mac gaming isn’t a thriving industry. And a lot of this inside baseball is eye-glazingly boring to consumers who are new to the market who haven’t the slightest interest in playing games on their Macs, even though they gleefully drop 99 cents at a time for the latest iOS novelty app.

But Fahey either willfully or ignorantly misses the fact that there is a Mac game market, comprising companies like TransGaming, Feral Interactive, Aspyr and others, who license games from major publishers and produce Macintosh versions of them. You can go poor trying to keep up with their new releases. There are also a ton more casual games on the Mac platform than there used to be.

Apple gave this moribund market new life with the introduction of the Mac App Store, and it’s growing organically and sustainable. As the Mac’s popularity grows, the Mac App Store’s influence – along with other Mac software download services – will continue to positively influence the growth of games on the platform.

I doubt that the Mac will ever achieve equilibrium with other platforms when it comes to gaming. But that hardly seems to matter now. Gaming has evolved, and soon we’ll be seeing even richer, more sophisticated games on the iPad that will rival console games.

They say silence is golden – but there’s a room in the U.S that’s so quiet it becomes unbearable after a short time.The longest that anyone has survived in the ‘anechoic chamber’ at Orfield Laboratories in South Minneapolis is just 45 minutes.