Many thanks to Pixelmator for sponsoring The Loop’s RSS feed for the past two weeks.

Pixelmator is the beautifully designed, easy-to-use, fast and powerful image editing app for Mac OS X that has everything you need to create, edit and enhance your images. With tons of new features and improvements, the next generation of Pixelmator—codenamed Chameleon—is clearly the best Pixelmator ever built. Even more, Pixelmator 2 will be available later this month via the Mac App Store as a free upgrade for everyone who purchased any version of Pixelmator via the Mac App Store.

Writing for GigaOM, David Churbuck outlines what he would tell the new CEO of HP to do:

Get a better board. It sounds like a shit fight in the monkey cage at the zoo inside of HPs board. The CEO needs to stack the deck with allies and advisors, not glory seekers who pull down each other’s pants.

That sums up HP for the last couple of years.

Matt Gemmell on publishing services like paper.li:

Newspapers contain editorial. There’s some kind of journalistic contribution, however brief, in each article. With these online “newspapers”, there’s zero. It’s just a wad of links and extracts, styled to appear something like a newspaper. No commentary by the “publisher”.…Even just a brief remark on why you care about each item enough to share it? Give me a reason to be interested.

I read articles and links because of the contribution the person brings to that article or topic. The contribution doesn’t have to be an essay — sometimes a few words on why they think it’s important is enough.

So cool. Even if you don’t understand the code, scroll down to the bottom and click to see the finished product. Spectacular.

Yeah, we’ve come a long way.

That’s about $300 too much.

Florian Mueller:

Damages can be substantial but they are not what Oracle is primarily trying to get out of this case. They are a potentially substantial consolation prize. The grand prize, however, is an injunction, and Oracle’s filing makes this clear with the following statement, which explains why Oracle’s new damages computation — unlike the old one that included damages until the year 2025 — relates only to past damages and apparently provides only some data points with a view to future damages, which would be rendered totally irrelevant by an injunction:

Mueller also noted on Wednesday that Google could potentially pay more to Oracle for a Java license than the $12.5 billion it paid for Motorola Mobility.

Tim Bajarin for Techpinions:

Only time will tell if she was the right one to take over at this time in HP’s history but she has the leadership and communication skills HP needs now to keep it from sinking any further and rallying the troops around a unified vision. And at the moment, I believe that is the real reason the board decided on Whitman. They need her to correct the problems of the present now and get them moving in the right direction as fast as possible.

I believe Whitman can do that. Whether she can last long term remains to be seen, but she’ll certainly do better than Leo.

CNN:

On the job as chief executive for not even 11 months, Leo Apotheker will leave HP a wealthy man: He has already taken home most of his $1.2 million annual salary, a $4 million signing bonus, and an additional $4.6 million awarded for relocation assistance and to offset payments that he forfeited from his previous employer, SAP.

As John Gruber said, the only thing Apotheker didn’t do was set HP’s campus on fire.

Macworld:

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced a bevy of features for its social network, including one called Timeline that allows you to chronologically chart your entire life via pictures, Facebook updates, Likes, and places you’ve traveled to and lived. That feature along with a host of new Facebook apps are being announced Thursday at Facebook’s f8 developers conference.

It’s been a big day for Facebook. Clearly they are fighting with Google for the hearts of the social networking public.

HP today announced that its board of directors has appointed Meg Whitman as president and chief executive officer.“We are fortunate to have someone of Meg Whitman’s caliber and experience step up to lead HP,” said Lane. “We are at a critical moment and we need renewed leadership to successfully implement our strategy and take advantage of the market opportunities ahead. Meg is a technology visionary with a proven track record of execution. She is a strong communicator who is customer focused with deep leadership capabilities. Furthermore, as a member of HP’s board of directors for the past eight months, Meg has a solid understanding of our products and markets.”

Great job!

DigiTimes:

Apple has increased its purchases of DRAM and NAND flash from Japan, according to industry sources, adding that Toshiba and Elpida Memory are being pinpointed as beneficiaries of the increased procurement.

It’s a defensive move by Apple to reduce risk associated with buying flash memory from Samsung, with whom Apple is waging a legal battle in several international markets (over the similarities between iOS devices and Samsung’s Android-based Galaxy Tab devices).

It’s utterly ridiculous for some pundits and industry reporters to suggest this move is Apple “punishing” Samsung, but it just goes to show the general mentality of some of the people reporting on this market. The company is reducing risk by becoming less dependent on a potentially volatile component manufacturer – something you might expect to see a competently-managed company do to protect its supply chain.

CNN:

Last week Sony changed the terms-of-service document for its PlayStation Network, asking U.S. customers to forfeit their rights to file class-action lawsuits against the company and its partners. Customers can opt out by sending the company a letter in the mail. … Sony said this week that the new terms-of-service changes were made, as some analysts suspected, in response to a Supreme Court decision in April. In that case, AT&T Mobility was permitted to include and enforce a clause in employment contracts that bars workers from bringing class-action suits.

Initially many suspected the changes to the PlayStation Network terms of service was a defensive reaction to lawsuits filed against Sony after the service was breached by hackers earlier this year, exposing personal information for tens of millions of accounts.

CBS News:

Turns out, traits that make great software testers – intense focus, comfort with repetition, and memory for detail – also happen to be characteristics of autism.Aspiritech, a nonprofit in Highland Park, Ill., nurtures these skills while forgiving the quirks that can make adults with autism unemployable: social awkwardness, poor eye contact, being easily overwhelmed. The company’s name is a play on the words “Asperger’s,” “spirit” and “technology.”

While a lot of research and treatment focuses on providing children who have been diagnosed with Asperger’s and other autism spectrum disorders, what makes Apsiritech different is their focus on adults. It’s a great idea, and goodness only knows the world can use more gifted and motivated software QA people.

Threatpost:

Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley said on Tuesday that her office would be inquiring into long-standing complaints about fraudulent purchases that leverage Apple’s popular online music store.In a lunchtime address to business and technology leaders in Massachusetts, Coakley said she was a victim of identity theft in recent months, and that her stolen credit card information was used to make fraudulent iTunes purchases. When asked (by Threatpost) about whether such fraud constitutes a reportable event under the Bay State’s strict data breach notification law, Coakley said that her office would be looking into that question and demanding answers from Cupertino, California based Apple, which has steadfastly refused to comment, or report the breaches to Massachusetts regulators.

Kinda figures that this didn’t get on her radar until AG Coakley herself was the victim of fraud.

Forbes’ “Richest People in America” list is out and it contains a lot of familiar names including Bill Gates ($59 billion) and Steve Jobs ($7 billion). One of the surprises this year is Mark Zuckerberg who is now worth $17.5 billion, putting him in 14th spot overall.

NPD Research:

Among smartphone users, 82 percent have no security products installed on their phones; however, the percentage of users addressing this concern varies by platform, according to NPD’s “Emerging Technology Trends: Mobile Security” report. Although iPhone and Android smartphone owners share similar security concerns, 30 percent of Android smartphone owners have installed security products on their phones, compared to just 6 percent of iPhone owners.“Even though iPhone users are less concerned than Android users about device security, they are still clearly worried,” said Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis for NPD. “Their biggest concerns were much more likely to be fears that their iPhone would be stolen or damaged, than any unwanted or harmful activities.”

iPhone owners feel pretty safe downloading apps from Apple because of the approval process the company has in place. The Android market has been caught a couple of times with malware apps and other nastiness available for users to download.

I did an interview for The Bro Show this afternoon with Myke Hurley and Terry Lucy from the UK. We talked about all kinds of things, including RIM, Final Cut Pro, The Loop 2.0, and more.

AppleInsider:

That observation, by RBC Capital Markets analyst Mike Abramsky, was made in response to Gartner’s presentation, which estimated that 40 percent of organizations already support employee owned mobile devices.Gartner called the trend toward “bring your own devices” as an “unstoppable train coming down the tracks,” noting that “C-level executives” have opened the door to employee-owned mobile devices and that younger employees “prefer consumer technologies like iPhones and iPads over enterprise-provided alternatives.”

Some IT people tried to stop it, but ultimately users won. The way it should be.

Erik Sherman, for BNet:

…according to a quick survey done of 500 consumers by brand naming company Strategic Name Development, Netflix may have stepped into one of the worst muck holes it could have: blowing the name of its DVD division. And the reason it did was fear.…By associating Qwikster with the DVD business, top brass made the complete opposite choice of what they needed. The company could have brought on new name (preferably something with a more natural connection to the service that avoided the infamous suffix) and associated it with the streaming service. Netflix would have used the classic approach of promoting new name with the established one and then, over time, switched the emphasis.

Survey respondents suggested that Netflix should have named its newly-minted DVD service something evocative of the original Netflix name.

Kara Swisher:

Former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is being considered by Hewlett-Packard directors as a possible candidate for CEO, in a move that would replace its current leader Léo Apotheker, according to several sources close to the situation.

I wonder if Apotheker knew. Well, he does now.

The entire economy of Singapore; All the illegal drugs in the world; Every home in Atlanta, Georgia combined.

Funny stuff.

[Via Kottke.org]