Macgasm

Oh, advertising online, what a tangled web you weave. I’m so torn with advertising models, it’s not even funny any more. The FCC has recently suggested that Mozilla and Google implement “Do Not Track” features into browsers so that users can ensure that websites aren’t tracking their movements so they can send out targeted ads.

It turns out that both Mozilla and Firefox will be adding features to their browsers that take the FCC’s recommendations into account.  Firefox intends on adding it via a “Do Not Track” HTTP header, and Google has introduced the “Keep My Opt-Outs” Chrome extension.  In both cases, adherence to the “Do Not Track” program will come down to individual websites implementing the program.

To be honest and upfront about this, I don’t know too much about the program, but today’s news certainly had me questioning a few things.  You can read them in my rant below.

The Rant

The privacy nut in me says, “Hell Yes!” to the “Do Not Track” movement, but the online content producer in me says, “Hell No!” I fully understand that targeted advertisements can be risky business and insanely obtrusive, but if we think about this from a content producer’s standpoint, how the heck are your favourite websites going to stay in business?

Major producers won’t have a problem generating money, but news startups might go defunct pretty quickly if they couldn’t rely on accurate advertising models. Our Google Ads keep us in business, and they pay the bandwidth bills. By avoiding them, and disabling ads, you’re essentially putting us out of business.

We know—it’s not your problem. Personally I’d rather you block ads and continue to read our website than avoid us because of our advertisements, but that’s probably not a norm in the industry.

But, this news really makes me wonder how long the freemium and ad-supported websites will continue to operate in the future. I wonder if there will be blow-back from major content producers who rely on targeted ads to pay the bills. Would they go so far as to block users from reading their content if they have ad blockers or “Do Not Track” functionality turned on? Would they move to a pay-to-read model for users who don’t want targeted ads?

What do you think? Would you block our ads if you could? Would you pay a monthly subscription to your favourite online news sources?

Let us know in the comments.

Article Via Read Write Web
Photo Credit: Oakland Seen

I—like many of you—live in iTunes. At home, I have a set of 1TB hard drives setup in a RAID-1 configuration just for my iTunes library. Currently, my library weighs in at 516 GB. A solid chunk of that is music.

Before carrying an iOS device, I didn’t care much about song lyric data. If I wanted to look up the words to a track, I’d simply fire up the old standby that is Google. However, with its gorgeous iPod app, iOS makes it a lot easier to see lryics. I’ve found myself frustrated that most of my media doesn’t include that data.

Well, until earlier this week, that is.

Because earlier this week, I discovered Lyrica 2 by MuffinStory. Here is how the developer describes the app’s functions:

• It shows and adds the lyrics of the currently playing song
• It adds all lyrics to songs from a selected iTunes playlist
• It lets you search for lyrics you can only remember a small text passage

Additional features like printing are coming in version 2.1.

The first function is simple and fast. Open the app, hit the button and boom, lyrics. Words are automatically added to the track’s metadata, making them available to Apple’s line of music players.

Here’s what the app looks like in action:

As you an see in the above screenshot, Lyrica 2′s UI is very simple and straightforward. Lyrics appear, centered on the screen, set in Palatino (a personal favorite) with no frills. I love this kind of minimal design when it comes to apps. Sadly, the 3D page treatment to the right side is a little weird, but I can live with it.

In addition to just finding lyrics to the currently-playing track, Lyrica 2 can scan an entire playlist — or even iTunes library. On my 65 GB of music, the app took about an hour or so to do its thing. Not bad. Never did the app freeze or spike its CPU or RAM usage, and the UI gains a status bar across the bottom, with a counter showing the app’s progress:

In short, Lyrica 2 is a well-behaved, well-written, helpful and handsome Mac app. And you should go download it.

Tapping around my iPhone today, I stumbled on to something so obvious that I couldn’t believe I never noticed it before: You can Shift Lock your iOS keyboard by double tapping the shift key on the keyboard. I know—welcome to 2008. But, if I missed it for this long, I’m willing to bet that there are a lot of people out there who are in the same boat as I am.

So, if you find yourself constantly hitting the shift key to get a capital letter when you’re inputting an acronym, or if you feel like yelling at someone in an SMS message, you no longer have to hit the shift key before every single letter.

Talk about a time saver.

Update: I’ve been notified that you have to turn on this “Caps Lock” feature in your Settings. Go to Settings > General > Keyboard and then flick the ‘Enable Caps Lock‘ switch to ‘on’.  Apparently mine was on by default.

Also, I’m sticking with Shift Lock. It’s a shift key that then locks—it’s not a Caps Lock key. ;)

Last Friday, Eugene dug up an interesting patent that pointed to Apple working on a Mouse that had a built in multi-touch display. Long-story short, he summed up his thoughts as ‘thanks, but no thanks.’  I don’t necessarily disagree with him, but if Apple’s working on multi-touch display mice, why wouldn’t they be working on multi-touch keyboards?

MacRumors has uncovered a patent application that illustrates a hybrid multi-touch physical keyboard.

The idea is far out there, but given the state of multi-touch in OS X Lion (10.7) and the importance that this type of input device will have moving forward, it’s not all that surprising that Apple’s been tinkering with multi-touch in traditional peripherals.

So, what does this patent application entail?

Apple explains in the patent application that the keyboard is an actual ‘physical’ keyboard that also has a ‘motion-sensitive’ area. The ‘motion-sensitive’ area is comprised of four ‘slot cameras’ around the keyboard that will monitor and track movements.

It sounds a little bit like Kinect, doesn’t it? When you couple this patent application with another 3D multi-touch application from earlier this month, it’s really starting to look like Minority Report based peripherals are closer than we might think.

Article Via MacRumors

Sue you, sue me… let’s all sue together, patently. Yes, it’s suing time again, folks! Last year, S3 Graphics sued Apple for infringing on its patents for image processing and image compression in its iPhone, iPad, iPod touch, and MacBook computers. In response, Apple is countersuing S3, and filed a complaint against the graphics visualization company this month. Apple is seeking a Declaratory Judgment of Non-Infringement and Invalidity of Patents. The details of Apple’s suit are not available for download, having been classified as an “oversize document,” so at this time we are not able to tell which patents Apple is challenging. In any case, Apple has chosen to respond in kind to S3 rather than give in.

According to Patently Apple, “A declaratory judgment is typically requested when a party is threatened with a lawsuit but the lawsuit has not yet been filed; or when it is thought by one of two (or more) parties that their rights under law and/or contract might conflict; or as part of a counterclaim to prevent further, similar lawsuits from the same plaintiff.”

S3 Graphics has its headquarters in Freemont, California, providing graphics visualization technologies for notebook and desktop markets, and video cores for discrete and integrated applications in the mobile, desktop, and embedded markets.

Article Via TUAW

If you’ve been following the iPad Retina display rumors over the last week, you’re probably well aware that the rumor mill has been churning out some outright hilarious rumors.

Last week the rumor was that the iPad 2 would be shipping with a 2048×1536 display, but after getting an adequate beat down around the internet, IDC Research is saying iPad 3 is getting a Retina display.

See the world we live in? Whenever someone debunks one rumor, people think it makes sense to make up another rumor to support their original rumor claims.

We don’t doubt for a second that Apple’s working on a way to get higher quality displays in the iPad, but claiming that iPad 3 is going to have a Retina display before iPad 2 even ships is laughable.

So much could change between now and iPad 3 that “Retina display” technologies could be defunct by the time iPad 3 even ships.

But, there you have it. iPad 3 “could” have a Retina D\display. It “could” also solve world hunger, poverty, and the potable drinking water problem.

Photo Credit: larissaherbst
Article Via SlashGear

Sparrow—the slick new Gmail client for the Mac—is coming out of beta and to the App Store soon.

According to the developer, there will be two versions:

• Paid: Sparrow will cost $24.99 but early birds will benefit from the $19.99 introductory price.
• Free: Sparrow Lite will be ad-supported. Carbon Ads is providing the nice ads you have certainly seen in the latest Beta version. The free version will allow one-account creation only.

Sparrow supports threads that include sent messages (like Gmail) and includes labels, notifications and more.

I’ve used Sparrow on and off during the beta period and have been impressed. It feels like a more modern app than Mail does, taking cues from Twitter for Mac and others. I’m excited to see it coming to the App Store.

After spending some time going down the rabbit hole known as the Apple news cycle today, looking for news on Jobs, I stumbled upon this amazing “Psychedelic” Steve Jobs collage on Flickr. The collage is phenomenal and tells us a little bit about the history of Apple, and the relationship between Apple and Jobs.

The detail in this image is astounding, and the thumbnail attached to this post doesn’t do it justice at all. I’d recommend clicking through to tsevis Flickr account page, and then clicking on the “large” link in his description to get the full effect.

I think I might actually get this printed for some artwork in the video podcast studio.

Photo Credit: tsevis