From the Twitter blog on the latest iOS/Android app update:
>Lastly, we’ve added push notifications for Interactions, so you can know immediately when your Tweets have been retweeted or favorited, or when somebody new follows your account.
Who would want this? Worse yet: these new notifications are on by default, even though I only updated the app. That alone should be a criminal offense.
Samuel Arbesman:
>One of the clearest regional differences in the U.S. can found by tracking the words people use to refer to soft drinks, which is in fact the map you saw at the top of this story. Pop or soda, or even Coke, these small linguistic differences are not as small as we might think. While “soda” commands the Northeast and West Coast (green) and “pop” is in between (black), “Coke” reigns in the south (turquoise).
Neat map.
Nilay Patel breaking down the privacy implications of cloud storage services:
>In the end, though, the actual wording of these documents doesn’t reveal much — they all set out to do the same thing, and they all accomplish their goals. What’s most important is how much trust you’re willing to give companies like Google, Microsoft, Apple, and Dropbox as more and more of your data moves to the cloud.
For all the talk of the iPad being priced too high, it sure is funny that, as Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports:
>Now, according to a new NPD survey, their first Apple (AAPL) product is more likely to be an iPhone or, increasingly, an iPad.
The iPad is selling like crazy, but I am not so sure it is going to have as large of a halo effect on Macs as the iPhone does — for one, it can do much more than an iPhone and many think of the iPad as a computer and not a complimentary device to a computer.
Marney Rich Keenan:
>”Can you imagine an 85-year-old lady and 95-year-old retired Air Force Major in wheelchairs being treated like terrorists?” Petti asked recently sitting in the kitchen of the Bloomfield Township home he shares with Woodward.
I can’t imagine it, but apparently the TSA can.
And later, after TSA jacked $300 and a police report was filed:
>Nobody, he says, is giving him a straight answer. “The police said they went and reviewed the videotapes but they were too blurry,” Petti says. Petti’s son Bill, who is helping his father, doubts that. “You can bet if my father were a terrorist, those videos would not be too blurry.”
Ugh.
Steve Evans reporting:
>”I think they [Macs] are ten years behind Microsoft in terms of security,” Kaspersky told CBR.
Not quoted were the direct links, prices, and features of the [Mac based security software](http://usa.kaspersky.com/products-services/home-computer-security/anti-virus-for-mac) that Kaspersky sells.
Oh wait, nope that’s him on a late night comedy show, but I’m sure he is all over the TSA incompetence.
Chris Morran:
>Last night and this morning, authorities arrested two current and two former screeners at Los Angeles International Airport for allegedly taking bribes to not notice that travelers were secreting stashes of coke, meth and pot in their suitcases.
Imagine what I would find if I even tried to find stories about TSA stupidity…
The Economist:
>Estimates by The Economist suggest that the average British size 14 pair of women’s trousers is now more than four inches wider at the waist than it was in the 1970s. In other words, today’s size 14 is really what used to be labelled a size 18; a size 10 is really a size 14.
Spot on analysis by Matt Drance.
I really tried to keep from reading about Google Drive, but so many of you sent me stuff about the TOS for Google Drive that I couldn’t ignore it. Zack Whittaker does a nice job breaking it down and compares what Google is asking for versus other services, the money quote:
>Simply put: there’s no definitive boundary that keeps Google from using what it likes from what you upload to its service.
I am sure you are *shocked*.
Chris Morran reporting for The Consumerist:
>”[T]he woman started screaming at me and cursing me and threatening me,” the father recalls.
He’s talking about a TSA officer. What’s particularly funny is the TSA statement to the site, which makes no mention of action taken against rude employees. What a bunch of assholes.
Lucian Constantin reporting on malware for Macs:
>Sophos collected malware detection statistics from 100,000 Mac computers that run its free antivirus product and found that 20 percent of them contained one or more types of Windows malware.
I don’t care what Sophos found, because I don’t trust Sophos, but what I find interesting is the above number: 100,000. Does that number mean that Sophos only has convinced 100,000 Mac users that their free anti-virus software is worth it?
And is an anti-virus customer the best yard stick for Mac users if only a fraction of Mac users actually have anti-virus software? I think not.
These were given to us as a gift and they are hands down our favorite blankets to swaddle our daughter in — we don’t even bother with all the other swaddle blankets people bought us. So, you know, if you are in the market…
MG Siegler:
>To me right now, Microsoft’s consumer business feels like Nokia’s smartphone business a few years ago: the numbers look fine, and in some cases even good, but the world is quickly changing.
Good comparison.
Rebecca Ruiz:
>Brademeyer said that a TSO began yelling at her daughter, would not permit her to pass through the scanner again and said that a pat-down was necessary. Isabel, according to her mother, was wearing Mary Jane shoes, a short-sleeve shirt and leggings that did not have pockets.
>”It was implied, several times, that my mother, in their brief two-second embrace, had passed a handgun to my daughter,” Brademeyer said.
Well done TSA.
Josh Constine:
>So if Facebook maintains its current revenue rate, it would make between $4.69 and $4.81 on each of its 901 million users each year.
Impressive.
Mike Wall:
>A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — is set to announce plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water.
[Wonder where they got that idea…](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120591/)
John Gruber on the long rumored, just announced, Google Drive:
>Sure, I trust Google to index the contents of all my files. Why not?
Yep. ((This also marks where I stop reading anything about the service and thus don’t follow news about it.))
Shawn Blanc looking at (some of) the ugliest keyboards that money can buy:
>If you too want to adorn your desk with an ugly keyboard — one with a loud personality and which increases typing productivity — then I recommend the Das Keyboard.
It’s interesting to me that Shawn types faster on the mechanical keyboards — that alone makes me want to try one. But there is no way in hell I am putting any one of those keyboards Shawn reviewed anywhere near my desk.
They are hideous, repulsive, and offensive looking.
Even if I was more productive with them, the tradeoff of adding in wires and ugliness is simply not worth it.
Where is the Kickstarter project for a sexy looking, bluetooth, mechanical keyboard?