Editorial: NBC’s Olympics and the steely grip of old media
By Brad Hill posted Jul 30th 2012 2:00PM Owners and stakeholders of Big Media have thick skins. So the persistent trending of #NBCFail, and the riotous reading that the tweet stream provides, is probably bouncing right off their leathery hides. For one thing, the complaints were surely foreseen. They are largely the same criticisms NBC withstood in previous Olympics — over-curating, ill-placed commercials, tape delays,...
iPhoto, Aperture get Mountain Lion updates
Apples iWork suite may have been updated to add Documents in the Cloud support, but those werent the only Apple-built apps to get a Mountain Lion-inspired refresh on Wednesday. Apple unleashed a spate of software updates aimed at taking advantage of features in the newly unveiled OS X 10.8. iPhoto, for example, now supports new sharing options introduced in Mountain Lion. Version 9.3.2 of iPhoto 11 adds Twitter and Messages to the...
Foster the People Pumps Up with Logic Pro
For several months in 2011, the radio hit “Pumped Up Kicks” by Foster the People was the song we couldn’t get out of our heads. For Mark Foster, who wrote the song, getting it out of his head — and into a demo — was no problem at all. Using Logic Pro, and playing all the instruments himself, Foster was able to write and record the single in just a day and a half. After the demo went viral on the web, the song climbed the charts and...
Facebook improves photo viewing with larger images, takes cues from Google+
By Zach Honig posted Jul 30th 2012 2:29PM Facebook has offered photo sharing in one form another since shortly after the site’s launch, but while certain features have been added over the years, such as tagging and downloads, image formatting has remained mostly unchanged. Until today. Facebook has announced that it will roll out a new tool for thumbing through galleries across the site, presenting photos in a new square format...
Former NSA official says agency collects Americans’ web data, director denies charges
By Terrence O’Brien posted Jul 30th 2012 2:54PM The NSA director, General Keith Alexander, is coming under scrutiny after he told a crowd gathered at the Def Con hacker conference that the spy agency “absolutely” does not collect data from and maintain files on American citizens. A former official stopped just shy of calling Alexander a liar, accusing him of playing a “word game.” William Binney left the...
