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“Open source anti-theft solution for Mac, PCs & Phones.” I use hiddenapp.com, but this looks good. Another option is http://www.orbicule.com/undercover/mac/.

“Two quick points. Not every idea is going to work. Know that going in. Ideas tend to follow the path of least resistance and more often than not that path is the one where you find yourself talking an idea to death, by getting hung up on the ‘what ifs.’ So you need to actively push ideas out and embrace failure. Fail spectacularly whenever possible. “Secondly, every single person I have ever met or corresponded with about leaving the work-for-hire world and trying to create something of their own, something that they really care about, says exactly the same thing. Win, lose or draw they always express the same thought and most of the time they say it in exactly these words. “What they say is, ‘I should have done this sooner.’”

I finally found out what these things are that look like little flat footballs made of dust laying around my house. Moth larvae cases!

Combine this small, easily customizable AppleScript with a keyboard shortcut utility (like FastScripts) to quickly toggle an application forward and back. I use this for Terminal and TaskPaper.

Honolulu expat Alex Hungtai put up this mix a little while ago. Good collection of gospel, old rock-n-roll, funk, some hip-hop and jazz. Fi is very lo. A great glimpse into the inspiration behind the new Dirty Beaches album.

“Using a database of vacant real estate in a given city and a platform for collecting propositions or pitches, we allow entrepreneurs a marketplace of ideas that is able to match their own predilections and interests with ‘please in my back yard’ [rather than NIMBY] demand. Individuals vote on the future land use and spatial assets that they want to see in their own city and their own backyard. If that voting is done with the wallet, similar to Kickstarter, would it be enough to usefully bootstrap entrepreneurs?”

“Select a group and enter your preferred prefix for the shortcuts assigned to each snippet. The resulting url may be downloaded as a custom .textexpander file, or used with TextExpander’s ‘Install from URL’ feature. Using the latter will provide automatic updates if the group is added to or changed, custom prefixes are preserved.”

Begins with a reading of Paul Ford's WWIC piece.

Tim Quirk tells the story of the Walkman, and how it’s “changed the way we listen, and what we listen to.”

Nitsuh Abebe on Odd Future's energy, and their unfortunately exclusionary lyrics.

My friends' band interviewed by Sabrina Velazquez about their upcoming recording. I am excited to hear that recording.

They featured my cameramail thing from, like, five years ago!

What a beautiful instrument.

“And playing live is a different process to DJing, which is more about getting on a train, arriving, meeting some guy you don't really know and going to a place you don't really know. Actually playing is the best bit because you get to connect with people for the first time in 24 hours. Parts of it are really good, but it's just a lot of time on your own. You can reflect. I write lyrics in those moments when I haven't got anything else to do. Those are probably just the moments when I start being a bit, you know, sad [he smiles].”

“A year ago, when nobody knew who they were, the demonic L.A. skate-rat rap collective Odd Future Wolf Gang Kill Them All cranked out music at an alarming rate. And now that nobody will shut up about them, they’re still doing the same thing. Since 2008, Odd Future have released no fewer than 12 full-length albums, as well as assorted between-releases singles — all available free on their Tumblr. Some of those releases are brilliant, paradigm-shifting works of violent vision. Others are entirely forgettable. Almost all of them are worth your hard-drive real estate, and almost all of them will confound you in one way or another. Below, you'll find a guide to every single one of those albums, from their introductory 2008 ‘The Odd Future Tape’ to Frank Ocean’s ‘Nostalgia, Ultra.’, the experimental R&B tape that the crew released just a few weeks ago.”

A chart.

A TextMate mod. Maybe check this out at some point; I think Dean uses it.

Copying a successful business plan is safe, and tons of companies are copying Groupon. The differentiating strategies of the more successful copycats are interesting, as is the arms-race and recursion of deal aggregators. I find it fascinating that people sign up for this stuff, because I find it wasteful. This is insane: “In just over two years, Groupon has accumulated 60 million subscribers, more than $1 billion in venture capital and $760 million in annual revenue to become the fastest-growing Web company ever. In December, it declined a $6 billion buyout offer from Google.”

Too Much Joy’s Tim Quirk tells the story of his band’s jingle for Budweiser in the early 90s, and how he feels about bands and advertising then and since. A good companion to Matt LeMay’s ‘Art vs Content’ post from late 2010 (http://www.mbvmusic.com/2010/10/19/living-in-the-age-of-art-vs-content).

Statistician has a fifty-worksheet Excel file filled with numbers and ideas, mostly based on 'congestion pricing', that could fix the traffic problems of NYC. “Komanoff is a dyed-in-the-wool stats geek, and the BTA demonstrates his faith in data. By measuring the problem—the amount of time and money lost in traffic every year—we can begin to solve it, he says. We can turn the knobs on the entire transportation system to maximize efficiency. Komanoff’s model suggests a world in which everything from subway fares to bridge tolls can be precisely tuned throughout the day, allowing city planners to steer traffic flow as quickly and smoothly as a taxi driver tooling his cab down Broadway on a quiet Sunday morning.”

FOMO is ‘Fear of Missing Out’ and it’s a major problem on the internet. “There is a company that sells radar equipment to the police as well as radar detectors to the public. Clorox is one of the world’s worst polluters of water, and also sells Brita filters to get the bad stuff out of the water again. Lawyers create mazes that you have to hire a lawyer to escape. Similarly social software both creates and cures FOMO. If you didn’t know that party was going on, you’d be home contentedly reading your latest New Yorker. But since you do, you hungrily watch each new tweet.”

“A quick and simple service for getting pictures of kittens for use as placeholders in your designs or code. Just put your image size (width and height) after our URL and you'll get a placeholder.”

“RSS is dead. Blogs are dead. The web is dead. Good. Dead means that they are no longer interesting to the drive-by technorati. Dead means that the curiousity factor has been satisfied, that people have gotten the joke.”

Prevent security risks from stuff like Firesheep. “When you connect to the Internet through an unprotected wireless network, such as at a coffeeshop or an airport, where you don’t have to enter a security key, you’re putting yourself at risk. Attackers connected to the same network can easily intercept your unencrypted traffic and log in as you to services such as Facebook, Amazon, and LinkedIn.”

The 'Live Audio' section in particular is nice, and is where the youarelisteningtolosangeles.com feeds are coming from. “RadioReference.com is the world's largest radio communications data provider, featuring a complete frequency database, trunked radio system information, and FCC license data. RadioReference is also the largest broadcaster of public safety live audio communications feeds, hosting thousands of live audio broadcasts of Police, Fire, EMS, and other associated communications. With hundreds of thousands of members, RadioReference provides the most comprehensive collaboration platform for public safety communications professionals and hobbyists.”

1. Understand the buyer. 2. Passion matters. 3. Charge money. 4. Experiment with tons of models. 5. Bootstrapping is the way to go. 6. Practice, practice, practice.

From the first EP to the soon-released LP, how it all happened.

By Matthew Perpetua.

‘Ian Roger’s presentation from New Music Seminar Los Angeles, February 2011.’ A great overview of how bands have used Topsin and online marketing to great success. Some good takeaways here: a) Don't sell anything until you have a few thousand people on your mailing list, b) Until that point, focus most of all on getting known, c) Do something small every week and something big every month, d) Communicate honestly and treat your fans well.