Damn Nature U Majestic of the Day: Henry Jun Wah Lee journeys through the expansive wilderness of America’s southwest — from Monument Valley and the Grand Canyon to Yosemite National Park and the eastern Sierras — and returns with an SFX-less, CGI-less testament to the beauty of a nature untouched.

[devour.]

Tagged: Damn Nature U Majestic, Henry Jun Wah Lee, The Wild Heart

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According to Asian reliable source, next iPhone will be released in September or October , and this cycle seems to be kept for years.

MacRumors has similarly heard from a representative of a supplier known to provide parts for the iPhone that Apple’s ordering plans are pointing toward a launch of new hardware in the September.

A third source also claimed to iMore last week that Apple is targeting an October launch for an LTE-enabled iPhone 5, with that source also apparently having accurately named March 7 as the date of Apple’s iPad 3 media event. Apple has yet to officially announce that iPad 3 event, but the date has been confirmed as accurate by the well-connected Jim Dalrymple at The Loop.

The claims of a September or October launch for the iPhone 5 directly contradict several previous rumors that had claimed Apple would be releasing the iPhone this summer, presumably at its Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco. That event that may be held during the week of June 11-15 this year, meaning that a product launch in the weeks after such an introduction would result in a very short lifecycle of only eight months for the iPhone 4S. Consequently, many have believed that Apple will indeed hold off on the iPhone 5 launch until later in the year as it did in 2011.

Recent Mac and iOS Blog Stories
• Apple Removes X11 in OS X Mountain Lion, Shifts Support to Open Source XQuartz
• March Madness Comes to iPad and iPhone March 7 for $3.99
• Apple Sold More iOS Devices in 2011 Than It Sold Macs in Almost 30 Years
• OS X Mountain Lion Drops Support for Many 2006-2008 Macs with Integrated Graphics
• Apple Wins German Injunction Against Motorola Over "Swipe to Unlock" Patents

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Afternoon Snack: SKIFCHA is a cat. With glasses. And a moustache. Who listens to dubstep. How have you not pressed play yet?

[unlikelywords.]

Tagged: Afternoon Snack, kitteh, SKIFCHA

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My best guess is that I didn’t reply correctly to this text (since that is about when I started to be charged):

“Hiring in your Area! Secret Shoppers Needed Make up to $50/hr Call 8779070514 Now. Reply stop4out”

I just replied with “Stop”

I called AT&T Service and they made it so that clicking on a link (which they say I did) to get this service, does NOT automatically sign me up for anything (and charge me) like this did. 

Upgraded Childhood of the Day: Big kid Devin Graham continues his ongoing series of childhood upgrades (previously, and, also) with the installation of the world’s largest rope swing.

Shot in Moab, Utah on a number of fancy cameras.

[thanks dillon!]

Tagged: 150-foot arch, Devin Graham, moab, Upgraded Childhood, video

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Apple is now worth more than $469 billion, making it the most valuable public company in the world by a significant margin. Exxon Mobil, the second most valuable public company, is worth approximately $400 billion after a weakening in that company’s price.

Apple is a long way from claiming the “most valuable publicly traded company ever” title. Among many others, Microsoft had a peak market cap of $642 billion during the dot-com boom in September 2000. That company is now worth just over $250 billion. With the reversal of fortunes, Apple is in fact now worth more than Google ($199 billion) and Microsoft ($256 billion) — Apple’s two biggest competitors — combined.

This is sort of out of nowhere, but it could lead to something interesting.

Per 9to5Mac, an upgraded Apple TV media hub might come sooner than thought after signs emerged that multiple stores ran low on stock. Amazon, Best Buy, Buy.com, Radio Shack, and Target all show the device either as out of stock or taking weeks to ship. Apple and others do have supply, but it follows a pattern of third-party resellers usually running out first.

While it’s possible that there would be a temporary lull in stock, new tips suggest that the existing version may have been phased out. No more were shipping to Best Buy stores, a person at the retailer claimed.

Code references have been appearing that refer to a new Apple TV for the past few months, but little has emerged as to what it might be. With a full TV set unlikely in the near future, it’s more probable that any device, if it reaches stores, would be an A5- or A6-based update that could support 1080p video.

The timing follows some dwindling iPad 2 stock and raises the possibility that Apple may use an increasingly likely early March event to show both a new Apple TV and a new iPad at the same time.

Stay tuned and we’ll have details as soon as they become available.

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The Church has released an early beta version of a new mobile app—FamilySearch Indexing—for iOS and Android platforms. You can start indexing right away by downloading the app. Just search for “familysearch indexing” in the iOS App Store or Android Market.

In order to use the app, you must sign in with your LDS or FamilySearch account. If you don’t already have an account, you can easily create one here.

Once you download the app, sign in with your LDS or FamilySearch Account.

About indexing

Indexing is the process of transcribing information on scanned or photographed historical records in order to create a searchable index. Without indexing, images of these historical records can only be browsed, making it difficult and time-consuming to find names of interest for family history.

A guide built into the app answers many common questions about indexing.

Snippets rather than documents

The FamilySearch Indexing app simplifies indexing by allowing you to transcribe individual names, or “snippets,” on your mobile device instead of downloading larger batches of names that must all be transcribed as part of a group. (You also have the option to view the entire document so you can see the name in context.) You can set a difficulty level and skip snippets that are too hard to read.

The app makes indexing fast and easy so you can do family history in smaller amounts of time. You can index while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, while on hold on a phone call, and many other times when you only have a few minutes.

Work offline

You can also index offline when you download more snippets into your queue. By default, you’ll store 25 snippets in your queue, but you can increase the count to 500, or decrease it to 5. The only drawback to working offline is that you can’t see the context of the snippet in the larger document, which sometimes helps by letting you see how the writer may have formed certain letters.

Confirmation rates

Because indexing involves interpreting handwriting that is sometimes hard to decipher, it can be difficult to get completely accurate results. To increase indexing accuracy, the app requires snippets to have a 75% consensus to be approved, at least for the app’s initial pilot period. This means that three out of four people who index that snippet will need to agree before it can be indexed. That number may be adjusted later as genealogists determine the most effective confirmation rate.

Feature roadmap

The app is still in its early stages of development, but FamilySearch will be working to enhance the user experience of the app and also add more features. Some of these features include giving administrators access to reports, keeping track of all indexing users have done, and more.

Crowdsourcing

The FamilySearch Indexing app shows how effective crowdsourcing can be in furthering the work of the Church. People all over the world can index names easily and effectively, which in turn makes it easier for others to search for and find information about their ancestors for genealogy.

Indexing is an easy way to get started with genealogy, and maybe after trying the Indexing app, you’ll have the momentum you need either to continue or start doing your own family history.

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Sometimes it’s as if the wireless carriers WANT you to be disgruntled with them.

Per iLounge, AT&T has begun to throttle—or downgrade the data speeds of—customers on unlimited data plans that go over 2GB in data usage for the month.

As AT&T customer John Cozen wrote on his blog, “I received a message during my last billing cycle, warning I was in the top 5% of my region and would experience reduced data speeds next time I reach that level of data use. I immediately checked my data usage on the AT&T iOS app. 2.1 GB. Less than I expected considering AT&T offers a 3GB plan for US$30 a month. The same amount I’ve paid for the unlimited data plan since signing up with them many years ago. AT&T no longer offers an unlimited data plan, anyone still on it has been grandfathered in.”

“Data consumption by all smartphone customers, including the top 5 percent of smartphone data customers, varies by month and by market,” said Emily Edmonds, Director, AT&T Corporate Communications. “As of August 2011, the average data use across the country by the top 5 percent of AT&T smartphone customers was 2 GB per month.”

Stay tuned for additional details as they become available and if you’ve seen this change on your end, please let us know in the comments.

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