[MyAppleMenu] Sep 21, 2011

[applesurf at myapplemenu.com]

MyAppleMenu
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**** Instagram 2.0 Adds Live Filters And Higher-resolution Photos <http://www.macworld.com/article/162397/2011/09/instagram_2_0_adds_live_filters_and_higher_resolution_photos.html#lsrc.rss_main>
Lex Friedman, Macworld

Instagram on Tuesday unveiled version 2.0 of its popular photo-sharing app. The update adds new filters, live filter previews, instant tilt-shift effects, more border controls, high-resolution photos, and rotation controls.

**** ‘Important’ Bento Update Fixes Lion, iCloud Issues <http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/09/20/important-bento-update-fixes-lion-icloud-issues/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+loopinsight%2FKqJb+%28The+Loop%29>
Peter Cohen, The Loop

**** Adobe Introduces Premiere Elements 10, Photoshop Elements 10 <http://www.loopinsight.com/2011/09/20/adobe-introduces-premiere-elements-10-photoshop-elements-10/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+loopinsight%2FKqJb+%28The+Loop%29>
Peter Cohen, The Loop

Photoshop Elements 10 adds new tools such as “Guided Edits,” which help users add photo effects like diffused glows and shallow depths of field step by step. New text functions let users add curving and flowing text to photos, and special crop guides help users create special compositions. The Smart Brush paints effects onto specific areas of photos, with 30 new effects including Pencil Sketch and Oil Pastel.

**** A Cloud Of My Own <http://lowendmac.com/ed/hatchett/11jh/pogoplug-cloud.html>
John Hatchett, Low End Mac

Yes, there are services that set up a hard drive on the Internet that you can access with online device. No fees and no storage limits! And, of course, my local cloud lives on my network and is perched on top of my desk. I can add storage by adding drives to the Pogoplug unit.

**** Follow-up To Finding A Replacement For Quicken <http://tidbits.com/article/12503?rss>
Michael E. Cohen, TidBITS

**** Apple's Mousetrap <http://www.slate.com/id/2304208/?from=rss>
Michael Agger, Slate

With natural scrolling, Apple was messing with the laws of the universe! Think of my surprise then, when an informal poll among friends revealed that most had switched without a hitch. Two days of discomfort at most. And here I was feeling like my hand had been cut off. No one likes to realize they have the old brain, that they're becoming obsolete. So I'm a natural scroller now, in the pink, working with the new hammer.

**** How Apple Badly Messed Up With In-app Purchases On Lion And Didn’t Tell Anyone <http://gorban.org/post/10455358440/apple-messed-up-in-app-purchases?5c323830>
Jacob Gorban

Apple never really ackowledged that there was an issue with this, didn’t close my bug report, didn’t delete all the 1-star reviews that angry customers left and didn’t compensate the affected developers for their financial loss. Nothing.

**** A Look At The Mac App Store, Two Months After Lion Launched <http://www.splatf.com/2011/09/lion-app-store/>
Dan Frommer, SplatF

**** How Do I Protect My OS X Lion Passwords From Being Easily Hacked? <http://lifehacker.com/5842151/how-do-i-protect-my-os-x-lion-passwords-from-being-easily-hacked>
Adam Dachis, Lifehacker

**** Apple’s Next Event To Be Held On October 4, Starring Its New CEO <http://allthingsd.com/20110921/apple-to-hold-special-event-on-october-4/>
John Paczkowski, All Things D

While Apple could certainly change its plans anytime, sources said that the October 4 date has been selected by the company to showcase the iPhone 5. Sources added that the plan is now to make the new device available for purchase within a few weeks after the announcement.

And while the iPhone 5 is a much anticipated handset, the event itself has a lot more importance for Apple than many previous ones. That’s because it will be newly installed CEO Tim Cook’s first big product introduction and the place where the public will get a first lengthy impression of him that may well set the tone for Cook’s new role.

**** Mac Virtualization Face-off: VMware Fusion 4 Vs. Parallels Desktop 7 <http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9220153/Mac_virtualization_face_off_VMware_Fusion_4_vs._Parallels_Desktop_7?source=rss_operatingsystems&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+computerworld%2Fs%2Ffeed%2Ftopic%2F123+%28Computerworld+Mac+OS+News%29>
Galen Gruman, InfoWorld

The bottom line is that gamers and simulation users will get a bigger bang from Fusion, whereas number crunchers will do better by Parallels Desktop.

**** Tip Of The Week: Safari’s New Reading List <http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/09/21/tip-of-the-week-safaris-new-reading-list/?partner=rss&emc=rss>
J.d. Biersdorfer, New York Times

**** FaceTime Calls Are Encrypted; And HIPAA Compliant When Using Proper Encryption <http://www.zdnet.com/blog/apple/facetime-calls-are-encrypted-and-hipaa-compliant-when-using-proper-encryption/11166?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+zdnet%2FApple+%28ZDNet+The+Apple+Core%29>
Jason D. O'Grady, ZDNet

**** Use AirDrop On Any Mac With Lion <http://www.macworld.com/article/162407/2011/09/airdrop_any_mac.html#lsrc.rss_main>
Glenn Fleishman, Macworld

**** Take Five 1.1.2 <http://www.macworld.com/article/162412/2011/09/take_five_1_1_2.html#lsrc.rss_main>
Dan Frakes, Macworld

I admit to being a bit skeptical of Take Five when I first tried it—my first thought was essentially, “Is this really necessary?” But once you pause playback and then, 10 minutes later, hear the music fade back in—often after completely forgetting you'd paused it—you begin to appreciate how Take Five can come in handy.



MyAppleMenu Reader
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**** Speed Chess <http://www.grantland.com/story/_/id/6948865/speed-chess>
Chuck Klosterman, Grantland

On Amherst, Maine Maritime Academy, and the moving pieces of college football offenses.

**** The Magic Of Reality By Richard Dawkins - Review <http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/sep/21/richard-dawkins-magic-reality-review?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+theguardian%2Fbooks%2Frss+%28Books%29>
Tim Radford, The Guardian

The intended lesson of Dawkins's book is that science tells a marvellous set of experimentally testable stories. The less direct lesson may be that we cannot stop telling ourselves fables, but at least we should learn to tell the difference.

**** Letting Go Of Star Wars <http://www.avclub.com/articles/letting-go-of-star-wars,61965/?utm_medium=RSS&utm_campaign=feeds&utm_source=avclub_rss_daily>
Keith Phipps, A.V. Club

I wonder if the next generation really ought to care so much about what a Krayt dragon ought to sound like. There are books, films, and TV shows of my youth that I look forward to sharing with my daughter, but I don’t expect her to claim all, or even any, of them as her own. If she doesn’t like A Charlie Brown Christmas, I can watch it without her. (But, seriously, how could she not like that?) As for Star Wars, I have no doubt it will still be around, but maybe she won’t care about it at all. I kind of hope she doesn’t. It’s had a good long run. She should have her own imagination-colonizing pop culture. I hope she loves it as much as I loved Star Wars, and that she gets to hold onto it all her life.

**** The Rise Of "Awesome" <http://moreintelligentlife.com/content/ideas/robert-lane-greene/just-awesome?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+MoreintelligentlifeTotal+%28moreintelligentlife.com+-+total%29>
Robert Lane Greene, Intelligent Life

Once it had to do with awe. Now it just means "great". How did "awesome" conquer the world?



SingaporeSurf
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**** Rising Electricity Prices Take Their Toll On Town Councils <http://www.todayonline.com/Singapore/EDC110921-0000374/Rising-electricity-prices-take-their-toll-on-town-councils>
Ong Dai Lin And Ng Jing Yng, Today

Town councils around the island are feeling the heat of rising electricity prices: The Bishan-Toa Payoh Town Council, for instance, has seen its utility bill balloon to S$8.2 million in the last financial year, an increase of almost 40 per cent over the last five years. 

But, even as town councils brainstorm ways - with at least one seeking suggestions from residents - to manage growing bills, town council chairmen Today spoke to reassured that, at this point, there was no need to consider raising residents' service and conservancy charges (S&CC).

**** Disclosure Is Important <http://www.todayonline.com/Voices/EDC110921-0000337/Disclosure-is-important>
Chua Soo Kiat, Today

If such disclosures will erode an organisation's competitive edge, both the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and Temasek Holdings would have been in trouble by now. But this is not the case.

**** On A High Horse Called Truth And Right, PAP Lost In A Changing World <http://yawningbread.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/on-a-high-horse-called-truth-and-right-pap-lost-in-a-changing-world/>
Alex Au, Yawning Bread

People grow and change. Other governments and institutions respond. Here, our government staggers from one unanticipated scenario to another because by their subconscious conception, the world should not be changing. Human nature should not be changing. People aren’t supposed to yearn for higher-level self-actualisations. Like freedom of speech. Like caring for the underprivileged.

And the PAP won’t blame themselves for their difficulties. They are in possession of  Truth and Right, aren’t they? So, if the people aren’t applauding their every move and utterance, it must be because of the wild wild west of new media leading the faithful astray.

**** This Just Cannot Go On <http://www.yoursdp.org/index.php/news/singapore/4967-this-just-cannot-go-on>
Singapore Democratic Party

The UBS-GIC debacle is not a one-off. It is a symptom of a much larger problem which is the lack of transparency and accountability of our national wealth funds. What is worst is that we still have no clue how much we have in the CPF. 

In the meantime while these mega-deals involving tens of billions of our CPF dollars are made by the government, Singaporeans continue to scrape by for a living and retirees continue to see our CPF savings get further and further out of reach.

**** End-of-life Care At NUH Is Below Par, Says Study <http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_715127.html>
Salma Khalik, Straits Times

A study has found that even when patients are alert and able to talk, this issue is still rarely discussed with them. And many terminally ill people are given aggressive treatments during their last 24 hours, which may cause unnecessary pain while merely postponing the inevitable.

**** Podcast… And post-Singapore Reflections <http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/discoveringdesistance/2011/09/20/podcast-and-post-singapore-reflections/>
Discovering Desistance

Though Singapore retains what looks to Scottish eyes like a Draconian approach to punishment (most notably, Singapore retains the death penalty and, I think, executes more people per capita than any country except China), it also has a remarkable approach to reintegration.

**** Resorts World Sentosa: Will It Kill Half A Million Fishes? <http://wildshores.blogspot.com/2011/09/resorts-world-sentosa-will-it-kill-half.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WildShoresOfSingapore+%28wild+shores+of+singapore%29>
Wild Shores Of Singapore

**** Lily Neo: It Was A Typo Disaster <http://theonlinecitizen.com/2011/09/lily-neo-it-was-a-typo-disaster/>
Jewel Philemon, The Online Citizen

**** Singapore Exchange Rules Out New Takeovers <http://news.ninemsn.com.au/article.aspx?id=8335793>
AAP

Singapore Exchange Chief Executive Magnus Bocker said on Wednesday the company would focus on growth in its South-East Asian neighbourhood.

**** Abolish ISA? How Badly Do You Want It? <http://politicalwritings.wordpress.com/2011/09/21/abolish-isa-how-badly-do-you-want-it/>
Political Writings

So why would PAP abolish ISA just because some critics say so? Voters don’t care too much about it, and there’s no upside to be gained by abolishing it. They have to waste time drafting a new law to replace ISA, and not a single rabid SDP supporter is going to vote PAP just because ISA is abolished.

So there is no earthly reason why PAP should abolish ISA, not until Singaporeans want it badly enough, not until Singaporeans are willing to send the right signals to the PAP at the ballot box.

**** Malaysia's ISA Reform Challenges Singapore <http://www.lowyinterpreter.org/post/2011/09/19/Malaysias-ISA-reform-challenges-Singapore.aspx>
Natasha Cowan, The Interpreter

Unlike Najib, PM Lee is not yet desperate enough to have to fiddle with Singapore's instruments of intimidation to secure his own popularity.

**** The Rogue Trader And His Impact On GIC <http://theonlinecitizen.com/2011/09/the-rogue-trader-and-his-impact-on-gic/>
Ghui, The Online Citizen

As a citizen of Singapore, I would urge GIC to take steps to ensure that more easily accessible information is made available to the public. By this, I do not mean general statements or investor jargon but easy to understand and concise information that the man on the street can digest and comprehend. It is the country’s money after all and every Singaporean has a stake in that.