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There are sound effects libraries that cost more than a small car, and they're probably worth it to certain kinds of users — like movie studios or audio production houses — but not to me. In search of interesting, appropriately licensed sounds for personal amusement, some google searching led me to Freesound.org, which has many thousands of freely usable, user-contributed sound recordings, all Creative Commons licensed.

Amazon.com has long been known as a workplace where dogs are welcome, so long as their owners abide by certain rules. But the company is going a step further in the plans for its new Seattle campus — designating a special area where the dogs can take care of some business of their own.

Earlier this week, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation issued a blistering report about the venture capital industry, detailing its own experiences investing in some 100 venture capital firms over the past 20 years.
Sixty-two out of the 100 funds it invested in failed to exceed returns available in the public markets, with the foundation writing that there is a “chronic misallocation of capital” occurring in the industry.

Analysts Discuss Mobile Device Management at Gartner IT Infrastructure & Operations Management Summit 2012, June 5-7, in Orlando and June 12-13 in Frankfurt, Germany

Egham, UK, May 9, 2012— Mobile device management (MDM) has become a crucial discipline for IT departments, given the increasing number of smartphones and media tablets used within organizations, according to Gartner, Inc.

The pieces are in place for Facebook’s IPO next week—not only has the company set its stock price range and updated its Q1 numbers, it has also attempted to de-risk the biggest perceived risk in the first draft of its S-1: exposure to mobile competition. Facebook bought Instagram for $1 billion, which ostensibly will help it approach mobile social interaction in a more engaging way. But it hasn’t done anything to address its exposure to other addictive consumer applications that could whittle away at its users’ engagement over time. Namely, the most risky applications involve social commerce, and the elephant in the room as it relates to physical goods, not virtual goods, is Pinterest.

As literally everybody and their dog (or kids) gets a mobile device, the need for shared family plans is becoming increasingly urgent. It was difficult enough to afford to get everybody in your family connected with a mobile provider before people had multiple devices –consider how many of you have an iPhone and an iPad!

Fortuantely for those of you signed up with AT&T, you may not have much longer to wait. In an interview with CNET yesterday, CEO of AT&T’s mobile business Ralph de la Vega indicated that the company has plans to offer one soon.

Meet the guy who gets the deals done at Intellectual Ventures, the 800-person patent licensing company and invention house run by former Microsoft technology chief Nathan Myhrvold.

Cypress Semiconductor has reached a patent licensing agreement with Intellectual Ventures, becoming the latest in a series of large technology companies to license the patent portfolio amassed by former Microsoft tech chief Nathan Myhrvold’s company.

Now, thanks to the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation — which has invested in nearly 100 venture capital firms across the country over the past 20 years — we’re getting an inside look into the problems rattling the industry.
The picture is not pretty.

It might be a fiasco, but it’s sure to be fun.

The Sloop Tavern Yacht Club and the Port Madison Yacht Club are hosting the second annual Three Buoy Fiasco next weekend on Saturday, May 12. The regatta drew 40 boats for its inaugural run last year, when it replaced the old format of the spring race around Blake Island.

In a survey of 799 teens conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project between April 19 and July 14, 2011, the teens were asked about a number of online behaviors. The results for video-oriented activities are reported here. Among the findings:

37% of internet users ages 12-17 participate in video chats with others using applications such as Skype, Googletalk or iChat. Girls are more likely than boys to have such chats.
27% of internet-using teens 12-17 record and upload video to the internet. One major difference between now and 2006 is that online girls are just as likely these days to upload video as online boys.
13% of internet-using teens stream video live to the internet for other people to watch.
Social media users are much more likely than those who do not use social media to engage in all three video behaviors studied.

Is there anything you can do to help those around you be more active, happier, or smarter? All of these produce better citizens or reduce crime.
Easy access to pornography reduces rape and sex crimes.
Likewise with violent movies. They don't increase real violence -- they reduce it.
Sending people to prison can be counterproductive. (Crazy as it sounds, even odd initiatives like helping criminals get plastic surgery has shown positive results.)
All this seem beyond the reach of your superpowers? Okay then, just smile. It can prevent bank robberies.

The fact is OMGPOP had multiple games before their first smashing success. In fact, according to AppPromo, 59 percent of applications released on iOS actually lose money for the developer. While 59 percent is high, an even more surprising number is that 80 percent do not generate enough revenue to be a stand alone business.

They conducted their first annual survey and made a handy infographic breaking down the information they learned. It is actually quite fascinating when you see the shocking number of applications that fail miserably upon hitting the App Store. Only 11 percent of developers had their application reach 500,000 downloads or more. On the flip side, 63 percent of app creators saw less than 50,000 downloads for their app.

The University of California Irvine Extension is offering free online webinars to the public for learning mobile app development. You may not be able to get a Master’s degree with these courses, but you’ll probably learn a little something about app development.

The college extension program is offering an online certification course called, “Application Development for Social Networking” that runs from July 2 through August 12. In the meantime, the free webinars, titled “Mobile Development for Apple iPhone and iPad Information Session,” “Application Development for Android Device Information” and Social Networking Program Information Session” will begin as early as May 30.

Analysts to Explore Business Outcome-Driven Enterprise Architecture at the Enterprise Architecture Summit 2012 in London, U.K., and National Harbor in Maryland, U.S.

EGHAM, UK, May 2, 2012— A disconnect remains between the way many organizations pursue enterprise architecture (EA) and the impact of EA on the business, which prevents EA from delivering business value, according to Gartner, Inc. EA practitioners need to re-examine old practices and shift their focus to deliverables that direct change and empower business and IT leaders to make better decisions.

5 Things to Do Before the New Patent Law Takes Full Effect from Xconomy Seattle http://www.xconomy.com

Some Facebook users are seeing a new icon on News Feed items which link to sites that share activity back to a user’s Timeline. The color of the icon indicates whether clicking the link will generate a story alerting users’ friends that they read an article or watched a video.

iPads, iPhones, and games go hand in hand, so it’s no surprise that gaming apps have historically been the App Store’s most popular category. In fact, games held the top spot as the app category that iDevice owners spent the most time using for a whopping 40 weeks.

Surprisingly, though, the way that iDevice owners use their devices may be shifting slightly, since games have just been unseated by social networking apps.

If you say nothing else about social media, you can at least say it’s developing a sense of humor. Mean? Maybe. Self-deprecating? Definitely. But it’s a sense of humor.
The latest evidence is Klouchebag, a parody of Klout’s influence score that launched earlier today. And if the name of the site isn’t enough to clue you in, you need only read the “The Standard for Asshattery” tagline.

There are now more than 42 million Facebook pages and 9 million Facebook apps, according to a recent amendment to the social network’s filing for an initial public offering.

The number of pages on Facebook with 10 or more Likes has increased by 5 million since Dec. 31, 2011, and the number of apps and websites that integrate Facebook are up by 2 million since that date. These new totals show that Facebook’s platform continues to grow in ways beyond new users. It also shows just how much is competing for users’ attention these days.

Sunshine Audio Release Sinerise Vol 1 – A Bank of 64 New Presets for Sunrizer Synth from iDesignSound http://www.idesignsound.com

It’s become depressingly trendy to be a startup. Even the United States Federal Government is out stumping the benefits of the startup economy. Just like being an investment banker in 2006, co-founding (or hell, just working at) the next Instagram is bound to get you bottle service and phone numbers.
Ashton Kutcher is still cool ‘cuz he makes startup investments.

Facebook will test a new “promote” button that makes it easier for pages to create Sponsored Stories directly from their posts, a company spokesperson tells us.

The button will appear from the page publisher — the box from which page owners create posts — and on posts that have already gone live. The feature is aimed at small- to mid-sized businesses that are using Facebook for marketing, but don’t necessarily have the resources to work with a Facebook ad rep or third-party partner. The social network’s ad dashboard has become increasingly complicated with untraditional ad types like Sponsored Stories and page post ads, but the promote button could make ad creation much simpler.

Movie streaming and digital downloads may be rising in popularity, but it looks like many of us aren’t quite yet ready to give up on good old-fashioned DVDs — even if we aren’t going inside a traditional movie rental store to get them anymore.
DVD kiosk venture Redbox saw its sales rise nearly 39 percent to $503 million in the first quarter, according to the latest numbers from its parent company, Coinstar, the Bellevue-based automated retail company.

Dropbox for Windows and Mac Updated with Auto Photo Uploading and Up to 3 GB of Additional Free Space [Dropbox] from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com

Send Files to Dropbox, Google Drive, and More From Windows' Right-Click Menu [Dropbox] from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com

Pages’ profile pictures will now be presented as the same size as users’ profile photos. Previously, pages’ profile pictures appeared as 125×125 pixels, though some pages noticed Facebook testing the new size earlier this month. The confusing thing about profile pictures on the site is that the uploaded image must be a minimum of 180×180 pixels, then Facebook resizes the image on users’ screens.

A new Facebook change will make it easier for developers to migrate their existing apps to Open Graph without requesting additional permissions from users.

This will happen through the merging of the publish_actions and publish_stream permissions, according to a post on the company’s developer blog Wednesday. Apps that were previously granted publish_stream do not need to request publish_actions. This is good news for developers planning to add Open Graph capabilities to their existing apps, but should not be taken an opportunity to begin publishing all sorts of activity users wouldn’t wish to be share on Facebook. The social network has updated its app policy to read:

When Propellerhead released their high profile iPhone app Figure, the iOS music making world collectively held their breath in anticipation. The software manufacture became a favorite in the world of electronic music production years ago, with their ground breaking software Reason and everyone hoped that they would deliver in the same way with Figure. Once the world got a chance to spend some time with Figure, the reaction was mixed – some folks lamented the lack of a Reason like interface while other reveled in the accessible and addictive nature of the app. One thing was certain though, when Figure hit the App Store, the world stood up and took notice as a blizzard of publicity furiously spun around the app.

According to enterprise management company Good, Apple’s iPad and iPhone accounted for 79.9 percent of all enterprise customer activations in the first quarter of 2012.

The Job Decision Matrix is one of those tools where you get enormous benefit from the exercise of using the tool as well as the result the tool generates.
The goal of the Job Decision Matrix is to identify what is actually important to you at a particular point in your career. Gaining clarity on what is important to you will help you identify new job opportunities, avoid wasting time on job opportunities that are not right for you, and to make a job decision with conviction.

You just interviewed for a job and you haven't heard anything. Sometimes this is a sign of bad news, and sometimes it isn't. You want to follow up and find out what's going on, but you don't want to be annoying. Here's how to handle this situation effectively.

'Junk Jack' Definitely Going Universal Soon from Touch Arcade http://toucharcade.com

A Simple Approach to Fixing Your Crappy Self-Esteem [Happiness] from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com

The Seattle area, which hosted the official Planetary Resources unveiling and is home to the new venture, is no stranger to science fiction with its healthy fan community and significant concentration of New York Times-bestselling, award-winning writers in Seattle and the broader Washington State.
So why not ask the writers themselves what role they think science fiction played?

During the quarter, Apple sold approximately 557,000 iOS devices that can access the App Store per day. That breaks down to more than 385,000 iPhones, almost 130,000 iPads, and around 42,000 iPod touches. (Sales for the iPod touch were not specifically discussed, but Apple CEO Tim Cook stated it accounted for “more than half” of the 7.7 million iPods sales during the quarter.)

We’re nerds for aesthetics here at The A.V. Club, like the style of one of our favorite television shows or nifty time-lapses from classic films. So of course we’re digging the below video from Off Book, a Tumblr run by the PBS Arts folks to give extra exposure to some fantastic stuff. The short feature takes a look at the art of the title sequence, talking to the designers behind some of the more memorable recent opening title sequences like the Mad Men open and the hilarious, thrilling sequence in Zombieland. Going beyond just what happens, these creatives talk about how these sequences help tell a story, how the design and style relate to their subject, and the larger themes therein. Bonus: Stick around for the whole thing (come on, it’s only six minutes) and there’s a nice little bit of homage to legendary sequence creator Saul Bass. [via Kottke]

Mary Madden and Kathryn Zickuhr presented "Public libraries in the digital age" to the Chief Officers of State Library Agencies at their spring meeting. They presented findings on the rise of e-reading, including reading-device ownership and the general reading habits/preferences of Americans.

At some point in your life you've won a game you've never played before or witnessed a young child say or create something with worldly depth. These are both examples of events we attribute to something called beginner's luck, as if chance caused them to happen. The reality is that the effects of this supposed beginner's luck have very real causes that can be reproduced under the right circumstances. Here's how the phenomenon works and how you can use that information to incite good fortune when you need it.

OHMYGODYOUGUYS from TheBloggess.com http://thebloggess.com

No Surprise Here: Up To 30 Percent Of Customers Could Be Interested In Buying ‘iTV’ from App Advice http://appadvice.com

Apple just released financial results for its fiscal 2012 first quarter and the company once again posted record sales numbers. Apple was able to grow sales of iOS products versus the same quarter a year ago. It once again posted great sales, exceeding analyst estimates, with revenue totaling $39.2 billion and a net quarterly profit of $11.6 billion. This compares to Apple’s revenue of $24.7 billion and net quarterly profit of $6 billion for the same quarter in the previous year. Apple also reported assets reached record levels of $151 billion with $110 billion in cash reserves.

Is anything on Twitter worth paying attention to? from Barking up the wrong tree http://www.bakadesuyo.com

App Synergy: How To App Synergize Your Business from App Advice http://appadvice.com

24 hours in apps media disruption from Technology: Apps blog | guardian.co.uk http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog

Four Excerpts from Valve’s Employee Handbook That Belong In Yours from SKMurphy, Inc. http://www.skmurphy.com

Instagram’s billion dollar idea wasn’t photos after all from GeekWire http://www.geekwire.com

Geek of the Week: Apptio’s Bruce Henry, from nuclear physics to enterprise software from GeekWire http://www.geekwire.com

A Glympse of the future in Seattle’s South Lake Union from GeekWire http://www.geekwire.com

Apple Planning To Webcast Second-Quarter Earnings Call Tuesday from App Advice http://appadvice.com

Lakes & Oceans: A Deep Infographic from Cool Infographics http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/

Where the Startup Jobs are from Cool Infographics http://www.coolinfographics.com/blog/

A superb GarageBand drum kit tutorial video from iPad Creative Blog http://www.ipadcreative.com/blog/

How to Make Your VPN Even More Secure [Privacy] from Lifehacker http://lifehacker.com

Inside Nathan Myhrvold’s office: The ultimate ‘geekspace’ from GeekWire http://www.geekwire.com

Your Guide to the Perfect Business Lunch from The Art of Manliness http://artofmanliness.com

Tablets Are Leading Alternative For Full-Length TV Show Viewing from PadGadget http://www.padgadget.com

Remarkably, Hulu had just one million subscribers last fall. Two double its Hulu Plus subscriber base in such a short period of time is truly an astonishing accomplishment for the company, which is clearly aiming to wrangle customers away from competing services like Netflix.