Linked List: June 25, 2015

Thursday, 25 June 2015

App Camp for Girls 3.0 

Jean MacDonald:

App Camp For Girls is on a mission: we encourage girls to pursue app development as a career by teaching them how to make iPhone apps in a fun, creative summer camp program under the mentorship of women developers. We are shifting the gender balance in our industry. App Camp 3.0 is the next stage in bringing the program to more girls in more locations!

They’re hoping to expand to four new locations this year, but they need your help during the last week of their fundraising campaign for the year. Daring Fireball is already committed as a $1,000 Community Sponsor. Like with any of these crowdfunding campaigns, though, any amount, no matter how small, can help. I think App Camp for Girls is a wonderful idea, well-executed, and I’d love to see the DF readership help put them over the top for funding this year.

See also: This cool video from my pals at Story and Pixel with lots of footage from last year’s App Camp for Girls in Portland.

Apple Music to Pay Two-Tenths of a Cent Per Stream During Trial Period 

Ben Sisario, reporting for the NYT:

For each song that is streamed free, Apple will pay 0.2 cent for the use of recordings, a rate that music executives said was roughly comparable to the free tiers from services like Spotify. This rate does not include a smaller payment for songwriting rights that goes to music publishers; Apple is still negotiating with many publishers over those terms, several publishing companies confirmed on Wednesday.

According to the music executives, these rates would apply to all labels.

For independents, the negotiations with Apple are seen as a victory, allowing thousands of small labels to be part of Apple Music and earn money when people listen to their songs.

Maybe I’m vastly underestimating just how many songs are going to be streamed from Apple Music, but my gut feeling is that there aren’t many artists who are going to make serious money at just two-tenths of a cent per song streamed.

Let’s say Apple Music generates 100 million plays per day from customers on the free trial. At $0.002 per play, that’s $200,000 in payments to the artists and record labels, or about $6 million per month. That’s couch change for Apple.

Maybe I’m way off, and the number of plays will be more like 1 billion per day?

Retro ThinkPad Concept 

David Hill, vice president of identity and design for Lenovo:

For a while now I’ve been exploring the idea of introducing a very unique ThinkPad model. Imagine a ThinkPad that embodies all the latest technology advances, however, embraces the original design details in the strongest way possible. I’ve been referring to the concept as retro ThinkPad. Imagine a blue enter key, 7 row classic keyboard, 16:10 aspect ratio screen, multi-color ThinkPad logo, dedicated volume controls, rubberized paint, exposed screws, lots of status LED’s, and more. Think of it like stepping into a time machine and landing in 1992, but armed with today’s technology. Although not for everyone, I’m certain there’s a group of people who would stand in line to purchase such a special ThinkPad model.

Lenovo should totally do this.