Apple is slated to announce the fruits of its labor on improving the use of technology in education at its special media event on Thursday, January 19. While speculation has so far centered on digital textbooks, sources close to the matter have confirmed to Ars that Apple will announce tools to help create interactive e-books—the "GarageBand for e-books," so to speak—and expand its current platform to distribute them to iPhone and iPad users.

If this is true there's a hell of a goldrush on its way.

I was lucky enough to see this last night at the Cineplex Eau Claire. My lovely girlfriend (@januarylark) scored a couple of premiere tickets.

Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy was a beautiful movie. Not one moment on screen was wasted.

I have never seen a show so closely marry photography, art direction and story together to capture a moment in time. The camera moves throughout scenes reminscient of great movies from the time period like Save the Tiger. Every thread, poster and piece of graffiti in a shot is perfectly true to the early 1970's.

The dialogue is never ham-handed. You learn who the characters are by their environment and their expression. In fact, Smiley (Gary Oldman) doesn't speak a word for the first 15 minutes of the movie. Lipstick and mascara sitting on his dreary bathroom counter tells you his wife has left him. Getting a new prescription for his failing eyes tells you time is passing quickly.

The movie is so dense it's hard to write a word without giving away the many tiny twists peppered throughout.

It's a must see for anyone who loves movies. It opens January 20th.

Awesome. Seems to be the story of the ship in Alien. (via @gruber)

The Microsoft patent that Motorola was found to have violated is related to the scheduling of meetings from mobile devices, in which other participants are invited to attend and their electronic calendars are synchronized to reflect the meeting.

This is great news. Hopefully the patent extends beyond mobile and there becomes a need to add a surcharge to sending meeting requests in general.

Seems like a really great service for 29 bucks a month.

Top 10
Everything of 2011

In 54 wide-ranging lists, TIME surveys
the highs and lows, the good and the bad,
of the past 12 months.

CEO Thierry Breton of the French information technology company said only 10 percent of the 200 messages employees receive per day are useful and 18 percent is spam.  That’s why he hopes the company can eradicate internal emails in 18 months, forcing the company’s 74,000 employees to communicate with each other via instant messaging and a Facebook-style interface.

If I had to guess I'd say this is what Google intended with Wave.

We've all wanted to do this when faced with bullshit red-tape. (via Time Newsfeed)

Excellent post on how "future visions" videos are retarded.