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by Alex Goy February 1, 2014 1:00 PM PST

I firmly believe we're entering an era where those who have never seen a "proper" Mini will outnumber have. We're coming to a time when, for most people, a BMW Mini is a "real" Mini and the old one will simply be a historical oddity. A cool one, but still.

John Cooper's involvement with Alec Issigonis' Mini wasn't a simple one. To get a racier Mini on the roads, Cooper had to do some pretty solid convincing. Thankfully, Issigonis took the bait and a legendary car was born. The Mini Cooper would go on to be an iconic name, one that would win races and the hearts of millions of people the world over.

When BMW bought the Mini nameplate, there was no question that Cooper would be back. But what involvement would John Cooper have? It would have been sacrilege to leave the man whose name charmed a generation out in the cold. John Cooper became THE Mini tuning guy -- he took the basic Cooper and Cooper S cars and turned the wick up a bit...a lot, actually. He died shortly before the fruits of his latest labours could be fully realised, but his name lives on.

After a while of operating as an official partner of BMW, JCW was bought outright by the company, becoming the Mini's M Division. JCW's cars are the most hardcore Minis money can buy -- they're faster, more technologically endowed, and all-round better than the more pedestrian cars. However, when a Mini's life is coming to an end, JCW is given its time to shine. The engineers put away the sensible pills and start taking acid.

The GP cars come with more powerful engines, tuned suspension, tweaked camber, silly spoilers, a brace bar in place of rear seats and a rather lovely noise. The Mini GP cars are "Mini Plus" and they're hard to get hold of. JCW only makes a limited number of them, a few to send off to the wider world to show the masses that Minis aren't all "cute."

The latest GP car, GP II, is an utter hoot to steer. It's fast, comes with a slick change, and can be manipulated on the road in ways that can get you in to trouble...I loved it, bar one thing: It's easy.

When I'm behind the wheel of something a bit "jazzy" I want to feel like I'm working for my supper. I want heavy steering, a chunky gear change, and a feeling that the car is a bit difficult. The GP II is...easy. It's like driving any other hatchback. Albeit one that'll bite if you poke it in the wrong place. The original GP, based on the first BMW Mini requires some work to steer, and I liked it. I also preferred its supercharger whine over the GP II's more conventional turbo thrum. Still, all the GP IIs are sold now, but if you can find one I'll wager it won't be cheap.

So here's to John Cooper, a man who created race legends, a nameplate that got under the skin of millions and made some very funky BMWs go very quickly indeed.

Windows 8.1 Metro: demoted by popular demand?

(Credit: Microsoft)

The Metro screen certainly has had its detractors. Is Microsoft now one of them?

The touch-friendly tiled start screen, aka Metro, that greets everyone in Windows 8.1 may be in danger of being demoted, if reports are to be believed this week.

One report claimed that Microsoft is testing a scenario where the OS boots to the desktop by default (not as an option), bypassing the touch-centric Metro screen.

Of course, it's merely a rumor at this point because no one really knows if Microsoft will in fact implement this when the Windows 8.1 Update 1 is pushed out to the general public.

At the risk of stating the obvious, here's the problem: most Windows 8 users -- as pointed out in The Verge article cited above -- still favor the keyboard and mouse. That would imply that Metro could be, at best, a distraction and, at worst, a nuisance for some business users.

The corollary to this theory is that Metro could run in some form on the desktop. How that would manifest itself is also the subject of rumors.

And, as a final thought, was Hewlett-Packard dropping some hints when it ran the Windows-7-back-by-popular-demand promo (at bottom)?

Hewlett-Packard ran this promo earlier in the month.

(Credit: Hewlett-Packard)

A shot from the school's Web site.

(Credit: Screenshot by Chris Matyszczyk/CNET)

It's not something you can ever expect.

It was 7:40 a.m. in the Middle School of the Kennebunks in Maine. A teen girl sat down in her classroom.

Then she heard a pop emanating from her back pocket. As Seacoast Online reports, before she knew it, her back pocket appeared to be on fire. She then reportedly fell to the ground, rolled, and tried to get out of her pants.

A teacher grabbed a blanket and fellow students tried to help.

The culprit is said to have been her iPhone. Images suggest it had caught fire.

The school principal, Jeff Rodman, told Seacoast Online: "It was something that I don't think people had ever seen before. I've never seen anything like that."

The teen was taken to the hospital, where she was treated for burns and later released.

The division chief of the local emergency medical services, Andrew Palmeri, told Seacoast Online that the phone's battery had "shorted out." He suggested that the phone had been crushed in the teen's back pocket. Local fire services are investigating.

I have contacted Apple to see whether the company has any comment about the incident and will update, should I hear back.

Cell phones of whatever brand do catch fire. iPhones have caught fire on planes, just as Droids have exploded in ears.

The relief in this case is that the teen doesn't seem to have been seriously hurt.

iPhone 5S

(Credit: NTT Docomo)

NTT Docomo provided some visibility into iPhone sales in Japan, when that country's largest carrier reported earnings on Friday. Most of the news -- but not all of it -- was good.

First, the bad news. Docomo, which began offering the iPhone for the first time in the fall of last year, said group operating profit fell 2 percent in the April-December period and sales were slightly off, according to a Nikkei report.

The addition of the Apple phone also increased Docomo's "discount costs," according to Nikkei.

The Good news: So-called "customer outflows" (to rival carriers, for example) dropped from 130,000 in September to 50,000 in December, the company said.

Also in December, the carrier saw a net increase of 279,000 subscribers, beating rivals KDDI and SoftBank -- the first time in two years that's happened.

And KDDI, which also reported earnings this week, said iPhone sales are up. Softbank has yet to report earnings.

The iPhone -- thanks in part to Softbank, which began carrying the phone years ago -- has been popular in Japan, forcing carriers like NTT Docomo -- which had long resisted the iPhone -- to embrace it.

Photographer Peter Stackpole's 1936 picture of the cable spinning operation for the construction of the Bay Bridge, and the gallows that dot the catwalks. The photograph is one of dozens by Stackpole, along with other paintings, drawings, and lithographs included in "The Bay Bridge: A Work in Progress, 1933-1936," a new exhibit at the de Young museum in San Francisco.

(Credit: Peter Stackpole/Fine Art Museums of San Francisco)

These days, the Golden Gate Bridge is by far the most famous span in the world, let alone California, or even San Francisco. Yet, in 1937, when it was completed, it was considered an afterthought by many, overshadowed by a much larger and more ambitious cousin.

That other bridge, of course, is the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge, also completed in 1937, an architectural masterpiece that took the Depression-era world by storm.

Today, San Francisco's de Young museum debuts "The Bay Bridge: A Work in Progress, 1933-1936," a brand-new exhibit of about 100 photographs and other works.

According to the exhibit's curator, Jim Ganz, the goal was to showcase not just the Bay Bridge -- as beautiful and important a structure as it is -- but also the 1930s, a period that was "such an exciting moment in American art." As Ganz explained, America was just beginning to come out of the Great Depression in the late 1930s, and government sponsorship of art and artists was a very important thing at the time. San Francisco, he added, was a "major site of activity for the American art world at the time."

Of course, for a city in love with the Golden Gate Bridge, its less-celebrated span generates mixed emotions. "Here in the Bay Area," Ganz said, "we all have a love-hate relationship with the [Bay] Bridge....It's been a source of drama and it doesn't have the serenity of the Golden Gate Bridge....But back in the 30s, this was one of the most impressive public works projects in the country. It was absolutely unprecedented in terms of what it sought to do. It was very exciting, and it went up very quickly and efficiently, and employed thousands of people."

As such, the bridge attracted many artists, Ganz continued, especially at a time -- the Work Powers Administration was in effect -- when artists were paid a salary to carry out their work. The Bay Bridge, he said, "more so than the Golden Gate Bridge, was an absolute magnet for artists."

About half of the exhibit features photographs by Peter Stackpole. Then a young unknown -- especially compared to some of the celebrated WPA artists in town -- Stackpole devoted much of his time to taking pictures of the Bay Bridge, albeit without a government commission. "What we've done is bring together the work of this brilliant young photographer with works of art created by many of the WPA time period," Ganz said, "to show people just how exciting the Bay Bridge construction was in the 1930s."

Artist Leo Villareal's Bay Lights Project, currently installed on the Bay Bridge.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET)

Today, the Golden Gate Bridge is far better known, and the brand-new eastern span of the Bay Bridge probably gets more attention than the western span, which connects San Francisco to Yerba Buena Island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. Today, even the western span itself may be best known for artist Leo Villareal's Bay Lights Project, which is in the middle of a minimum two-year run. Yet, the bridge stands tall above downtown San Francisco, a force to be reckoned with, and a true thing of beauty.

Now, visitors to the de Young will have a chance to see how it came together. And how its construction helped to galvanize a community suffering through years of squalor. "It [was] really an American icon of the West Coast and California," Ganz said, "because at the time, the Bay Bridge was really a much more complicated, expensive, and elaborate project" than the Golden Gate Bridge.

On-Ear Sennheiser Momentum (left), over-the ear Beyerdynamic T 90 (right)

(Credit: Steve Guttenberg/CNET)

I get a lot of reader emails seeking recommendations for headphones, and sometimes they'll ask about two very different types of designs. For example, "What should I buy, Sennheiser's on-ear Momentum or the AKG K 712 'phones?" In that case there's no obvious "better" headphone, because they are two radically different types of headphones. The Sennheiser is an on-ear, closed-back design, and the AKG K 712 is a much larger over-the-ear, open-back headphone. It's like asking "What's better, a Ford F-150 Raptor truck or a Porsche 911 Turbo sports car? They both go fast, but serve very different kinds of drivers. "Best," isn't the right question, it's more about what's the right one for you.

There are many types of headphones, and if you understand the pros and cons of each before you go shopping you'll make a more informed buying decision. Closed- vs. open-back headphones for example, serve different needs. To get a handle on how they differ I spoke with two engineers, Sennheiser's Axel Grell and AKG's Philipp Schuster, and they were a big help. Today I'll cover on- and over-the-ear headphones, tomorrow we'll look at open- and closed-back 'phones.

On-ear 'phones' ear pads rest on the outer ear; over-the-ear models' have larger ear pads that encircle the ears. Grell said that over-the-ear headphones produce more spacious and natural imaging than on-ear models. That's because over-the-ear headphones have larger ear cups which position the drivers further away from the ears, so more sound reflects off the folds of the outer ear. Which is closer to the way we hear sound from speakers. On-ears focus sound directly into the ear canal, so it's a less "natural" way to hear stereo sound. Over-the-ear headphones sound more spacious and expansive than on-ear headphones.

When it comes to bass power Grell and Schuster saw no clear cut advantage for either design type. Bass oomph depends on the specifics of each design, and how effectively the headphones' ear pads seal. If you wear glasses their side temples may adversely affect over-the-ear headphones' seal, and bass response will suffer. Glasses pose less of a problem for on-ear designs. Schuster reminded me that everyone's heads and ears are shaped differently, so the ability of a given headphone to achieve a tight seal varies from person to person.

Most on-ears are optimized for on-the-go users, so their designers focus on making smaller headphones, and that sometimes requires the use of smaller drivers. That approach will limit the amount of bass the headphone can produce. So with headphones size does matter, and a preference for smaller size trumps comfort and sound quality for most buyers.

Over-the-ear headphones are more comfortable to wear for extended periods of time, because instead of having ear pads pressing directly on the outer ears, over-the-ears' pads surround the outer ear. On-ears' "clamping" against the ears' pressure tends to be higher, and they will probably make your ears hotter and sweatier than over-the-ear models. Of course, the specifics of each headphone's design come into play, but I almost always find over-the-ear models more comfortable.

Over-the-ears' biggest drawback is size, they're larger than on-ear headphones. I like the larger soundstage over-the-ear headphones produce, but some listeners prefer the more immediate/present sound of on-ears. Schuster recommends over-the-ears for sound quality and comfort, but over-the-ears are less portable.

Most on-ear headphones are closed-back designs, but over-the-ear models can be either open- or closed-back. I'll cover their pros and cons on tomorrow's blog. I wrote about how ear buds and in-ear headphones differ on a previous blog.

A new dawn. Hacker Square at Facebook's Menlo Park, Calif., campus.

(Credit: Facebook)

Facebook will enter its second decade by starting over entirely.

The new beginning comes courtesy of Paper, a standalone iPhone application for reading and writing the news, which will launch February 3, the eve of Facebook's 10-year anniversary.

Metaphorically, Paper is the 2014 version of Facebook, unencumbered by the rigid walls erected over the past 10 years, yet supported by the foundation of 1.23 billion people.

More literally, Paper presents News Feed's standbys -- photos, videos, and articles -- in new formats designed for enjoyment on smartphones. The app also comes with newspaperlike sections such as sports, entertainment, food, and even cute (for adorable animal pics) that you can add to your personalized zine to gather news on the topics you care about.

Back to the lab

The app is the first of several singular applications to be developed and released by Facebook Creative Labs. The unit is a startup-like group separated from the operational strictures that come along with a company of Facebook's size. The team has been granted, by none other than CEO Mark Zuckerberg, the freedom to do its own thing so that people like Product Manager Michael Reckhow and Product Designer Mike Matas can come up with radically different ideas.

The team checks in with Zuckerberg for guidance, of course, but the group mostly answers to its individual creative whims.

The company's 10-year anniversary seems as good an opportunity as any to trot out Creative Labs and set the tone for what's to come in the years ahead.

Recomposing Facebook

With Paper, Facebook has deconstructed the network into little bits and put a few of the pieces back together to make something else entirely. As a standalone app, the ad-free Paper can only hurt Facebook if it becomes so popular that people dramatically cut back on their usage of the main app, where Facebook needs a large audience to make money from ads.

The reconstruction effort started with cosmetic surgery to the tools that pump blood into Facebook's most-viewed body part: News Feed. News Feed is the source for all that is happening in your network, but it's not exactly designed for elegant storytelling.

"[Paper] started with this idea...that we wanted to build great tools to give people a way to...craft their story and control the presentation," Reckhow told CNET. "As networks for sharing have grown up, the network has always grown faster than the tools."

Paper, as Reckhow and Matas explained, was built to be a publishing tool for people with audiences large and small. You'll find this most evident when you create a post, as the app provides you with a live preview of how your post is going look.

Facebook Paper

(Credit: Facebook)

"So, as you're composing [a post] you can see how writing a longer post, for example, makes the text get smaller, or writing a shorter post you get larger text," Reckhow said.

Visually, you'll notice right away that you can make more of an impact with fewer words, he said. If you add a photo, it pops in to the preview. The same is true with locations, add one and a map is dropped into the post preview. "This allows you to take a craft in forming your post."

The attention paid to the art of composition speaks to Facebook's desire with Paper to create more of an open community where people of any stripe can find a captive audience for their art, be it photos, videos, or stories.

The two sides to Paper

Paper, then, is equal parts network and newswire. And like any other digital publishing medium, the app is split in two, defined by those who create and those who consume. Paper can be your Twitter if you want it to be. It can be your Tumblr. Or your Medium. Or your Flipboard.

And Matas and Reckhow say that unlike any of those other networks, setting up Paper to your liking is easy and fun.

"It's so frustrating when you start out and you've downloaded some new app for content. You have to spend 10 minutes configuring and trying to find all the particular sources...that's no fun," Reckhow said. "We wanted Paper to be something you could open up, and, within seconds, you've configured it to have some of the most engaging content out there."

He's talking specifically about Paper's interpretation of News Feed and the dozen or so topic-themed sections that you can add to your Paper. Sections are Facebook's version of a wire service, where news is gathered from the stories that people and Pages post publicly to Facebook. Sections are a mix of posts surfaced by algorithms and plucked by human editors, with the primary goal being to present you with content you haven't seen before.

(Credit: Facebook)

Sections offer a new view for Facebook updates that would otherwise go unnoticed, either because they fly by in News Feed or you don't yet follow one of the many sources that are publishing must-read articles or must-see photographs.

Matas and Reckhow will tell you that sections are all about introducing you to people producing high-quality stories. And while that's partly true, the bigger picture is that sections turn Facebook into a viable source for staying connected to breaking news, pop culture, and memes. In this sense, Paper achieves what hashtags, trending topics, and other product releases haven't; it makes Facebook finally make sense for those who want to do more than connect with friends.

Sidestepping demise

That brings us back to Paper being the 2014 version of Facebook, where content is just as important as connections and the network possess a keen awareness for what's happening in the world at any given moment. It's the first standalone app to redefine Facebook, but it won't be the last.

If Facebook is to exist 10 years from now, it will be because the Creative Labs team helped the company sidestep the seemingly inevitable MySpace- and Friendster-like demise that happens when people move on to the next big thing.