The Brooks Review

Month: May 2010

  • Harry McCracken On the Facebook Privacy Changes

    Harry McCracken:

    Bottom line: Managing your Facebook privacy is still a remarkably convoluted process which isn’t explained clearly enough.

  • Chris Saad: “Facebook’s Claims About Data Portability Are False”

    Chris Saad:

    In the face of this, however, Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook continue to (deliberately?) confuse the idea of open technologies with “sharing in public.” The attempt to correlate the two things is at best misinformed and at worst dishonest.

  • Air Force X-51A Waverider: faster than Superman

    Peter Grier:

    The first mission for its technology likely would be use in a weapon. The X-51A could morph into a hypersonic cruise missile by as soon as 2015. That would provide the Air Force a long-sought Prompt Global Strike capability, defined as the ability to target any spot on earth with a conventional warhead within 60 minutes.

    Wow.

  • I’ve Changed My Mind About The iPad

    Fred Wilson:

    So I’ve changed my mind about the iPad and tablet computers. In my initial review, I focused on capabilities. And tablets are stuck between the power and utility of the notebook and the size and features of a smartphone. But they also create a middle place in terms of usability. And that is what I missed in my first day with the iPad. It feels less like a computer than any computing device I’ve owned. It’s easy on me in a way that the other devices are not. So I’m now convinced that tablets will have an important place in our homes and our lives.

  • The top seven iPad knockoffs

    God these are ugly.

  • WIRED on iPad: Just like a Paper Tiger…

    Excellent analysis. I like the Wired app, but it still needs improvements, such as: copy & paste, zooming, tweeting & sharing. iA is all about posting controversial thoughts, but this is not without solid logic and analysis.

  • Tynt, the Copy/Paste Jerks

    John Gruber:

    I.e., three blank lines followed by “Read more:”, then the URL from which the text was copied, then an identifying hash code used for tracking purposes.

    and:

    Everyone knows how copy and paste works. You select text. You copy. When you paste, what you get is exactly what you selected. The core product of the “copy/paste company” is a service that breaks copy and paste.

    If you have ever copy and pasted text from a web page and there was an auto inserted line that said “read more” with a URL this is what Gruber is referring to. He offers a great solution, this was a huge annoyance for me when I am creating all these link posts. Thanks Gruber!

  • Dropbox – Selective Sync

    Dropbox released a new experimental build that allows you to selectively pick which folders get synced to different computers. This is awesome.

    Sign up for Dropbox here to help me out.

  • Now Writers Can Self-Publish to iBooks

    John Brownlee:

    If you’re a hopeful author sitting on what you hope to be the next great literary classic — or, failing that, the next mopey emo vampire series that you think will sell like gangbusters amongst the indiscriminate Hot Topic tween market — great news: Apple’s just released information on self-publishing on the iBookstore.

    I was hoping that Apple would do this when they announced the iBooks Store. This has the potential to be very big.

  • Reading on the iPad

    Tim Van Damme:

    Results may vary, but I can’t read a 500 word article on a laptop screen, and am glad to say the iPad is a totally different experience. I’ve used a Sony eReader before, and wouldn’t want to trade my iPad for one. Sure, the Amazon Kindle might render text more like a book, but this device has so much more features.

    I agree, I gave my Kindle to my Wife. Have not missed it.

  • Smart Fridge by Ashley Legg

    Radhika Seth:

    The Smart Fridge here is for those who have shunted cooking to a hobby and rely more on designer microwave meals. The idea is to give you a fridge that is intelligent enough to come up with a healthy recipe, depending on what you stock in it. Not only that, it guides you with vocal instructions, spoon by spoon, till you dish out the perfect-wholesome meal. A touch interface door glams up the appliance, creating the desire to own a piece that’s futuristic but may not be what you’re looking for!

    Be sure to check out the renderings.

  • NBC and Time Warner Side with Flash in Apple-Adobe War

    Ben Parr:

    According to the New York Post, NBC Universal, Time Warner, and other media firms have told Apple that they won’t reformat their video libraries in order to make them work on the iPad. Apple has famously banned Flash from the iPad and iPhone for a litany of reasons including stability, security, and a preference for the HTML5 standard.

    It doesn’t matter if they do or not. These companies are the ones missing out, not the users.

  • Fake a Credit Card – Video

    From Wired:

    Fraudsters rack up millions of dollars in merchandise using fake credit cards with legit numbers hacked off the Internet. Detective Bob Watts of Newport Beach PD shows how it’s done.

    That takes a lot of cash to get up and running, my guess is that you can buy it all online with stolen credit card numbers.

  • Official Google Blog: We’ve officially acquired AdMob!

    Susan Wojcicki on the Official Google blog:

    One of the key ways that people find and access information on their mobile devices, just like on the desktop, is through search. As smart phones have proliferated, we’ve seen dramatic increases in mobile search volume. Over the past two years, Google’s mobile search volumes have grown more than fivefold, at an accelerated pace. In the first three months of 2010, people with smartphones with “full” WebKit browsers (such as the iPhones, Android devices and Palm Pre) searched 62 percent more than they did in the previous three months.

  • Cyber Command: We Don’t Wanna Defend the Internet (We Just Might Have To)

    Noah Shachtman:

    Einstein 2 is supposed to inspect data for threat signatures as it enters federal networks. Einstein 3 goes even further — alerting DHS and the NSA before the attacks hit. “You’re starting to anticipate intrusions, anticipate threat signatures, and try and preventing things from getting to the firewalls rather than just stopping at the firewalls,” Lynn told Danger Room after his Cyber Symposium speech. (Full disclosure: I ran a panel at the event, and the military paid my travel costs.)

    One word: Skynet.

  • The next Apple TV revealed: cloud storage and iPhone OS on tap… and a $99 price tag

    Joshua Topolsky

    According to our sources, this project has been in the works long before Google announced its TV solution, and it ties much more closely into Apple’s mobile offerings. The new architecture of the device will be based directly on the iPhone 4, meaning it will get the same internals, down to that A4 CPU and a limited amount of flash storage — 16GB to be exact — though it will be capable of full 1080p HD (!). The device is said to be quite small with a scarce amount of ports (only the power socket and video out), and has been described to some as “an iPhone without a screen.” Are you ready for the real shocker? According to our sources, the price-point for the device will be $99. One more time — a hundred bucks.

    Interesting – if they can do it for $99 it will sell fast.

  • Darpa’s Beady-Eyed Camera Spots the ‘Non-Cooperative’

    Katie Drummond:

    Smart-Iris, the name of the new Panoptes innovation, is being developed in conjunction with SMU Professor Delores Etter, who specializes in biometric identification. It’ll eliminate problems like glare, eyelashes, dim lighting — and an unwillingness to stop and stare directly into a dedicated iris-detection camera. Instead, Panoptes devices will zero in on a face, no matter angle or movement, then narrow right into the iris. A long line of people, moving through a line, could be scanned by wall-mounted cameras without even noticing.

    So cool, very James Bond.

  • Pain Is A Gift

    Daniel Jalkut:

    Why is this good for the iPhone? Because it’s doomed without a proper competitor, and thus far, it’s been lacking one. What happens to fighters who nobody spars with? Regardless of size, skill, or strength of weapon, they end up flopping about the arena alone. Never defeated, but never victorious.

    Exactly what I was saying.

  • Palm webOS Designer Matias Duarte Joining Google

    John Paczkowski:

    Mobile user interface master Matias Duarte has left Palm and evidently hired on at the most obvious of places: Google.

    Does not bode well for HP – talent drain has begun.

  • Google Balks at Turning Over Data to Regulators

    Kevin J. O’Brien:

    Google has balked at requests from regulators to surrender Internet data and fragments of e-mail messages it collected from unsecured home wireless networks, saying it needed time to resolve legal issues.

    I thought Google said the entire reason they kept the data after they discovered the ‘error’ was to provide it to the Government if needed.