The Brooks Review

Month: June 2010

  • Paul Thurrott: Understanding iPad

    Mr. Thurrott:

    The iPad is a new type of computing device, just as Apple claimed. It offers a premium user experience for certain kinds of tasks only, and comes with a premium price to match. It is aimed at those consumers who wish to send a message to others, much like Prius drivers or Whole Foods shoppers. These people value style and status above functionality or cost concerns, and will put up with missing features and annoyances like the overly glossy and reflective screen, because they want to be seen as technology savvy trendsetters. (Which, arguably, they are.) And to be fair, they will be rewarded over time with functional improvements, if Apple’s history with the iPod and iPhone is any indication.

    Apparently there are 2+ million of ‘these people’.

  • “Likejacking” Takes Off on Facebook

    Sarah Perez:

    After clicking through on a link, victims don’t get to see the promised content, but rather a blank page reading “click here to continue.” This page contains the clickjacking worm (Troj/Iframe-ET) embedded via an invisible link. Click anywhere on the page and the message is posted to your profile and News Feed, allowing the worm to further its spread.

  • MSI Wind-Pad Summed Up by Wired

    Charlie Sorrel:

    Care to guess which OS the all-plastic computer will run? Android? Chrome? Nope, it will be encumbered with a full-on desktop operating system in the shape of Windows 7. MSI has papered a thin software covering over the top in the shape of the Wind Touch UI, which should make things a little more finger-friendly. Windows 7 does technically support touch out of the box, but I have tried it and it pretty much sucks.

  • Woman Sues Google for Bad Directions

    Courtney Rubin:

    A woman is suing search engine Google, claiming its walking directions led her onto a major highway, where she was hit by a car. She’s seeking more than $100,000 in damages.

    I didn’t read past this line to know two things:

    1. This lady is an idiot.
    2. She was never taught to “stop, look, and listen”.

  • Protect your browser from “tabnabbing”

    TJ Luoma:

    Have you heard about “Tabnabbing”? It is the term for a new kind of attack, which can be summarized as grabbing a Web browser tab when you aren’t looking and making it appear as another site.

    Aza Raskin, lead designer for Firefox, created a page that illustrates this. If you click on that link and then ignore it for awhile (create and switch to another tab), Aza’s page will turn into a lookalike for Gmail.

    Interesting, I can see how this would work on people that keep a lot of tabs open.

  • Pulse: the iPad’s Most Gorgeous Newsreader

    No doubt that it is beautiful, but not that practical if you have more than a dozen news feeds you follow. Still, it is a great app to use for showing off the iPad.

  • HTC Aria spotted in the wild, specs revealed, all still unconfirmed

    Is this the first phone to have an ‘optical joystick’?

  • World’s Biggest Supercomputing Superpowers

    Wow.

  • Can the Eee Pad Compete With the iPad? – Digits – WSJ

    Not as it currently stands.

  • When Companies Respond to Online Criticism With Lawsuits

    DAn Frosch

    Outraged at having to pay $118 to get his car back, Mr. Kurtz created a Facebook page called “Kalamazoo Residents against T&J Towing.” Within two days, 800 people had joined the group, some posting comments about their own maddening experiences with the company.

    T&J filed a defamation suit against Mr. Kurtz, claiming the site was hurting business and seeking $750,000 in damages.

    In my opinion it is never a good idea to get mad at 800 people instead of listening to thier compaints.

  • What your email address says about your computer skills

    The definition of an @yahoo user is very true.

  • Apple Sells Two Million iPads in Less Than 60 Days

    Apple PR:

    Apple® today announced that iPad™ sales have topped two million in less than 60 days since its launch on April 3.

    Wow. Faster than any Apple product that I know of to reach the 2 million mark.

  • Security firm discovers spyware in Mac software

    David Chartier:

    Intego, makers of security and privacy apps for the Mac, warned on Tuesday that some Mac software include a new piece of invasive spyware. Macworld has obtained a preliminary list of the applications with the spyware.

    Go to the link, look at the list and delete them if they are on your computer.

  • Judiciary Committee Wants Answers from Facebook

    Zuckerberg pissed them off too.

  • Google ditches Windows on security concerns

    The Financial Times:

    Google is phasing out the internal use of Microsoft’s ubiquitous Windows operating system because of security concerns, according to several Google employees.

    Bound to happen, the question is not who will follow suit but when, and how long it will take Microsoft to respond. I don’t think companies should or will abandon en-masse but I do suspect that companies, like Google, that have built out around multiple platforms will do so with great ease. Microsoft you should have Ballmer and Schmidt in the same room to fix this before you really start to lose.

  • Are Questions The “Future Of Facebook”?

    Erick Schonfeld:

    The advantage Facebook could have in the Q&A space is that to the extent that you find answers from your extended social network, questions can become the start of deeper conversations and spur new relationships. But breaking it out as a separate feature raises some new questions. Will every major type of status update now become its own feature on Facebook (like Photo and Event updates do)? And, if so, what’s next?

    I see this as a move to counter the growing popularity of sites like Formspring.me who are very popular among younger students (middle school to high school).

  • Another Take on the Wired App

    Aegir Hallmundur:

    No, I think most on-screen magazines will be dominated by long articles of fairly plain text interrupted with advertising, just as print ones are now. I’d like to see some better means of delivering advertising on-screen than we have now though — I find flickering and flashing adverts unbearably distracting and can’t imagine paying for any magazine that uses them in its articles, so I’d hope for something more respectful and dignified.

    Whatever happens, and whatever conventions we end up with, I suspect that the reality will be at once quite wonderful if you stop to think about it, but disappointingly dull and prosaic on first impressions. I doubt we’ll have a wow moment from it, which is, I think, kind of the point.

  • Department of Justice Inquires Into Apple’s Adobe Flash Policy

    Samuel Axon:

    The U.S. Department of Justice is talking to industry figures about Apple’s decision not to support Adobe Flash on the iPad, The New York Post reports. An anonymous “Hollywood” source told the Post that the DoJ is “doing outreach” because “the Adobe thing is just inviting the wrath of everybody.” The Post already predicted this inquiry several weeks ago.

    Don’t read too much into this, not supporting another companies proprietary stuff on your proprietary stuff is not monopolistic practices. Further, Adobe has yet to show they can actually run it on the iPhone, so all Apple has to say is that it is not technically possible right now.

  • Adobe’s Digital Publishing Roadmap (PDF)

    Interesting that Adobe seems to be differentiating between the iPad and the iPhone. The iPad being a platform in Adobe’s eyes, and the iPhone being a mobile reader. I see them both as one in the same.

  • A VC: I Prefer Safari to Content Apps On The iPad

    Fred Wilson:

    understand why content companies are so interested in iPad apps. It is a familiar model to them. But as currently configured most content apps do not take advantage of the power of the digital medium. And so they are mostly useless to me.

    I agree with most of his assessments, apps such as the Wired App need a lot of work before they become really useful.