The Brooks Review

Month: August 2010

  • The Oatmeal Just Gets Us

    So very very true. You won’t get me to blink until it hits $9.99 though, just ask my bank.

  • Apple to Provide Live Video Streaming of September 1 Event

    For the first time since 2005 Apple will be providing a live video feed for tomorrow’s event – no need for compulsive refreshing tomorrow as we can all now stream it.

  • Is Facebook ‘Too Big to Fail’ – Hell No

    In a post on the Backupify blog, Jay said this:

    As written previously, Facebook has become too big to fail. Everyone is on Facebook, so everyone wants to be on Facebook. Perhaps more accurately, Facebook is AOL 2.0 — a massive walled garden that makes the internet simpler and safer for the average user. Facebook may be doomed to AOL’s same fate once the walls of that garden become too closed in but, lest we forget, AOL is still around. Diaspora will fail to kill Facebook simply because Facebook can’t die, even after it has faded to zombie-like pointlessness.

    Are you kidding me, is this Jay’s first trip to the tech world? Did he not see Enron, Lehman, Madoff, or WorldCom? What they hell is he smoking? People once thought FriendFeed and MySpace were never going to fail, that worked out well for them. AOL for all intents and purposes has failed already, simply still being in business doesn’t mean you are not a failure.

    Second, I’m not convinced the average user gives a damn about privacy.

    Probably true, but once they start getting turned down for the precious few jobs out there because of pictures of their debauchery – well then they will start to care.

    Third, the opportunity to host my own social networking server is one that appeals only to the smallest fraction of the social networking marketplace.

    Absolutely true, but like Twitter the nerds must take over first and the rest (as they say) will follow. Diaspora will get the nerds to use it, the nerds will get regular users wanting it, and thus they will offer a hosted solution.

  • Coming Soon: AMD and Intel Inside

    AMD is killing off the ATI brand name and rolling it all under the AMD brand. Smart move that makes a lot of sense. The thing is, this really looks to be a shot at Intel, I mean AMD primarily has competed against Intel and now you can get a computer that has both Intel and AMD chips – just look at the current Mac Pro’s.

  • Courier for Mac

    Realmac Software:

    Courier allows you to share files, images, photos, movies, and more with all your favourite online services – including Flickr and Facebook.

    I hate, hate, hate how cumbersome it is to upload to Flickr, so this is a very welcome app for me.

  • Call Failed, Now Brought to you by Google

    Michael Arrington talking about Google Voice’s recent troubles:

    About 30% of my inbound calls have the caller muted – they can hear me but I can’t hear them. And outbound calls are worse. In the last 24 hours at least 75% of them failed completely. Either it never starts ringing, or it rings a couple of times and then dies. In fact, I called Google PR to give them a heads up on this story and that call failed too. As did a second attempt.

  • Character Amnesia

    Judith Evans:

    Character amnesia happens because most Chinese people use electronic input systems based on pinyin, which translates Chinese characters into the Roman alphabet.

    Interesting side effect of technology, really makes me wonder what would have happened if the US and western systems weren’t the ones to invent the digital inputs.

  • MySpace Announces Its Death

    I had almost forgotten about MySpace, but good news for its 3 users, you can now sync with Facebook (the much more popular social networking site).

  • Slow Death of Digg

    Rose and Co. are trying to push for massive change, instead of being like Zuckerberg and telling people that ‘this is the way it is’ he is caving to pressure from users. This will only end badly for everyone.

  • National Parks Infinite Photo

    Click to zoom in (flash) and reveal a lot more photos, very cool.

    [via Coudal]

  • Gmail Priority Inbox Sorts Your Email For You

    Jason Kincaid:

    The system uses a plethora of criteria to decide which messages are most important: things like how frequently you open and/or respond to messages from a given sender, how often you read messages that contain a certain keyword, and whether or not the message is addressed solely to you or looks like it was sent to a mailing list. If you come across a message that’s been marked important when it shouldn’t have been, you can hit an arrow to tell Gmail it’s messed up. Likewise, if a message that should have been flagged gets sent to the ‘everything else’ area, you can promote it. Through these actions Gmail gets progressively smarter, so the system should work better over time.

    This sounds really cool, I was getting ready to write up how to implement this in Apple’s Mail app and still will, but I can’t wait to try this out.

  • Steve Jobs on Apple’s Core Value

    Steve Jobs on Apple’s core value:

    We believe that people with passion, can change the world for the better.

    That is a lot different from Google’s ‘don’t be evil’ motto. This is also a great video where Jobs talks about marketing while wearing shorts.

    Also here is a link to a better quality version of that Think Different ad.

  • Less Stress One Bankers Box at a Time Part II

    On Wednesday I stated this:

    It is Wednesday, August 25th, and I am tired. I am really tired, I don’t know why, but I am. I have been all over today and just read this great post over at FiftyFootShadows (via Minimal Mac) on minimalism and consumerism. It got me to thinking about a goal I have had for the past year. That goal is to get rid of all the crap I am filling the nooks and crannies of my life, my hope is that in doing this I am less tired.

    The problem though is where to start, and when to stop. So I had an idea, to fill one bankers box a week until October, roughly 6 bankers boxes. All that is to go into the boxes are items that can go to Goodwill or be sold online. Any garbage I come across is to be disposed of immediately.

    Once full the box is to immediately go to Goodwill or items posted online for sale. My hope is that by doing this in small chunks with a definite timeline I will be less overwhelmed and instead take to the challenge in a new way.

    I’ll check back in once I get the box full.

    Today (August 28, 2010) I have filled the box and it feels great. It took me about an hour and a garbage bag but the one corner that has always been full of crap is now cleaned and organized. I am also getting rid of quite a bit (to Goodwill) and it feels great. I encourage you to do the same.

    Before:
    IMG_5372 - Version 2.png

    After:

    IMG_5374 - Version 2.png (I did remove the cat first)

  • Lessons from Google Wave

    Dare Obasanjo on Google Wave’s announcement

    The product announcement read more like a technology showcase than an announcement for a product that is actually meant to help people communicate, collaborate or make their lives better in any way. This is an example of a product where smart people spent a lot of time working on hard problems but at the end of the day they didn’t see the adoption they would have liked because they they spent more time focusing on technical challenges than ensuring they were building the right product.
    It is interesting to think about all the internal discussions and time spent implementing features like character-by-character typing without anyone bothering to ask whether that feature actually makes sense for a product that is billed as a replacement to email. I often write emails where I write a snarky comment then edit it out when I reconsider the wisdom of sending that out to a broad audience. It’s not a feature that anyone wants for people to actually see that authoring process.

  • How to Ruin Twitter

    Alexis Madrigal:

    It allows you to stash a piece of content (say, a website or an e-book) and only allow access to it after a user has tweeted something about it. In other words, it’s like a paywall in which you pay by tweeting about something.

    Sounds terrible to me.

  • Leaked Screenshot Shows a Cleaner, Simpler IE9

    Does anybody think that the translucent Windows Vista/7 UI looks good. Looks like crap if you ask me.

  • The Amazing Wooden Mirror

    Thomas Davie:

    The concept is simple but formidably clever: a tiny camera gathers light and shape data, before sending it to a computer that processes it and uses hundreds of tiny electric motors to shift the wood blocks into the image in front of the device. Subtle gradations of shade are achieved by both the natural grain of the wood and the angle at which they are displayed, casting shadow if necessary.

    Doesn’t look like a mirror, nor would it be useful for anything other than art, but it is very neat.

    [via Hacker News]

  • Apple’s TV Rentals May Offer Month’s Worth Of Shows For $1

    Leander Kahney:

    Instead of renting individual TV shows for $1, customers will pay $1 a month for ALL EPISODES of a show that aired during that month. In other words, fans of CBS’ “Big Bang Theory” can rent all the episodes broadcast during the month, for $1 a month.

    Now that would kill cable TV. I hope this is true.

  • Save Icon Re-Designed

    Helveticons redesigns the save icon, interesting idea but I am not sure if it speaks ‘save’ to me.

    [via Tom Kenny on Twitter]

  • Send ‘Canned’ Text Messages on iPhones

    Lovely new iPhone app that allows you to write text messages before hand, and choose if you always will send it to the same person or not. Either way you can send the message very fast, great tool and it’s only $0.99.

    [via Shawn Blanc]