The Brooks Review

Month: September 2010

  • Macworld Introduces Macworld Insider

    In a rather pathetic attempt to make money Macworld magazine has launched a subscription model to their website, it gives you all the features that they should be giving everyone for free already (except the ad free part) along with this little gem:

    Special community status and features. Members of Macworld Insider receive a special Insider badge on every post they make in the Macworld Forums.

    Yay a special badge for only $40 a year!

    Among the new features here are the ones that they should already be offering for all readers of the site:

    • Full-text RSS feeds
    • Back-issue magazine archive
    • One-page article view

    Given the stupidity of this I felt compelled to post about it.

  • Random Thoughts from my Trip

    Those that follow me on Twitter may already be aware that I spent the labor day weekend in Las Vegas. It was a short trip, but in my opinion one can only stay a few days in Vegas before they are either completely burned out, or broke.

    During the trip there were quite a few ideas that popped into my head that I wanted to suss out, but never got the chance to, instead the point of this post it to share some half baked thoughts that came from my trip.

    • Vegas hotels are always busy, and always making money – so why the hell did my hotel only offer Internet access via Ethernet? (totally unusable with the iPad). While the hotel my father stayed at had a complete connection kit and iPad dock setup. I feel ripped off.

      • Now my hotel was a bargain price and old (Luxor), but even still wireless should not have been an unreasonable expectation. I really expect this to change over the next few years and more and more small computers omit Ethernet ports.

    • AT&T had about 4 bars in most all places, however those 4 bars were meaningless and completely useless. I have seen this in a few spots around Seattle before, but never to this degree. You could be standing in one spot, full reception, and still not be able to place a call, send a text, or use the data. Blew my mind. Then ten minutes later AT&T’s network would be working faster than I have ever seen it work in my life.

      • Now this was not just in the Casinos, I saw this when we were on the roads, highways, freeways, street, airport, malls. My guess is that the network was simply over loaded, but even still how odd. I have rarely seen the network become useable and unusable in such short times, without moving around. ( I of course checked to make sure I was holding the phone correctly).

    • The MiFi was a life saver, because it was on Verizon. I cannot tell you how much I used the MiFi with my iPad this weekend, it was invaluable and really snappy. This was in stark contrast to the lovely craptastic AT&T network.

    • Gowalla, and Foursquare have some serious work to do on their implementations if they want people to check in while in Vegas. I only tried a couple of times and was overwhelmed trying to find exactly where I was (on top of the network troubles), eventually I gave up (which brought much happiness to my Wife). When you go to check in, every place inside the casino appears and then they often appear a couple of times leading to tons of confusion.

    • My new Bose In-Ear Headphones rocked and I love carrying them over my old Bose QuietComfort 2 Headphones. Even though they didn’t block as much noise the sound was loud enough to by enjoyed all flight.

    • I introduced my wife to Angry Birds, now she too is addicted.

    • Reading articles in Instapaper while on the plane is bliss.

    • I only brought the iPhone 4 as my camera, which was a mistake. It is a great camera for a phone, but there are some really weird white balance issues that I ran into. HDR will solve the rest of the backlighting problems that I had though.

    • I checked my bag and only carried on my iPad bag. Holy cow was that a small carry on, I loved it.

    • They sell iPods in vending machines at the Airport, which is not all that uncommon. What struck me though is what you would do with that iPod. I mean if you forget your iPod and buy one before you hop on a flight how are you supposed to get your music on it to listen to it? Made no sense to me.

    • It had been quite a while since I last flew Southwest Airlines, and the boarding system has been revamped, which is rally stupid. Instead of being a free for all for everyone as the groups are called (A, B, and C depending on how early you checked in), you now get a group and a number in that group. Everyone then must line up by group and number. This is way to confusing for most people, I think they are better off assigning seats at this point.

    • I charged the iPad Thursday night and only once for 10 minutes before I left Vegas to Seattle. Last night when I put the iPad on the charger it had 19% battery remaining – which is astounding.

  • HP Files Civil Complaint Against Hurd

    Hani Durzy for the HP Corporate Blog:

    In response to the news of Mark Hurd’s intention to join Oracle, HP today filed a civil complaint in the California Superior Court (County of Santa Clara) against Hurd. HP’s statement on the matter:

    “Mark Hurd agreed to and signed agreements designed to protect HP’s trade secrets and confidential information. HP intends to enforce those agreements.”

    Sounds like a whole lotta crying over at HP. Larry Ellison is going to have a field day with this, God do I wish Ellison had a blog of his own.

  • An iPad Buyer’s Guide and Other FAQs from Shawn Blanc

    Shawn Blanc:

    The greatest value the iPad has added to my life is that I read much, much more.

    I agree with just about everything he says, though I do regret not having a 3G model even though I have a MiFi.

  • Idea Quote of the Day

    “Idea generation is an addiction. It is an engaging, brain-spinning indulgence that must be practiced in moderation.” –Scott Belsky

  • Basecamp Notifications Delivered to Your Desktop

    BaseApp:

    BaseApp is a menubar application for Mac OS X that helps you stay on top of everything that happens in your Basecamp accounts.

    Works great, and a great idea to boot.

  • Google’s Privacy Policy Changes

    Pretty interesting page from Google showing the edits to their Privacy Policy set to take effect next month. I really like that they have this page for people, but really I don’t remember getting a notice about this, and there are a lot of edits.

  • An Email Rule I Would Love to Have

    I have talked a lot about email lately and since I was out of town this weekend checking email sporadically I came to a realization about a new email rule that I want. A little background first, I try my very hardest not to work unless it is 8a-5p M-F (not including vacation and holidays). This means that if I get an email after hours or over a weekend it waits until the next time I am working, some emails go unanswered from Friday at 5:01p until Monday at 8a, it is just the way that I work. I don’t like people demanding that I be available to them 24/7, when I only get paid for 40 hours a week.

    So then you can imagine the email rule that I want:

    • Check to see if the email is in my work account.
    • If yes, check to see if it was sent between 8a-5p M-F.
    • If yes, mark as unread and leave in the inbox.
    • If no, do not display email until the next working time period.

    Now of course I can’t create this with the tools that I currently have, there are work arounds (turning off email checking for that account during those times is one) but the workarounds all suck. Why can’t I just build natural language rules like this, how great would that be?

    [This part of an ongoing series on dealing with email, to see more posts look here.]

  • The Atlantic Will Follow Paid iPad Edition With New ‘Atlantic Premium’

    Staci D. Kramer on The Atlantic for iPad:

    In coming weeks, the magazine publisher plans to convert single-issue app sales to an iPad digital newsstand app—and to launch Atlantic Premium, a daily bundle of everything the magazine produces online for a monthly access fee.

    I like the idea of more publishers creating monthly subscriptions for their magazine apps, but I worry that they think $4.99/mo is acceptable. You can subscribe to a paper magazine for $15-20 a year, sure there is ads but hey that is not a bad price. iPad magazines however cost $2.99-4.99 an issue and you still get ads, which is just absurd.

  • Windows Phone 7 Ad Promises A Forthcoming Revolution

    If the hardware depicted in the ad is real, then the iPhone may have a real competitor in the hardware arena. That is a sexy looking phone.

  • Tumblr Fixes Content Attribution

    David Karp:

    When creating a post, you can now attribute its content (eg. a pull quote or image) to a source outside of Tumblr. That source gets clearly attributed everywhere that post is reblogged on Tumblr. 

    A much needed update for Tumblr, making a great blogging platform even easier, though I am still a huge WordPress fanboy.

  • Think you’re a ‘supertasker’? Probably not

    MSNBC.com:

    Supertaskers only make up about 2.5 percent of the general population, however, said study team member James Watson of the University of Utah.

    “Given the number of individuals who routinely talk on the phone while driving, one would have hoped that there would be a greater percentage of supertaskers,” Watson said.

    Possibly one of the best quotes from a scientist.

    [via Rands on Twitter]

  • One Man’s Vision of a Social Workplace

    Here is an interesting post, sticking with the recent email theme we have been doing, by Amy-Mae Elliot about Luis Suarez’s email vision:

    “We will still have e-mail in ten years,” says Suarez. “I don’t want to kill all e-mail, but I want to help people re-purpose it. We will see traditional tools like e-mail redesigned to be used for what it was originally designed for.”

    For Suarez, the e-mail of the future will look something like this:

    “You get an alert, telling you how and where you can go and grab content … it won’t just be a notification system, but a read-write opportunity with the option to engage back so that information is no longer stuck in an inbox.”

  • Smoking Apples Review Twitter for iPad

    Milind Alvares really nails it in the Smoking Apples review of Twitter’s official iPad app. I love the app and think it is the best for the iPad, but it is not without its flaws.

  • iOS App Sales are through the roof insane

    Asymco (I wish they attributed by real names so I could reference that):

    If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29/app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year.

    If you want to know the precise reason everybody and their mom wants to have their own app store, take a look at the graph they posted. Insane growth.

  • MG Siegler on the new Apple TV

    Siegler:

    All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

  • Why is everyone always writing off Netflix?

    If I think about it I see so many people quick to praise Redbox and TiVo all the while they turn their nose up at Netflix. Netflix is smart and I think they will be around longer than either company that I mentioned above.

  • Internet as Social Movement

    The Editors at N+1:

    And then the internet came for the print media. This process has been longer, more intricate, and more emotionally fraught than the interaction of the internet with any other media.

    What a great read and I love watching all the change that we have seen these past 5+ years with the Internet pushing into every nook and cranny of our lives.

  • There is a Horse in the Apple Store

    Frank Chimero on the realization that came from seeing a horse in the Apple Store:

    Since then, John and I have a term called a “tiny pony.” It is a thing that is exceptional that no one, for whatever reason, notices. Or, conversely, it is an exceptional thing that everyone notices, but quickly grows acclimated to despite the brilliance of it all.

    Read the entire thing, it is gold.

  • My Biggest Chrome Gripe Solved

    I have always wanted to give Chrome a fair shake and use it for a while but for a long time I wouldn’t do it because 1Passsword wasn’t supported, then they supported it. Chrome never supported keyboard shortcuts for launching links stored in the bookmarks bar and that was enough to give me reason not to use Chrome, until I found this extension. This solves a lot, and I have switched to Chrome for the time being.

    [via and huge thanks to Shawn Blanc who found it from Stuart Maxwell]