The Brooks Review

Month: November 2010

  • How Mobile Phones Jump-Start Developing Economies

    Antonio Regalado for Technology Review:

    Entrepreneurs say mobile wallets are feasible thanks to the rapid expansion of cell-phone use in poorer regions of the world. In the past five years, operators have added more than two billion mobile accounts in developing and poor nations, according to data from the International Telecommunication Union. That compares to 435 million new accounts in wealthy nations (see chart).

    A great story about how companies are setting up business that are profitable while helping out people in developing nations.

  • Holy Crap

    A concept of a Facebook Adidas shoe. Seriously.

  • Gruber on TSA

    John Gruber:

    Here’s the question for Pistole, and anyone else who argues that these new TSA procedures are an appropriate response to that incident: What happens if the next guy hides his bomb up his ass?

    That should prove to be a “fun” experience.

  • MobileMe Gallery joins Find My iPhone as a free service

    Very cool – I encourage people to use both features I use them all the time and they are great.

  • Hearing Loss in the Military

    Joh Pavlus for Technology Review:

    The $450 price tag makes sense when you consider that the EB15 is a state of the art hearing aid and earplug at the same time. “Adaptive attentuation” circuitry detects incoming impulse noise like gunfire and RPG explosions and electronically morphs into a 15-dB earplug before your eardrum takes a beating. It does the same thing if ambient noise rises to a damaging level for a sustained amount of time. Otherwise, the EB15 lets the user hear well enough to detect sounds normally and pinpoint their locations, or even boost the signal for enhanced situational awareness.

    Very cool tech that essentially removes the danger of hearing loss from explosions and gunfire – while still allowing troops to ‘hear’ what they need to hear. I hope the troops actually get these.

  • What to Expect: iOS 4.2 on the iPad

    Now that iOS 4.2 is available to the public I thought it pertinent to fill you in on an iPad running iOS 4.2 (I have been using the betas since they came out). This is a rather quick look at some of the things I like, for an in depth look I recommend looking here.

    There are two immediate things that most every one should take note of and one major annoyance that will surely give you some troubles.
    What you will love:

    • Multi-tasking.
    • Folders
    • Unified Inbox

    What will drive you crazy:

    • The lack of an orientation lock switch.

    Multi-Tasking

    This is what most people are going to care about – I have some bad news, unless the App is already setup for multi-tasking it will be painfully obvious that it isn’t. During the beta period the only apps that worked properly for multi-tasking were the ones that were universal and had an iPhone counterpart that was already multi-tasking ready. Except for Twitter’s app – that was a horrendous problem.

    Other than that multi-tasking works as expected, double tap the home button to switch apps. Though exiting the app and launching another works the same as a double tap, it just adds a few steps.

    I have found that I use my iPad for a lot more ‘switching’ than I do my iPhone so multi-tasking is a welcome addition. We will have to wait for some iOS devs to get their apps updated, but my guess is that most will be done before Thanksgiving (U.S.).

    Folders

    Ah yes, folders are in my opinion the best addition that iOS 4.2 brings. The larger screen size that the iPad holds over the iPhone makes flipping through pages of apps tedious. Folders help reduce the number of pages, and in my case I went from 5 to 2 pages. I love folders, all you need to do is drag an app icon on top of another and iOS will create the folder.

    Better yet, use iTunes to organize all your apps as you can do it much quicker there.

    Unified Inbox

    Still to this day I do not understand why a unified inbox was not a part of iOS from the beginning. That said it is finally a part of the iPad in iOS 4.2 and it is a very welcome addition to the OS. Basically you get to see all of your emails in one inbox at the same time – yay.

    One thing that I would like to see disappear is the fact that you have the options for ‘all inboxes’ and a single inbox for each account, in addition to another list for each account, where you can click and then see the inbox for that account yet again. The listing of just the individual account inbox tabs seems a little cumbersome and cluttering to me.

    Orientation Lock

    What used to be the orientation lock switch is now a mute switch just like on the iPhone. This is extremely annoying and should not have happened. You will see why soon enough.

    You can still lock the screen orientation you just need to double tap the home button and swipe your finger to the right to reveal the software switch. Really cumbersome. The iPad is less an audio device that it is a reading device, orientation is greater than audio on the iPad. Add to that the volume rocker which already quickly mutes the device if you just hold it down.

    Overall

    iOS 4.2 is yet another great upgrade – don’t hesitate to do it. In fact go upgrade now. Apple also announced that find my iOS device is now free, set it up and use it. What a great feature to make free.

  • Today: iOS 4.2 Software Update

    Update available today, most likely at 10a PST. Find my iPhone/iPad is now free to all users – that’s a big shot over Android’s bow.

  • Is Google Dying a Slow Death?

    Note: This post is a collection of thoughts that is in no way complete, I invite you to join the conversation via posting your thoughts on your blog – you are always welcome to shoot me the link via email if you want.

    Comments were made the other week by a well respected venture capitalist about the health of Google as a company. The comments centered around the fact that Fred Wilson thinks Google has stopped innovating, instead choosing to get new ideas and products via acquisitions. Wilson makes an incredible compelling case, one that I am inclined to agree with:

    Mr Wilson […], author of the  popular A VC blog and a managing partner at Union Square Ventures, said Google had not come up with anything truly transformative that was a home-grown product since Gmail, introduced in 2004. It had relied on acquisitions instead to develop new services.

    One quote cannot do this blog post justice, click over and read the whole thing, it is very short.

    Is Google wrong though? Wilson’s argument seems to be that the company that only acquires ideas is one that is short lived. If you ask my Wife she will confirm that I have long been saying that come 2015 Google won’t be around anymore (with the occasional proclamation that it they will be dead by 2012 – though that is not realistic). I have no concrete reasons why, it just seems to me that they have yet to figure out what will keep them alive. Android could have been a great source of money for them, but then they decided that the Android platform would not be a direct profit center, instead they would profit off of mobile search and in-app advertising – using Android to help drive those revenue sources.

    Ok…

    There also exists this long held belief among business people that ideas are not nearly as important as execution. You often hear this from venture capitalists in the form of statements like “an idea is worthless until someone executes on it.” Which naturally implies that not every person can execute, or better still, execute well enough to be successful.

    Both innovation and execution matter. They matter a lot.

    Let’s look at innovation for a second, if you have a wildly innovative company, does that naturally mean that your company will also be a wild success? The obvious answer is no.

    Think about it like this, if I have a great idea for a blog post that I just think will knock the socks off of anyone who reads it – does that make the blog post a hit? Of course not because I still have to write the post, meaning that unless I execute on my idea I really have nothing but a dime-a-dozen idea.

    Now take execution, it is more like a 100 yard sprinter than anything else. If you have no really great ideas, but you can execute you most certainly can make some money, but it will be very short lived. Business is a marathon, and execution is only a sprinter, innovation is what you need to keep pace in the marathon.

    Two examples of execution without innovation:

    The Pet Rock

    The idea was lousy, terrible really, but he executed very well:

    The pet rock sold for $3.95 and estimates state Dahl sold over 5 million of his pet rocks in a six month period. Even more, each pet rock was purchased for a few pennies and Dahl estimated that the packaging and accompanying manual cost him under 30 cents per rock in bulk to produce. Therefore, assuming incidentals and delivery cost Dahl another 65 cents per rock, then Dahl was profiting 3 dollars per rock. With these totals Dahl earned over 15 million dollars during a six month period in 1975 which would be estimated at $56,166,419.02 today.

    That was over a six month period now it is largely a cult classic – he had no innovative ideas and thus as every sprinter does he eventually ran out of breath and that was that. Though you must give him massive credit on executing extremely well on a very mundane idea.

    The I am Rich App

    Who remembers the I am Rich App when the iOS App store originally launched? It was an app that only had a glowing red gem in it, when pressed it would boost your already huge ego. Do you know why I know that the purchasers of this app had a huge ego? Because it costed $999.99 in the app store – not a typo.

    According to Wikipedia the creator sold 8 copies before it was pulled by Apple. Again this is not a great idea, it was a poor idea that was executed very well. He made some good money with little effort put forth, yet again though it was very short lived (if Apple had not have killed it I am certain it would not have been a sustained success).

    Success

    Long-term sustainable success – the success that puts your company in the Fortune 500 – is only done two ways: being innovative while executing well, or by having something that few others have (rare goods). The latter consists of oil companies, diamond companies and so on – companies that have goods that for one reason or another the general population desires. The rest are in the former category: innovative and executing well.

    There are some obvious points of arguments here, such as how can I argue that Wal-Mart and Kroger are both innovative and executing things well? That is: they don’t sell rare goods, so they must fall in to the other category as defined by me. If you really look at those two companies their innovation exists in supply chain management and business management, both of which they execute very well. Innovation is not just done by creating new products, an idea is an idea.

    In fact, lets take a look at the top 15 companies to better illustrate my point:

    1. Wal-Mart: the employee management, supply-chain management and operational efficiency has lead the way. They have executed some very ruthless business ideas in order to make their company into a powerhouse.
    2. Exxon Mobil: Oil, rare goods sales.
    3. Chevron: Oil, rare goods sales.
    4. General Electric: These guys have invented some of the great things out there. 4D ultra sounds, portable air conditioners, programmable clock radios. You may think that GE is a dinosaur, but then you would be wrong. (( Source.))
    5. Bank of America: services and financial strategy. Innovation is not just about creating new things, utilizing new theories and practices can be just as innovative. And hey they survived the financial meltdown when just about every other bank didn’t, something that required more than just dumb luck.
    6. ConocoPhillips: Oil, rare goods sales.
    7. AT&T: this will be touchy for readers but you have to remember that AT&T has its hands in a lot of other businesses besides your iPhone’s data plan. They average 2 patents every day. Think about that. ((Source.))
    8. Ford Motor: Uh, the assembly line and more recently the Ford Fusion Hybrid which features a SmartGauge that shows a plant with leaves that grow on it, the more efficient the driver drives the more vines and leaves the plant grows on the screen – clever.
    9. J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.: Same deal as Bank of America with a strong focus on investment strategies.
    10. Hewlett-Packard: faltering recently in innovation and execution, but still has many, many innovations under its belt – this I would guess is just a dry spell.
    11. Berkshire Hathaway: Warren Buffet.
    12. Citigroup: See Bank of America and J.P. Mogan Chase.
    13. Verizon Communications: LTE, Fiber Optic Internet to the home…
    14. McKesson: these guys are the big boys of medical consulting (i.e. they try to make the medical industry work better). Their innovations are about applying modern ideas and concepts to the medical world.
      15;. General Motors: heavily invested and testing/working on fuel cells and biofuels.

    I knew every answer to those 15 companies by memory with exception to McKesson, I had to research about them. Now look at Google, their greatest innovation to date is Search. Most everything else was acquired, that is why people like me are concerned about Google.

    This is not to say that Google does not have smart people, or even that they do not profit every year – they do. I am simply saying, or rather asking: where is the innovation and execution? Where are all the ideas that these very smart people spend 1 day a week working on? Where? Perhaps Google is innovating all day long, but unless they start executing they are nothing more than a mashup of once innovative companies – companies that at one point executed on something. Same can be said for Facebook, though instead of acquisitions they just execute ideas that others have already executed.

  • Andy Ihnatko’s Buying advice, from one to a billion dollars

    Andy Ihnatko:

    If you have only a thousand bucks to spend: Buy four or five Airport Extreme base stations and offer free upgrades to all of the coffeshops, libraries, and bagel places that you hang out in.

    That’s actually a great idea.

  • ‘Growing Up Digital, Wired for Distraction’

    This is a long read about how technology is changing the way students learn and work. Except that it is not really for the better, the story centers around one kid so obsessed with film making that he thinks that alone will get him into college. Matt Richtel tells the story:

    He occasionally sends a text message or checks Facebook, but he is focused in a way he rarely is when doing homework. He says the chief difference is that filmmaking feels applicable to his chosen future, and he hopes colleges, like the University of Southern California or the California Institute of the Arts in Los Angeles, will be so impressed by his portfolio that they will overlook his school performance.

    I’m not a parent so I tend to reserve judgment, but come on, really? Who is letting him believe this stuff, where are the reality checks, when did kids take over the decision making process?

  • Obama calls airport pat-downs frustrating but necessary

    David Jackson for USA Today:

    “One of the most frustrating aspects of this fight against terrorism is that it has created a whole security apparatus around us that causes a huge inconvenience for all of us,” Obama said.

    Funny I seem to remember President Obama not being OK with the Secret Service taking away his Blackberry for “security reasons”. Apparently the ‘huge inconvenience’ does not extend to giving up your Blackberry, only your dignity.

  • Dell Customer Service Saga

    Aayush Arya on a faulty Dell monitor that he has had replaced several times:

    Outrageously enough, this guy also had the audacity to suggest to me that since it seemed damn near impossible for the company to properly produce one Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP, perhaps I would like a downgrade to a cheaper monitor in the interest of at least getting one without any flaws.

    Be sure to click through and read his last paragraph. I have had similar bad experiences with Dell support.

  • My New Home Office

    In case your interested I have a completely different setup at home now, so I figured I would snap a pic.

  • Additional Thoughts on My Microsoft Store Visit

    One thing that I forgot to mention earlier when I posted about the new Microsoft store in Bellevue is the interesting problem that the location poses to Microsoft. As I said the store is about 3-4 spaces down from the Apple store, which I can only assume was intentional on Microsofts part.

    On the other side of the Apple store (the non-Microsoft side) is two doors and then Nordstrom. I can tell you from first hand experience just what that means on an iPhone launch day – it means the iPhone line snakes down and will go directly in front of the Microsoft store.

    How awkward is that?

    Not for the people waiting for the iPhone, but for everyone in the Microsoft store including the employees. Think about it, to my knowledge there has been no line where people have waited hours and hours in 300+ people lines to get a Windows Phone 7.

    So that means come another iPhone/iPad launch everyone in the Microsoft store will have to stare at the droves of people lining up to buy one thing from their competition. I don’t know if this is bad or good, Microsoft could use it to their advantage and try to woo people with their competing products (walking through the line showing off a slate or Windows Phone 7 perhaps) or it could prove to be completely demoralizing for Microsoft.

    Either way it should be interesting to see.

  • Samsung Galaxy Tab

    I just got a review unit of the Samsung Galaxy Tab from Verizon, I will be working on a review of it over the next week. Please email me if there is a specific something you want me to address in my review and I will do my best.

  • Impressions from the Bellevue Microsoft Store

    photo 1.jpg

    I just returned from my first trip to the newly opened Microsoft Store at Bellevue Square – the store itself sits just a few doors down from the Apple Store, but is vastly different. I have read in many places that the store is much like an Apple store and yadda yadda yadda – this could not be further from the truth.

    The only way this store is like the Apple store is in how the employees dress, how nice they are, that it sells consumer electronics and that it offers similar services as the Apple Store. Everything else is vastly different.

    photo 2.JPG

    What I Liked

    • The sign for the store is great, just a Windows/ Microsoft logo and nothing else, very un-Microsoft like.
    • The size of the store is huge, it is 5,374 square feet and makes the nearby Apple store seem tiny.
    • The vast range of products that were one display and up and running.
    • Not a BSOD in sight.

    What I Did Not Like

    • The wood floors were off putting – is this a tech store, or a lodge?
    • The products were separated in some organized fashion, but there was no central phone table, instead the phones were scattered between the computers. This is just terrible and should not be done.
    • There was a line, it had 3 people in it. They were waiting to play with a Kinect, yet the gates for the line were large enough to handle 60 people. (Note you did not have to wait in this line to get into the store)
    • There was some random press conference thing going on in the back and it was so crowded I could neither hear no see much (and I am 6’3”). It was also odd because they were sitting behind a table of microphones, just seemed like the end of a sporting event, not a technology centered event.

      • photo 3.JPG

    • The products in the store felt like the vendors picked them with little curation from Microsoft. They really should focus better on showing a better range of products and better looking products.
    • There were only two tablets that I found – the store was busy and confusing so I may have missed some.
    • Also I only saw one Surface to play with, and from what I saw it was laggy as all hell when you made movements on it.

    photo 4.JPG

    Windows Phone 7

    I was really happy that I got to spend some time with two models of Windows Phone 7 devices. Some HTC jobber and a Samsung Focus. Overall Windows Phone 7 impressed the hell out of me, it may be the best piece of software I have seen Microsoft make in the last decade. The UI was impressive and responsive. The keyboard was comfortable, but both devices had a large screen than the iPhone so typing was hard for me – though I guess with a short amount of time you would have no problems typing on the device.

    The browser was slow to load this site, but I don’t know if that was the network (the store was packed with people using the Internet) or the browser itself. I liked everything about the phone except the home screen. That home screen is nothing but ADD, I couldn’t find any logic to how it was laid out. What a joke.

    Overall though I really was impressed with my short time playing with the phone, more impressed than I ever have been with an Android phone.

    Sorry for the crap pictures BTW – I had not planned on taking any and apparently there was a lot less light in the store than I previously thought.

  • Free Wi-Fi on Alaska Airlines

    Kristin Jackson reporting for the Seattle Times:

    The airline said Friday there would be no charge for in-flight Internet through Dec. 9 (courtesy of the Honda corporation).

    Awesome, who’s going to pick up the tab for me when I fly over New Years week? I vote the TSA pays for it.

  • TSA Touched ‘My Vagina Through My Pants’ & More Daily Doses of TSA Outrage

    I would be remiss not to reuse such a compelling headline, Kiro TV in Seattle reports:

    “I didn’t really expect her to touch my vagina through my pants,” said Kaya McLaren, an elementary schoolteacher, of an airport screener.

    Come on already.

    In other news:

    Erick Erickson (what a name) of Red State reports:

    This is probably another good time to remind you all that all of us were carrying actual assault rifles, and some of us were also carrying pistols.

    So we’re in line, going through one at a time. One of our Soldiers had his Gerber multi-tool. TSA confiscated it. Kind of ridiculous, but it gets better. A few minutes later, a guy empties his pockets and has a pair of nail clippers. Nail clippers. TSA informs the Soldier that they’re going to confiscate his nail clippers.

    And Gruber linked to this gem from Molly Grantham reporting for WBTV:

    “She put her full hand on my breast and said, ‘What is this?’. And I said, ‘It’s my prosthesis because I’ve had breast cancer.’ And she said, ‘Well, you’ll need to show me that’.”

    Cathy was asked to show her prosthetic breast, removing it from her bra.

    It appears that the TSA wants you to be safe and humiliated before you fly – ass wipes.

    My TSA Story

    Lastly here is something interesting that happened to my Wife when she got to TSA yesterday in SEATAC. She got in line a noticed that she was in the porno-scanner line. She lane jumped to a metal detector and did so a couple of times to make sure she got through TSA fast enough to not be re-routed to the short porno-scanner line. Upon clearing the metal detector an agent that had been watching her pulled her aside and search her stuff, telling her that she had too many liquids.

    This ass of a TSA agent claimed that she could only have 3oz of liquids TOTAL in her bag. WTF. Here is TSA’s official policy:

    311_header.jpg

    What my Wife was told was clearly a lie, eventually they let her through. I have no doubt that this was in response to her jumping lines and probably looking freaked out that she may have to be groped instead of being given cancer with the porno-scanner. If that was the case though TSA should have asked her about it instead of passive aggressively making shit up.

  • SSD: External Storage

    Today I spent the morning updating all of my external backups and making sure everything was in good order. Next week is Thanksgiving here in the U.S. which means a short work week and loads of travel. I love it, but it is also a peak time for data loss so I wanted to make sure everything was properly backed up. The annoyance though quickly set in as external USB HDs are slow, and I began to wonder what it would be like to have external SSDs instead.

    Here are the options that I have found, none of which I have tried.

    Drobo + SSDs

    It appears that you could put SSDs in a Drobo, you would just have to find a way to mount them in the 3.5” bay that Drobos use. If you were to buy the base model Drobo that has 4 bays that would cost you $399 and it appears that for only a twenty dollars for each drive you could get the needed adapter, though I have never seen the inside of a Drobo so I can’t say for sure that this adapter would work.

    You could then fill the drive with Intel X25-M Gen2 80GB SSDs at a price of $250 a pop – not cheap. But in the end you would have a 320GB Drobo that is all SSDs for an everyday low price of $1,479.00.

    Which is massively expensive for what you get.

    [Updated: 11/19/10 at 10:21 AM] Drobo says it does not support SSDs – that saves me 1,479 dollars.

    [Hat tip to Graham Wetzler on Twitter]

    Other Options

    Since the Drobo is out of my price range here are some other options that I found:

    • For $215 you can get a bus powered USB/Firewire SSD that is 60GB – which is pathetically small, but would make for a great backup drive for traveling photographers.
    • Or for $590 you can get the same setup only with 240GB of storage. That brings you within striking distance of the Drobo storage amount above, but for 1/3 the price.
    • For $1,280 you can get a 400GB external Raid solution that has eSATA/Firewire/USB. Or just get the 800GB model for a measly $3,300.

    Ok so far I am striking out to find anything useful. I would need to replace 1 mobile 250GB HD, 2 1TB desktop HDs, and 2 500GB desktop HDs so that my backups would remain solid. None of the above options do that in a way that I could remotely afford.

    More Options

    • Iomega offers an external USB 3.0 SSD in the 256GB flavor for a not so cheap $619.00.
    • Not to be outdone OCZ offers the Enyo line with similar stats for $715.

    Sad Reality

    It appears that in order to get all external drives to SSD you need to be rich, very rich. I am not, so for now I will stick with my lovely 7200rpm records. I would suspect though that we are very close to seeing these drives at affordable prices.

    What really intrigues me is what form factor SSD external drives may take – they wouldn’t need the same cooling fans, the same power requirements, nor would they need to be in a box shape.

  • Flight Control HD for Mac

    It is distributed via Steam and costs $4.99. I have it on my iPad only and love the game. Not sure about how it plays on the Mac, but it has to be better than it would be on the iPhone (iPad is awesome).

    [via TUAW]