On April 30th, 2010 [I wrote](http://brooksreview.net/2010/04/hps-very-smart-acquisition/):
>Hey thanks HP for acquiring Palm — I almost forgot you were still around.
That’s the sentence that started this blog. Not a post about Apple, not a review — an analysis of HP’s acquisition of Palm. I haven’t actually read that since I posted it, but I did just now. Reading that post I remember why I wrote it and what I was trying to say when I read the last line:
>So in short, HP forget about Windows (phone) Mobile, spend money on Palm’s marketing. But most importantly forget about Apple and do your own thing, because you can’t beat Apple at its own game, so beat them at yours.
Boy, I could say that again today and still would be relevant — yet we are a year removed from when I originally wrote that. In fact that entire article is still relevant to HP/Palm — that’s not me tooting my own horn, that’s me shocked at the ineptitude of HP.
The next month, just weeks after launching the site, I switched hosts because I was fed up with downtime at Bluehost. I moved to the Media Temple (gs) and was so overly happy with the move. Near the end of that month I wrote about Google and Apple, and [stated](http://brooksreview.net/2010/05/google-vs-apple-gaining-perspective/):
>Before the iPhone it was more common for someone to not have a data plan on their phone then it was for them to have one — let alone an unlimited data plan.
Funny now that a year later we are without the ability to buy unlimited data plans — because of the sheer overwhelming demand for mobile bandwidth and the greed of the carriers.
In May 2010 The Brooks Review had less than 150 total readers for the entire month. ((Which was far more people than I actually shared the blog URL with.)) I had no idea what I was doing, or where this was all going — but I was having a hell of a good time sharing my thoughts with a small audience.
July 2010 saw my first “big” post, it got a couple of points on Hacker News and occasionally people still come across it. I liked it at the time — though now I very much regret writing it in a list way, lame.
[Email Mistakes That Irritate Smart People](http://brooksreview.net/2010/07/email-mistakes-that-irratate-smart-people/):
>It is really awesome that you figured out how to embed your company logo in your email signature, but I know who you are and what your company logo looks like. I still hate it. Don’t waste bandwidth sending me email attachments of your logo.
Yeah, that *sounds* like me.
Thanks mainly to that single post I had what I thought was a huge month, at 766 unique views for the month — I was a very happy guy. ((Still am, though most would argue that.))
Unbeknownst to me this was the first turning point of everything, from here it would be nothing but up, up, up.
For October the only post that really generated discussion was [this one](http://brooksreview.net/2010/10/mba-fits/), where I refuted some of John Gruber’s claims about the new MacBook Air’s. To which, after seeing that I was buying one as my primary machine, he [responded](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2010/10/26/brooks-air): “And he’s putting his money where his mouth is.”
Luckily I didn’t have to eat those words. It also happened that buying my MacBook Air was one of the best purchases I have ever made.
The next month I wrote what still may be the longest post on The Brooks Review, my [MacBook Air review](http://brooksreview.net/2010/11/mba-review/). I remember slaving for days over this post to be as accurate and interesting as I could be. It was one of the toughest things I did all year and one of the most satisfying.
I am going to skip over the rest of the year — there is just too much to process at this point, suffice to say: thank you for reading and emailing and correcting my grammar.
—
Things I learned this past year:
– I don’t know how to use a comma.
– My readers know how to spell and use commas.
– Positive, interesting, email outweighs the bad 6 to 1.
It… was a massive good year.
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