Month: June 2011

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  • Phone Book Company Loses Court Fight Against Seattle

    Those yellow page litterers tried to stop progress, they lost — lost big as Vanessa Ho reports: >As of Wednesday, more than 225,500 yellow pages have been cancelled in Seattle. Well done Seattle, well done.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 17: Aviators and BBQ

    Discussing Kansas BBQ, Google + and the HP TouchPad. Thanks to our fine sponsors: [Wren](http://wrenapp.com/) and [Seamless](http://fivedetails.com/seamless/).

  • Likability

    Shawn Blanc: >The iPad is more than the sum of its parts. The iPad has an intangible: *Likability*. The emphasis is his, not mine. I agree with this statement, but I don’t think the intangibles are what got the iPad sales going in the first place, nor do I think it is the reason people […]

  • Myspace’s 50 Million User Profiles Now Belong to an Ad Targeting Firm

    Ben Popper on the My Space acquisition: >But the acquisition today by Specific Media is quite different. They bought the profiles lock, stock and barrel. Now they will use them for their core business, ad targeting. First off, that is a lot of speculation — even for me. Every is in agreement though that it […]

  • Best Google + Article

    I am guessing this article about how to delete your Google + account is going to be pretty handy in the coming week or so.

  • The HP Camry

    I was actually hoping that this would be a great tablet, alas that doesn’t seem to be the case. [Joshua Topolsky](http://thisismynext.com/2011/06/29/hp-touchpad-review/): >Hardware quality feels cheap >Developer support is thin right now [Tim Stevens](http://www.engadget.com/2011/06/29/hp-touchpad-review/): >The shortage of apps is a problem, no doubt, but that will change with time. What won’t change is the hardware, and […]

  • Ballmer Responds to Calls for Him to Quit

    Tom Warren reporting: >“You cut me open and saw what was inside: Windows. Windows. Windows. Windows,” Ballmer said in an audio recording obtained by GeekWire. “Our company was born on the back of Windows. Windows underpins a huge percentage of all of our success, all of our profitability, all of the important things that we […]

  • Wizards of Bullshit

    David Heinemeier Hansson on the idea that Zuckerberg is now really rich: >Now anyone with an iota of critical thinking would perhaps question whether a stock purchase of 0.01% is representative for the worth of the company at large, but not Forbes. They simply accept this fantasy 1:3000 transformation as fact and serves it up […]

  • Google + (-Me)

    As the title states, I won’t be joining Google’s [new social network](http://www.google.com/intl/en/+/demo/) any time soon. I wasn’t even going to post about it, until I started to get people asking me about it. I have two problems with Google +: 1. It’s made by Google. 2. I don’t trust Google. That is: I don’t trust […]

  • Why Lithium-Ion Batteries Die So Young

    Josie Garthwaite: >Over the course of years, the lithium-ion battery that once powered your machine for hours (days, even!) will gradually lose its capacity to hold a charge. Eventually you’ll give in, maybe curse Steve Jobs and then buy a new battery, if not a whole new gadget. That sentence bugs me a lot because […]

  • Quote of the Day: Tom Coates

    “Fundamentally, Google is a utility. No one wants to hang out at their power company.” — Tom Coates

  • Replacing the Human Concierge

    Jane L. Levere: >Still, the question remains whether digital concierges can ever equal their human counterparts. Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst for Forrester Research, said he did not think they would. “Nothing will ever replace a face-to-face concierge,” he said. “A guest visiting a city for the first time will have a lot of questions and […]

  • Flexiglass

    I [posted yesterday about Moom](http://brooksreview.net/2011/06/moom/) and how it makes use of the damned green button again. Cody Fink has a great review of yet another app in this category called Flexiglass. What piques my interest about this app is the ‘real zoom’ option that makes the green button just throw the window to fullscreen (I […]

  • New Sony VAIO Z: Packs Thunderbolt

    Alas it is not of the Mini DisplayPort variety. I have two majors concerns with Thunderbolt: 1. That it won’t be adopted by the PC market, leading to a Mac only product that is very good, but has incredibly high-priced peripherals. (Think Firewire 800 here.) 2. That if it is adopted everyone will use some […]

  • Quote of the Day: John Robb

    “Facebook is an example of Madoff entrepreneurship. I win big, everybody else loses. Sure it’s viral. But it’s viral deception.” — John Robb

  • OopsieFocus

    Shawn Blanc: >When launched, the OopsieFocus script will check to see if OmniFocus is running. If OmniFocus is running then the script does nothing and OmniFocus brings up the Quick Entry Pane for you just as it should. If OmniFocus is not running then the script will automatically launch the app and bring up the […]

  • Dropbox Being Sued

    I’m not big on the “sue, sue” approach Americans take with things, but in this case I think it may be the best course of action. Dropbox doesn’t seem to think what happened was anything more than a “bug” or a fluke. I for one am not convinced that they truly think this is *that* […]

  • Crazy Tumblr Traffic

    MG Siegler: >Last Thursday, Tumblr hit 400 million pageviews for the day, Karp tells us. It’s close to 5,000 pageviews a second, he notes. That’s just crazy — hard to blame them for uptime issues when they are trying to handle that much traffic. ((Not to worry, I will find a way to blame them. […]

  • Review: Moom

    The one feature that Mac users seem to be clamoring for that their Windows brethren have is that ability to ‘snap’ windows to half the screen. There are a ton of apps for the Mac that seek to provide this functionality, tools like [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/) and [SizeUp](http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/). Recently I stumbled across another app of this breed […]

  • Best Buy’s Music Cloud Service

    Bit late on this one. But it’s another crippled and doomed to fail from the outset offering much like Google’s.