The Brooks Review

Month: July 2011

  • Product Shots With an iPhone

    What a great setup for shooting products. Many will say: “But I have a dSLR and surely that can do that better.” That’s only partly true, you really need a light tent + macro lens + flashes to do “good” product photography on a dSLR. What makes the iPhone great for this is the Macro focus it has, my wife uses our Canon G9 for taking her photos, in a light tent, with some of my flashes.

    This is a great little setup for all the would be Etsy sellers and those occasional Craigslist/Ebayers.

  • Here’s to the Misfits, the Eccentrics

    Marco is spot on here arguing that you/we should own our identity. Your identity *is* your brand — ask any company if they would allow anyone else to control their brand, the answer will be a resounding ‘no’.

    Own your brand. Well said Marco.

  • Thoughts on Goog+ After Using It

    I left MySpace for Facebook because Facebook didn’t crash my web browser and destroy my vision with user “designs”. I left Facebook when my mother-in-law started ‘hiding easter eggs’ on my wall and random people from my past kept ‘poking’ me.

    I started using Twitter because you can *still* get value in using Twitter while being a mute, but I may leave Twitter soon because — like with Facebook — people are starting to be offended when I choose not to ‘follow’ them.

    I decided to join Google+ for two reasons:

    1. I was getting a lot of grief from readers (you guys) for commenting on it, without ever having tried it.
    2. A lot of people that I respect have started using it and are *not* hating it.

    Now having used Google+, I can’t help but wonder what it’s for?

    Of the other social networks I have used, here is where I see them fitting:

    **GeoCities**: Was epic, and the best place to share animated GIFs.

    **MySpace**: It was the place to go for crappily designed user profile pages and scantly clad pictures of women that you don’t know. To check out bands so that you could later tell you buddies: “I was listening to them way before they were *main stream*. It was the GeoCities of the early 2000’s.

    **Facebook**: It is the place that you go to see what your ex is up to, if what’s her name from high school is still hot, and well who took a bikini vacation recently? It is also the place that will yield preposterous valuations, and shoot you an average of 30 clicks just for posting a link. Facebook made social networking an acceptable activity for everyone. Also: FarmVille.

    **Twitter**: It’s the place where no one can deny your “friend request” and ADD heaven. Where millions can declare their allegiance to people they hardly know, and where a relative nobody ((Me.)) can get rather instant tech support.

    **Tumblr**: This is basically the modern day GeoCities with better templates and (sometimes) faster loading sites. Also, it’s taking blogging to be a mainstream accepted activity.

    **Google+**: …?

    I am not saying Google plus is bad, but it’s place in the current market is confusing and unclear. The whole circles thing is neat, but what about when I just want to post something to everyone? Every ‘post’ that I see is too long for Twitter, but too short and non-sensical for a blog post.

    Everything is not tl;dr — rather it is: Seems Boring; Don’t Care.

    It feels like a cross between Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. Long form sharing of all media, with a ‘can’t be rejected’ friending system and the appeal of ‘profiles’ from Facebook.

    There is a lot of speculation that people will soon hate it as soon as the general public starts to get in, I wonder what people truly like about it right now. Honestly, the way I look at it is if you line up the current market leaders: Facebook and Twitter — would you rather lose one of those to keep Google+, or would you rather lose Google+?

    The granular control of who sees what is fairly nice, but I wonder if that was made as a reaction to users wanting more privacy, or users just not wanting to hurt people’s feelings? Did Google add that granular control because they thought it was better, or because it is a clear differentiating feature of the service?

    That is, if I don’t friend you on Facebook you may get mad at me. But if you create a system where I don’t need to friend you, and you still can’t see some things — well then no feelings are hurt, right? Wrong.

    It’s like a no-cut sports team in high school: lame and terrible. (Let’s not get into that debate, and no I am not a parent.)

    ### Bottom Line:

    I learned a few important things:

    1. Google+ is most certainly better, technically speaking, than Facebook. I loathe it less. Once ((If.)) it gets more users, I imagine it will give Facebook some good competition. I fear though that moving an entrenched group from Facebook may be hard, when — well — Facebook works for the general “mass” and Google is still invite only.
    2. I am incredibly frustrated by social networks that require me to constantly interact with them in order to gain value. It’s the difference between Facebook/Google+ and Twitter/Tumblr/Gowalla. I can get a lot out of the latter with mostly passive interaction, which isn’t the case with the former.
    3. I just don’t like social networks. Honestly, they just aren’t my “thing”.

    Having said all that, Google+ is probably great for people that are fans of Facebook — for people that value Twitter over Facebook, it’s not there yet.

  • DOJ: We Can Force You to Decrypt That Laptop

    And… I’m turning on FileVault.

  • Does LinkedIn Indicate a Social Networking Bubble?

    James B. Stewart:
    >But LinkedIn is too new to have reliable earnings, given its heavy capital investment. So let’s ignore earnings and focus on revenue, which will ultimately be the source of LinkedIn’s profits.

    Yeah, because that has *never* gotten investors into trouble before.

  • [SPONSOR] Billings Pro

    Billings Pro is a multi-user time tracking and invoicing solution for the Mac and iPhone, with a Web interface for timekeepers. With Marketcircle Cloud we’ll worry about all the setup, hosting, and backup of your data. We host it, you access it – from anywhere, anytime.

  • Preparing for John Siracusa’s Review of OS X Lion‬‏

    What an amazing way to start off the week.

  • Jesus Diaz Doesn’t Get It

    Jesus Diaz for the Giz:
    >Mac OS X Lion still works. It’s fast. It’s solid. Its shortcomings could be partially fixed. And I’m sure that many will learn these new user interfaces patches and live with them. Me? I’d rather wait for a more coherent operating system.

    He’s wrong, really wrong. I have my review 99% finished and it will be live the same day as Apple pushes out Lion. That said, there are a handful of new features in Lion that if they were the only *new* features would make the $29 easily worth it.

  • Solving the Scoble Problem in Social Networks

    Rocky Agrawal commenting on social networks:
    >Paradoxically, the extent to which the constraints of Twitter stifle conversation helped its growth. Because real conversation is hard using Twitter (vs. just tweeting out your own story) there isn’t the expectation that people will engage with you in it. Because tweets disappear as the firehose continues to gush, it’s easier to ignore them.

    And a bit later:

    >The current Google+ interface would be less appealing to celebrities, because the interface is designed to invite conversation and engagement.

    That seems to be the main problem that I have with Google+ ((And yes, I have now joined up on Google+ so that I can accurately comment on it.)) , I don’t like being forced — or feeling obligated — into responding to people. It gets me into trouble many places (Twitter, Email, voice mails), but at the end of the day I don’t have the time, care, or concern to give a proper response ((Anything less is not worth responding)) to everyone that pings me — it’s not something I say with pride and unfortunately is a ‘humble brag’, but I don’t know how else to explain it.

    I’ll have more thoughts on Google+ this week…

  • Dave Winer: Why Twitter May Have Trouble Monetizing

    Some great points in here and I feel like this statement:

    >Twitter was better when there were fewer people there.

    Is the most common complain I hear about Facebook from “original” users. He has some good points and this is well worth a read. (It’s short.)

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 18: 36 Hours Without Internet

    >In this episode Shawn and Ben talk about life without Internet, purposefully not responding to Email, Google+, and the HP TouchPad’s future.

    Brought to you by: [Authentic Jobs](http://www.authenticjobs.com/?ref=fusiona)

  • Verbs App

    A big thanks to #include tech for sponsoring this weeks’ RSS feed to promote their excellent iPhone app: Verbs. With the launch of Verbs Pro (available through an in-app purchase) you can now stay connected to your IM accounts for up to 7 days.

    That’s a killer feature that I personally love — Verbs keeps me from using Twitter’s DMs as an IM platform, which is better for everyone. It really is a good app and if you are an IM fiend you should definitely check it out.

  • Dave Winer on ‘Corporations’

    Dave Winer has a great take on not just Google+, but social networks and companies in general. A lot of what he is saying resonates with me, at the end of the day I just want to own **my** data.

  • Quote of the Day: Warren Buffett

    “I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

  • Google+ and “Privacy”

    [Lukas Mathis on Google+](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/07/07/oliver_reichenstein_on_googleplus/):
    >To me, it feels as if Facebook is constantly trying to trick me into doing things that are good for Facebook’s bottom line, but bad for me.

    and later:

    >Perhaps most importantly, Google+ handles privacy in a prominent and intuitive way.

    In fairness Mathis is likely talking about privacy between users, not privacy between users and the service provider (Google in this case).

    However, the latter case of privacy is far more important and is identical between Facebook and Google: in both cases, you the user, is the product that the company is selling.

    As far as Google+’s [privacy policy](https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/+/policy/):

    >We will record information about your activity – such as posts you comment on and the other users with whom you interact – in order to provide you and other users with a better experience on Google services.

    That’s the same stuff they use in the normal privacy policy language, and correct me if I am wrong, but the number one Google “service” is targeted advertising. I’m not so stupid to accuse Google of handing over your information to advertisers — that’d be a bad business move by Google (they want to own that information) — but certainly Google+ is a fantastic way to serve even more targeted ads to users (even if those ads never appear on Google+ itself).

    Yes, call me paranoid, but [Gruber’s right](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/05/bray-google-plus) — Google wants Google+ to be huge, because it is the fastest and most accurate way to better target advertising — of which it makes billions off of doing — not because they want to compete with Facebook.

  • The HP TouchPad & Dropbox

    Shawn Blanc reviewing the HP TouchPad:
    >There is not a Dropbox app in the Catalog, but rather a system-level sign-in for Dropbox.

    Why is this the first I am hearing of this awesome feature? Shawn says that apps have native access to Dropbox once you make the link. This is amazing and very cool.

    Too bad the overall impression of the TouchPad is that it isn’t very good.

  • I’m Quitting Email

    MG Siegler:
    >For the rest of this month, I’m not going to respond to any emails. None.

    Who hasn’t wanted to do this? This blog generates about 75% of all emails that I get. At first I responded to 99% of all emails that I received and I did so with as much care as time allotted. Just over a month ago I was pretty fed up with responding to emails, so I stopped.

    I didn’t stop reading emails, I just stopped responding to 95% of them. I feel like a dick when I don’t respond, but I also know that by not responding I have more time for other things and I am happier because of it.

    I still read 70% of the email that I get, but I don’t feel guilty if I don’t read it. I do however read 100% of @replies that I get on Twitter — so you do have that option if you luck out getting in touch with me (well for as long as I remain on Twitter).

    Kudos to MG, I may not be far behind — I have long desired to make Twitter the only way you can “comment”.

  • Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 15 Billion

    Apple press release:
    >Apple has paid developers over $2.5 billion to date.

    Anybody know how much Google has paid out to developers?

  • Quote of the Day: Tom Ford

    “You should put on the best version of yourself when you go out in the world because that is a show of respect to the other people around you.”
    [via Om Malik]

  • What’s Yours Stays Yours

    Dropbox clarifies its new Terms of Service, re-writing the section that got many hot and bothered, here’s their explanation of the changes:
    >We’ve never been interested in rights broader than what we need to run Dropbox. We want to get this language right so that you’re comfortable using Dropbox with no reservations: what’s yours is yours.

    Bottom line: all that language before was lawyer speak that allowed Dropbox to implement features like sharing and galleries and hosting. The new language is dead simple.