It’s $50 more than the Kindle Fire, with less content, and a stupid notch in the bottom corner.
Year: 2011
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[SPONSOR] Doxie Go — ‘Scan Anywhere, Sync To Mac & iPad’
Doxie Go is the tiny, cordless scanner that scans anywhere, no computer required, then syncs directly to Mac, iPhone, and iPad. Doxie’s elegant Mac software makes it easy to go paperless.
Doxie creates create searchable PDFs you can save and share — save scans to your desktop, add them to your iPhone or iPad’s photo roll (and therefore to iCloud), send to Evernote, or simply keep your scans in Doxie’s app and recycle all that cluttered paper.
Smart and elegant – just what going paperless is all about. [Get your Doxie here.](http://www.getdoxie.com/a/tbr_nov11.php)
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Tweaking
Malcolm Gladwell on Steve Jobs:
>Jobs’s sensibility was editorial, not inventive. His gift lay in taking what was in front of him—the tablet with stylus—and ruthlessly refining it.Gladwell argues that Jobs’ best gift was his ability to make things better — perhaps the best they could be. It was not that he was inventor, so much as it was that he was a tweaker.
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Anoka-Hennepin Teachers Write Their Own Online Textbook, Save District $175,000
I had a professor in college that wrote his own textbook for our accounting course. It saved us, as students, a boatload of money. However having a textbook that your professor wrote is not ideal — it was much worse than any of the other textbooks.
We stilled learned the material, but did so by reading the book not learning from the professor — who just referred questions to specific pages in the book.
My experience is not going to be the case everywhere, but it is a very real danger to self-published textbooks.
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Google Chairman Eric Tells US Senators Apple’s Siri Could Pose ‘Competitive Threat’
Josh Ong reporting:
>In the letter, Schmidt backpedaled from a previous statement in September 2010 where he had denied that Apple and Facebook were a “competitive threat.”>”My statement was clearly wrong,” he said. “Apple’s Siri is a significant development—a voice-activated means of accessing answers through iPhones that demonstrates the innovations in search.”
What’s interesting about this is not that Schmidt is saying it, it why Schmidt is saying this. He is saying this to help Google not have anti-trust regulations slapped on them. He is saying this to make Google look a bit less anti-competitive and bit more like a company struggling to keep pace.
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Closing in on the Mac Pro
I can’t believe how close the performance of the high end iMacs and MacBook Pros are compared to the Mac Pro.
The MacBook Air, not so much.
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The B&B Podcast – Episode 33: A Show
>Shawn and Ben talk about the new design of The Verge, Shawn’s AT&T data usage issues, battery backup packs for iPhones, and why they won’t be friends if Shawn buys a minivan.
All I know is that the last bit is true.
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Amazon Item of the Week: NuForce NE-700X Audiophile-Grade Earphones
I purchased a pair of these bullet looking headphones a while back and have had really good luck with them. My cat has chewed on the earbuds with no success thanks to the metal nature of them, the connection points have yet to wear out. The sound is OK, less bass than Bose headphones — but I actually prefer this.
My only complaint is that (as with all ear buds) they can be tricky to get stuck in your ear if your ears are not “normally shaped”. I haven’t had a problem, but your mileage will vary on fit — they do come with an assortment of different sized tips.
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Mophie Juice Pack Reserve
A while back I [purchased](https://brooksreview.net/2011/08/monoprice/) the [Monoprice](http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10831&cs_id=1083110&p_id=8295&seq=1&format=2) PowerRocks for two reasons: I didn’t own a battery back up for USB powered devices and it was dirt cheap. It works well and packs quite a punch, but because of that it is big and heavy.
I rarely carry it around and so it is usually stashed in my car, only making into my bag when I travel in a plane. With the battery woes on the iPhone 4S I decided that I really needed a small battery backup to carry in my bag, possibly in a jacket pocket.
I finally grabbed one of the reasonably priced, small, [Mophie Juice Pack Reserve](http://d.pr/wPuh).
What surprised me most about the Mophie is just how lightweight it is — it’s lighter feeling than most AA batteries — making it a great in-bag travel companion.
[
](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/mophie-closed.jpg)That’s great and I love it for that, but does it work? Kind of.
I ran a few tests using the Mophie every time my battery started to run low (below 40% charge remaining). The only indicator on the Mophie is a single LED (green charged, red close to dead, no light is a dead battery).
In my testing I found that you could expect to increase your battery life by 20 plus the current percentage shown on your remaining battery when you juice the phone off of a fully charge Mophie. So if you had 10% charge left, the Mophie would bump that up to 30%. That’s not earth shattering, but the thing is tiny and weighs nothing — for emergencies that’s not a bad bump.
In one incredibly scientific test I moved my iPhone 4S battery from 14% to 38% in 50 minutes and roughly 30 seconds. The Mophie was completely dead after this and I only sent one text while the iPhone 4S was “charging”. That’s enough that carrying the Mophie is fine for me, but probably less than most would hope for.
I would again remind you that the Mophie really is light weight.
### Is it Worth It?
[
](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/mophie-usb.jpg)That’s a question I have been struggling with because there are several factors I need to consider:
1. For this device to be “worth it” I need to always have it on me when I need it. That’s not going to happen in the summer when I am out and about because I don’t have the pocket space to carry this thing. However, in the winter, I bet I would have to be careful not to wash the Mophie because it would be easy to forget it in a jacket pocket. Since I live in Washington State where it is more winter than summer — I’ll say it is worth it for me.
2. How convenient is it? Turns out the built in charging cable for both the Mophie and your iPhone is pretty great. Making it super easy to charge your iPhone with and to recharge the device itself. However, it doesn’t fit securely enough for me to the bottom of the phone and when you set the phone down on the table it props up the end it is plugged into just a few millimeters — that’s not good if you want to hit the home button with the Mophie plugged in.
3. The charge itself is a ok amount and has proven to be enough for the times that I have needed it — but it’s hardly a conference level battery backup solution.[
](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/mophie-dock.jpg)Overall I would say that if near the end of the day you sometimes find yourself needing a boost — or when you know you will be out and about quite a bit, then this device is a pretty useful thing. However if you just need something to carry in your bag and size/weight is no issue — you are better off with something else. Also if you know you are going to for sure need it, one of those silly battery cases is probably a far better bet.
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Wil Shipley on Sandboxing and OS X Security
A fantastic post by Shipley on why Sandboxing, and the other security requirements Apple is imposing on Mac App Store developers, isn’t the best solution. This is a long read, but is incredibly informative.
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Why TV Still Sucks
This entire article summarizes why TV and Cable still suck and will likely continue to suck.
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Apple’s Supply-Chain Secret
Adam Satariano and Peter Burrows on Apple’s supply chain mastery:
>Apple’s retail stores give it a final operational advantage. Once a product goes on sale, the company can track demand by the store and by the hour, and adjust production forecasts daily. If it becomes clear a given part will run out, teams are deployed and given approval to spend millions of dollars on extra equipment to get around the bottleneck.There were a lot of little nuggets in this story that made me stop and chuckle, such as buying all the available air freight prior to the holiday season.
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Shawn Blanc on Apple’s Cards App and Service
Shawn Blanc:
>There was not a lick of Apple advertising anywhere to be found. I thought for sure there would be a little Apple logo on the back of the card, where a Hallmark logo would have been, but nope. Nothing.I’m glad Shawn ordered these and reported back. They sound like a great deal with nice little touches such as the above one.
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Siri Back After Long Outage
I had flashbacks of MobileMe all day.
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‘The Opiate of the People’
Fantastic post by Andy Mangold on Apple’s love affair with skeuomorphism:
>Some people believe that skeuomorphism makes an interface easier to use, or more intuitive for the user, and I simply don’t buy that. But what hadn’t occurred to me is that it doesn’t matter if it actually does make it easier to use, all that matters is that it makes the average person think it’s easier to use. In reality, a user must take time to learn any interface, whether clad in faux leather or not.Makes a lot of sense to me after reading this post.
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Verizon API to Give Apps ‘Turbo’ Bandwidth Boost
Mark Hachman reporting on Verizon’s plans to install a “turbo” button to speed up network access for apps:
>Verizon anticipates that a customer running an app on a smartphone will have the option to dynamically snatch more bandwidth for that app, if network congestion slows it down, said Hugh Fletcher, associate director for technology in Verizon’s Product Development and Technology team. The app, however, must be running what Verizon referred to as the network optimization API it is currently developing, and hopes to publish by the third quarter of 2012.
>Users could have the option to pay for the extra bandwidth via a separate microtransaction API Verizon is developing and hopes to have in place by the end of 2012, Fletcher said.So what would stop Verizon from artificially slowing down all the apps in order to make more sales off the “turbo” button? Their, um, ethics?
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BSA & Fusion
The full content of the email that was — finally — sent out to Fusion members. You have to give him credit for publishing his cell phone number — that takes balls.
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‘Faith No More’
MG Siegler on the new GMail app and what it means in the larger picture:
>The faith is gone.
It’s a fantastic post about the trend he is seeing with Google — a trend I also see.
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Fusion Ads’ New Ownership
Chris Bowler on the Fusion blog:
>As of today, Fusion Ads is now under the ownership of BuySellAds.
I’ve debated most of the morning about posting this, but it really is bugging me so I decided to post about it. I didn’t find out about this until last night when Chris (no longer with Fusion) emailed me. I like Chris a lot and trust him, not true of BuySellAds because I don’t know them.
As of this writing (10:43a PT) I have yet to hear from BuySellAds — they haven’t contacted me and that doesn’t bode well for them in my book, how can we have a business relationship without communication?
I love Fusion, and the people in the network, they have all been great to me. As with any major change or buyout in the industry I am interested in how the buyer handles the purchase, so far I am not impressed.
Who do I even contact at Fusion now?
I don’t know because no one has told me, that’s not good business.
*(I post this full well knowing it may comprise my arrangement with Fusion. I post this knowing most don’t care. I post this, as with everything else, because I see something happening that I need/want to comment on.)*
**UPDATED**: There’s a bit of confusion, I was told about the sale before it happened (last night) and it was Chris who told me. My complaint is that I have yet to hear from anyone at BSA about this — still. The old Fusion told me this was happening, but the New Fusion has yet to contact me.
**UPDATED** (on Nov 3, 2011 at 13:07): I have been contacted.