The Brooks Review

Month: January 2012

  • Tweet of the Day: Scott Simpson

    “My new standard of cool: when I’m hanging out with you, I never see your phone ever ever ever.”
    — Scott Simpson (@scottsimpson) June 17, 2010

  • The Next Apple

    Federico Viticci does an excellent job arguing against [John Biggs’ statement](http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/11/why-samsung-is-the-next-apple/) that Samsung will be the next Apple.

  • ‘Why Samsung Is the Next Apple’

    John Biggs arguing the above ridiculous headline:
    >Samsung specializes in meh and me-too…

    And:

    >Add in some tablets, some washing machines, and some acceptable software and you have a real and vibrant ecosystem.

    Because “meh”, “me-too”, and “acceptable software” all very much sound like Apple. What an idiot.

  • ‘Companies Who Spam Their Best Customers’

    Shawn Blanc:
    >Getting junk mail and advertisements from companies I don’t do business with is annoying enough. But getting it from the companies which I have been a long-time and deeply invested customer is quite annoying.

    What it really comes down to is respect. Companies that value you as a customer also tend to value your time and junk mail is always a waste of my time.

    The easy way to tell how much a company respects and values you is to pay attention to how much crap they send you and how relevant the crap they send you really is. Apple is not exempt here as they send me “news”, but they make it painless to get off that list and don’t abuse the privilege.

  • Google’s Enemies

    John Gruber:
    >It also occurs to me that there’s no company in tech with as many enemies as Google. Apple, Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook, Twitter — Google has taken the fight to all of them. In this sense they’re like Microsoft 15 years ago.

    Enemies might be too strong of a word, but I think Gruber has it right with the comparison to Microsoft. Google is the one company where I don’t feel good about using their products, but have a hard time *not* using their products.

  • ‘Misdirection, Doublespeak, Non-Answers, and Straight Up Bad Decisions’

    MG Siegler dived into why Search+ is really not good and after going through it all, he has this to say about Google:

    >It’s like they’re suffering from brain diarrhea.

    That’s actually a pretty perfect way to sum up everything that Google does. Not that this is necessarily bad, just that Google can’t seem to stop and think about things before starting new projects.

    Perfect evidence of this is Google Wave.

    They have really great projects that they start, but they seem to lack on idea of what the use case is, or the follow through needed to make them a success. Search+ seems like one of those things that the engineers pushed through without thinking about the ramifications.

  • Four Great OS X Services You Don’t Know About

    I use DevonTechnologies’ WordService ones on a daily basis.

  • ‘Thirty Five’

    Noah Stokes on 35 things he learned in his 35 years:

    >Scotch is really good.

    Yes, yes it is.

  • The Seminarian on iPad Usage

    Vincent on creating an iPad like writing atmosphere on his Mac:
    >So what I’ve done is removed my twitter client and my email client (Sparrow) from the dock and shut them off. Hopefully this will create a less cluttered environment where I get the best of both worlds.

    I [used to do that with my iPad](https://brooksreview.net/2010/08/using-your-ipad-with-your-mac-pc-to-help-you-focus/), but found that it leads to far too much friction during the day.

  • Under-served vs. Over-served

    An interesting tale by Horace Dediu of how Apple is gaining traction in the enterprise market.

  • Quick Thought: Dedicated Instapaper Device

    Here’s a thought I had after reading about the discount applied towards Nooks if you buy a subscription to select periodicals: What if instead of buying an e-reader that is book-centric, you get an e-reader that is Instapaper-centric (with the ability to side load eBooks)?

    That is a device dedicated to Instapaper from the ground up so the primary focus is still reading, but not reading books.

    It would be my guess that people churn through Instapaper articles much faster than they do through a book and therefore a dedicated (of sorts) Instapaper device could prove more beneficial to consumers than a dedicated book reading device.

    I agree that Instapaper is fantastic on the iPad and excellent on the iPhone/iPod touch, but wouldn’t a Kindle like device that downloaded only your Instapaper articles, as you saved them, be a fantastic device?

    I think so.

    You can certainly send articles to your Kindle from Instapaper, but that’s not something that the general consumer is likely to do. Essentially I want a Kindle type hardware device that is actually a curation of the articles I want to read from the web.

    The Instapaper device becomes my new newspaper, my hub, and books are relegated to the back burner — where their true priority is in my life.

    Just a thought, but I think it could be neat.

  • Jack Daniel’s: The History of the World’s Most Famous Whiskey

    Jim Stengel:
    >What is especially interesting about Jack Daniel’s beginning to advertise regularly is that demand then exceeded supply. “From the mid-1950s to the mid-1970s, it was on allocation,” Eddy said. “The sales representatives would literally go into an establishment and let them know how many bottles or cases they could have. When other companies would pull back from advertising, Jack Daniel’s spent money on ads to tell people they couldn’t get it.”

    I love that.

  • Cutting the Cord on Cable

    Kevin Sintumuang on leaving his cable TV subscription behind:
    >You’re full of a lot of inescapable crap.

  • ‘New Siding for the Titanic’

    Roger Black talking about publishers, and specifically in this quoted section the periodical *Today*:
    >They’re breaking the stories on the web, and then adding texture and reporting during the day. The print edition features analysis and opinion, the theory being that everyone already has the news. What readers are looking for in print, is the analysis, the background, the critique, the forecast—the narrative.

    That’s a great direction for traditional media to go and come to think of it this is largely how I work here at TBR. Basically all of the linked list items suffice as ‘news’ type posts, while the articles I write are the analysis and opinion.

    I like the idea of paying for analysis and opinion that has been thought through with a developed narrative and leaving news as easy to go get for free because good thougthful analysis and opinion is much harder to find.

  • ‘Why I Hate Android’

    MG Siegler, while writing about why he loathes Android, makes a very interesting point about Apple:
    >Apple, because they put the consumer first and have proven time and time again that they will not bend to carrier bullshit and will often work against them behind the scenes.

    I agree with that statement, but when I read it I was struck with just how important the above is to the overall experience of the iPhone.

    – No carrier logos
    – No carrier software
    – Pricing parity between carriers (for the device)
    – No waiting on anyone but Apple to update
    – Free updates for at least two years (at least historically so)
    – If Apple can port a new feature to an old device — they eventually will (Siri is an odd case and I don’t know why they haven’t ported that yet.)

    Those are just a few of the advantages Apple holds over Android and I believe it is all because of Apples stance towards carriers.

    The relationship Apple has with carriers is fascinating to me — Apple seems to outwardly despise them, while knowing that carriers are (currently) necessary for Apple.

  • Pseudonyms, Trolls and the Battle Over Online Identity

    Mathew Ingram:
    >While the Disqus data may not be conclusive, however, it does seem to show that pseudonymous speech doesn’t necessarily lead to worse behavior than any other form of online identity, and may even lead to better behavior (at least for those who see user comments as being valuable at all).

    I agree with what this data shows. Some of the best emails I get are from people that don’t wish their name or company to ever be known. My best guess as to why: people at great companies or in a position of great influence within a sector are very smart — these are, I think, the same people that have great insight to add through emails that I receive.

  • The WD-40 Home Button Fix

    Khoi Vinh:
    >In my experience, on not just my own iPhone 4 but also on my girlfriend’s, WD-40 restores the responsiveness of the iPhone’s home button to basically like-new condition.

    I highly — highly — recommend that you do **not** do this.

  • Selectively Enable Flash in Chrome Without an Extension

    Justin Blanton on using Click-to-Flash in Chrome as a built in feature:
    >The thing is, with Chrome, you don’t need a plugin or extension to ensure that Flash (or any other type of content that requires a plugin) is blocked by default, but easily enabled when needed; this sort of functionality is built into the browser.

    He also has an [impressive list](http://hypertext.net/2012/01/chrome-extensions) of extensions for Chrome.

  • Ten Things Everyone Should Know About Time

    Absolutely fascinating.

  • How to Use Services in Mac OS X

    Nice overview of using Services in Mac OS X — this can be a really powerful tool.