The Brooks Review

Month: June 2012

  • Quote of the Day: Julien Smith

    “Do not trust your own brain for your memory. Do not trust it for what you “feel like” you should be doing. Trust only the reminder app.”

  • ‘The World’s Worst Password Requirements List’

    A great list of stupidity from Kottke.

  • Google Acquires Quickoffice

    Personally I wish their press release said: “Check.”

    This should worry Microsoft, as I talked about already today, Microsoft’s office is becoming even more irrelevant to mobile users. With this Google is taking yet another step towards trying to woo more and more people from Office, to Google’s own platform.

  • ‘Microsoft Quandary’

    Barb Darrow:
    >Tier 1 analyst Carl Brooks said this Windows first strategy is nutty in this day and age. “Microsoft wants to own user data in Office across the clients and in the cloud obviously. But this is a fight Apple’ s going to win on its own platform,” he said. “Microsoft can obviously deliver a better experience on Windows devices, but waiting too long or restricting Office to Windows would be suicide. I can already read .docs and .ppts on my iPhone and it gets easier all the time,” he said.

    Microsoft is in a very interesting position on mobile: they want users to be on their platforms, but they also want to sell as many copies of Office as they can. It was a long held belief by many in the corporate world that iOS could not, and would not, be successful for businesses without Office on them. Turns out they were wrong about that one and because Microsoft still hasn’t shipped Office for iOS/Android there have been many third parties that have risen to the challenge and made great apps that open these documents.

    If you use iOS, you have probably never once thought about the fact that you don’t have Word or Excel on your device — yet this was a real fear for the platform when it launched. Now though, would you even bother buying Office for iOS if it came out?

    I wouldn’t — and that’s a problem for Microsoft because now users have no compelling reason to buy Microsoft software *and* no compelling reason to *move* to Windows platforms.

  • ‘Photo Permissions on iOS’

    Khoi Vinh on the “Allow use of location data” prompt that iOS presents when an app wants access to the photos on the device:
    >From a technical perspective, this dialog box makes sense, because the sensitive information at question isn’t the photos but the location data. Nevertheless, it’s a very confusing way to ask the question, because most users don’t think of their photos as being anything more than just that — photos.

    It’s a really poor dialog, but it has to convey two things to users:

    1. That the app wants access to photos.
    2. That your photos *do* contain location data.

    It’s quite a challenge to do this with one small dialog — here’s hoping it gets changed in the next update. Perhaps just allow Apps to get to Photos while stripping the location data?

    (Vinh also points out how annoying it is to change your mind at a later date too. Can’t imagine the support emails for that alone.)

  • ‘Oracle Sues to Smash Patent Troll Lodsys’

    The headline says it all. Oracle is pissed that Lodsys started to threaten their customers, so they want Lodsys’ patents invalidated. That’s good for anyone not invested in Lodsys.

    Here’s the thing about Oracle: Larry Ellison is a worse person to piss off than Steve Jobs was.

    I think that about sums up how this is going to play out.

  • GTD is not for…

    I love Merlin Mann’s retort to those complaining that “GTD is not for X”.

  • Are We Using Geofencing Wrong?

    When Apple announced their reminders app, and a new API, that allows geofencing in iOS, I was pretty pumped. To be able to schedule a task to alert you the moment you enter or leave a location seemed pretty cool. But, as with many things, the demo proved to be much cooler than the actual real world use case.

    My biggest gripe with geofencing is that most apps that implement it do not allow you to set the radius for the geofence. For OmniFocus that means that even driving by certain places will set off the reminders. This is not only *not* helpful, but I find it down right annoying.

    Sometimes a wide fence is good, but most of the time you need the geofence as tight as can be — say 10 yards. Even at that it’s just not accurate enough most of the time to be a feature I find useful in day to day situations.

    ### Are We Holding It Wrong?

    Or, better yet are we using the geofence technology wrong? Was Apple’s application of geofencing for reminders simply the only example they could think of within the current apps they had and wanted to offer?

    I think this may partly be the case. I just posted about Instapaper’s new geofence for background updates — a task that simply doesn’t need to be massively accurate to be performed well. In my mind this is a better use case for a geofence, as the service currently exists, than something like location based reminders.

    ### Another Problem With Reminders

    Most of the time geofence reminders reminding you when you arrive somewhere is simply not that helpful. I hardly want to be reminded of 59 tasks the moment I get home, so I rarely use arrival reminders because, overall, I find them to be very invasive. (They are handy if you want to be reminded of something you need to do the moment you get home, but those times are pretty rare for me.)

    What’s even more worthless is reminders when you leave. In my life there are simply very few use cases where I want to be reminded *after* I leave a place. What I really want, and what I expect many really want, is a reminder when I am just *about* to leave.

    “Don’t forget your keys!”

    That reminder is worthless *after* I have left, and worthless when I arrive and if you don’t leave at the same time everyday, you can’t set a time based reminder for such an item.

    Now, I have no clue how to do this, but it would be pretty great if I could exclude my garage from the geofence. Therefore once I get in the garage my phone assumes I am leaving. How you do that? No clue.

    Even if my car could talk to my iPhone and tell it “Ben is in his car now” — that would be a great time to trigger a couple of reminders.

    ### Geofuture

    A lot of what I want relies on more accurate GPS locations and dreams. What does make me excited is to see more applications that use geofencing in new ways, much like what News.me and Instapaper are doing now.

    Here’s a thought: geofence based calendar alerts. If my meeting is at my office, and I too am in my office, set the alert to only 5 minutes before. If I am at home and my meeting is at work, set alert for 15 minutes before.

    That would be cool, and that would be helpful.

    Here’s to better usage of geofencing.

  • Quote of the Day: Matt Buchanan

    “A review should be honest to people, not ‘fair.’”

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  • ‘Instapaper 4.2.2 with Background Update Locations’

    Marco Arment:

    >Simply add up to 10 locations that you enter and leave often, and Instapaper will frequently update without manually launching it.

    What a clever hack, this should make an already great app even better. I had never heard of this, but Arment says this idea is from News.me — credit where credit is due.

    I also love this little privacy note:

    >Instapaper stores these locations only within the app itself, only for this purpose, and does not share them or send them to any web service (not even its own servers). I respect your privacy.

  • Quote of the Day: Christopher Elliott

    “The problems of airport security don’t rise to the level of becoming an election-year issue, but this isn’t about airport security anymore. This is about getting scanned and frisked at a ballgame, the train station, and outside Congress.”

  • Shiny Things Software

    My thanks to Shiny Things Software for sponsoring this week’s RSS feed to promote their new game: [Sudoku Touch](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sudoku-touch+/id512397454?ls=1&mt=8). Before I was contacted about this game I had never, not once, played a game of Sudoku. I didn’t even know how to play, so I am about as rough a use case as you can get to test a Sudoku game on.

    I caught on in about five minutes flat — an hour later I was still playing Sudoku Touch. For this beginner I loved having the app tell me when I misplace a number because it is a great way to get a hang of the game without getting frustrated. Now I just love how fast I can play numbers by drawing them on the screen.

    I honestly don’t keep many games on my iPhone, but this game will stay on there for a long time.

  • “Personal”

    Nick Bergus on the dangers of clicking a “like” button in the name of humor:
    >Amused, I posted it to Facebook with the line “A 55-gallon drum of lube on Amazon. For Valentine’s Day. And every day. For the rest of your life.” And then I went on with my life.
    >A week later, a friend posts a screen capture and tells me that my post has been showing up next to his news feed as a sponsored story, meaning Amazon is paying Facebook to highlight my link to a giant tub of personal lubricant.

    I don’t know what Bergus is thinking here — he didn’t use an affiliate code on his link to the lube. So I have taken the time to do so, [buy it from Amazon](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005MR3IVO/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20) and I will post a link to your site if you use my affiliate code — you just need to provide me with a short 100-word review of the product. ((No, really, I will.))

    [Hurry](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B005MR3IVO/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20), only 10 left as of this writing.

  • ‘Intel Ultrabooks Will Mooch Free Wi-Fi’

    David Zax on new technology to be a part of Intel’s, soon-to-be-doomed, ultrabook initiative:
    >Basically, it lets a device automatically join a free Wi-Fi network, even if that network typically requires some sort of manual input to join. It achieves this feat by sending a specially-formatted DNS query that can worm its way past any Wi-Fi router that’s not hyper-fortified. The query then heads to Devicescape’s servers, bearing details of the Wi-Fi point; then Devicescape’s servers send back tailored instructions on how to gain access to that Wi-Fi point. Devicescape’s software on your device is then able to link you–automatically.

    The article goes on to make it sound like the WiFi access points have to opt-in to the service, but there’s a lot of potential for — well — things to go badly. For example, what’s to stop a hacker from registering his WiFi hotspot and skimming all your data when you connect — since the connection can be made while the laptop is still in your bag?

    This entire idea makes me very uncomfortable.

  • Little Thing: Device Chargers

    This is one of my favorite *[Little Things](https://brooksreview.net/2012/05/little-things-2/)* tips: just buy more chargers for your devices. I know that you have probably heard this before, but I really do hope that you do this.

    In case you don’t know what I am talking about I want to walk you through a typical day of mine back in 2006 (which was right before I started deploying this tip in my life).

    ### 2006 Ben

    I was using a 15” MacBook Pro and I only had one charger for it. Keep in mind I used this Mac for *everything* — no iPhone was around yet. In a typical day during this time I would have to unplug and relocate my MacBook Pro charger no less than five times.

    That isn’t a shockingly high number, until you think about the fact that outlets are not conveniently placed. They are placed low on the wall and often in spots where you want to block them with furniture. It’s not hard, per se, to move a laptop charger from room to room — but it *is* very annoying.

    ### Present Day Ben

    Now I own several MacBook Air chargers. I keep one at my desk at work. One at my desk at home. I keep the third one in my cord bag so that I can easily toss it in my bag if I need to. (Before I switched to the MacBook Air, with its long battery life, I used to keep a fourth laptop charger in the living room routed between the couch cushion that I normally sat on.)

    I can’t remember the last time that I bothered with toting chargers around with me in my day-to-day life. That’s not only less weight and stuff to carry, but it’s a lot less of the fiddling with placing chargers.

    ### Why You Need to Do This

    How many times have you been working on your device (any battery powered device) only to have the battery start to die and instead of plugging in the device to keep working, you decide to just go plug it in to the charger — wherever that charger maybe?

    If you do that even once a week, you know how big of a pain that can be. Doesn’t matter if it is your iPad, iPhone, or Mac — having to stop working to go charge it somewhere that you don’t want to work is annoying.

    So by buying yourself an extra charger (or three) you can quickly eliminate this annoyance.

    I think to most of you the laptop charger scenario will make a ton of sense — the chargers are heavy and we like to route the wires nicely on our desks.

    What about iPhone though?

    I think any avid iPhone owner will agree that the battery life could be much better. In a typical day my iPhone will be sitting at about 20% left when I get home around 5p. That’s not great — I made it through the work day — but it won’t last me the night.

    I actually have iPhone chargers everywhere.

    – Living room
    – Home office
    – Car
    – Office, office
    – Bedroom
    – Two extra chargers in my cable bag

    Here’s the thing with my iPhone: I don’t like to not be near it, ever. It bugs me — yeah call me OCD, or odd — fact is I like my iPhone close to me at all times. I also realize that the battery will die if I don’t charge it at some point during the day, thus all the chargers scattered throughout my life.

    It’s even to the point where I am going to go put an iPhone charger in our guest room, just so our guests don’t have to mess with plugging in (and forgetting) their chargers.

    ### The Exception

    There is only one exception to my “buy a ton of extra chargers” rule: my iPad. The iPad has proven to me that it’s battery life, and the amount per day that I use it, don’t warrant having chargers anywhere but in the bedroom. ((Of course this is helped by the fact that I can, in a pinch, charge off of iPhone chargers.))

    As battery life in my devices improve this will likely reduce the amount of chargers I have to carry.

    ### But Until Then

    I am going to keep strategically placing chargers throughout my life for two reasons:

    1. I hate having to move chargers.
    2. I love knowing that I don’t need to worry about battery life because it is either good enough, or a charger *will* be near.

    Ok, go buy some chargers.

    #### Buying Advice

    Obviously with Mac laptops you need to buy Apple chargers, but for your iPhone here are a couple of chargers you may want to consider:

    – [Belkin Mini Surge](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0015DYMVO/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20): I love to take this traveling or to coffee shops. You get three power ports and two USB chargers. It won’t charge your iPad at full speed, but it’s a great travel companion.
    – [Griffin Car Charger](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B0042B9U8Q/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20): The best part is that this charger has two ports. One for you and one for your wife.
    – [Monoprice External Battery Pack](http://www.monoprice.com/products/product.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10833&cs_id=1083110&p_id=9282&seq=1&format=2): I personally have not used this, but I do have this version that [they no longer make](http://minimalmac.com/post/9551851629/monoprice-powerocks-universal-external-backup-battery) and have nothing but good things to say. What’s great about this power pack is that it can charge an iPad at full speed, which means I just bought one for myself.

  • ‘A Room So Quiet No One Can Stand It for More Than 45 Minutes’

    Bill Ward on a room that is 99.9 percent sound proof:

    >Besides being able to hear one’s own heart, stomach and even inner ear, or the sounds emitted by a cellphone’s display, first-timers in the quiet room find their other senses discombobulated by “cross-modal” perceptual effects.

    >“Your eyes don’t feel as comfortable in this room,” Orfield pointed out, adding that some visitors have had hallucinations during or after a spell in there. “You lose your touchstones.”

    You have no idea how badly I want to see how long I could last in this room.