The Brooks Review

Month: July 2012

  • ‘Awakenings: An Android Design Process’

    Sebastiaan de With has posted about his design process for an Android alarm clock app that he designed. He goes through the how and why of an alarm clock, the — umm — intricacies of designing for a platform with some many different screen sizes.

    Near the end of the post he gets on with a fascinating topic to me:

    >It’s… well, designed for humans. All these details seem like such obvious things, yet you’d be surprised to find that nobody seems to have thought about these details before. I sincerely hope our app inspires others to adopt the same design patterns, simply because I believe it makes people’s lives better.

    There are some really great touches that are in the app — things like sleep cycles make the app something more than your normal alarm clock.

    I often whine on and on about weather apps, but it is true that something well designed, well thought out, and designed to *help you* can almost be magical. Case in point: Dark Sky. Just look at what [Dr. Drang has to say about Dark Sky](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2012/07/dark-sky/) after heading its advice and waiting out rain, while watching a colleague dash into the building:

    >I waited out the full three minutes and sauntered up to the door with only a couple of stray drops hitting me. She now owns a copy of Dark Sky.

    It was a powerful enough moment that he felt compelled to write about it, because in that moment the app seemed like magic. Indeed, Dark Sky often seems like magic when you use it — like something that shouldn’t be possible because it is almost too accurate.

    Why should that just be limited to Dark Sky, seems like this alarm clock is heading on that path and I would love to see more apps take this route too.

  • “Keep Moving”: Marissa Mayer’s First Memo to Yahoo

  • ‘Magazines on iPad Should Be in iBooks Format’

    Nate Barham arguing that magazines should default to the `.ibooks` format instead of the Adobe crap that is prevalent today:
    >They’re much better off than the mainstream publications, but System Extension is what my dad should see (though it would probably be something more like, Mustang Maintenance) when he picks up his iPad to read a magazine. It downloads fast. It works the way an iPad user expects things like text and images and videos to work.

    Barham is right, iBooks Author is a superior tool for creating magazines, but — as far as I can tell — Apple offers no way for publishers to publish using the iBooks format and utilizing the Apple subscriptions and Newsstand background downloading. I would love to see publishers using iBooks Author for magazines, it would be a great thing for iOS users, but for now it seems Apple doesn’t have a way for them to do this.

  • Sparrow Acquire by Google

  • Announcing Two Members Only Features

    I have crafted two small perks for members — these will always be members only.

    The first is something I am calling “Daily Linkage”. Unlike my normal linked list posts, this is just a list of links presented without any commentary. These are items that I read and think are important enough to share, but that I have nothing additional to add to with commentary that makes them worth a full linked list post. Pretty simple, members can [check it out here](https://brooksreview.net/category/linkage/).

    The second is called “The Weekly Review” and it’s a blatant rip-off of the [Evening Edition](http://evening-edition.com/), except it is posted every Friday and centers on technology news and the TSA — you thought I would forget about the TSA? Ha. I round up the week in tech and add a few comments and lots of links (hopefully). Members can [check this out here](https://brooksreview.net/category/weekly-review/).

    Both of these items are a way to share more time sensitive items with members, but I make no guarantee that they will stick around — for now both are just a running experiment. If the feedback is good, and I don’t get annoyed by doing this, then hopefully they will stick around.

    But by no means should either be the basis for your membership.

  • Video: Nexus 7 Touchscreen Defect

  • Sun — Simple Weather App

  • Both iA Writer for Mac and for iOS Receive Significant Updates

  • At Least 12 Killed, 50 Injured in Colorado Movie Shooting

  • For the Week Ending July 20th, 2012

    This week was all Google, all week long — but don’t worry the TSA made an appearance.

    ### Yahoo!

    Former Google executive Marissa Mayer made the move from what seemed like a dead end job, [to the CEO of the once web darling, Yahoo](http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2012/07/16/googles-marissa-mayer-tapped-as-yahoos-chief/?hp&pagewanted=all). This is a pretty big deal in tech, and [it got the nerds all riled up](http://dearmarissamayer.com/) — was it Mayer herself that prompted [this great response to them](http://www.flickr.com/dearinternet)?

    [*The Week* has a nice roundup of the hubbub surrounding Mayer’s hiring](http://theweek.com/article/index/230636/marissa-mayer-can-yahoos-new-ceo-turn-the-company-around), but personally I think this was a savvy move by Yahoo and gives them a fighting chance at righting the ship — I give Yahoo better odds than Microsoft.

    Not everything is roses in the Mayer hiring, well at least not for Google as [Marco Arment points out](http://www.marco.org/2012/07/17/the-real-reason-marissa-mayer-left-google):

    >Every time Apple loses one of its Senior VPs, we see stories questioning Apple’s leadership and future, suggesting that there may be significant inner turmoil.

    >Well, Google just lost one of its top people.

    [Steven Levy points out in his article for Wired](http://www.wired.com/business/2012/07/why-marissa-mayer-the-ultimate-googler-makes-sense-for-yahoo/), most Googlers he talks to don’t see themselves at Google in 5 years. [Something to keep on eye on](https://brooksreview.net/2012/07/google-mayer/).

    ### Nexus Se7en

    Speaking of Google, pre-orders of Google’s new Nexus 7 tablet made it in the hands of users this week and guess what? There’s a ton of reviews to read. [Most agree that this is a mighty fine tablet](http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/15/omg-he-likes-it-he-really-likes-it/), though there are some [that question the usefulness of the device](http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2012-07/googleasus-nexus-7-review-best-weird-breed).

    [Shawn Blanc, also questioned this in his write-up, concluding](http://shawnblanc.net/2012/07/the-nexus-7/):

    >Where is the magic? The fun? The incredible 3rd-party apps? It is because of these elements that the iPad is more than the sum of its parts while its competition continues to remains less than.

    I’ll post some thoughts on the tablet soon, but suffice to say — I don’t think it’s worth spending money on.

    ### This Week in TSA Stupidity

    [The TSA freaked out this week](http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2012/07/17/man-claims-worlds-largest-penis-got-him-frisked-at-sfo/) as a man with a world record holding penis had a “concerning” bulge in his pants. Oh TSA, you would be the government agency to force me to write the word penis on my site.

    ### Apple Ordered to Buy Samsung Some Nice Ads?

    [So says a U.K. judge, that ruled Samsung tablets are *not* a knock-off of the iPad](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-18/apple-must-publish-notice-samsung-didn-t-copy-ipad-judge-says.html) — and therefore Apple must now buy ads in top publications, as well as post on their U.K. website, that he hath decreed Samsung tablets to not be iPad knock-offs.

    We’ll see how that works out for you.

    I can’t see Apple ever complying with this. If there is a fine, I bet Apple pays it up to $400 million without even blinking. If it is an injunction against selling in the U.K., well I say Apple calls the bluff on this one — would you want to be the judge that decided no more iPads in your country? I didn’t think so.

    ### Patents

    Remember when the iPhone was announced in 2007 and Steve Jobs proudly declared something like: “we patented the crap out of this thing”. Remember that?

    We this was the week those patents started to get approved, everything from the [disappearing slider](http://www.theverge.com/2012/7/17/3165237/intellectual-properly-apple-patents-disappearing-vertical-scroll-bars) to how they display files on the screen.

    [Christina Bonnington](http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/07/apple-patent-gui-iphone/), for Wired:
    >It may sound snoozy, but the patent — which covers graphical user interfaces ranging from email to Camera Roll to menu lists to the multi-touch interface in general — looks like a dangerous weapon for Apple as it battles Android handset makers.

    I can already hear Samsung screaming “prior art!”.

    ### Sad Days in Redmond

    [Microsoft reported it’s first *ever* quarterly loss](http://allthingsd.com/20120719/aquantive-write-down-deflates-microsoft-earnings/) as they realize the loss on an acquisition gone bad.

    That’s too bad too, because it’s been rather nice weather here in western Washington. Then again, we have had freak lightening storms all week…

    This is a big deal for Microsoft, but it’s not *that* big of a deal. The loss was basically from a bad investment, rather than the kind of losses that — say — RIM is experience, those of disinterested consumers. So while this stings, it’s more like deciding that the boat covered in moss on the side of your house — yeah that boat — it’s no longer an “asset” to your family, rather than it is about actually tanking your business.

    ### Sad Days for the Country

    [A shooting in Colorado at a Dark Knight Rises movie premier has left a dozen dead and many more injured](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-07-20/14-killed-as-many-as-50-injured-in-colorado-movie-shooting.html). Most debates that will arise from this shooting, will sadly, be the wrong debate to be having.

  • Typekit’s New, Improved Embed Code

    The Typekit Blog

  • Microsoft Reports First Loss in History

  • Google’s Data Advantage Over Apple’s Siri

  • Marco Arment on Dropbox

    Rob Sobers writing about a statement Marco Arment made on his podcast about Dropbox:
    >Marco’s response echoes my personal feelings about Dropbox and other public cloud services – treat Dropbox as though it’s nearly public. **Marco’s rule of thumb is that he doesn’t put anything in Dropbox that could potentially be harmful or embarrassing if it were leaked.**

    Regular readers will know that I am paranoid about this kind of data breach. So my solution? Sensitive stuff goes inside an encrypted DMG inside of Dropbox. I am willing to trade a bit of security for the ease of use Dropbox offers.

    Also remember that there is a Dropbox like solution that is encrypted on the user end, called: [SpiderOak](https://spideroak.com).

    Or your can use [this tool to encrypt first](http://getsecretsync.com/ss/) (never tried it).

  • The B&B Podcast #70: Really Great Frisbee Thrower

    >Shawn and Ben talk about the Nexus 7, Android, the tablet market, the UK ruling for Apple to place ads saying Samsung didn’t copy them, and how to grill a steak.

    [Shawn also *made* me do an After Dark](http://5by5.tv/afterdark/197).

  • A One, Two Punch for Yahoo!

    This post makes one huge assumption: I assume that Marissa Mayer does not want Yahoo to continue to suck.

    If that assumption holds true, here’s two acquisitions Yahoo should make to become awesome, and a service that I use daily.

    ### Acquire 500px

    [Just yesterday I pondered about Yahoo buying 500px](https://brooksreview.net/2012/07/photo-tip/), I awoke today thinking it is an even better idea than it was yesterday. The play here is simple: buy 500px and rebrand it as “the new Flickr”. Migrate the entire existing Flickr user base and instantly make them all happy.

    Next get hard to work on a mobile app for iOS uploads and see about getting direct integration into iOS from Apple for iOS 7/8.

    This is smart because 500px is a business already, not some free service that Yahoo would need to figure out how to monetize.

    I doubt every Flickr user would be happy with this, but it’s a better option than the “dying the slow death” path that Flickr is currently on.

    ### Acquire DuckDuckGo

    It would pain me to see DuckDuckGo bastardized with ads, but I think there is a smart play here. Yahoo buys DuckDuckGo and starts serving ads on it, and make it the default Yahoo search engine. Yahoo is already an option on most browsers and devices (like iOS) so the potential user base is there. Putting the Yahoo brand behind the DuckDuckGo power, might be a win-win for both.

    Of course the awesome privacy features of DuckDuckGo may suffer, but I have a solution for that: charge users to keep DuckDuckGo as it is — if they want. Figure out how much each user is worth to you in ad dollars. Divide that in half, and charge that a year for “pro” DuckDuckGo users. I bet it comes out to less than $10/yr — cheap!

    This *is* a better option than [partnering with Google](http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-microsoft-search-alliance-google-127843).

    ### Who This Hurts

    This is a play against Microsoft and Google. Yahoo would become a better search engine than Bing, and an excellent alternative to Google. Yahoo would also have (once again) the strongest photo offering for everyone from mom and dad, to pro level photographers. Both businesses would be easy to integrate, have a place in the company, and be able to immediately contribute to the bottom line.

    Notice who this doesn’t come after: Apple. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? If Yahoo can show it is savvy, it would make itself a far more attractive partner to Apple than Google — and that could pay off in spades.

  • ‘What does ⌥ (the Mac option key symbol) represent?’

    This is pretty clever, whether or not it is true. I think the worst of all the symbols on current Mac keyboards is the Launch Center / Spaces key that is three randomly placed rectangles.

    Everything else on a Mac keyboard is so very neat and tidy, then you have that F3 keys and it’s unorganized mess — it drives me nuts.

    Which brings me to one last point: the option key on Macs doesn’t show that symbol — it’s something that you see in menus when looking for keyboard shortcuts. So how long before Apple rids their keyboards of the Command key symbol? The word is already clearly spelled out and it would lend to a cleaner look. There’s got to be a traditionalist at Apple keeping that symbol on Mac keyboards.

  • Quote of the Day: Marco Arment

    “If given the choice between writing for free or censoring myself, I’ll write for free.”

  • Tutorial: Enhance Photos With Curves

    A great curves video tutorial from Aaron Nace on the 500px blog. If you take photos at all, then you should watch this because it can really do wonders for your photos.

    This got me to thinking about something else though — and so excuse this tagent. One the last remaining, somewhat relevant, Yahoo! properties is Flickr. But Flickr hasn’t been great in years. I [recently stopped using it in favor of 500px](https://brooksreview.net/2012/04/500px-2/) and think you should give 500px a shot if haven’t yet.

    Now thinking about Mayer being the new Yahoo! CEO, Flickr, and 500px — it seems to me like right now 500px is the ultimate realization of what Flickr could have been. The photos on 500px are stunning, the design is top notch, the site is easy and fast to use — it’s a great site and a better product.

    So it occurs to me, what with Mayer being branded a product person, that 500px seems like it would be an exceedingly smart acquisition for Yahoo!. ((Note: I have no clue what to do here. Yahoo has an `!` at the end of the name, but what happens when I need to say then name and then end the sentence? What a mess.)) Yahoo! could give it the funding, backing, and exposure — transition all Flickr users to it and boom: instant relevance.

    Just a thought.

  • ‘Can a Design Firm Differentiate an Android Device?’

    Be sure to watch the video in this linked post. Frog design has partnered with Sharp to make a new smartphone for the Japanese market. They are using Android with a high customized skin — but really the customization goes deeper than just the skin. The way to think of this is like this: base Android is a Mr. Potato head with body parts randomly put on him, this Frog version is the same Mr. Potato head with the body parts arrange correctly.

    The video makes the design and interaction look fantastic — I’d love to try one out.