Year: 2012

[Patrick B. Gibson is the latest to posit that Apple should buy Twitter — Gibson argues that Apple needs Twitter in order to make successful web services](http://patrickbgibson.tumblr.com/post/36041799210/apple-and-twitter). On the surface this is a pretty solid argument, with this being the most quoted line of the article: >My friend and co-worker Tom has a thesis about […]

[Jim Dalrymple, commenting on the Microsoft Surface, notes that he sees the fundamental flaw of the Surface being that it does not actually solve any need or problem](http://www.loopinsight.com/2012/12/05/microsoft-forgot-to-solve-a-problem/): > Which brings me back to the Surface. What did it solve? Microsoft loaded the Surface with a 16GB operating system that isn’t optimized for a tablet, […]

[Chris Bowler brings up a great point about the iOS basic keyboard](http://chrisbowler.com/journal/ios-keyboard-has-room-for-improvement): >Using Mail’s keyboard is a significant reduction of efficiency compared with writing in iA Writer. Here’s hoping Apple recognizes the better design and embraces the approach. The keyboard in Writer really is better, but it’s not the best. [As Shawn Blanc notes in […]

[Yesterday I posted about Laker Compendium](http://brooksreview.net/2012/12/laker-ipad/), an HTML 5 based iOS app framework for publishing magazines yourself. It looks very nice, but it still requires a lot of work and tweaking around in Xcode. [Today I found out about The Periodical Co, a new shop that has set out to](http://theperiodical.co) create a platform for building […]

[A while back I posted about the nRF8002 from Nordic Semiconductor and had this to say/wish](http://brooksreview.net/2012/06/bluetooth-proximity/): >I’ve long speculated that a better way to use geofencing is to make use of bluetooth chip to tell your phone where you actually are. Turns out, someone else makes the hardware already. The chip is a way to […]

“I started to become overly interested in how others operated and other benchmarks and achievements. What I should always have been concerned with was my own context and what my company needed.” — Nicholas Haralambous

[This is a fascinating way to create HTML5 based iOS apps.](http://www.lakercompendium.com) This model uses The Baker framework and adds custom styles giving a non-coding user a complete system for publishing an iPad app that is a Magazine. All you need to know is CSS and HTML — and from the 20 minutes I have spent […]

[Christopher Elliott may have written the best thing I have ever seen LinkedIn used for, reporting on a congressional hearing about the TSA](http://www.linkedin.com/today/post/article/20121130115318-332179-the-tsa-as-we-know-it-is-dead-here-s-why): >Charles Edwards, the Department of Homeland Security’s acting inspector general, described the TSA as bureaucratic and dysfunctional. Stephen Lord of the Government Accountability Office, suggested the agency was ignoring the thousands of […]

“He said the Navajo saw mistakes as moments in time. And since you can’t change time, why try to change a mistake that already happened?” — Jamie Ross via Jason Fried

[I’ve been to a few conferences where there stands an artsy guy with a large white sheet of paper that draws out what the speaker is saying over the course of the talk. These are called Sketchnotes.](http://rohdesign.com/book) Previously I thought these were the whim of the talented drawing type — something I am not. As […]

[When we last left off, I had come to the conclusion that the SOG Aegis Mini was the knife for me](http://brooksreview.net/2012/11/edc-search-pt1/). I love that little knife, but readers started to pour in with suggestions of their own — I whittled those suggestions down to five knives to try out. I purchased all five of these […]

[Harry Marks takes Dana Levine and Shawn Blanc to task over their stance on retina displays](http://curiousrat.com/home/2012/11/30/that-disruptive-retina-display): >Visible pixels matter and now that they’ve gone away, we certainly don’t want them to come back. Like Marks, I was pretty shocked to see [Shawn’s comment about the retina display, specifically this bit](http://shawnblanc.net/2012/11/levine-ipad-mini/): >As awesome as Retina displays […]

Looking at how popular sites frame their content, and how that effects reading flow.

>This week Shawn and Ben are joined by special guest and Internet Hero, Shaun Inman. Shaun is a designer and developer, the creator of Mint, Fever, The Last Rocket, and much, much more. We talk about web design, development, growing in your skill sets, learning new skills, video game jams, and launching a Kickstarter campaign. […]

“The Verge: We don’t mind dropping our paychecks on $500 tablets and $300 smartphones, but we draw the line at two dollar TV shows and fifteen dollar apps.” — Harry Marks

My first and only thought when I heard about [Fantastical for the iPhone](http://flexibits.com/fantastical-iphone): I wonder how that app translates… I wasn’t very excited and because I like Agenda I wasn’t yearning for a new iPhone calendar app. Time passed, and my love for Agenda began to wain from love to like — nothing major, just […]

*(This post is a part of a series on Keyboard Maestro, [see more here](http://brooksreview.net/tag/KM-SERIES/).)* As a blogger (I’m sure this applies to others) there are a lot of times when I am writing and need/want to grab a lot of source material to use. For me this typically involves a lot of copy and pasting […]

“Also, are nightmares covered by AppleCare? Because my sleep mode is NOT working right.” — Sam Weiner

[Miłosz Bolechowski wrote in to tell me that using Automator to change the date was silly because all of it can be done in Keyboard Maestro](http://www.fabryka-pikseli.com/2012/11/28/keyboard-maestro-i-data-w-nazwie-pliku/). This is a really complex version, but does work much faster than using Automator (my method). I actually had no clue just how easy it was to grab files […]

[Craig Mod in, what I am sure will become a point of reference for a lot of tablet-only publishers, has this to say about publishing on the iPad](http://craigmod.com/journal/subcompact_publishing/#sub_clarity) (via [Shawn Blanc](http://shawnblanc.net/2012/11/mod-publishing/)): >I’d be shocked if there weren’t a dozen other publishers prepping to launch similar magazines. Or, even better: someone building a system by which […]