The Brooks Review

Year: 2012

  • RIM’s Failed Hail Mary

    Dustin Curtis on BlackBerry 10:

    >Instead, they released something uninspiring, uninteresting, and unfinished.

    His take on the crazy new camera are spot on. RIM is just flailing around, drowning, in a wading pool of thier own stupidity.

  • 6 Months Away

    MG Siegler on Google’s Schmidt and his constant 6-month promises:
    >It’s either going to be an extremely busy June for Google — or an extremely busy June for Google’s PR department when Google fulfills none of Schmidt’s promises.

  • ‘Pro Photographers Potentially Ruining Instagram?’

    Jorge Quinteros:
    >The purpose of an app like Instagram is to celebrate the increasingly mobile culture. There’s no right way or wrong way to use the service but sharing dSLR photos on Instagram seems almost like violating the spirit of the app.

    Even more than that: posting photos that you didn’t take, posting photos of text to share “your message” — come to think of it I don’t miss Instagram, even though I really loved it.

  • Quote of the Day: Nick Bilton

    “Getting acquired while producing no revenue is like performing a card trick without the deck of cards: the magician simply explains how magical the trick is, never actually showing it.”

  • PDFpen OCR Folder Action Script

    This is excellent.

  • ‘Why We Shouldn’t Make Separate Mobile Websites’

    Bruce Lawson:
    >The vital point is that you never know better than your users what content they want. When Nielsen writes that mobile websites should “cut features, to eliminate things that are not core to the mobile use case; [and] cut content, to reduce word count and defer secondary information to secondary pages,” he forgets this fact.

    [Amen](https://brooksreview.net/2011/06/the-mobile-web/).

  • Owning Your Own VPN, Securing Your Browsing

    A fantastic tutorial to setup a VPN connection between your Mac and an Amazon EC2 instance. It’s not free, but it’s cheap and besides you Amazon is theoretically the only one that could snoop on you (well probably the NSA too). I like this a lot better than services like Cloak for my Mac — the tutorial even includes a method for making the VPN automatically active when you are not on a secure wireless network.

    It’s fantastic — takes a bit to setup though.

    [via Dave Klem]

  • Barnes & Noble, Microsoft Form Strategic Partnership

    I bet this was the last move Microsoft wanted to make, but it’s smart on the part of both parties. The local news in Microsoft country was talking up two things:

    1. That this would bring a Nook app to Windows Phones and Windows 8;
    2. That this would enable Nook to use Windows 8 as it’s backbone.

    The first makes sense and Microsoft has already said that, but the second is really odd. Would BN just dump Android and head over to Windows 8? I can’t imagine they could produce the devices at a low price point without sacrificing performance even more if they used Win 8.

    I bet the Nook stays with Android for the next few years at least.

  • [Sponsor] Drafts

    Drafts is the quick way to capture and share ideas on your iPhone or iPod Touch. Drafts reduces the friction between you and that next great tweet, email, or task. Drafts opens with a new ready to edit draft – enter your text, and you’ve captured that thought. When you’re ready to do something with that idea, Drafts offers a growing set of output options: Tweet, Email, Message, Export – or send to other apps like OmniFocus, Things, Tweetbot and more.

    It’s even in Ben’s dock, [take a look](http://c276381.r81.cf1.rackcdn.com/IMG_0982.jpg).

    Only $0.99 on the App store.

  • ‘Apple to Crush Carriers, Become Direct Service Provider’

    Zach Epstein:
    >“What has been holding Apple back from becoming a wireless provider already, according to Bluestein, are the enormous handset subsidies paid by mobile operators (AT&T, VZW and Sprint in the US), which amount to about $381 for each iPhone sold today,” Bluestein noted. ”That has been a short-term stumbling block for Apple, but the company has its well-known cash reserves and could seize the initiative at any point.”

    Seriously, that’s what you think is holding Apple back? How about the fact that they would have to build a wireless network and get the spectrum to do that from the FCC? Apple can figure out the phone subsidies, but magically making a cell network infrastructure appear is likely to be much harder.

    Apple could lease access from existing carriers, but what motivation would carriers have to lease this to Apple? None.

    I must be missing something here.

  • ‘Apple Squared, (Four)squared’

    Mor Naaman makes the case for Apple buying Foursquare and Square — it’s a compelling case and it would likely be Google’s worst nightmare (short of Facebook buying these two companies).

    >To summarize: after the deal, Apple will immediately become a giant payments company, with an installation base that is expected to encompass half of all mobile devices sold. The company will have the best local search abilities, far exceeding any existing recommendation engine. And due to its enormous reach, it will possess a payment system that merchants will line up to support.

    Fantastic idea.

  • iPads Hate the Outdoors

    Om Malik citing a Actix press release:
    >95% of iPad usage is indoors.

    Not surprising, even in the gray overcast that is western Washington, it’s not easy to use an iPad outside.

  • In Related RIM News

    Turns out RIM was indeed behind the Wake Up campaign, so maybe giving out phones with no Internet is RIM’s way of showing that they are better than iPhones.

    Someone needs to tell RIM to wake up.

  • ‘A Wave of Application Support’

    Ian Austen reporting on the new BlackBerry handed out to developers:

    >Among the features missing on the prototype phones given to software developers was the ability to actually make phone calls or access wireless networks.

    No word yet on whether these phones come with ethernet cables, all we know is that:

    >“The reason why we’re doing this — which is unprecedented for us and it’s quite uncommon in the industry — is because we want to create a wave of application support behind the new BlackBerrys before we bring them to market,” Mr. Saunders said in an interview on Friday at a RIM office here where much of the new operating system was developed. “If we launch without applications, well, it will be slow.”

    Ah, whatever I am sure developers will get cracking on developing for the phone that can’t get on the internet, wait what’s that you say:

    >The incompleteness of the phone only becomes apparent when it is switched on. Most notably, it is still missing the on-screen interface that will be offered to consumers, which Mr. Saunders said developers would see this summer.

    Oh, now that’s just sad.

  • Secrets of the Archive Utility

    Tip number five has been a long time favorite of mine.

  • ‘Minimize Distractions with Keyboard Maestro’

    Dan Byler has a neat Keybaord Maestro macro to hide apps after a certain amount of time. He is using it to keep distractions to a minimum, but I think it would be pretty neat to do the same with my accounting apps so that prying eyes don’t get to pry too much data. There’s some other neat use cases I can think of too.

  • FlyRights

    New app to file complaints directly to the TSA & DHS. Something tells me the TSA/DHS is not going to enjoy this app being out there. I don’t know — call me crazy — I just get that sense.

    [via Lots of Emailers]

  • Google’s Secret Weapon

    John Moltz:
    >Basically, you dock your phone and it becomes your desktop computer. Which surely couldn’t lead to any kind of compromised user experience.

    I wonder what it would be like playing back a Flash YouTube video from your phone that is powering a 24″ screen — I mean phones don’t have fans, so the phone would just, erm, melt — right?

  • Apple’s Response on Its Tax Practices

    Man is this response seething with contempt… Love it.

  • Dropbox’s Photo Intercept

    A new “feature” of Dropbox is that it shows a nag screen when it detects a photo card being attached to your Mac — it’s an annoying and B.S. move if you ask me.

    See also: