The Brooks Review

Month: March 2013

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  • Quote of the Day: Bruce Schneier

    “Welcome to a world where Google knows exactly what sort of porn you all like, and more about your interests than your spouse does.” –Bruce Schneier

  • Blindly Drinking the Kool-Aid

    [Peter Matthaei has penned a response to](http://mobivangelist.com/post/45363132528/why-ben-brooks-is-totally-wrong-about-the-reader) [my post](http://brooksreview.net/2013/03/billlllllllions/) about the Reader shut down. I wanted to dissect his argument a bit, because it is very much on the exact opposite side of the spectrum from my argument. Matthaei: > The truth is, user-RSS is slowly dying. While I, and many of my friends, are…

  • When Even Billions of Dollars Won’t Support Free

    [Two years ago I wrote](http://brooksreview.net/2011/03/fragility-free/): > Sticking with Gmail for another example, imagine if Google decided that Gmail was a money loser and that it was to be shut down. Doesn’t matter what you offer to pay, in a week it’s gone. > This happens with free software and services, sometimes with paid services (but…

  • Bye Google Reader

    [Alan Green announcing the “sun setting” of Google Reader](http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html): > There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience. That’s a crock of shit. The…

  • Quote of the Day: Kontra

    “The list of grandiose promises and statements made by Google that turned out to be false and hypocritical is uncomfortably long.” — Kontra

  • No One Should Agree With You

    You know what’s boring? A room full of people that will only agree with you. You know what kind of blog post is boring? A blog post with a lot of words which all together don’t say much. I find that the two go hand in hand.

  • Quote of the Day: Philip Messing and Chuck Bennett

    “An undercover TSA inspector with an improvised explosive device stuffed in his pants got past two security screenings at Newark Airport — including a pat-down — and was cleared to get on board a commercial flight, sources told The Post yesterday.” — Philip Messing and Chuck Bennett

  • Bullshit Wait-listed Apps

    [Alli Dryer on the newly popular, incredibly annoying, iOS app wait list tactic](http://badyewex.com/words/2013/3/11/strong-reservations): >The idea behind the wait list is that once the backend systems have scaled up in step with demand, you’ll receive a code that unlocks the full feature set of the app and it will perform much much more better than it…

  • ‘Why I Like DST’

    The level-headed [Dr. Drang on daylight savings time](http://www.leancrew.com/all-this/2013/03/why-i-like-dst/) and studies that seek to prove the waste of DST: >Second, do these “studies” ever look into the productivity of people who can’t get a good night’s sleep from May through July because the sun streams into their bedroom at an ungodly hour and the birds start…

  • Keyboard Maestro Macro: Publishing to WordPress from iA Writer (kind of)

    One of the things I used to love about doing all of my writing in TextMate was publishing directly to this site using the “blogging” bundle. iA Writer is a better writing app than TextMate, so the tradeoff when I switched seemed fair, but I still get annoyed every time I copy and paste the…

  • Keeping Up-to-Date with Apps

    ## Justnotes Since I [reviewed Justnotes in May 2012](http://brooksreview.net/2012/05/justnotes/) there has been a number of enhancements to the app. The change that addresses my biggest complaint, is that file naming now makes logical sense. It’s still a great app that I use everyday, but now it’s a *lot* better. The latest update even added support…

  • Quote of the Day: Tim Sniffen

    “Is it way too late to take the ! out of our name? I always feel compelled to shout it. Granted, with larynx atrophy it only comes out as an anguished gurgle. Still. “ — Tim Sniffen

  • ‘Umbrella Lottery’

    [Dan Lewis explains how “chance of rain” is calculated and why it really isn’t a useful metric](http://nowiknow.com/umbrella-lottery/): >The problem is that the weather forecast does not focus solely on the roughly four square foot area you’re standing in, but rather, a much larger area enclosing hundreds of square miles. And while it may rain in…

  • Quote of the Day: Thomas Hawk

    “Being able to walk into a store and purchase something right there at the entrance in less than five minutes is the absolute height of customer service.” — Thomas Hawk

  • I did it with the whiffle ball bat

    [Jeff Plungis for Bloomberg on a TSA rule change that is upcoming](http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-03-05/tsa-will-permit-knives-golf-clubs-on-u-s-planes.html): > The agency will permit knives with retractable blades shorter than 6 centimeters (2.4 inches) and narrower than 1/2 inch at the widest point, TSA Administrator John Pistole said today at an aviation security conference in Brooklyn. This is one of the best…

  • Quote of the Day: Richard Branson

    “In 30 years time, as technology moves forward even further, people are going to look back and wonder why offices ever existed.” — Richard Branson

  • TypeEngine

    [Marco Arment is taking heat](http://www.marco.org/2013/03/02/calm-down-marco) [over comments made](http://www.marco.org/2013/03/02/type-engine) about TypeEngine — a new CMS/App that is coming out to allow individuals to publish periodicals on Newsstand. You can say it’s [sub-compact publishing](http://craigmod.com/journal/subcompact_publishing/), or that it is [The Magazine](http://the-magazine.org)-like all you want, but he truth is, systems like TypeEngine look great, are in demand, and will…

  • ‘It’s Time to Legalize Cell Phone Unlocking’

    [R. David Edelman](https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/its-time-legalize-cell-phone-unlocking?utm_source=wethepeople&utm_medium=response&utm_campaign=unlock) responding to a petition on We the People: >The White House agrees with the 114,000+ of you who believe that consumers should be able to unlock their cell phones without risking criminal or other penalties. In fact, we believe the same principle should also apply to tablets, which are increasingly similar to…

  • Quote of the Day: John Gruber

    “If openness were key, Linux should have succeeded everywhere. It has not.” — John Gruber

  • Your Goal Should Be to Almost Finish

    [Debbie Cafazzo for the local Tacoma News Tribune](http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/01/2494665/tacoma-school-board-raises-goal.html): >The Tacoma School Board Thursday officially raised the bar for expected graduation rates. Board members said they want the district’s overall graduation rate to hit 85 percent by the year 2020. They are following the tried and true Olympian mantra of trying for Bronze in an attempt…