The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • [SPONSOR] Billings Pro

    Billings Pro is a multi-user time tracking and invoicing solution for the Mac and iPhone, with a Web interface for timekeepers. With Marketcircle Cloud we’ll worry about all the setup, hosting, and backup of your data. We host it, you access it – from anywhere, anytime.

  • Preparing for John Siracusa’s Review of OS X Lion‬‏

    What an amazing way to start off the week.

  • Jesus Diaz Doesn’t Get It

    Jesus Diaz for the Giz:
    >Mac OS X Lion still works. It’s fast. It’s solid. Its shortcomings could be partially fixed. And I’m sure that many will learn these new user interfaces patches and live with them. Me? I’d rather wait for a more coherent operating system.

    He’s wrong, really wrong. I have my review 99% finished and it will be live the same day as Apple pushes out Lion. That said, there are a handful of new features in Lion that if they were the only *new* features would make the $29 easily worth it.

  • Solving the Scoble Problem in Social Networks

    Rocky Agrawal commenting on social networks:
    >Paradoxically, the extent to which the constraints of Twitter stifle conversation helped its growth. Because real conversation is hard using Twitter (vs. just tweeting out your own story) there isn’t the expectation that people will engage with you in it. Because tweets disappear as the firehose continues to gush, it’s easier to ignore them.

    And a bit later:

    >The current Google+ interface would be less appealing to celebrities, because the interface is designed to invite conversation and engagement.

    That seems to be the main problem that I have with Google+ ((And yes, I have now joined up on Google+ so that I can accurately comment on it.)) , I don’t like being forced — or feeling obligated — into responding to people. It gets me into trouble many places (Twitter, Email, voice mails), but at the end of the day I don’t have the time, care, or concern to give a proper response ((Anything less is not worth responding)) to everyone that pings me — it’s not something I say with pride and unfortunately is a ‘humble brag’, but I don’t know how else to explain it.

    I’ll have more thoughts on Google+ this week…

  • Dave Winer: Why Twitter May Have Trouble Monetizing

    Some great points in here and I feel like this statement:

    >Twitter was better when there were fewer people there.

    Is the most common complain I hear about Facebook from “original” users. He has some good points and this is well worth a read. (It’s short.)

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 18: 36 Hours Without Internet

    >In this episode Shawn and Ben talk about life without Internet, purposefully not responding to Email, Google+, and the HP TouchPad’s future.

    Brought to you by: [Authentic Jobs](http://www.authenticjobs.com/?ref=fusiona)

  • Verbs App

    A big thanks to #include tech for sponsoring this weeks’ RSS feed to promote their excellent iPhone app: Verbs. With the launch of Verbs Pro (available through an in-app purchase) you can now stay connected to your IM accounts for up to 7 days.

    That’s a killer feature that I personally love — Verbs keeps me from using Twitter’s DMs as an IM platform, which is better for everyone. It really is a good app and if you are an IM fiend you should definitely check it out.

  • Dave Winer on ‘Corporations’

    Dave Winer has a great take on not just Google+, but social networks and companies in general. A lot of what he is saying resonates with me, at the end of the day I just want to own **my** data.

  • Quote of the Day: Warren Buffett

    “I could end the deficit in 5 minutes. You just pass a law that says that anytime there is a deficit of more than 3% of GDP all sitting members of congress are ineligible for reelection.”

  • Google+ and “Privacy”

    [Lukas Mathis on Google+](http://ignorethecode.net/blog/2011/07/07/oliver_reichenstein_on_googleplus/):
    >To me, it feels as if Facebook is constantly trying to trick me into doing things that are good for Facebook’s bottom line, but bad for me.

    and later:

    >Perhaps most importantly, Google+ handles privacy in a prominent and intuitive way.

    In fairness Mathis is likely talking about privacy between users, not privacy between users and the service provider (Google in this case).

    However, the latter case of privacy is far more important and is identical between Facebook and Google: in both cases, you the user, is the product that the company is selling.

    As far as Google+’s [privacy policy](https://www.google.com/intl/en-US/+/policy/):

    >We will record information about your activity – such as posts you comment on and the other users with whom you interact – in order to provide you and other users with a better experience on Google services.

    That’s the same stuff they use in the normal privacy policy language, and correct me if I am wrong, but the number one Google “service” is targeted advertising. I’m not so stupid to accuse Google of handing over your information to advertisers — that’d be a bad business move by Google (they want to own that information) — but certainly Google+ is a fantastic way to serve even more targeted ads to users (even if those ads never appear on Google+ itself).

    Yes, call me paranoid, but [Gruber’s right](http://daringfireball.net/linked/2011/07/05/bray-google-plus) — Google wants Google+ to be huge, because it is the fastest and most accurate way to better target advertising — of which it makes billions off of doing — not because they want to compete with Facebook.

  • The HP TouchPad & Dropbox

    Shawn Blanc reviewing the HP TouchPad:
    >There is not a Dropbox app in the Catalog, but rather a system-level sign-in for Dropbox.

    Why is this the first I am hearing of this awesome feature? Shawn says that apps have native access to Dropbox once you make the link. This is amazing and very cool.

    Too bad the overall impression of the TouchPad is that it isn’t very good.

  • I’m Quitting Email

    MG Siegler:
    >For the rest of this month, I’m not going to respond to any emails. None.

    Who hasn’t wanted to do this? This blog generates about 75% of all emails that I get. At first I responded to 99% of all emails that I received and I did so with as much care as time allotted. Just over a month ago I was pretty fed up with responding to emails, so I stopped.

    I didn’t stop reading emails, I just stopped responding to 95% of them. I feel like a dick when I don’t respond, but I also know that by not responding I have more time for other things and I am happier because of it.

    I still read 70% of the email that I get, but I don’t feel guilty if I don’t read it. I do however read 100% of @replies that I get on Twitter — so you do have that option if you luck out getting in touch with me (well for as long as I remain on Twitter).

    Kudos to MG, I may not be far behind — I have long desired to make Twitter the only way you can “comment”.

  • Apple’s App Store Downloads Top 15 Billion

    Apple press release:
    >Apple has paid developers over $2.5 billion to date.

    Anybody know how much Google has paid out to developers?

  • Quote of the Day: Tom Ford

    “You should put on the best version of yourself when you go out in the world because that is a show of respect to the other people around you.”
    [via Om Malik]

  • What’s Yours Stays Yours

    Dropbox clarifies its new Terms of Service, re-writing the section that got many hot and bothered, here’s their explanation of the changes:
    >We’ve never been interested in rights broader than what we need to run Dropbox. We want to get this language right so that you’re comfortable using Dropbox with no reservations: what’s yours is yours.

    Bottom line: all that language before was lawyer speak that allowed Dropbox to implement features like sharing and galleries and hosting. The new language is dead simple.

  • The “Cloud” and “Privacy”

    *This is a reminder.*

    Unrealistic expectations: I think that is probably the best way to describe the general ‘internet communities’ take on Dropbox and the privacy/security woes the company has been facing. I know this to be the case because the fastest way to be the #1 story on the web right now, would be to post about how your entire life was ruined by any security lapse or overreaching policy that Dropbox has.

    “Man has entire life savings wiped out from security lapse at Dropbox.”

    “Women faces lawsuit after incriminating data turned over by Dropbox.”

    Normally it would be fair to say any and all of the following about me:

    1. Picky
    2. Paranoid
    3. Pessimistic

    However in the case of Dropbox I am not paranoid, nor am I pessimistic about their future. I think the biggest problem that Dropbox faces is user education.

    Companies really need to start hitting users over the head with the following information:

    – Bad things happen to good people and good companies. Once the data is out of your control, it is indeed out of your control — be vigilant about what data you let out of your control.
    – In the U.S. the government can and will seize your data through the use of the legal system. U.S. companies **must** comply with this, but you only need be concerned if your are doing something shady. ((Because of that ‘innocent until proven guilty’ thing we got going on I am going with shady instead of illegal.))

    ### Smart Usage

    I took a look through everything that I keep in Dropbox yesterday and I determined that, of all the files I keep there the most sensitive ones are financial files for iBank. These files don’t contain bank account numbers (they could, but I choose not to) so essentially you would just get to see how much money I make and how much *more* money I spend if you hacked into my Dropbox account.

    That is, yesterday you could potentially have seen that data.

    In about 5 minutes I created a few encrypted DMGs with the password saved on my Mac. That adds one extra step (opening the DMG) when I do weekly accounting, yet that one tiny step secured everything “sensitive”.

    Sure, I don’t *want* everything in my Dropbox folder to be public, but if it was to get exposed it certainly wouldn’t amount to anything more than a really bad day.

    With any “cloud” service you run the risk of your data being seen by someone other than you — it doesn’t matter which company is providing the service — this can and will happen.

    If you accept this inherent risk, and you use the services accordingly, there is nothing to fear. So stop freaking out about Dropbox and it’s security — either accept the risks or don’t use the service.

    ### Pondering a Way for a Better Security System by a Guy Who Knows Nothing About Security or Programming

    If you take Dropbox and how it currently works, say you ditch the website version. Once you ditch the website, Dropbox itself (as an entity) has no need to know which files are yours and where those files are, only your computers need to know that information.

    It would be like a giant pool of those gross plastic balls that kids “swim” around in, only each ball is owned by a different person. Each person has marked the balls that they own in a unique way, but only the person that marked the ball knows what the mark is theirs. Thus an individual can find the balls that they own, but no one else would know that those balls belong to them and since all balls look the same, well you get the point.

    Of course the whole thing is kept in a locked cage to keep out puzzle solvers.

    This is security by obfuscation. If you couple this type of routine with what Dropbox [is doing](https://www.dropbox.com/privacy#security), then you have a system that becomes exponentially more useless to would be attackers. That is, you could see my financial “data” above (again without the account numbers) but you wouldn’t have much of a way to attach that data to me.

    This also significantly makes government seizure a more difficult process — if Dropbox literally doesn’t know where, or what is, my data then how could they possibly hand it over?

    No system is going to be perfect, so remember that when iCloud launches.

  • Quote of the Day: Mike Monteiro

    “Because ultimately, people may come for the difference, but they stay for the stuff.”

  • The Doom of Publishing Circa 1982

    Robert Reinhold reporting for the New York Times on a National Science Foundation report from 1982, even then the coming technology was known to represent a massive change for publishers:

    >”Videotex systems create opportunities for individuals to exercise much greater choice over the information available to them,” the researchers wrote. “Individuals may be able to use videotex systems to create their own newspapers, design their own curricula, compile their own consumer guides.

    Fast forward almost 30 years and publishers are only just now realizing what was reported, by a newspaper no less.

  • Capture — the Quick Video Camera for iPhone

    This is a great little app that I have been beta testing for a while now. What I love about the app is how simple it is: tap the icon and the video starts recording the moment the app is launched. I don’t have kids, but I can only imagine this would quickly become a killer app if I did.

    Even without kids in my household this app gets plenty of use — I find that when I want to record something, the built in camera app is consistently too slow to make it worth my while.

    The app is $0.99 and available now — go get it.

    One last note: The app icon, it’s the best icon on my iPhone home screen.

  • Quote of the Day: John Gruber

    “If it works out as they hope, the result is that we’ll wind up thinking of this social network at least as much as we do about web search when we think of “Google”.”