The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • The Cosmonaut

    I have huge respect for the guys behind the Glif, but I don’t think this new dry-erase marker style iPad stylus will be useful. The simple fact is that iOS is not and has never been designed for use with a stylus. To make such a tool work you need the right software and there just isn’t software (perhaps even hardware) that can support the most fundamental uniqueness of drawing: pressure sensitivity.

  • Adding Other People’s TextExpander Snippets

    Brett Terpstra is the man when it comes to TextExpander — he is certainly at guru level bordering on achieving Buddha zen with the tool. He has shared a bunch of his snippets for us to add to our TextExpander libraries. Here is how you add them.

    And don’t forget you can add the pre-defined snippets as well. I love the pre-defined “Accented Words” (which accents characters for you, without you having to remember how to do this) and the “Internet Productivity” one that allows you to shorten a link with bit.ly.

  • Cultured Code & OTA Syncing

    Jürgen for Cultured Code on the state of OTA syncing in the still popular Things app:

    I’m sure the question on the mind of many readers is: when will I be able to play with Things cloud sync first-hand? As it happens, the integration of cloud sync with the Mac version is a little further ahead of its counterparts on iOS. We have therefore decided to start with a beta of Mac-to-Mac sync first.

    I can’t make this stuff up. Cultured Code needs to get a clue. Mac users aren’t the ones that need OTA syncing — iOS + Mac users are. This should be pretty obvious.

    The best part though is this bit:

    iOS devices will join the fun once we are confident with everything server-side.

    Which, given Cultured Code’s track record isn’t very reassuring.

    [Updated: 3.28.11 at 1:39 PM]

    So yeah, I guest their servers aren’t that “confident” yet:

    Due to high demand, we’re experiencing intermittent server downtime – thanks for your patience.

  • How to set post slugs from within WordPress’ iOS apps

    This trick is nothing short of amazing for iPad WordPress bloggers. Previously I had been creating the post and saving it as a draft, then going to the backend in Safari and editing the slug — obviously this is far better.

  • Shawn Blanc on “The Value of Twitter”

    Shawn Blanc in response to my “Twi$$er” ((The title of which has really been messing with Twitter itself and how it tries to pickup stupid things when you use a “$”. It has been quite funny to see how Twitter is screwing with this title.)) article, has this to say about Twitter in a footnote about his own article on the subject:

    It’s an article observing what Twitter as a company sees as their most important goals, and how, in some ways, nobility and ubiquity have become of higher value than profitability.

    Sure, I can see that argument — but there is no value in a service that dies next year because they can’t afford to keep running it. I highly doubt the U.S. government, or any other, see the “value” in Twitter to the point that they would “bail” Twitter out.

    Though Shawn knows that Twitter needs money to keep going, he also adds this to the discussion:

    It would be regrettable if those who cannot pay were locked out from using one of the most powerful tools for global communication and information sharing there has ever been. The NPR writer adds that “Twitter purposefully allows everyone access because information — both good and bad — should be allowed to flow freely.”

    I agree with that general notion — I truly do — but it is a heavily flawed view. The mail system is vital, yet it costs money to send a letter. The phone is crucial to the world, twice over, yet it costs money to place a phone call. The Internet is perhaps the most vital communication tool yet conceived by man, yet it costs money to gain access too. Power and water are also vital and, thus, we pay for them as well. Don’t forget that you must already pay to get on the Internet before you can even get to Twitter.

    I agree with Shawn that it would be ideal for Twitter to remain free and thus “open” for anyone to use. But, I don’t think it is viable and therefore I would rather pay for Twitter and subsequently exclude users — especially when the alternative would be Twitter going away.

    This is a great take by Shawn and I really do agree with it — I just don’t think it is possible and the reason I don’t think it is possible is stated clearly by Shawn:

    However, Twitter is not trying to answer the question of who would or would not stay and pay. They are trying to find a business model that will support those who cannot pay so even more of them will sign up.

    I think the tried and true method to support people who can’t pay is, and always has been, for those who can pay to subsidize that cost. Whether by making food stamps and shelter available this has been the U.S. way for quite some time. What I am saying is that as stupid as the “Pro” account model is — it very clearly subsidizes the cost for most ‘non-paying’ users.

    I think what everyone is forgetting is that Twitter isn’t trying to make the service free so those who can’t pay will continue to use Twitter, but they are trying to make it free for everyone — that way there is no room for competition.

  • Quick Takes on Five (Perhaps, Three) Apps #6

    Thanks for all the great suggestions last week, I will be checking a lot of them out. There also were some great ideas for me to do follow-up on some of these apps and I will try to do that every once and a while.

    Everyday (iPhone)

    Everyday is a photo app, but one where you take a picture of yourself everyday and the app will make a little movie out of it so you can see how your physical appearance changes over time. I have been taking pictures of myself for over a year now, but I had been using Photobooth, which means that I miss some days here and there. Everyday is great because it will shoot you a push reminder AND it helps you line up your pictures so that the movie will look even better. I really dig it.

    DaisyDisk (Mac OS X)

    DaisyDisk is a dead simple way to see what is eating all the space on your Mac’s hard drive. I used the tool recently to find 20GBs of wasted space that I reclaimed. It is a great tool and presents the data in a view pretty looking view. I like to have tools like this around so that I can check in from time to time on what is taking up space on my SSD.

    QR Code Reader and Scanner (iOS)

    I don’t really care at all about QR codes and have never felt the need to scan one — that is until REI sent me some dividend stuff and there was a QR code on it. Now I felt that I had to check that out. I knew that finding a good QR code app might be a challenge, so I downloaded a bunch (only free ones, because after all this is a stupid technology). Here’s the thing, this app is fast and works as advertised — so I don’t know what there is to complain about. Oh wait, I though of something: The name of the app is “…” on the homescreen which is just stupid of a developer to do.

    Be sure to check out more installments that actually have five apps in them: here.

  • CareerExcuse.com

    From the FAQ of this website that will be your fake reference for your fake company or residence:

    Is misinformation on a resume illegal?
    No, Since a resume is not a legal document, it is not illegal to misrepresent on a resume.

    Actually, it’s called Fraud.

    Which, according to dictionary.com, is:

    deceit, trickery, sharp practice, or breach of confidence, perpetrated for profit or to gain some unfair or dishonest advantage.

    So yeah…

  • “Open”

    MG Siegler on Google’s use of the term “open” when referring to Android:

    And in that context, being “more” open is like being “kind of ” pregnant.

  • Dear Twitter

    David Humphrey on why Twitter should charge it’s users:

    Watching you flail and fail with business models is depressing, when the one obvious one is being completely rejected.  I’m an adult. I have a job; and I use Twitter for my job.  I’d pay for this because it’s a useful part of my online experience.

    Needless to say I completely agree.

  • The B&B Podcast Episode 5

    Shawn and I spend the entire episode talking about some of the cool apps that we use on our Macs for getting all of our stuff done. Things like TextExpander, Droplr, Shortwave and others.

    This episode is sponsored by the very awesome Instacast.

  • The Audacity of Getting Paid

    Christopher Bowns:

    First, making money is easy: you must have the sheer audacity to charge for a product. Pinboard.in turned profitable in week one. Minecraft’s early sales helped bootstrap its development, and the developer has staffed up and found office space in the past six months to work on new features and new games.

    You actually need to ad the whole post because it is fantastic and exactly what I have been talking about.

  • Amazon’s Android Appstore

    MG Siegler:

    If you touch the screen in the wrong place — whoops — you just bought an app. Of course, this is assuming you have one-click purchasing turned on.

    Sounds like a swell experience.

  • Why Jumpcut Is Better Than LaunchBar

    Dr. Drang makes the case for using Jumpcut over LaunchBar when it comes to clipboard history. Looks interesting, but slower than LaunchBar, even with the implied advantages that the Doctor points out.

    What are you guys using for clipboard histories?

  • Miniot iPad 2 Cover

    This cover blows my mind, there isn’t much on the site for it, but check out the video TUAW has.

  • Quote of the Day: James Shelley

    “It gives me pause: what would my life look like if the whole world judged me only by the worst choice I ever made?”

  • Allow Yourself a Sick Day

    Elliot Jay Stocks speaking to all freelancers and self-employed people:

    So I think that we should all take more time off, and when we’re feeling rough, we should accept that nothing good is going to come of it, and just let ourselves be sick; because being ill is inevitable.

    Since graduating from college in 2005 I have not had a single boss — I have always done my own thing. If you ask my wife she will be the first to tell you that I never take time off. There is always the pressure looming over my head that if I stop working, I stop getting money — and that’s not good. I made a vow that this year I would take more than 4 days away from the office to really enjoy my life.

    So far so good, I even took a couple of sick days already this year and I feel better than ever about that work/life balance stuff.

  • Markdown OS X Services

    Watts Martin has some great tips for creating Markdown services in OS X. Personally I use FastScripts to do a lot of this same stuff, but Automator is free and already on your Mac.

  • How NY Times Paywall Could Turn Out to Be a Success

    Felix Salmon on why the paywall at the NYT could work out pretty well for them:

    The point here is that the paywall is responsible for multiple revenue streams, not just its own narrow subscription revenues. It will drive marginal readers to the print product, especially at weekends — and thereby shore up or even increase print-ad revenues from the weekend paper.

    I hadn’t thought about that — what a great ((Whereby ‘great’ I mean pointless.)) idea, leveraging modern, popular, technology to shore up a dead business.

  • Twi$$er

    We have a problem: Twitter one of the last useful “social networks” ((I spit on you Facebook.)) needs to start making money and fast. Making money isn’t really the problem, the problem is how Twitter wants to make money and how the need for money is fundamentally changing the service itself.

    Right now Twitter seems to be using “Promoted Tweets” and “Promoted Trends” as their way to monetize the service. I have no clue how much these ads cost, or how many they run at once, but lets just say they are making $100,000 (This article says $80k and this WSJ article says $100k) off of each of the two — for one day. Let’s assume there are 3 of these running each day. That means that in one month Twitter has made roughly $9 million dollars (again assuming they can find 3 advertisers willing to pay $100k every day). I think that is unlikely given how ineffective I can only imagine these ads are.

    Marco Arment on the latest episode of Build & Analyze pleaded for Twitter to just inject ads into the users tweet stream every so often. A good idea (one that I support), but again it would be very difficult to keep the revenue at a high enough level without allowing just about every advertiser. Google makes a lot of money in $1000 chunks, not in $100,000 lump sums.

    What if Twitter decided to start charging users?

    Imagine that Twitter’s estimated 200 million user base was asked to pay $6 a year to use the service (something that would amount to $0.50 a month). I would guess Twitter would lose some users — let’s be brutal and assume they lose 70% of users instantly. That leaves the service with about 60 million users – a large drop.

    That is 60 million paying users though, and at $0.50 each monthly that amounts to $30 million dollars in revenue each month. To put it another way: if Twitter charged users $0.50 a month and lost 70% of their user base, they would still make $21 million dollars more each month than I estimate they do with promoted tweets and trends.

    Now we have to go back and look at my original math, to get a promoted [whatever] to reach $30 million in revenue each month Twitter would need to be running 10 of these promoted items everyday at $100,000 each. That just doesn’t seem likely to me. Perhaps they are and I just don’t see them, but if I am not seeing them, then how beneficial can they possibly be to businesses? And if they are of little benefit to businesses, then they won’t sell for very long.

    There are some obvious things going on here:

    1. We must assume that Twitter wants the service to remain free to users at all costs. ((Given their current behavior.))
    2. We must further assume that Twitter doesn’t want to display traditional ads. ((Given their current behavior.))

    Making those assumptions means that Twitter has decided a large, vast, user base is better than a small profitable user base. I am not here to argue which they should do, but I think it needs to be noted that if 30% of Twitter’s estimated 200 million user base paid just $0.50 a month — Twitter would be making gobs of money.

    Or think about this: what if you could pay $29 a year (like a Flickr Pro account) and in return your account would be verified (telling the world it is actually you) and you wouldn’t see promoted anything. Thus, Twitter could keep serving those promoted items and charge the power users not to see them. I would guess that the ‘Pro’ accounts would bring in more money than the ads do on a month by month basis if such a system were to be implemented.

  • The iPad, A Year Later

    John Carey checking in on his iPad usage:

    I have a simple Manhattan Portage messenger bag with a space that perfectly fits my iPad and it’s lovely cushy sleeve that I wrote about here before and it makes it so very easy to pull out my iPad and instantly be checking my mail, opening up a tech manual for a new piece of gear at work, catching up on the latest news, or sharing a few photos quickly and easily on the big screen. This kind of casual quick approach computing isn’t as accessible on a laptop. Well, maybe on one of those tiny little MacBook airs to an extent but not in the same way.

    Carey makes some great points about how his iPad usage has transformed. For me I used the iPad a lot the first month I got it then the usage waned a bit before it just took off like a rocket. It takes time to get used to computing on the iPad, but once you do you can’t imagine not having one — at least I can’t