The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Quick Hit: Microsoft & Nokia

    I had a few emails in my inbox today about the new Nokia and Microsoft partnership that the collective ‘we’ of the Internet had been expecting. Here is the announcement from Microsoft and here is Nokia’s. Those that did write me about this wanted to know what it means for Windows Phone 7 — nobody cared about Nokia. That should be telling about the relevance of Nokia in todays smart phone market.

    So does this partnership allow Windows Phone 7 to gain traction?

    I don’t think this announcement does much for either company. Windows Phone 7 is a very good 1.0 smart phone operating system — and the mobile OS I would choose if I were not able to have an iPhone — but Microsoft already has a decent selection of Windows Phone 7 handsets out there that are not selling that well. Nokia is a lost brand on consumers these days — most U.S. consumers will only remember the iconic ‘dumb’ phones that cellular providers would give you for free.

    A few things happen with this announcement:

    1. Microsoft gets yet another manufacturer to join the fold, this can only help with unit sales.
    2. Nokia is no longer a known brand and because of that consumers don’t care — consumers only know two cell phone brands these days: Smart phones and iPhones. Thus, Nokia proves its irrelevance.
    3. Google should feel embarrassed.

    This doesn’t really help make Windows Phone 7 a major competitor and I don’t think this deal helps Nokia in the slightest. Nokia is now a lesser HTC and Windows Phone 7 is now being sold by a lesser HTC. Big deal. Consumers couldn’t care less about a manufacturer — that in the U.S. is not known for smart phones — so this deal is irrelevant here. I imagine that in Europe this is a bigger deal, but more so because of the implications for the once great brand of Nokia.

    This deal should really make the Android team at Google wake up — why would Nokia choose a platform that ‘costs’ them money? ((There are reports that Microsoft paid Nokia.)) I think the answer lies in both Elop and Nokia’s culture. Clearly Elop is tied with Microsoft, but more than that Windows Phone 7 is far better looking and feeling than Android and that matters.

    Nokia wanted something that looked good on its phones — not just something that was free. They can’t get iOS, so Windows Phone 7 is the next best thing. This doesn’t mean they are done making their own OS and if they are smart that are buying time with Windows Phone 7 so they can make a true competitor.

  • How To Sync Any Local Folder to Dropbox

    A clever little tip for using Symlinks on a Mac to sync folders ‘outside’ of the Dropbox folder. There are two utilities for hacking Dropbox one for Windows and one for Macs.

  • iPhone Exploit Puts Passwords At Risk Within Minutes

    Graham Spencer on the exploit:

    The only way at this stage to prevent such an attack is to avoid the attacker from physically accessing the iPhone…

    I have never had the delusion that my data was secure if someone else has my phone — do people really think their data is safe if they lose their phone?

  • Micro-Payment Dilemma

    I am a huge fan of Readability’s new payment system — both because I want to support others and because I appreciate any support of this site. I was also very excited when Instapaper and Readability were tied in together since I don’t normally use Readability. I have one major problem though: I send everything I read through Instapaper and I don’t necessary want to support every site that I read.

    That may seem unreasonable, or even mean to some, but truthfully there are some sites that I read that I really don’t want to support.

    I thought perhaps that Instapaper solved this problem with the recent addition of these options:

    Screen shot 2011 02 10 at 8 48 13 AM

    Originally I had the first option selected, but by virtue of the fact that I didn’t want to give money to all publishers I read, I changed to the second option. Now only publishers whose articles I star will get credit.

    This seems like a great solution — until I got to thinking about it more.

    The problem is I star very few articles — I save starred items for articles that I think are of excellent quality — which means that there are some very good articles on sites that I truly want to support, that just won’t get support under this system. I don’t want to star non-excellent articles just so I can support the publisher — I only star things that I think are excellent.

    The last option seems like it would be ideal, except that when I want to remove an item from Instapaper I would need to delete it — otherwise that publisher gets my money. Deleting items in Instapaper requires two clicks. Two clicks is too much friction for me.

    Perhaps this all seems silly to you, but I truly want to be able to give select sites money with as little friction as possible.

    For now, my solution is to keep the Readability bookmarklet in Safari so that I can give those not-quite-star-worthy articles money, as well as those that I star in Instapaper. I don’t know what the best solution is, because adding a ‘send-money’ button in Instapaper would also require two clicks (one to send the money and one to archive it).

    What I can tell you is that what I have today is a far better system than what I had two weeks ago.

  • Full Instapaper API

    Marco Arment on the Instapaper blog:

    Full API access, but only for paid-subscriber accounts. In other words, all developers can use the Full API, but it will only work for customers with Instapaper’s $1/month Subscription memberships.

    That is clever.

  • Improving Basecamp Email Notifications

    I am a big fan of Basecamp and this update to the email notification system is great and I love that they include a Mail.app rule for filtering it in the blog post. Good stuff.

  • The Next Six Months

    John Gruber thinks that 2011 might yield two new iPad models. If this is true my wallet will hurt.

    He is guessing the iPad 2 comes out in April and another iPad in September.

    What I know for sure: HP, RIM, Google, et al., hope that there are no new iPad models in 2011.

  • Spot on Description of The Daily

    Marco Arment with the best description of what The Daily content is:

    It’s acceptable, for what it is: a very lightweight rundown of the previous day’s most mass-marketable news, with an editorial or two that usually leave me wanting more depth.

  • Why Native USB 3.0 for Mac Won’t Happen

    Matt Tinsley:

    Regardless, and getting back to the Mac Life article, it’s unlikely that we’ll see Apple natively support USB 3.0 because Light Peak is on the horizon — be that a distant one. In my humble opinion, with the slow adoption of USB 3.0, and its imminent obsoleteness with Light Peak around the corner, it wouldn’t make sense for Apple to introduce a technology that’s about to be replaced by a better one.

    I still think we will see USB 3 as dropping support for USB won’t come for years, so why wouldn’t you just go with the fastest spec (maintain backwards compatibility). Macs could have BOTH after all. ((As seen with the FireWire and USB ports living side by side.))

  • iOS Needs to Add Single-Game Data Back-Up and Restoration

    With many good iOS games reaching 1GB+ in size, users are finding that they need to delete games more often. Craig Grannell points out the problem with that:

    The only difference is that an iOS device can hold a bunch of ‘cartridges’, but when one’s removed, the result is the same: all your progress is lost.

    This is a real problem and not just because of the size of the games themselves. When I go on trips I slim down my games and apps to maximize space for photos, videos, music on my iOS devices — I would love to have game progress backed up.

  • Near Field Communications (NFC)

    Ars Technica has a great primer on the NFC technology that will soon become ubiquitous in our lives. Bottom line: there are flaws and the only way it will succeed is for widespread adoption to occur. Or, to put it simply, how badly does the world want to rid themselves of a wallet?

  • The Stylus

    Touch screens never used to really be touch screens — we all knew that they required one very important tool to use: the stylus. That small, cheap, piece of plastic, that bent uncomfortably in our hand, is what we used to control our Palm Pilots, our Treos and the grocery store credit card terminals.

    Touch screens were devices that lived on TV and while they could be operated with our chubby fingers they were imprecise tools at the forefront of technological dreams. We bought styluses in packs of three, four times a year — losing them was a common occurrence.

    The iPhone came out and we Treo and Blackberry wielding masses wondered where the stylus was stored. Turned out, the iPhone was the first device that didn’t require such a clumsy input device. Then came the iPad, further pushing out the idea of the stylus.

    This all seems logical, except: last week I bought a stylus for my iPad.

    iPad Stylus

    Sixty-seven seconds after unpacking the stylus I immediately regretted the $20 purchase.

    I should be clear here, I purchased the Griffin Stylus for iPad and it is not a flawed product – it is an unnecessary one.

    Why

    The few people that saw me using the stylus immediately asked why I would want one and the answer is simple: to have another piece of digital ammo for meetings. I thought that perhaps a stylus in conjunction with the iPad and an app like Penultimate would make for a killer setup. I wanted to accomplish a few things:

    1. Better sketches.
    2. Be able to write readable handwritten scrawls that don’t take up an entire screen.
    3. To be able to draw straighter lines and rounder circles. ((No, really.))

    I figured that $19 plus shipping and handling wasn’t too much money — so why not just give it a go.

    Result

    Much in the same way as Photoshop can’t make you a better photographer — a stylus for your iPad does nothing to make you a better sketcher. My hope was that I could get more nuanced control of the sketches, but in actuality the stylus is no more finite than using my pinky finger is. ((I honestly should have guessed this.))

    That’s OK, I moved on to the handwriting tests. I tried very hard to see if I could get normal looking handwriting with the stylus and the best I came up with were scrawls that were 20% smaller than if I used my index finger.

    That is: no you don’t write better with a stylus than you do with your finger on the iPad. I think a large factor of this is the multi-touch surface. You really need to be able to rest your hand on the screen, without invoking an action, before you can write legibly on the iPad.

    I bet you have guessed by now that having a stylus will not help you draw straighter lines or rounder circles. I actually think it may be worse off for that.

    At the end of the day the stylus I bought did nothing that I wanted it to do.

    In a fit of desperation, trying to find something good to say about using a stylus with the iPad I opened up Layers Pro. I will say that the stylus does seem like it might be helpful for painting type work — but people seem to get along just fine with their fingers alone.

    Hardware

    That leaves use with the hardware of the stylus itself. There isn’t much to say as it is a sturdy, but small piece of aluminum. The tip is interesting — it feels like a deflated inner-tube. It is rubber and glides across my finger print laden iPad screen with greater ease than my finger normally would.

    iPad Stylus Tip

    Overall I think it is a solidly made product.

    Future Improvements

    The greatest reason why a stylus doesn’t make sense for the iPad is because there is no pressure sensitivity on the multi-touch input tablet. Most people that have used a Wacom tablet will tell you that they love being able to vary the brush size based on how hard they are pressing — this is how you actually draw, with light and heavy strokes — all without having to stop and adjust the brush size.

    Right now there is no pressure sensitivity on the iPad and therefore no reason to own a stylus.

    This is not to say that the iPad needs pressure sensitivity — it probably doesn’t — but in order for a stylus to make sense with the iPad, the iPad needs pressure sensitivity.

  • Stupidity

    Felix Salmon for Reuters talking about The New York Times website design versus the Huffington Post:

    Most importantly, the HuffPo page is genuinely, compellingly, interactive — it’s almost impossible to visit it without finding something you want to click on. Like! Comment! Tweet! Go here! Try this! Visit that! There’s site navigation, yes, but that’s just one layer of a very rich and complex page architecture. At the NYT page, by contrast, to get out of the Media Decoder blog you either have to click on a generic navigation button like “Sports,” or else you’ll just leave the page and the site completely.

    Ok now that you read that look at a comparison picture of the two pages provided in the Reuters post:

    Comparison2

    You sensible readers will probably be thinking: “HuffPo is ugly and annoying looking.” Thanks for thinking that, but Salmon continues:

    The fact is that readers come to the NYT — or any website — because they want to read its stories. They don’t much care about branded sections, or deciphering the difference between a news story and a blog entry.

    Right, which is why this early statement of yours makes no sense:

    Still, the difference between the two pages is much starker than it needs to be: the NYT page is like walking into a library, while the HuffPo page is like walking through Times Square. The HuffPo page is full of links to interesting stories elsewhere on the site — about Egypt, or the kid in the Superbowl Darth Vader ad, or the stories my Facebook friends are reading. And there are lot of links to media stories, too; each one has a photo attached.

    I don’t know about you, but Times Square is the last place I go to try and read stories. Times Square, just like HuffPo, is distraction overload. I recommend reading HuffPo with Safari Reader (not Readability, they don’t need any more of my money).

  • Get the Basecamp Mobile Interface in Your Menu Bar With Fluid

    I am not a huge fan of having a lot of stuff in my menubar, but this is a very neat trick and I rather like it.

  • SXSW

    I will be at SXSWi this March and would love to meet any of you readers that are attending. February 11th is the last day to get discounted prices on a badge, then it goes up to the walk-up rate.

  • Toggle Twitter

    A great script to show and hide Twitter. If you are using Twitter for Mac you can also implement this in preferences. Just another reason to use FastScripts though.

  • ‘Real’ Page Numbers on Kindles

    Stu Woo on how the ‘real’ page numbers are implemented:

    Hitting the “Menu” button brought up the corresponding print page number: “Page 176 out of 237.”

    This is a great addition to the Kindle. This is useful for students and book clubs and provides psychological reassurance for everyone else (like me).

  • ‘A Mans Desk’

    This is a picture of Shawn Blanc’s desk, which he comments on his site:

    That’s a man’s desk. 21 square feet of simplicity and awesomeness built from scratch by yours truly.

    I agree, it is a desk to envy. If you are going to build or buy a desk, here are somethings I think you should keep in mind:

    1. Size: I personally think a three foot by six foot desk is optimal. We don’t all have that much room in our lives for such a perfect desk size, so build it as big as you can. The depth is very important so never go less than 24″ or more than 40″ for a single user desk. Again, I think 36″ is the optimal depth. ((Here is Stephen Hackett’s desk which is also lovely.
    2. Think about how and where you will route your cables. Personally I think a grove or a sliding compartment on the desk top is ideal. You must also think how those cables will be stored below the desk, typically I use zip ties that can be screwed into the bottom of your desk (you can find these in the electrical aisle of a hardware store). I also like to have a place in the legs to route the power down and if I am making the desk a compartment to hide the cables in. I am a huge fan of the way this desk hides cables. ((I am going to get a picture of the desk my Grandfather built as it is stunning and has smart cable management.))
    3. Don’t ever build your desk to custom fit anything you have right now. You can build it to the space you want it to fit in, but don’t get fancy with the shape. Keep it a simple rectangle and keep in mind that you should expect it to last 10-15 years (at the very least).
    4. Building a desk is often cheaper and easier than one thinks. If you borrow and rent most of the tools you can build a desk that would cost you $3,000 for $300 and a weekend of your time.
    5. An old carpentry rule: ‘cut once, measure twice’. If this is your first time woodworking then I recommend measuring a ton of times.
    6. Sanding is the most important thing you can do for the finish of your desk. What the wood feels like before you apply any stains or paint or lacquer is what it will feel like in the end. Sand and then sand some more.

    You may be asking: “But Ben, come on, your desk isn’t hand made — how could you possible know this?” Correct, but I have worked in construction for over 5 years of my life mostly with a hammer or Skil saw in my hand. I have helped to make countless buildings and custom pieces of furniture with my Grandfather. On top of all that, I designed this and helped build it. ((That is teak wood, and is about $2,000 worth of material, where mistakes get costly.)) It may be ‘just a headboard’ but I assure you that if you saw the work that went into the craftsmanship, you would never want to make a headboard. ((For size reference the bed is a California King.))

    [Updated: 2.8.11 at 8:58 AM]
    I was just reminded by a friend that I also was (allegedly) the main guy behind a huge bar that was built in the house I lived in during college — complete with a chandelier. For legal reasons I will not be sharing those pictures.

  • Iain Broome’s iPad Life

    I would like to welcome a fantastic writer and a fellow Read & Trust member, Iain Broome to my iPad Life interview series. You can find out more about Iain on his blog Write for Your Life.

    Tell me a little about yourself, what do you do, where do you live?

    Well, I’m a writer and I live in Sheffield, which is in the north of England.

    By day I’m a copywriter for a tip-top UK design company called The Workshop, where I write copy (obviously), but also work on UX, UI and accessibility. By night, I write fiction. My first novel is called A is for Angelica and is represented by literary agency, Tibor Jones & Associates.

    I also run a couple of websites for writers – Write for Your Life and the rather stupidly named Broomeshtick.

    What was your reaction when the iPad was launched?

    Goodness gracious, how am I going to persuade my partner that we need one of those? That was my first reaction.

    Then I started to think about it with a little less emotion. That’s the thing about Apple. They tug on our heart strings before they start to talk technical. It’s wonderful and wallet-scaring in equal measure.

    Anyway, apart from initially not having the money to buy an iPad, I also wanted to think about whether I would really use one or not. I had an iMac (still do), which is totally aces, and my partner had an old Sony Vaio laptop, which she used primarily for browsing the web and studying.

    I spent the best part of six months working out how I could – and if I should – fit the iPad into our lives. It was the first time I’d ever bought a computer that wasn’t a natural upgrade. I was worried my iPad would be a luxury. A toy, even.

    I wanted a mobile device but couldn’t afford any of the Macbook line up and the old Sony Vaio’s battery was next to useless. In the end I bought an iPad because I decided that, as a writer, all I needed was a keyboard and a screen. The iPad has both plus all of this other fantastic stuff too.

    I convinced myself that together, me and my machine, could create as well as consume.

    Which model did you order and why?

    I bought the 16GB WiFi only version because it’s all that I need.

    My iPhone works nicely as a play-anywhere MP3 player and I’m quite happy to switch movie files to and from the iMac when I need them. I knew that I wouldn’t need the extra storage. Like I say, purchasing an iPad was a carefully considered decision.

    As for 3G, again I felt pretty sure it wouldn’t be a problem not having it, and that’s proved to be the case. I use the iPad primarily at home, where it connects to our WiFi network. I can’t envisage a time when I’ll be out and about and the 3G connection I get with my iPhone won’t be enough.

    How are you using the iPad on a daily basis?

    I use it in the same way that you do Ben, and all us other technofolk. I read articles, blog posts, books and play games. I also watch the occasional TV show or movie. Importantly, I write. But enough about me. I can’t tell you anything new.

    What’s been far more interesting is the way both my partner uses it, and my two nephews who are three and five years old.

    My partner is never off the iPad. She has no interest in technology whatsoever, and yet she absolutely loves this rectangular bundle of joy. See, although she doesn’t give two hoots about what version OS she’s using, or whether it’s a 16 or 32GB version, she does like browsing the internet, checking Facebook and, inevitably, playing Angry Birds.

    For people like her, you know, normal people, who don’t know or care about the hows and whys of computing, these things can be a chore. All that most users care about is the doing. With the iPad, my partner can do. And she does. All the time and wherever she wants. That’s a significant shift, both in our house and for casual web users everywhere.

    Then there’s my nephews. They are children – infants – and they can use the iPad. As someone who works in usability and accessibility, that’s pretty amazing. Watching the three year old figure out ‘swipe to unlock’ in under ten seconds was mind-blowing.

    It made me think back to my Commodore 64. So many wasted hours waiting for something to load. We’ve come so far. They’ll never know that anguish.

    Can you give me a quick run down of the apps that you use the most?

    I use Safari all the time for browsing the web, of course. And I use the official Twitter app on a daily basis to, you know, tweet.

    I also use Simplenote a lot, originally for my to do list, but I’ve now reverted back to pen and paper for that. However, Simplenote is very much the place I put ideas and sentences when they come to mind.

    The jewel in the crown is PlainText and this goes back to my only needing a keyboard and a screen. When the iPad launched, I was wary because I couldn’t see an easy way for me to write on the iMac and then seamlessly carry on writing in the same document with the iPad. But with the aid of Dropbox, PlainText allows me to do just that. It’s utterly brillotine.

    Finally, I use Instapaper and Reeder to keep up with what’s going on in the world.

    Broome small

    Which app is your favorite?

    I should probably say PlainText as that allows me to do what I love, but I think I’ll go for Instapaper. It’s just fantastic, isn’t it?

    I know it’s wildly popular already, but I really wish that more of those normal people I talked about earlier were aware of things like Instapaper. It’s just a great way to read the web and so many people are put off by all the nonsense that gets crammed into websites.

    I should start a petition or something. Maybe send an angry email.

    Do you have any bag/stand/case recommendations for people?

    I have just one iPad accoutrement, and that’s the Compass from TwelveSouth. It does exactly what I want it to. It holds my iPad up for me. Lovely stuff.

    I don’t have a case yet. My partner (who has featured in this discussion more than anticipated) is pretty nifty with the needle and thread, and I’ve commissioned her (asked politely) to make me a nice iPad wallet of sorts. Just something to protect it from the elements. And by elements, I mean me dropping it.

    What features do you want to see in a future iPad?

    I honestly can’t think of anything that would drastically change the way I use my iPad. A front camera might be nice for Skype, but not essential. A really fantastic microphone would be great for interviews on the move, but unlikely to ever beat proper recording equipment.

    So nothing, no extra features required. I love what it does and it does it how I need it to. You can’t say fairer than that.

    Have you ever had an American pronounce your first name correctly?

    Ha! I do get some strange spellings, but it’s actually just the Scottish version of Ian. As in Sir Ian McKellan or Ian McEwan. Although I am in no way Scottish. I don’t know what my folks were thinking.

    I want to thank Iain for taking the time to share his iPad life with me. Be sure to follow Iain on Twitter where he is @iainbroome.

    More iPad Life

    To see more people’s iPad Lives take a look here.

  • The Daily, Hourly, Minutely, Secondly, Real-timey

    Put aside for a moment that ‘The Daily’ has a laggy, ugly, non-text-selectable user interface — even throw out the fact that a new “issue” takes over a minute to load — throw all that out and you still have one major problem: stale content.

    The title says it all: do you the reader and consumer of news want information that is a day old? Would you prefer an hour old, perhaps a minute old, seconds, what about real-time? If you take an honest poll of news readers that are using iPads ((It is important to denote these readers as iPad readers, because iPad readers differ in needs and wants to those that get news from paper newspapers.)) and you will find that for most the sweet spot is a few hours old. That is, most iPad news consumers want the news they are reading to be up to date within the last few hours — they rarely want to know the news from yesterday. ((Again just iPad readers here.))

    This is the problem with the Daily: stale news that was no longer relevant the moment I started downloading it, five minutes ago. The only time you can get away with publishing content that is out dated is if that content is opinion and not fact based. That is I care to read about the Super Bowl the day after the Super Bowl if — and only if — you are going to add to the discussion, perhaps telling me why TV crews felt it necessary to show the disgusting scene where Cameron Diaz feeds A-Rod steroids, but I digress.

    Opinion pieces (known as Op-Eds in the super fancy newspaper industry) should be relevant weeks after it was published — if it isn’t, then it is a mark of a bad piece. News about the who won the Super Bowl was irrelevant a few hours after it happened for most all iPad readers.

    This is where the Daily app is missing the boat. Flipboard is wildly popular because the content us up to date — and I mean up to date — you won’t find stale content on that app. The Daily could have swooped in and pulled news from the many different News Corp entities to create a truly fantastic news aggregation service that is custom designed for the iPad and shockingly up to date. I would pay for that.

    Which means the the Daily fails as a news app fails, but does it fail as an opinion app?

    Are the Op-Ed articles in the Daily worth the cost of the subscription? I don’t know because I only re-installed the app to make sure I was accurate for the purposes of this “Op-Ed” post and because that question is subjective.

    I have read a ton of commentary on the Daily and most all of it focuses on the design and layout and not on the content. Rightfully so — to each his own — we must all decide for ourselves if the content is going to be worth the price. The bigger issue that I see with the app long term is how relevant the content truly is by the time the reader gets around to reading it.

    Design and layout issues are easily fixed, but you can’t easily fix stale content. The Daily should have a constant stream of new content, so that when I load up the news section I can see what is happening right now — not late yesterday evening.

    Until the Daily fixes that, I truly have no interest in the app. ((For the record I deleted the app again.))