The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Leaving Microsoft Hell

    Alex Wilhelm got a virus on his Windows 7 computer that left him in serious trouble:

    Every single safeguard the OS had failed, and I ended up with a full computer that I could not restore, reinstall, or boot normally in any way without facing an immediate Blue Screen of Death. I sat there in safe mode and picked at my teeth.

    Sounds lovely, this though is the best bit:

    I still love and prefer Windows 7, but I am forever adding a caveat to that statement: when it works.

    So I guess the new tag line for Windows is: “When it works”. Compare that to Apple’s: “It just works”. If you are still confused about which OS you should choose — well, actually, then I can’t help you.

  • Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform

    Kyle Baxter hypothesizing that Androids Market may be poor on purpose:

    If users won’t pay for applications, what will developers use to make money from their applications? Advertising. And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob.

    The entire post is a must read.

  • My Year in Stats

    For all of 2010 I tracked various aspects of my life using Daytum, which collects and graphs various data that you enter. I became inspired to do this by the Feltron Annual Report — though I must admit my data is not incredibly accurate since I am not always perfect about recording stuff.

    I have held off writing about Daytum because I wanted to see what I would learn from using it to track random things. Here are some of the things that I learned:

    Email Sucks

    One thing that I tracked was my Email usage, specifically: amount received monthly, amount replied to monthly, and amount sent monthly (total, including replies). What was most interesting to me was how little I actually reply to emails — it seems I create more emails than I reply to them. Until I saw this I always thought that I spent more time replying to emails.

    email.png

    Kernel Panics

    I also decided to track my kernel panics, or lack of them. I average 2 months 11 days and 17 hours between kernel panics as of this writing — surprisingly high. In fact since 1/10 I only had 3 kernel panics and one complete computer freeze that resulted in having to force the computer off. I am hoping that most of this subsides with the MacBook Air (haven’t had one yet).

    kernel.png

    iPhone Crashes

    Like with my kernel panics I also tracked iPhone crashes: again I only had 4 this year. An average time between crashes of 3 months 20 days and 8 hours. Not too shabby.

    iphonecrash.png

    Personality

    I also tracked things relating to my personality:

    • I kept track of the amount of meaningful conversations I had this year and I counted 130 meaningful conversations on the year. Seven of those conversations were with complete strangers.
    • I was annoyed on average every 7 days.
    • Surprised on average every day.
    • I won one more bet than I lost this year.

    Overall the tracking I did on my personality showed me that I am decent at making wagers, I like to talk to in depth with strangers and that I am constantly surprised. I am glad that the annoyance factor isn’t higher! One last thing: when I shop online I order from Apple.com the most, then Amazon.com.

    orders.png

  • iPad Simulator

    Very neat CSS and Javascript iPad simulator.

  • Traveling, Miami, Airplanes and Paid WiFi

    It is Jan 3rd, 2010 9:00a EST or 6:00a PST (aka the time zone I am accustomed to) and as I write this I am flying high over the U.S. aboard Alaska Airlines — returning from a quick trip to Miami, FL for my sister-in-law’s wedding. This trip could not have come at a worse time for me from a business stand point as I had a large amount of work to complete. I loaded up my standard compliment of travel gear and my MacBook Air — with the hope to get work done on the plane.

    MacBook Air and Flying

    On the way to Miami we flew coach and I was position in a middle seat. The work that I needed to do was in Adobe’s InDesign app (report design) and I can tell you that after 10 minutes of trying there was no comfortable way to do this type of work. A trackpad and a middle coach seat are not conducive to this type of work. I stowed my computer and caught some ZZZ’s before we landed.

    Fast forward to the end of our trip and on our return flight to Seattle my wife and I were able to finagle a cheap first-class ticket. First-class is far from an ideal spot to type in, but it certainly is not uncomfortable. I don’t care much for the distractions that in-flight WiFi offers so I have forgone paying for the service.

    I feel confident now in saying that the 13” MacBook Air is not usable for anything other than video watching in the coach cabin of Alaska Airlines — it is very usable in the first-class cabin. I would gather that you would be fine typing on an 11” model in coach, but heavy trackpad use would still remain challenging. The tray tables are a bit too high for natural typing and resting the computer on your lap will cause strain on your neck after a bit. Overall I was pretty happy with using the Air in first-class and miserable in coach with it.

    Sunny Isle, Florida & AT&T

    The wedding was held at the Trump International Hotel in Sunny Isle, FL and that is also where my wife and I stayed. We were fortunate enough to get a room on the 30th floor facing the ocean — a beautiful and distracting view. The Trump hotel and the area surrounding it offers some of the worst AT&T data speeds that I have ever experienced.

    The coverage seemed adequate (I usually had at least two bars), but the network speed was almost unusable. It was not unusual to not be able to refresh Twitter or check email. I had to precariously hold the phone on the top to get some Internet access.

    Pathetic.

    I talked to a few other AT&T users without iPhones as well as some Verizon users with Blackberries and everyone seemed to experience the same problems. From talking to some local residents this is the norm for that area, in part due to the amount of users in the area and also complicated by the tall structures and dense walls. Frustrating for sure.

    WiFi & MiFi

    As with most hotels, the Trump offered its guests WiFi Internet for a fee. There were two levels as I tweeted — the first was priced at $10 a day for 512kbps and the faster optioned was $13 a day for 1.5mbps access. Both were less than stellar options. I would be at the hotel for 5 days, and there was no way I would be willing to pay this monster rate for each of the five days.

    Instead I decided that I would use my Verizon MiFi, tethered to my Laptop via USB (doing this gives you slightly faster Internet speeds and infinitely improved MiFi battery life).

    This worked out great for the most part with the MiFi averaging a 4/5 bar signal strength on the EVDO network. The problem though: the internet speed I was getting was around 0.3MBPs — which is anything but good.

    The work I was doing was minimal (aside from uploading stuff to Flickr) so the Internet speed didn’t kill me, but it certainly was not enjoyable. Perhaps the fact that I am getting older is making me more frugal, but I just despise when hotels deem it necessary to charge guests for WiFi access.

    I will say this once more: cheaper hotels offer free WiFi and business travelers love it, expensive hotels charge you for crappy internet access and everyone complains. Perhaps expensive hotels need to pull a page from the Starbucks playbook and convert their WiFi to free. Starbucks is leading the charge in how to offer better customer service for a cheaper price — there is a reason I like to go to Starbucks for remote working — time to wake up hotel industry.

    Printing

    The second day at the hotel presented a new challenge: two people set to give toasts at the wedding were told that it was preferred that they not talk while reading from an electronic device — instead they were encouraged to use paper. No one brings a printer along though, so I being the resident geek was tasked with printing about 7 pages worth of stuff.

    I grabbed my iPad and MacBook Air and headed down to the business center. There were instructions for hooking up your laptop to print — though all were for PC users and not having a lot of time (and that I am not Rhone) I decided it would be best to use the PCs that were available.

    10 minutes, 14 pages and $24 later I was done. The computer cost $7.50 to use for 15 minutes and $0.50 for each additional minute. The black and white printing I did was priced at $1 a page. Outrageous. (I ended up printing two copies of each speech in two different formats to allow the reader to select which ever would be more comfortable for them to read.)

    Home

    Overall the trip was fun, but the AT&T network was unbearable and Verizon was hardly better. The 13” MacBook Air was a perfect companion once in the room and fit perfectly in the small room safe. My iPad was perfect all around once again.

    My iPhone made me understand why people want a Verizon model so badly and the hospitality industry is responding to the recession by adding fees instead of providing incentives for people to stay with them. Overall all this made me feel as though I was constantly being ripped off.

    I miss Seattle with its robust AT&T network. And my own bed.

  • New Daytum iPhone App

    I have been using the app for a while — it is strictly for data entry IMO — but very pretty and easy to use. I love Daytum and I will be posting about it later this week. If you already use Daytum be sure to get the free iPhone app.

  • Why Bing “Likes” Facebook

    Paul Boutin on why Bing may be a better search engine for most things (particularly if you use Facebook):

    Beyond beating link spam, your friends’ preferences and recommendations may also provide a better guide to what you, as an individual, really want to find. If, for example, you’re shopping for a new pair of shoes, the most valuable search results may not be the most linked-to pages on the Internet but, rather, what your best friends want to be seen wearing.

    It is an interesting dilemma that Google will need to deal with: unless you tie into Facebook/Twitter how do you provide results that are more relevant that page ranking? My guess is that Google would rather use tracking cookies and other methods of tracking user behavior — than they would tying you into a social graph that they don’t own.

  • RSS Is Dying [Being Ignored], and You Should Be Very Worried

    Kroc Camen:

    Google Chrome has no RSS reader. It doesn’t even try to render RSS, or even help the user with it in any way. It gives less of a crap than a French man smoking a cigarette in public.

  • Automatically add Tasks delegated by Email to Things with Applescript

    I previously posted about an applescript that will send an email to OmniFocus as a task — for those emails that you want a little tickler on. Now with the help of Sven Fechner you can set this up for Things too. It’s no OTA sync, but hey it is free.

  • Real Power Users

    Chris Clark trying to defend Facebook messages over email:

    It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users.

    I think this statement is massively off base:

    1. Plenty of “Pro” users that I know (myself included) are more than happy with the App system Apple has in place.
    2. There is a relatively small user base that Jailbreaks when they are not happy.
    3. Others will just move to a “open” ((Yeah, right.)) system like Android.
    4. Lastly I would argue that Steve Jobs is a “Pro” user so by Clark’s account — Jobs should not be allowed to design future systems.

    That means that clearly millions of people are wrong for buying products that Jobs makes? I think the problem here is that Clark is using the word “Pro” and “Power User” when he should be using the definition: “Niche Users”. He and his friends clearly are a niche where they are best served by something other than email. I am no fan of email, but I certainly don’t agree with what Clark is arguing.

    People keep sending me emails about this article and I can’t say that I agree with anything that he is saying in it.

    People are not flocking to Facebook because they want better email — they flock because they want to see what their ex looks like now. Facebook is not popular because it is a communication tool — nor is it an underutilized communication tool — Facebook is popular because people like to spy on each other.

  • The Problem With Ping

    Nik Fletcher on Apple’s Ping network:

    A purchase of a song isn’t the strongest indicator of a user’s liking of a song: the playing of a song is. Ping with Scrobbling would offer me far more of an incentive to visit – I care much more about what my friends are listening to as opposed to what they’re buying (and even when buying, there’s no guarantee the purchase will be via iTunes and thus tracked).

    What a great point.

  • Twitter for iPhone FAIL

    San Francisco we have a problem: Twitter for iPhone has become the most crashtastic app on my iPhone over the past month or so. I can’t pinpoint when this first started to happen but Ian Hines lamented on Twitter the other day:

    @twitter for iPhone crashes roughly 30% of the time. Unacceptable..

    For an app so good and as high profile as Twitter — this is hardly a good thing. On my iPhone it seems to happen most frequently when I am trying to reply to a Tweet, followed closely by the times that I am simply trying to tap out a Tweet. Normally I use a mix of Tweetie and my iOS devices, but while traveling this weekend Twitter for iPhone was my primary interface and it was frustrating to say the least.

    I am hardly in the mood to switch apps at this point, but I may be forced to if this continues much longer. Then the questions is what app do I switch too? I am not much of a Twitterific fan — Icebird seems nice, but is hardly great. Suggestions?

  • Lending Kindle Books

    Amazon:

    Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days.

    I don’t know about you, but I rarely finish a book in just 14 days — I am a slow reader and have way too many other things going on. One would think that Amazon (by the very nature of their business) would have a damned good idea of just how fast people are reading books — 14 days seems a little bit faster than I imagine most read.

  • Matt Gemmell Reviews the MacBook Air 11″

    Gemmell does an excellent job reviewing the 11″ Air. Most importantly he decided the best way to talk about the limited screen space was to put together a Flickr gallery of screenshots with popular programs running. This is the type of reviewer that I love.

  • Tablets and Input

    Tim Bray:

    Tablets and handsets can displace computers as play and reading devices, but they really can’t become dominant as work tools until we have a better solution for high-speed low-friction text input. On the other hand, I wouldn’t be surprised to see dramatic progress in this area; it’s so obviously the number-one usability barrier for everything that isn’t badged as a “computer”.

    Agreed — though I don’t agree with much else in his post. Reviewers take note: you need to dedicate at least 250 words to talking about how the text input experience is on each device you review — this stuff matters.

  • The Daily Post

    So you want to try and blog everyday in 2011? WordPress.com is there to help.

    WordPress.com:

    This is an experiment in blogging motivation from the folks at WordPress.com. We will post every day here with ideas, suggestions and inspiration, hoping it will help you get the most out of your blog.

  • Prevent Deactivation of Find My iPhone

    Great tip, go do it. (You need to have a MobileMe account)

    [Updated: 12/31/10 at 2:01 PM]
    Correction you just need the free account for Find my Device. I forgot that they had made this free, sorry about that.

  • Webkit Mac Antialiasing

    Some of you may have noticed that when I pushed the new site design the text looked, well shitty. Then when you scrolled around all was well in the world. Needless to say I was freaking out and when I couldn’t get it sorted out I turned off Typekit to resolve the problem. I contacted Typekit on Get Satisfaction and they sent me this link. You see that little text that says “Powered by Fusion” was set in 10px type. That was causing all the problems, a couple of CSS edits and bumping the size up to 11px seems to have solved the problem. If you still see it contact me, but we should be good now.

    This link is to an excellent technical description for the problem, along with the remedy.

  • Back to the Future (Our Future)

    It occurred to me the other day, that today’s youth doesn’t know the world without things like: Facebook, Google, Broadband Internet speeds, Microwaves with butter softening settings ((Highly recommend, very cool option.)), waiting for food, not knowing where a person is, getting lost, and so much more. As you think about each of those — think about how different news delivery today is from what it was when you were a teenager.

    I get most of my news from an RSS reader and all my breaking news from Twitter and email alerts. Neither are very old systems

    With that in mind try to imagine what the world will look like in our life spans — hell what the world may look like in just 5 years. It is almost impossible to imagine these things — this is the reason that technology never ceases to excite me.

    Endless Possibilities

    What technology holds five years from now is not knowable — though we can discern a few things here and there. For example we know battery life improves every year and computers tend to always get lighter, smaller, and faster. We also know that internet speeds keep increasing, as do file sizes, as does the amount we pay to companies providing us with services we had never heard about a year ago.

    It is important to remember though that it is not just the big things that change our world — it is also the small things. Things like light sensing backlit displays, backlit keyboards, not having to screw cable connections into your computer. Those little things make life a whole lot easier and they change the way we work too.

    The Future

    Moving forward there are a lot of things that I want to see change and improve. Most of all I want to see us all using less paper — it is a violent medium that gives you some of the most painful cuts a grown man can experience.

    I also want to see better and cheaper broadband internet for the masses, helping to level the intellectual playing field. I want to see technology continue to push boundaries — wowing even the largest luddites.

    I want Google Maps with real-time satellite imagery.

    A Note on Our Past

    I love going on road trips, but every time I venture out I think about my childhood. Not because we spent a lot of time in the car, but because when I was a child getting lost meant: you were lost. It didn’t mean you would have to pull over and check Google Maps on your phone, or program in your GPS. You couldn’t even call someone from your car to ask for directions and help. If you were lost you had to go find an actual live person and ask them for help. ((Or read a paper map.))

    That is mostly lost on today’s generations. They will never know what it is like to simply not talk to a loved one during the day. Think about how before cell phones most people that left on a road trip would not check in until they made it to their destination. It could have been days without people knowing if they are alive and well.

    Today if I am on a road trip without my wife and I haven’t checked in with her recently I will get text or a call for sure. I don’t know if today’s kids are as paranoid about losing contact as people in my generation seem to be, but it is certainly an interesting paradigm.

    Cell phones have changed my world almost as much as the internet has — that is no small feat.

    Anyways

    All of this is just a fancy way of telling everyone to keep dreaming and make those dreams huge.

    Here’s to the future.

  • TBR to the Future

    When I started this blog back in April of this year my only goal was to get my blog out there and to do my best writing. Turns out that I have started on a good path with the first goal and I think my writing has only improved since day one.

    What I didn’t expect was to get some of the amazing emails I have gotten. Perhaps the most amazing thing that happened was that I have made some great new friends along the way — to all of you I want to thank you for your kindness and I look forward to our continued friendship.

    That Was Last Year

    Twenty-Eleven

    I
    want to make 2011 even more bad ass. I look forward to forging new friendships and starting new debates. Please don’t ever be shy about emailing me — even when I get overwhelmed by the amount of email I receive, I always crave a bit more.

    Most of all: tell me when you think I am wrong. I am always happy to debate, or even change my mind.

    There are two major changes that I am pushing right now to the blog:

    1. Ads: I feel incredibly lucky and fortunate to have been invited to join the Fusion Ad network. I had been reserving virtual space to get one ad on the site when I found the appropriate network and I think Fusion is that network. I look forward to joining the ranks of some outstanding blogs and I hope I can live up to the reputation associated with them.

    2. Logo: Until today everything on the site had been designed by me or adapted from other themes. Today though, TBR has a new logo designed by an amazing graphic designer and all around great guy: Aaron Mahnke of Wet Frog Studios. I took advantage of an offer he made on Twitter and decided that TBR could use a better logo. I am very happy with what Aaron came up with and I hope you enjoy it too. ((As a side note be sure to get in touch with Aaron if you have any kind of graphic design work you need done — you won’t regret it.))

    Miscellany

    A couple people send me links to stuff they think I might like and I would like to encourage all of you to send me tips and suggestions. Even if you just want to know what I think about something, or have something you think I should review — send them in.

    Thanks for a wonderful 2010.

    One last thing if you don’t see the new logo refresh again or dump your browsers cache and you should get it. Thanks