The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Microsoft Instaload: Insert Batteries Any Way You Like

    Why it took this long to do something seemingly so simple I don’t know. But kudos to Microsoft for coming up with it.

  • The Swype Revolution?

    David Pogue:

    True, you pick up a lot of speed when the letters you want are already in line with each other as in the “ask” example. But you lose a corresponding amount of speed when you’re having to bounce back and forth from one side of the keyboard to the other, as in the word “soaks” that’s four complete horizontal traverses.Furthermore, when I use Swype, I constantly encounter pop-up word selectors, indicating that Swype wasn’t sure what word I wanted. For example, the same identical swipe could mean “pit,” “pot,” or “put.” If the word you wanted isn’t there, you have to cancel out and swipe in the whole word anew. You never see those interruptions in the online video demos of Swype.

    This sounds like a you hate it or love it system.

  • Translation From Apples Unique Dialect of PR-Speak to English of the Letter From Apple Regarding iPhone 4

    “We dare you” is probably John Gruber’s best line. Well worth the read.

  • Thoughts on Foursquare and Venture Funding, Revenue, Profits & Cash Flow

    The other day Foursquare announced a successful series B round of funding that raised the company $20 million – a huge amount of money given the size of the company. This really got me to thinking about whether such funding is really a good healthy thing for a company – especially for companies that are not profitable.

    I fully understand needing money to become profitable, or being willing to invest in a company hoping for future profits – what I don’t understand is throwing your cash into a black hole.

    In the article linked to above Erick Schonfeld says:

    As far as making Foursquare a great company that makes a lot of money, Horowitz says the “monetization” opportunities are “very obvious and straightforward.” There are many ways Foursquare can start charging businesses once it reaches a larger scale. “Would you pay to know your most frequent customer?,” Horowitz asks rhetorically. “Probably.” The bigger issue is how to take Foursquare from nearly 2 million users to tens of millions of users and beyond.

    I think they should have bought a Lotto ticket if that is the way they invest, having huge potential is great, but having it contingent on a “tens of millions of users” is just damn risky. Facebook and Google could swing into the fold and decide to make a competitor that easily crushes Foursquare. Gowalla could easy add users faster and crush them as well. I see Foursquare as MySpace in the early days – a ton of potential if ran right, but a huge downside if mis-managed. Could Gowalla be the Facebook to Foursquare’s MySpace?

    Taking Venture Funding is Like Playing Monopoly

    Everyone knows that the key to winning in Monopoly is to build hotels and lots of them – those hotels also cost a ton of money. Many start-ups seem to think this same way, they need to hold the Boardwalk monopoly and build a hotel fast before the other players in the industry can build their own. In pursuing this path many start-ups decide to take on venture capital funding to help build the company fast.

    The problem – as often pointed out by Jason Fried of 37Signals – is that this leads you down the wrong path more often than not. Let’s go back to the Monopoly analogy, say you have bought everything you landed on for the past 2 turns, including Park Place, making you just one property away from the coveted Boardwalk monopoly. Now, on your 3rd turn, you land on Boardwalk and you want to buy it, but you can’t afford it. Your choice is to let it go to auction against the other players, or mortgage what you need in order to buy it.

    Most people mortgage their properties (venture funding in this case) and now they are stuck not collecting rent on those properties, unable to build the hotel and in debt. This is not a good spot to be in. Same goes for people that would rather mortgage everything then sell it to another player. When I play I let things go to auction, and sell off assets only keeping the core monopoly that I own debt free.

    I have won entire games with a monopoly on the light blue row – a cheap monopoly to hold – by choosing a plan of attack and sticking to it. When companies take on venture funding to pursue new growth avenues without making their current product profitable first – I start to get pretty worried. A company needs to focus on their core product and making it the best it can be – in doing so they will attract customers and profits. Adding more and more in hopes of exponential growth is often a fools game.

    Now of course Monopoly is not real life – I know this and so do you – but the strategy involved plays out. Foursquare is not in debt – they owe those investors a return – a return that can only come from two things: profit or a sale/acquisition.

    Profit is not Revenue or Cash Flow

    Here is where things get tricky, when people talk about how well a company is doing they like to talk about Profit and Revenue. These are not the same thing, profits are a factor of revenue, but revenue alone will not give you a profit. If you have $100 in revenue for a year and costs of $100 then you have no profit. Likewise if you have $10 in revenue for a year and $1 in costs then you have a $9 profit. Thus the $10 a year company is more profitable than the larger $100 a year company.

    The more debt you take on from loans or people demanding a return on investment, the less profit your company will have for you to take pay yourself (not withstanding salaries). Stop looking at revenue numbers and start looking at profits. A good company is profitable and leverage company has large revenue and no profits.

    + to Cash Flow or + To M&A

    This is the real debate that entrepreneurs are making right now. One camp is saying that you should build a business that cash flows and pays you a nice check each month. The other camp is trying to get big (really big) and fast (really fast) in hopes of a cash out in some form or another that will make them set for life. To clarify both models make you set for life, one model does it without you having to work anymore.

    I am clearly in the cash flow camp – getting a sale that will make you set for life is a gamble and doesn’t happen that often. It is however easy to setup a nice company that cash flows each month and can pay you for quite sometime. This is exactly what I have done with the company I run – we cash flow each month and I get paid. This is not to say that my company will be around forever – we must adapt like any other company – but our underlying philosophy is not one that pushes to make risky moves and to take on debt, ignoring profits in hope of a sale.

    There is one thing I have not touched on: what happens when you get venture funding and can’t find a buyer or profitability? Most people assume that when a company like Twitter or Foursquare take on funding that it is because they are close to making money – they usually aren’t, after all if you are making money then you don’t need funding.

    Once you have that funding in your bank account you have investors that want returns, they often hope to push you into a fast sale long before you are profitable. They push you into this because they know one thing: profits are never a guaranteed.

    So what if a year later you are out of money and have no interested buyers and no profits to show for it? Often you are S.O.L. ((shit out of luck)) and on rare occasions you can raise another round of funding to keep you on life support. This life support though will only put more pressure on your company.

    The Point

    My point is not that venture capital is bad or good, just that it is not the only way to make money. Most importantly though: just because someone gives you $20 million dollars does not guarantee:

    • Success
    • Profits
    • Sales
    • Acquisitions
    • Mergers
    • Happiness

    All venture capital insures is that you now owe money to more people than just you and your co-founders.

  • Letter Heard ‘Round the World Regarding iPhone 4

    Apple:

    Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

    That certainly explains a lot of tints over the years. Also this is Apple pushing the blame to AT&T and not contradicting what Jobs’ has conveyed in emails to customers (notice that Jobs did not sign the letter). This appears honest and offers a fix, It is not OK, but it is not wholly inexcusable. Apple should have caught this 2 years ago and they didn’t, when they did catch it they are fixing it.

  • iPhone 4 3G Data Performance

    John Gruber:

    So I’m seeing download speeds twice as fast as on an iPhone 3GS, and upload speeds over ten times faster. Latency is about an order of magnitude better as well. The iPad doesn’t fair much better than the 3GS.

    I will update with the speeds that I get tonight.

  • Breaking: Tapulous Acquired By Disney

    Interesting, no word yet on the acquisition price.

  • Reachability & Honesty – The New Business Model

    On my way into the office this morning I was listening to Dan Benjamin’s latest episode of “The Conversation” where he was talking to one of the Slicehost co-founders, Matt Tanase.

    Tanase got to talking about start-ups and what is needed – he brought up an interesting point about honesty and reachability. Basically saying that Steve Jobs’ one line responses to customers is a powerful marketing force, Benjamin popped in at this point to add that the reachability of company founders these day is almost expected by consumers.

    This really got me to thinking about the business models that people are using these days – I am amazed that there are some many companies doing the same thing out there, but the winners are the ones that are focusing on customer service. Here in 2010 you will not get very far with a new startup if you are not responding to customer concerns and you are being dishonest with your customers.

    The business model then becomes:

    • Find some product or service to sell.
    • Get a following.
    • Treat your customers like royalty.
    • Respect everyone.
    • Be honest when you screw up / humble when you succeed.
    • Respond to your customers (no matter what your role at the company is).

    Take note of that above model, because it is not what you are going to learn in school. In school they will teach you to try and sell for less, or sell for more, to have huge advertising campaigns, to grow fast. This has worked for many years, and will continue to work for many more. This new model, the interactive and responsible company model is faster and more sustainable. Here are a few companies that I see using this model:

    • Zappos
    • USAA
    • Woot!
    • Nordstrom
    • Glazer’s Camera (Seattle only)

    There are a ton more that I could name, but the above five are something special. I have never heard someone speak and ill word about the customer service of the above companies – sure they may not like the prices, but once you are their customer, you are their customer for life.

    This is a powerful new business model – it is a reflection of a changing society. It is not about profits (those will come) it is about relationships, those need to be won.

  • Symbols for iOS 4 Folder Names

    Love it. Glyphboard is a great little tool.

  • BREAKING: Woot To Be Acquired By Amazon, Then Left To Amuse Ourselves

    The title says it all. Great pickup by Amazon (assuming a reasonable price).

  • Jim Ray on the MSNBC.com Redesign

    Jim Ray:

    Besides all of the new typography, navigation, color and multimedia, the real story is the fundamental rethink of what a story page should be. For too long, the formula of online news has been a spine of text that media elements hang off of like a sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree, competing with ads and widgets for attention. What these new pages do is suggest that a story is more than a jumble of these parts, in fact, it works best when every element ties together cohesively.

    MSNBC.com certainly is different though I don’t particularly care for it – I do like it more than the site it replaces. Also is the scrolling on the pages jerky for anyone else?

  • Facebook Apps Must Now Ask Users for More Specific Permissions

    About time.

  • Changing with Technology – Welcome to the Future

    Mobile technology is changing everyday, forcing all of us to keep changing with it. That in itself is not a bad thing – it does however become detrimental when we spend more time trying to change, than we do working. Technology brings with it the great promise of enabling us to do more with less time – to be more productive – is this necessarily true?

    Merlin Mann says ((source)):

    Every time you feel like trying a new todo app, turn off your computer, and complete one task.

    Poignant advice to be sure.

    My life since April 1st, 2010 has changed dramatically – both technologically and personally , but I am only going to focus on the technologic changes. The beginning of April brought forth the iPad, May brought me from OmniFocus to Things and from using my MacBook Pro monitor as a second monitor to one monitor. June has brought me the iPhone 4. These were seemingly small steps along the way – in aggregate they may just be the most significant steps forward that I have taken in a long while.

    Any single step along the way would not have been enough for me to think about (let alone write about) but taken together it is a change that is hard to wrap your head around. The difference between now and March is the difference between the Original iPhone and the iPhone 4 – both are great, but there has been a pronounced change for the better.

    The iPad was First

    When Apple launched the iPad I was disappointed, I wanted more and didn’t see why I needed it. Pressure from family and friends set in and I purchased one. Today I can’t imagine not having an iPad (funny how technology always works like that), my brother-in-law recently asked if he should get an iPhone 4 or and iPad. My answer: If you already have an iPhone 3G S (assuming no cracked screen) then I would get the iPad over the iPhone 4 – however if you don’t have an iPhone already, then take the iPhone 4 (not 3G S) over the iPad any day.

    I still feel that is great advice (I gave it after only having the iPhone 4 for a couple of hours) but I would seriously encourage people to splurge on the iPad as well. Don’t bother with a laptop that you will carry with you anymore – my Macbook Pro is 5.6 pounds and the iPad is 1.5 the amount that I cannot accomplish with the iPad alone does not warrant the extra 4.1 pounds in weight.

    Here are some situations I use my iPad in (string together for space saving): meeting notes, iPhone 4 line entertainment / productivity, couch surfing, book reading, news reading, reading, vacation, car trips, watching videos, watching podcasts, weather information, weekend email, cooking recipes, magazine reading, calendaring, task managementing, supplement to watching baseball, watching baseball when the wife doesn’t want me to, reviewing photos from my last shoot, 1024×768 web site testing (kinda a little), RDPing into works Windows servers and using the Windows apps on it instead of my Macbook Pro (via Parallels), sketching, finding a restaurant for the night, entertaining the cats (NobyNobyBoy), and entertaining myself (FlightControl HD).

    That is a lot of stuff. All of this can be done easily on a computer, and most of it can easily be done on my iPhone. None of that is the point – the point is that I have chosen, that I find it better, to do all of these activities on the iPad.

    The magical part of the iPad for me is not that apps, the form factor – it is the on-demand nature that the device has. You pick it up and press one button and the iPad is on and ready to go. There is no wait, instantaneous gratification is delivered to you. Yes the same is true of the iPhone, but the iPad has the large screen, the type-able keyboard, etc..

    Things Came Next

    Ah the ever lasting debate between which task management app to use – since its inception I have been a diehard OmniFocus user – sure I spent a few months here and there using trying out the ‘other guys’, but in the end I always came ‘home’ to OmniFocus. This time it is different, this time it is not about power and flexibility it is all about: simplification.

    Hours of my life have been wasted customizing and tweaking OmniFocus, changing the font (a dangerous option to give a wannabe designer), the colors, the perspectives. I think that most days I played with the app rather than do the tasks it was storing. I probably even made tasks to do things in the app.

    Things offers simplicity in that respect, it is everything I need and gets rid of the distraction of customization. I can do everything I need to do in the app that will help me get things done, without the distraction of the app itself.

    There is of course other reasons – the iPad app is a major reason I made the move. But more than that the switch from OmniFocus to Things represents a larger move of mine away from complex ‘best in class’ apps to simple ‘gets your shit done’ apps. ((Yeah I made that phrase up)) I switched to Things for the very reason that I switched from Evernote to Notational Velocity: I wanted the app to get out of my way.

    Oh Then Came My 4th iPhone

    I have resigned myself to the fact that every year I will have to upgrade my iPhone to the newest model. There are many reasons for this, the main reason is that I am very hard on my phones. I use them with no cases, dropped into my pocket with change and money clips. My iPhone 3G S had no less than 4 cracks on the plastic casing and a few specs of dust behind the glass that you could see.

    More than anything else though I wanted the iPhone 4 for its expected better battery life (thus far it has been twice as good as my iPhone 3G S’ was) as I have been spoiled by the battery that Apple included with the iPad. I have grown tired of chargers – or more specifically charging.

    Three Things – One Transformation

    For the first time in my life I truly feel like I am living in the future. It has nothing to do with these device or software choices and everything to do with one concept, a concept that it seems engineers and developers are beginning to get:

    The tools we use to get the job done – need to stay out of the users way.

    That is the dramatic change that has happened in my life these past months – I finally see the future and am getting a small taste of it.

    What the Future Holds

      Battery life becomes irrelevant in the future – at least in so far as having to worry about a battery charge not lasting a normal day of use.

      Connectivity is all wireless – what the hell is an ethernet cable?

      Syncing is everywhere and seamless.

      Typing accuracy is irrelevant – the device will guess what you mean to type.

      Remembering multiple passwords is for the paranoid – secure databases will store those for you and log you in when needed.

      Carrying heavy bulk (e.g. Laptops) is a thing of the past and completely unnecessary.

      Scratches – they don’t happen.

      Instant on is on its way out, predictive is in.

    Welcome to the future that I have started to realize.

  • Cisco Announces the Cius

    Why announce a tablet that won’t ship until 2011? Why is Wired calling it the “Blackberry of Tablets” when they have yet to see it? This whole thing is dumb.

  • Breaking the Email Addiction

    Tony Schwartz:

    It isn’t overload were battling anymore, it’s addiction — to action, and information, and connection, but above all to instant gratification.

    I am not addicted to email, but news and Twitter I am addicted to, or so says the wife.

  • Gruber on the 4

    John Gruber:

    And, for obvious reasons, the glass back raises concerns about the iPhone 4’s droppability. With previous iPhones, it was liking dropping a piece of buttered toast — there was a lucky and unlucky side on which it could land. With the iPhone 4, it’s like dropping a piece of toast that’s been buttered on both sides.

    Last iPhone 4 review I post. (also I am definitely buttering both sides of my toast from here on out – sound delicious)

  • Verizon Wireless Said to Start Offering IPhone in January – Idiots Everywhere Bank On It

    Not a stupid prediction – maybe even accurate. Still you would be an idiot to hold out hope at this point.

  • MapQuest Updates – Hopes to Stay Alive

    Today marked the first time in at least a year that I visited MapQuest.

  • Android 2.2 Froyo Now Rolling Out To All Nexus Ones

    Jason Kincaid:

    Of course, most Android users will still have to wait a while (months, in many cases) until their devices will get 2.2. That’s because it’s still up to hardware manufacturers to port the OS over to their devices — a process that can be further complicated by ‘skins’ used by some companies, like HTC’s Sense.

  • Hulu – Plus

    The first thing I am doing tonight when I get home – convincing my wife we don’t need our cable subscription anymore.