The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Attackers Exploiting New Flash Bug, Adobe Warns

    Robert McMillan:

    When exploited, the flaw can cause Adobe’s software to crash, but it can also give attackers control of the computer, Adobe said.

    Well that’s not good.

  • You couldn’t pay me to work for Ballmer

    David Heinemeier Hansson:

    Now contrast this to Steve Ballmer. Who’s certainly no genius and calling him evil is to belittle evil. He has turned the gorilla into a buffoon. And frankly, it’s sad. Gone are the feelings of rage (except when they patent troll people for being web apps) and left is pity.

    Truth hurts.

  • App Shopping

    Eric Meyer:

    So it is with the App Store. It’s a central location for iPhone and iPad owners to go shop for apps. The stock is large—too large for any physical store to handle—but it is still screened. You may not like the screening criteria, just as you may not like the screening criteria exercised at Wal-Mart, but it exists nonetheless.

  • Once Again, Steve Ballmer Is Wrong — This Time About Android

    Om Malik:

    The other Steve (Ballmer) is almost always wrong. He was wrong about the iPod. He was wrong about the iPhone and he is once again going to be proven wrong about Google’s Android OS.

    and:

    Let’s face it, Android has gored Microsoft’s mobile operations, leaving it with a bleeding, gaping wound that looks difficult to patch at this point.

    Not just Android, but Apple too.

  • Reeder, The Best Feed Reader On The iPhone Is About To Launch On The iPad

    I am salivating, can’t wait for this. Love how the navigation was put along the side so you can use your thumbs, with current offerings like NetNewsWire you have to move your hand to advance through items.

  • What Apple Does Well (What if iPad Came First?)

    Matt Drance:

    This is what Apple does so well: it brings you aboard with something familiar or intuitive, and then takes you someplace you wouldn’t have gone otherwise. It is also what Apple’s competitors and detractors never seem to understand. With every product launch, naysayers inevitably turn to a PowerPoint slide and note that company X’s product overview has more bullets. It’s not about the bullets. It’s about people wanting to use the product. Tapping into that is very, very hard—especially when refusing to acknowledge its importance. How they can continue to ignore it as Apple’s sales and market cap soar is a mystery.

    Spot on.

  • Bing Destination Map: Automatic Napkin Sketching of Maps

    This is really cool, and from Microsoft no less.

  • Survey: Up To Half Of All Media Sites Plan To Support The iPad And HTML5 Video

    Expect this to be an upward trend.

  • What AT&T‘s Data Plans Mean for Video Conferencing

    As you probably have heard by now AT&T changed its smart phone data plans – you can no longer purchase ‘unlimited’ data plans. Instead you must settle for 2gb of data – not too shabby, but no unlimited. This all seems well and good given that most users barely broach the 300mb mark each month, but then again isn’t the new iPhone 4G rumored to have a front facing camera?

    According to a lot of reports, including the iPhone 4G that was ‘found’ by Gizmodo, the new iPhone will indeed have a front facing camera – presumably for video conferencing. Now this seems pretty sweet, until you remember that AT&T is only allowing you to use 2gb of data each month. Uh Oh.

    So there are two options that I see here, assuming of course that Apple is going to launch the iPhone 4G with built-in video conferencing. The first is probably the most obvious, AT&T will make U.S. customers wait a year to use the feature and then add $30/mo to your bill to allow you to talk on video chat for 100 minutes each month (I am making this all up, I have no sources). Basically, option one is AT&T charging an extra charge each month for video conferencing, not at all unlikely.

    Option two is that the new iPhone won’t be able to use the existing cellular networks for video conferencing and instead this will be a Wi-Fi only feature (making one wonder why you would use an iPhone over your home computer). This would allow Apple to completely by-pass AT&T and give its customers free video chats.

    Assuming Apple does launch video chats on the iPhone, I unfortunately would expect them to go down the road of option 2 – wi-fi only. My guess would be that at that point they would work with AT&T to get it over 3G and release a software update supporting it just before Christmas.

  • Rdio: File-Sharing Pioneers Now Selling Music

    Brad Stone:

    Rdio customers paying the full amount will be able to stream and store songs on a range of mobile devices, beginning with the BlackBerry and iPhone, and soon, phones running the Android operating system from Google. The company is backed through the founders’ Atomico Ventures, a venture-capital firm based in London.

    I have never liked subscriptions services, but hey, to each his own.

  • Amazon to Sell Kindle E-Reader at Target Stores

    Julie Bosman:

    Beginning on Sunday, the Kindle e-reader will be sold in Target stores nationwide, the company announced on Wednesday. It will be the first brick-and-mortar store to sell the Kindle, which had been available only through the Amazon Web site.

    Great move by Amazon, the more people that get to touch the Kindle – the more people that buy the Kindle. Paying $259 for something you can’t play with before hand was never a great sales pitch.

  • Digg v4 Preview

    Digg CEO Kevin Rose walks through the new version of Digg in a video post. Looks great, but can it make Digg relevant again (hasn’t been relevant for me for the past year and a half).

  • Mark Zuckerberg Talks (And Swerves Around) Facebook Privacy

    Jason Kincaid:

    When asked about the site’s privacy changes, Zuckerberg wasn’t exactly forthcoming. Many tweets, and the official live coverage of the event, noted that Zuckerberg dodged some questions about privacy, resorting to talk about encouraging serendipity through openness and well-worn anecdotes detailing why sharing is important. Zuckerberg also brought up Facebook’s oft-repeated stat that over 50% of users have adjusted their privacy settings, citing it as evidence that users know what they’re doing (this doesn’t convince me in the slightest — that means nearly 250 million people haven’t touched them).

    As to be expected.

  • New Toshiba Screen Lets You Bend to Zoom in Google Earth

    Really cool screen, but I don’t see how the bending of the screen to zoom is all that intuitive…

  • Apple to Save the News Biz?

    At the D8 conference Steve Jobs remarked that perhaps the news industry needs an iTunes type model for news. He went on to say that we need news outlets so that we don’t become a “nation of bloggers”. Agreed.

    The question then is does Jobs mean that we really need an iNews, or was he simply using that to illustrate the point that news is lost and needs a common strategy that they can band around? I of course think that Jobs meant the latter: news outlets need to band together to create a common and standardized system by which they will make money off of their content.

    The reasons iTunes works so well for music is because you can get everything at one place for the same price. Just because Ke$ha is more popular right now than Bob Dylan, doesn’t mean her music costs more. Everything in one location for a standardized price. Makes sense. So why hasn’t news done this?

    What is stopping the major news outlets from coming together and saying that starting next week we have to pay $5 a month for a subscription to a news site, every news site is now $5/mo and that is that.

    I know what is stopping them from doing this: ego.

    There is no way that the Wall Street Journal and New York Times are willing to charge their customers the same price that The New York Post charges – no way.

    Ego: that is going to be the news industries downfall.

  • The Walled Garden (aka The App Store)

    Neven Mrgan:

    Aren’t the benefits of a closed, carefully managed garden clearly visible? The experience is controlled, so it tells a story – one which may not emerge from a democratic, anything-goes process (or do you think this sort of slow and deliberate story would emerge in a busy American city in the year 2010?) Charging for admission means that the place can be maintained, improved, and marketed. There are downsides to this, of course — maybe the management makes boneheaded decisions now and then. Maybe you think that vine maple would look better a little to the left — maybe you’re even right.

  • Microsoft Unveils a (Somewhat) Tablet-Friendly Version of Windows

    If by somewhat you mean it has another convoluted new name.

  • Griffey Retires

    So long to a legend for Mariners fans and baseball fans across the world.

  • Verizon Wireless currently testing Apple iPads

    Anyone other than BGR and I would not believe it. This doesn’t surprise me Apple tested intel chips for years before the change was made. This is probably more of a backup right now than anything else. Just my guess though.

  • Yahoo faces privacy test with new e-mail features

    Michael Liedtke:

    Yahoo Inc. is hoping to turn on a new sharing option in its popular e-mail service without shocking users who prize their privacy.

    That’s why the Internet company is advising its 280 million e-mail accountholders to review their privacy settings along with their incoming messages.

    Yahoo posted the privacy reminder this week as it prepares to unveil new features that will share its e-mail users’ online activities and interests with people listed in their address books unless they take steps to prevent the information from being broadcast. The new sharing tools will be appearing in people’s e-mail accounts this month.

    This is not the right thing to do. You should allow people to opt in always, not make them have to opt out.