The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • The Newspaper Industry Sucks So Much They Can’t Even Afford a Convention to Brainstorm Ways to Save Themselves

    Eric Pfanner:

    The conference and an accompanying forum for editors had intended to focus on new business models to help newspapers manage the difficult transition to digital publishing.

  • Leaving on a Jet Plane (aka I Quit Facebook)

    My reasoning for why I am deleting my Facebook account. I am doing it on June 13th, 2010 unless Facebook makes some serious privacy changes.

  • Meet the iPad

    Great new iPad ad from Apple.

  • Server Downtime

    We had some server downtime last night, BlueHost had to restart the server around 11:00p last night. It was down for at least 45 minutes that I know of. When I contacted them at 10:45p they said it would be back up in a half hour. That was not the case.

    As such I will be looking for a new hosting provider. Sorry about all this.

    [UPDATE]: I have selected a new hosting company (Media Temple) and am waiting for the account to be set up, at which time I am going to get the site moved over. There will be hiccups, but I will do the best I can.

  • Google Knows You Hate Facebook

    Joshua Brustein:

    The trend has even seeped into the consciousness of Google’s algorithms; if you began typing “how do I” into the search engine this morning, “how do I delete my facebook account” was the fifth result, right between “how do I love thee” and “how do I look.”

    We are reaching a critical mass here.

    On another note I am going to begin the process of letting everyone know I am deleting my account within the next couple of months.

  • Court Rules That LimeWire Infringed on Copyrights

    Joseph Plambeck:

    Professor Zittrain said that the ruling did not appear to consider the technology itself as illegal, only the promoting and encouraging of illegal uses of that technology, which is consistent with the precedent established by the Supreme Court’s Grokster opinion.

    Why you would be arrogant enough to promote illegal file sharing to begin with – well it is beyond me.

  • SAP to Buy Sybase for $5.25 Billion

    Won’t be long before Oracle responds with 120 acquisitions of their own. Ellison won’t let anyone “out acquire” him.

  • Great Analysis of the Verizon / Apple iPhone

    John Gruber:

    Really, we’re right back where we were a year ago with Apple-Verizon rumors. I could pretty much just re-run today this piece I wrote a year ago. (I’d change my prediction that we’ll see a Verizon iPhone “before the end of 2010” to “before the end of 2011”, though. But I still think it’s a question of when, not if, the iPhone will be available through Verizon.)

  • iPad Won't Go Mass Market = BS

    Steve O’Hear:

    As magical as Apple’s iPad maybe, it’s unlikely to go mass market anytime soon. That’s according to research carried out in the UK, which concludes that consumers struggle to see how the device could fit into their lives.

    Yet Apple has sold over a million of these bad boys. So yeah, probably a million plus people are wrong and this guy is right. What the hell defines ‘mass market’ anyway?

  • Review: Zinio for iPad

    I have been using Zinio to read magazines since 4/21/2005 (according to the oldest transaction Zinio lists on my account page) until the release of the iPad I have only had access to my magazines on my Macs. For the most part Zinio gives you a PDF version of the print magazine, with the occasional video added in here and there. The quality has always been fantastic and their Mac support gets better every year, it is now excellent to use the service on a Mac.

    So naturally when I saw that Zinio had an iPad app that I could read my magazines on, I was to say the very least happy. Very happy.

    Reading Magazines on the iPad

    I use the iPad mostly in landscape view, but I have found that with Zinio I read in Portrait orientation (looking at the pictures in landscape). The initial iPad app was very sluggish, and when you zoomed in the text did not come into focus. Just yesterday Zinio released a new version that speeds the app up significantly, and allows you to zoom in and have nice sharp text.

    Zinio does not stop there, as they also have interactive magazines that you can download, which give you a far better experience then the typical PDF version of the magazine gives you. With interactive versions you get three majors advantages: video, slideshows, text excerpts (more on this in a bit).

    The video is good, and adds a little to the experience of reading the magazine. The slideshows are phenomenal, especially if you subscribe to National Geographic (why wouldn’t you?). In the National Geographic app you get slideshows for the features where you can see some of their amazing photography. One thing that I really love about about the National Geographic slideshows is that when you transition from one picture to the next, instead of the picture showing up blurry for a second, it shows up dark. Half a second later you get a nice vibrant bright image, this strikes me as a much better way to transition then the blurry to sharp method that most people invoke.

    The text excerpts, or more aptly the text button at the bottom of articles is a very handy feature. Pressing the button invokes a text only mode, the screen background becomes white with dark grey text, no ads, or pictures to distract your eye. I very much like reading the articles this way, as it reminds me of the fantastic Instapaper app.

    Overall I highly recommend using Zinio to get your magazines, especially given the most subscriptions are between $9.00 and $19 a year. Forget paying $4.99 and issue.

  • The Verizon iPhone Hubbub

    About 6 months after AT&T and Apple debuted the iPhone back in 2007 people started clamoring for the Verizon version. Every year around this time rumors abound that this is year that Apple and Verizon will launch the iPhone together. I have several friends who have been “holding out” to get the Verizon iPhone, not wanting to use one on the AT&T network.

    I think by now most people know my stance on that line of thinking: these people are idiots. They are not idiots because they want the phone on Verizon, but rather because for the last 3 years they have been using crap phones, waiting to use the phone they really want to use. Some have even been buying new phones to “tide them over” while they wait for a Verizon iPhone.

    The most interesting thing to me about this whole Verizon iPhone business, is Verizon’s stance on the matter. I have never heard or read anything from Verizon (not counting the clueless store employees that always say it is coming soon) that confirms or denies that they are getting the iPhone. This is perhaps one of the smartest marketing moves by a company yet.

    By not saying anything Verizon keeps peoples hopes up, and therefore keeps some of their customers with them instead of switching to AT&T. In fact I would guess that each time one of these Verizon iPhone rumors pops up, Verizon loves it. Not because they so much want it to be true, but because it means that people still like them over the rival AT&T.

    Think about that for a second.

    Verizon is getting massive free PR (good PR no less) every year for about 4-months leading up to the introduction of a new iPhone. They are getting customers to stay with them in hopes that a phone they want really comes to fruition, instead of very easily switching to AT&T. This is astounding.

    I for one hope that they release one for Verizon so that my service quality goes up as everyone “flees” to Verizon.

  • Microsoft 2010 on the Web

    Ashlee Vance for The New York Times:

    It is now available for businesses. Microsoft has said that Office will range in price from a limited, free Web version supported by ads to a full-blown version that costs $500, both to be available to consumers in June. Most analysts say they think Microsoft will hold on to its near monopoly on productivity software.

    This is a smart move by Microsoft, but one question I keep asking myself is: if a company wants to move to a web based product, why would they pay Microsoft almost $500, instead of paying Google next to nothing (in comparison)?

  • Apple Loses Another 4G iPhone

    This morning Engadget (I am sure Gizmodo as well, but I don’t visit that site) has pics up from a Vietnamese blog that paid $4,000 (reportedly) for a 4G iPhone. It looks a little more polished than the one that Gizmodo had, though almost identical.

    The best part is that a teardown has revealed that the device seems to be running an Apple chip, perhaps even the A4 chip that powers the iPad. This is huge, if true it is the best news about the new phone to date. Any iPad user can tell you just how impressive the speed of the iPad is, now imagine that in your phone.

    Can’t wait.

  • AT&T Changing Upgrade Eligibility Dates for iPhone Users

    Mike Schramm:

    While most of those who purchased the iPhone 3GS at launch had an upgrade date available sometime in November, far be it from AT&T to stand in the way of a new iPhone purchase. They’ve been changing the dates without fanfare to as soon as June 21st, 2010.

    AT&T so far has done this every year, the difference is that they usually waited until you pre-order your phone. Then you get an email message such as the one I got when I bought the 3GS:

    On June 17, AT&T announced a change to their upgrade eligibility policy
    and ‘best upgrade pricing’ for qualifying iPhone 3G owners.

    Based on AT&T’s updated qualification criteria, we are pleased to inform
    you that you are eligible to receive a refund on your recent
    iPhone 3G S purchase.

    Your Order Acknowledgment and Shipment Notification emails will reflect
    the original purchase price. However, Apple will issue you a refund in
    the amount of $200.00, which is the difference between your original
    purchase price and the new qualifying price.

    Apple will process your refund in the next 5 days, and will send you an
    email when this has been completed. We will process your refund based
    on your original payment method. See below for details.

    Nice to see that fours years into it they are finally getting out ahead.

  • Link the Web to Locations

    Marshall Kirkpatrick:

    The service is essentially a form of Augmented Reality, augmenting physical locations with geotagged web content. The potential for fun and value here is huge and I’ve long wondered why no one had built an app like this.

    Still in the testing phase but the potential here is awesome. Imagine traveling and wonder what something was, or if the food was any good there. Pull out your phone and pull up what is on the web about where you are standing. Huge potential here.

  • Skype's New Rival, Meet Goober 3

    Ramu Nagappan:

    Goober 3.0 offers HD voice calls (with higher-quality audio). Rates are a little complicated: it’s 1 cent a minute for landlines in the U.S. and Canada, and 1.4 cents for mobile lines. Calls to landlines in Europe are usually less than 3 cents a minute, but some areas are more, and mobile lines are 20 cents and up. Asia calls start at 5 cents, and go up from there depending on the country and type of line. The company is making a point of saying that its advertised rates tend to be lower than Skype’s.

  • Someone Teaches the World How to Use Macs Since They Don't Have a Start Menu

    Seriously.

  • ATM Hack Demo Planned For Black Hat

    Mathew Schwartz:

    In particular, he promised both local and remote attacks on two ATMs from “major” but as yet unnamed manufacturers, and to demonstrate “a multi-platform ATM rootkit.” In addition, he said he will detail “protection mechanisms that ATM manufacturers can implement to safeguard against these attacks.”

    So many things I could do with this – for testing only ofcourse.

  • GSA Moves Toward Cloud E-Mail

    J. Nicholas Hoover:

    Currently, according to a statement of objectives also posted online, GSA uses IBM Lotus Notes 7 for its 18,500 e-mail accounts, Blackberry Enterprise Server for mobility for about half of those accounts, and a number of other Lotus tools like Connections, Sametime, and Quickr for collaboration. It also has the option to use a number of Cisco collaboration tools — Cisco hardware and software powers the agency’s voice-over IP implementation, which is in the middle of being rolled out.

    This is going to be the new outsourcing trend in large agencies and corporations. This is no small amount of emails to move to the cloud.

  • HiFiMan HM-801 Audio Player

    Eliot Van Buskirk:

    That means HiFiMan not only plays lossless files that sound as good as CDs but also 24-bit files that sound better than CDs, with much wider frequency and dynamic ranges. That equates to reproducing very high pitches (even ones outside the human hearing range, which some say colors the sound we can hear), and music with more gradations in volume that allow dynamic nuances to shine through.

    On my Christmas list.