The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Gigabit WiFi Speeds?

    New frequency in the 60ghz range is going to be used to deliver some serious speed to WiFi. The drawback? Line of sight is needed for connects. Yay for Infrared!

  • Imagine YouTube for Traders

    David Carr:

    So Thomson Reuters is trying to change television. Its new product, Reuters Insider, is a Web-based video service that captures myriad streams of information produced by the company’s reporters and 150 partners. The service, which will begin Tuesday, is something like a You Tube for the financially interested, albeit one that is available only to Reuters subscribers, who pay as much as $2,000 a month.

    Interesting approach. This is a 50/50 swing here, either it will be a home run or a strikeout.

  • Art Selling Itself – Constantly

    Rob Walker:

    Even if Spies won the object, created by a young artist named Caleb Larsen, his ownership would be tentative: the technical innards of “A Tool to Deceive and Slaughter” carried a program that would relist the thing on eBay every week, forever. Indeed, the terms and conditions for submitting a bid clearly stipulated that the device must be connected to the Internet, constantly trying to resell itself at a higher price to someone else.

    Very neat, if this is still on display I might have to go take a gander.

  • In Mobile Age, Sound Quality Steps Back

    Joseph Plambeck:

    In many ways, the quality of what people hear — how well the playback reflects the original sound— has taken a step back. To many expert ears, compressed music files produce a crackly, tinnier and thinner sound than music on CDs and certainly on vinyl. And to compete with other songs, tracks are engineered to be much louder as well.

    Mark this down as “it is only a matter of time, until it changes”.

  • The Death of Files

    Dustin Curtis:

    The concept of a “file” as a container to hold a piece of content is dying. The contents inside the files are becoming the central actors for creating user interactions. Computers are becoming more human, and part of the evolutionary process requires them to more closely complement the human brain’s built-in systems for interacting with the world.

    Agreed.

  • The Lost Tribes of RadioShack: Tinkerers Search for New Spiritual Home

    Jon Mooallem:

    Recently, RadioShack has been forcefully rebranding itself, trying to shed its image as a temple of transistors, parts, and cables. Polished executives have parachuted in from the boardrooms of Safeway, Kmart, and Coca-Cola to turn the iconic American retailer around after years of underperformance and uncertainty. (In 2007, The Onion summed up the brand’s decline with the satiric headline “Even CEO Can’t Figure Out How Radioshack Still in Business.”)

    The plan? The new bosses want to turn RadioShack into a hipper, more mainstream place for “mobility” — which is what they insist on calling the cell phone market. (In an interview, RadioShack’s marketing chief used the word mobility an average of once every 105 seconds.) Selling phones is central to the new RadioShack. And so far, it seems to be working. Per-store sales are up, and corporate profits jumped 26 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009.

    My last year in college in the senior capstone course, I with two other people wrote what basically amounted to our thesis (for lack of a better word) on RadioShack. At that time we recommended that RadioShack seek to acquire or merge with a GameStop type retailer. Our thought was that the small size of RadioShacks combined with the sheer number of them (5,800 or so stores) would make for great video games sales locations.

    Now that did not and will not happen at this point. RadioShacks problems stem even deeper than most people think, they have a severe identity crisis as is apparent in this article. It used to be that all RadioShack salespeople knew how to fix stuff, they were very knowledgeable about the technology of the day. And while that may be more difficult to do today, it does not make up for the fact that most of their employees are clueless (based on my own experience).

    Trying to stay profitable with mobile phones is stupid, almost as stupid as calling them “mobility”. RadioShack should go back to being a repair shop, leverage brains and expertise. There are tons of people who make money repairing water damaged phones and computers. Replacing iPhone screens and so on. I would go to RadioShack if they had a new back cover for my iPhone and could replace it for me right then and there, wouldn’t you?

  • Reflections on the iPad's Screen

    (aka The most loved and hated screen)

    One of the most beautiful aspects of the iPad is its screen, glossy, large, beautiful, vibrant color. It is a sight to behold and one of the first things that draws people to the iPad. As gorgeous and wondrous as it is, the screen is also one of the most hated parts of the iPad. Yet there isn’t much anyone can do about it, yet.

    Glossy screens give deeper blacks and more saturated colors (just think back to those laptops of 5 years ago with the anti-reflective coatings and how amazed you were the first time you saw a glossy screened laptop), the consumers have spoken and glare is an acceptable trade off for these beautiful glossy screens. Besides who really computes outdoors?

    I do, or tried too.

    I work from home on Fridays, I live on the top floor of a southwest facing condo with a large balcony. Now in Seattle that means I get sun (if there is sun) all day long, which is great. Since I have a Macbook Pro with a glossy screen I can’t take it outdoors. In the past on Fridays I had spent lunch on the balcony reading my Kindle. Now I have the iPad (wife took the Kindle) and so I went out to the balcony on this beautifully sunny day. Guess what?

    I could not see the screen at all.

    I tried dozens of positions and angles to try and make the device usable. I found a few, but none that were comfortable enough to use for an extended period of time. I came inside and started writing this.

    If you want the bottom line on the iPad here it is: the iPad’s worst feature is also one of it’s biggest marketing features, it is the screen. It is a fingerprint magnet, it is a glare monster, but it is amazingly clear, crisp, vibrant, and beautiful.

    Even with all it’s drawbacks, I would not want a matte screen, nor will I put on an anti-glare film. It is too pretty to mess with.

    I hate this screen for so many reasons, but the good far out weighs the bad.

  • On the Android Flash demo at FlashCamp Seattle

    Jeff Croft:

    Here’s what happened: On his Mac, Ryan pulled up a site called Eco Zoo. It is, seemingly, a pretty intense example of Flash development — full of 3D rendering, rich interactions, and cute little characters. Then, he pulled up the same thing on his Nexus One. The site’s progress bar filled in and the 3D world appeared for a few seconds before the browser crashed. Ryan said (paraphrasing), “Whoops! Well, it’s beta, and this is an intense example — let’s try it again.” He tried it again and got the same result. So he said to the audience, “Well, this one isn’t going to work, but does anyone have a Flash site they’d like to see running?” Someone shouted out “Hulu.” Ryan said, “Hulu doesn’t work,” and then wrapped up his demo, telling people if they wanted to try more sites they could find him later and he’d let them play with his Nexus One.

    Oh Adobe blew that one.

  • iPad vs. Paperback

    Michael Grothaus:

    In my flat, I enjoyed reading the novel on the iPad more than in any other location (why, I’ll get to in a moment). One thing I love about ebooks on the iPad is the in-text dictionary look-up feature. This is something the iPad will always have as an advantage over traditional paperbacks. I sometimes come across a word I don’t know while reading a book. It’s much handier to be able to look up the word on the same screen as the text as opposed to having to grab a dictionary or my iPhone to look it up while I’m reading a paperback. I also like the bookmarking feature. Though bookmarking has long existed in paperbacks (when you dog-ear a page), bookmarks excel on the iPad’s ebooks because they allow you to do two useful things: highlight a word or block of words (much like you might highlight or underline text in a paperback), but the iPad also displays a bookmarks Table of Contents that list all your bookmarks and the date you bookmarked them.

    Great read for all you readers out there.

  • The Tell-All Generation Learns When Not To, at Least Online

    Laura M. Holson:

    In a new study to be released this month, the Pew Internet Project has found that people in their 20s exert more control over their digital reputations than older adults, more vigorously deleting unwanted posts and limiting information about themselves. “Social networking requires vigilance, not only in what you post, but what your friends post about you,” said Mary Madden, a senior research specialist who oversaw the study by Pew, which examines online behavior. “Now you are responsible for everything.”

    Social networking among people over 35 is supremely annoying. Add to that they share everything and don’t care to make it private – they are setting themselves up for disaster. We all need to be a little more vigilant about protecting out privacy.

  • The Unified Database Of Places Is Coming Soon. Or Maybe Never.

    MG Siegler:

    That rings true. But the question remains: who will build it? Twitter seems to be passing the buck to Google, who seems to be passing it right back to Twitter. Brightkite clearly wants to, but will any of the other players really trust a rival with their data? If not, will they start to restrict their APIs to make it harder to access the place information in bulk?

    The obvious solution is to have a completely open database, as Erick laid out. But again, that is easier said than done. We’ve seen that time and time again with a number of different initiatives. “Open” sounds great until someone has to actually do it, be in charge of it, and get users to use it.

  • Mobile Hotspot Buyers Guide

    Bill O’Brien:

    Both are battery-powered devices and the Overdrive does everything the MiFi does but, with the addition of 4G, it has the potential to do it much faster. How much faster? Well, a 4G device should be able to provide anywhere from 100 Mb/s to 1000 Mb/s, depending on usage and locale. As well, 4G is absolutely, positively, maybe guaranteed to offer seamless hand-offs as you leave one coverage area and enter another. The only problem is that there aren’t that many 4G areas just yet — but they’re coming, and the Overdrive offers 3G compatibility should 4G service not be available.

    Personally I am so close to canceling my MiFi contract and getting the Overdrive. It looks and sounds sweet.

  • Facebook, Zynga, and buyer-supplier hold up

    Chris Dixon:

    If buyers of traffic (e.g. app makers) fear future hold up, they are less likely to make investments in the platform. The biggest mistake platforms make isn’t charging fees (Facebook) or competing with complements (Twitter), it’s being inconsistent. Apple also charges 30% fees but they’ve been mostly consistent about it. App makers feel comfortable investing in the Apple platform and even having most of their business depend on them in a way they don’t on Facebook or Twitter.

    I have nothing but respect for Mark Zuckerberg and the company he created out of Facebook. At said he is at a critical point in business where he has to decide how much he cares about profitability versus sustained success. I think if they keep secretly screwing users privacy and app developers profits they are not long for this world.

  • Charted: Ad Spending of Tech Companies

    The most telling part is not the dollar amount they are spending, but what that is compared to their revenue. Amazing how much bang for the buck Apple gets.

    (via Daring Fireball)

  • HTC Incredible vs Nexus One

    Michael Whalen:

    There are more buttons on the Sense phone app than there are in the cockpit of the space shuttle. In the rare case that I need to dial someone rather than from my address book, I don’t need a bunch of crap getting in my way.

    (via Daring Fireball)

  • Nokia Adds iPad to Its Patent Fight Against Apple

    HELSINKI (Reuters) — Nokia , the world’s top handset maker, broadened its patent battle against Apple on Friday to include the iPad, deepening the legal fight between the two smartphone rivals.

    The firms have turned to the courts in the last year as Nokia battles Apple, which only entered the cellphone business in 2007 but has taken a sizeable share of the fat-margined, fast-growing smartphone market.

    The Finnish firm, on the other hand, has shed market share in smartphones along with margins and stunned investors last month by delaying its new software upgrade for phones, seen as key in its struggle with Apple.

    This in addition to the report that Nokia is branching out to new fields – they are all signs of a company grasping at straws.

  • Wii Sales Slowing

    Very interesting how long video game consoles rest on their laurels. They need to spend more time innovating and releasing more frequently, retaining backwards compatibility a long the way. The industry is ripe for picking.

  • Stock Crash Attributed to Trading Glitch

    NYTimes.com:

    Many firms have computers that are programmed to automatically place buy or sell orders based on a variety of things that happen in the markets. Some of the simplest triggers are set off when a stock drops or rises a certain percent in the trading day, or when an index moves a specific amount.

    But these orders can have a cascading effect. For example, if enough programs place sell orders when the overall market is down, say, 4 percent in a single day, those orders could push the market down even more — and set off programs that do not kick in until the market is down 5 percent, which in turn can have the effect of pushing stocks down even more.

    Very reminiscent of 1987 (though admittedly I was not aware when it happened then, I have studied it since).

  • What iPads Did To My Family

    This is a great look at something I found to be true for myself. The iPad is not a computer, but I much prefer it to a computer.

  • Lazy Programmers, Or Arrogant Apple?

    Ian Bogost:

    The computational ecosystem is burgeoning. We have more platforms today than ever before, from mobile devices to microcomputers to game consoles to specialized embedded systems. Yet, a prevailing attitude about making computational creativity longs for uniformity: game engines that target multiple platforms to produce the same plain-vanilla experience, authoring tools that export to every popular device at the lowest common denominator; and, of course, the tyranny of the web, where everything that once worked well on a particular platform is remade to work poorly everywhere.

    It is a kind of computational extirpation, where everything unique is crippled or cleansed in order to service a perverted belief in universality. I consider it a kind of jingoism, and I hope we can outgrow or destroy it.

    Falling into the lowest common denominator trap would devastate innovation.