The Brooks Review

Author: Ben Brooks

  • Why Intel Will Be a Mobile Loser

    Om Malik:

    The market has read the tea leaves as well, thus explaining the stock performance of Microsoft. Same goes for Intel. Despite its efforts to launch new chips or dabble in likely-to-fail OS efforts such as its joint venture with Nokia, the Mobilin, Intel resembles an elephant on top of quicksand.

    As I said yesterday:

    Competition is almost always a good thing for consumers. My fear would be that Intel tries to monopolize the market much like they did with the PC industry. It would seem to me that if Android or WebOS ran on any mobile chip, that it would take one step closer to being the Windows of the mobile market.

    That still stands. A lot of people predicted that Microsoft was too late to get into the video game arena with the introduction of the Xbox. What nobody accounted for was Microsoft’s determination, and money. Intel is seemingly in the same boat.

  • FCC Is GungHo About Net Neutrality

    Edward Wyatt:

    On Thursday, Mr. Genachowski is expected to assert that the agency, under its powers to regulate phone service, is permitted to require broadband service providers to follow certain transmission guidelines, including safeguarding privacy, not discriminating against certain types of content providers, offering service to rural customers at the same rate as urban customers and providing access to people with disabilities.

    This is good.

  • Get $2 From AT&T

    Nate Anderson:

    And, if you were an AT&T DSL subscriber, but the company’s records show that nothing improper was done to your line, you can still get money. The proposed settlement says that those who “believe that your DSL Service has not performed at satisfactory speeds” may still be eligible for a “one-time payment of $2.00.” Yes—$2.00.

    As expected AT&T settled with the Ohio class-action suit over limiting its DSL speed. But hey, it is better than nothing.

  • Infographic on How Teens Use Cellphones

    Christina Warren:

    At this point, 75% of teens have cellphones, up from 45% back in 2004. Thirty-three percent of teens send more than 100 texts per day. Teenage boys send an average of 30 text messages per day and girls send an average of 80.

    Be sure to click through and check out the infographic. If I were a mobile tech CEO, this is the kind of data I would use to shape my company for the future. Today’s teens make us look like luddites.

  • Towards Better Ads

    Marco Arment:

    If you currently block ads, is there anything the ads themselves can improve that would make you change your mind? (I’m guessing there isn’t.)

    Even the best ads are still ads, and still aren’t always appropriate or wanted. I don’t think smarter ads are the solution to this problem. I don’t think ads are the solution to this problem. What if more ad-supported sites and services offered paid no-ads subscriptions?

    It is worth clicking through to read his whole post. The gist of which is that no matter what advertisers do you are not going to click on the ad. And no matter what blogs do you probably are not going to pay to support them. I think perhaps the best model is to look at the Daring Fireball’s monetization model. Charging to support the RSS feed, adding in lovely ads and finishing off with T-Shirt sales. Now not every blogger can do this, but it is a great model for John Gruber.

  • A Tiny Apartment Transforms into 24 Rooms

    This is the future, this guy has an amazing setup to make a very small apartment very functional. There was a lot of time, thought, money, and technology put into the development of this place.

    (Warning this is a YouTube link, so there be Flash)

  • 10 Reasons To Delete Your Facebook Account

    Dan Yoder:

    While social networking is a fun new application category enjoying remarkable growth, Facebook isn’t the only game in town. I don’t like their application nor how they do business and so I’ve made my choice to use other providers. And so can you.

    I have been toying with the very same idea. I get very little out of Facebook and put a lot of data out there for that privilege.

  • Apple Isn’t the Problem. Wall Street’s Big Banks are the Problem.

    Robert Reich:

    Why is the Federal Trade Commission threatening Apple with a possible lawsuit for abusing its economic power, but not even raising an eyebrow about the huge and growing economic (and political) muscle of JP Morgan Chase or any of the other four remaining giant banks on Wall Street?

    Our future well being depends more on people like Steve Jobs who invent real products that can improve our lives, than it does on people like Jamie Dimon who invent financial products that do little other than threaten our economy.

    Could not agree more. Did not know this though:

    So why is the FTC nosing around Apple and not around Wall Street? Because the Federal Trade Commission Act allows the agency to stop “unfair methods of competition” almost anywhere in the economy except in the financial sector. Banks are explicitly excluded.

    Time to make some changes to those rules I think. Big banks had a chance to prove us wrong and instead they made 10% of Americans unemployed. Ooops indeed.

  • iPhone, Gizmodo, and moral clarity about crime

    Stuart Green on the “lost” 4G iPhone:

    Finally, there’s the misguided idea, long espoused by many in the tech community, that “information wants to be free.” But whether it’s in the form of proprietary trade secrets embodied by Apple’s latest iPhone or intellectual property subject to seemingly endless illegal downloading and file sharing every second of every day, information is not free.

    It takes a lot of time and energy and money to write books, compose music, create movies, and design and market electronic devices like iPhones. Such information deserves legal protection, even when it’s been lost in a bar.

    This is probably the most clear headed take on the matter, from a law professor no less.

  • Microsoft Kin One and Two review

    Katherine Boehret for WSJ:

    Though Microsoft’s Kin One has some polishing to do on its camera and on its social-networking tools, it’s a uniquely attractive device that’s a pleasure to use. I only wish all mobile devices had worry-free backup websites like the Kin Studio.

    Compared to Joshua Topolsky for Engadget.com:

    It’s clear to us from conversations we’ve had with Microsoft that there are people at the company with good ideas about what phones should and shouldn’t do, but we don’t feel the Kin is representative of those ideas. The execution (or lack thereof) on these products makes us legitimately concerned about what the company will do with Windows Phone 7. We can only hope that the similarities between those devices and the Kin handsets don’t stretch much further than the “Windows Phone” label, because in our estimation, Kin is one side of the family that needs to be disowned… quickly.

    Well those are polar opposite opinions.

  • Google Readies Its E-Book Plan, Bringing in a New Sales Approach

    WSJ:

    Google says users will be able to buy digital copies of books directly from its site. It will also allow book retailers—even independent shops—to partner with Google Editions on their own sites, sharing the revenue.

    and

    While Mr. Palma didn’t go into details, users of Google Editions would be able to read books from a web browser— meaning that the type of e-reader device wouldn’t matter. The company also could build software for certain devices like an iPhone or iPad.

    The first quote is killer, if Google say let people self publish ebooks, sell them through Google and got 60% of the revenue – this is how Apple got the App Store so damn popular. They made it easy for creators to sell to consumers.

    The second part though – well no one wants to read an ebook on their computer, let alone in a web browser. The typography would be terrible, Google needs to integrate this with Android and Chrome OS to win some market share.

  • Exploring iWork for iPad

    Robert Mohns:

    We’re not fans of the huge, side-scrolling “My Documents” view. It’s a gratuitous waste of screen real estate, and doesn’t scale well past a handful of documents. What happens when a user has created twenty or thirty documents? Or a hundred? It’s not far fetched, yet Apple doesn’t seem to have considered that obvious scenario.

    That never once crossed my mind as a problem, but I can see it happening very quickly.

    The final factor is this: If you want to author documents, spreadsheets and presentations on iPad, quickly and easily, and today, Apple’s iWork trio is the only game in town.

    That is the same conclusion a lot of people are coming to. There will be updates that will make these apps shine, and there will be more third party offerings. But neither are here right now.

  • HP refreshes PC lines, tries to copy Apple

    Gabriel Madway:

    HP launched new notebooks for its high-end Envy brand, with slot-load optical drives and back-lit keyboards, and cut the entry-level price to $999 from $1,299.

    Sounds like they are taking some of the nicer features from Apple’s notebooks. Can’t blame them there.

  • Intel Throws its hat into the ring, again

    Tarmo Virki:

    Intel said it has been able to cut the amount of power the chip uses on standby, between tasks, by more than 50 times and Chandrasekher told Reuters last year the power consumption is “very close” and almost matching that of rivals.

    Competition is almost always a good thing for consumers. My fear would be that Intel tries to monopolize the market much like they did with the PC industry. It would seem to me that if Android or WebOS ran on any mobile chip, that it would take one step closer to being the Windows of the mobile market.

  • TED's OpenTV Project Announced

    Emily McManus:

    The TED Open TV Project has already signed up dozens of broadcasters around the world, whose collective audience numbers in the hundreds of millions. Built in response to strong demand from TV station managers around the world, TED’s Open TV Project allows broadcasters to air TEDTalks for free, and encourages them to create custom programs for their communities.

    TED Talks are great, I love watching these videos, so naturally I think this is a great move. TED has some of the most thought provoking and inspirational videos on the web.

  • Take a Walk, Recharge Your iPhone

    Sarah Kessler:

    After an early wave of enthusiasm for bulky backpacks with solar-powered chargers, the new bet is on kinetic energy, or energy that can be generated from movement, including the stride of a walker or the turn of a bicycle wheel. The beauty of kinetic energy is that the more something weighs and the faster it moves, the more energy it can generate.

    25 minutes walking to charge and iPhone = sign me up.

  • I Agree With One Thing Paul Thurrott Says (But Only One Thing)

    Paul Thurrott:

    I know that, internally at Microsoft, many people do not agree with the direction the company is going. And all you have to do is read the tech press and, heck, the mainstream press, to see who’s getting all the press these days.

    It ain’t you, Microsoft. And that is indeed bad news.

    I have to agree with that whole heartedly. Microsoft for all intents and purposes has dropped off the radar of the press. This is never good for a company, even when Apple is in lock down developing a new product there is still tremendous buzz about the company.

    But Thurrott had to go and say this:

    And if you’re looking to copy Apple’s success–and you are–then at least do it right. It’s not about the products at all. What Apple does right is marketing. It’s form over function, plain and simple. How else could the world be so excited over an unnecessary over-sized iPod touch? Because it’s from Apple, that’s how. And the press markets it for them, and makes people believe that this is somehow a big deal. It’s a self-replicating back-patting, buddy system, plain and simple.

    And you’re not part of the circle, Microsoft. How else can you explain the ginormous Windows 7 sales that get no attention, and certainly no love from Wall Street? You’ve sold over 100 million licenses of this thing in record time and all anyone can talk about are lost iPhones and the iPad. I mean, give me a break.

    Actually it is about the products, marketing will sell your products initially, growth comes from having a great product. This is how you explain Apple’s success, amazing marketing to get the early adopters to buy and then the product will carry it the rest of the way. The iPhone / iPod / iPad sales are nuts, and growing still.

    Windows 7 has been a financial success I am sure (compared to Vista) and it has sold a lot of copies. That does not make it good however, because unlike with the iPad or iPhone people are not buying it because they want it. People are buying Windows 7 because they don’t want to use a slow, 9 year old Operating System. That and the fact that all new PCs comes with it helps.

  • Central Desktop for Office

    From the Website:

    Central Desktop for Office enables multiple users to simultaneously co-author Word, Excel and PowerPoint files in real time, eliminating the need to upgrade to Microsoft SharePoint/Office 2010 for the same functionality.

    I am pretty surprised that it took so long for this to come to Office. Looks like it could be pretty neat for those that need this level of collaboration. I would think though that their user base is very limited in size. Be sure to check out the video for a better understanding of what the software allows.

  • Electronic medical orders may save lives

    Frederik Joelving:

    Despite the encouraging findings, Longhurst said he was concerned about President Obama’s call for rapid implementation of the electronic system.

    “It should be rolled out by experienced experts,” he said. “And there are only so many experts in this country.”

    I too agree that it should be rolled out by very experienced people. I think the bigger picture with regard to digitizing the healthcare system in hospitals is going to be privacy and security. I think in general everyone agrees that better information (getting all the medical charts at once with computer alerts to allergies) will save lives.

    The real question is what the cost to our privacy will be.

  • The iPad – One Month In

    Monday April 5th, 2010 at approximately 10:30a I received my 16gb Wi-Fi only iPad. I had just gotten off a plane in Portland, OR – a red-eye from Honolulu to Portland – and drove 2 hours and 30 minutes to Tacoma, WA to pick up my iPad waiting at my office for me. Then I drove another 44 minutes home.

    I unpacked from being gone for two weeks, played with the cat and ate food. Then I did the ceremonial opening of the iPad and plugged it in to my Macbook Pro. Now came the longest hour and a half of my life as I synced the iPad and put music and videos on it.

    For the next week of my life and really took the iPad everywhere with me, showing it off and using it for every possible thing I could. We have all read those reviews, some are great and some leave you scratching your head. I thought it would be useful for people to get a look at how I am using the iPad one month into it. I have broken my usages down by the time of the day as that seems like the best way to go about this.

    Pre-Work (5:45a – 7:30a)

    After I check some websites on my Mac, I read through my RSS feeds (Fever°) and save the ones I want to read to Instapaper. From there I grab my iPad and head to the couch (I don’t like to look at Fever° on the iPad as it is still a little problematic, but usable). Once I hit the couch I go through my apps, here is the order that I read the apps and email links to Instapaper:

    • TWC Max+ (weather info)
    • NYT Editors Choice
    • USA Today
    • BBC News
    • Guardian Eyewitness
    • Reuters Galleries
    • Reuters News Pro

    When I see an article I want to read in any of the above I email the link to Instapaper for reading later. If I have time left before I need to leave for work I try to read articles in Instapaper.

    Work (8:15a – 4:45p)

    This is the period of the day that I rarely use the iPad. Not that it doesn’t have its business uses, just my work day is not tailored towards those uses. I rarely go to meetings – which is a place where the iPad shines. Most days I will use the iPad as a scratch pad (Penultimate) while on the phone and will take it with me to different places I go. If I find myself with some downtime I will flip on the Verizon MiFi and catch up on some Instapaper reading.

    After Work (5:30p – bedtime)

    The iPad shines during this period of time. Spend a lot of time on different websites, reading in Instapaper / iBooks / Kindle / Zinio. I post to WordPress, play games, and control VLC on my Mac mini (hooked to the TV). The entire night is spent on my iPad, rarely do I touch my Macbook Pro.

    Weekends

    Take Pre-work and After work and press them together omitting the ‘work’ stage. That is my weekend usage. 10% is on my Macbook Pro and the rest is my iPad with about 0.5% being my iPhone.

    Would I do it again?

    One thing I think is most telling about a new gadget is to ask yourself if you would purchase it again given what you know today. The answer to this for me is an overwhelming ‘yes’ I would buy the iPad again no regrets. I also would not buy the 3G, nor do I need any more space than 16gbs affords.

    The key to my enjoyment of the iPad is that after work period of time, whereas before the iPad I used to use my Macbook Pro until my wife got annoyed and then just my iPhone. With the iPad it is all sorts of different. I can turn the iPad off and on to start and stop what I am doing in an instant – allowing me to stop reading and focus on a conversation with my wife, picking it up again easily. With a laptop there is always a lag between sleeping and waking the computer – a lag that becomes annoying once you use an iPad.

    Favorite Feature

    Hands down the battery. Apple was not joking when they rated it at 10 hours of battery life. This device has an outstanding battery. While the life is nice, what the battery really means for the user is:

    • No carrying a charger
    • Doing what you want when you want it – you don’t have to save the last little bit of battery life for something that may be important later, because you always have battery life.

    Wireless devices are great so long as the battery is charged. They are worthless once the batteries are dead, or you have to us them tethered to a charger. The iPad makes this a non-issue.

    Worst ‘Feature’

    I had a lot of trouble deciding what I think the worst feature to be, but I think I finally discovered. Lack of privacy is the iPad’s worst feature. I think Craig Hockenberry said it best:

    The iPad was naturally passed around amongst the partygoers. Many people interacted with it during the evening, and I lost track of who had it at any given time. And therein lies a fundamental problem.

    My iPad has a lot of personal information on it: email, business documents, and financial data. When you pass it around, you’re giving everyone who touches it the opportunity to mess with your private life, whether intentionally or not. That makes me uneasy.

    I could not agree more so be sure to read that whole post to get the entire picture. We need better security when we show / share these devices with others.

    Favorite App

    Instapaper. Hands down, the reading, usability, speed are all top notch. This is the best app on the iPad no doubt about it.

    Worst App

    I can’t speak for all the apps, but of the ones that I have tried I hate the Wall Street Journal app the most. This has nothing to do with the subscription pricing, and everything to do with the look, and usability.

    Why do I have to download the entire newspaper for the hour / day? Why does it take forever to download it, NYT and USA Today reloads quickly. Why do you feel the need to nag me all the time to subscribe when I already said no? Not to mention the giant pop up ads. Such an annoying app.

    Moving Forward

    I really am looking forward to the future of the iPad, more so than I am with the iPhone. I think OS 4.0 is going to give quite an amazing boost to the iPad. I think that future hardware updates are only going to make an already fast iPad into an instant iPad.

    Also on another note the iPad has made me want an SSD drive for my Macbook Pro more than ever.

    That’s my iPad take after one month of using it.