The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • ‘Automatically Send Articles From Reading List to Instapaper’

    I asked on App.net for a tool to send stuff from Reading List to Instapaper, didn’t explain why, and Federico Viticci came up with a wonderful solution. Viticci figured out why I wanted it too:
    >The interesting fact about this workflow is that, at first, I thought it would be useless: *why would I want to do this*? As TJ Luoma told me on App.net, though, Reading List is integrated on a system-wide level, while Instapaper isn’t. Sure, most third-party apps offer a “Save to Instapaper” feature nowadays, but it’s still very convenient to be able to add links to Reading List from Mail or Calendar.

    Bingo. I can send things to Reading List really easily in Apple apps and avoid having to open the page in Safari and then invoke the Instapaper bookmarklet — thanks Viticci!

    David Smith, well dressed man he is, [also came up with an app to do the same]( http://static.crossforward.com/ReadingListToInstapaper.app.zip) (that’s a zip file download link, FYI). The primary difference between the two is that with Viticci’s solution everything is automated, with Smith’s you have to manually send the items each time. Both work, and work well in my testing, they just are for different workflows. I’ll use both, but probably rely mostly on Viticci’s for the time being.

  • Seasonality Core

    This is a neat enough update to the Weather app, Seasonality, that I thought it was worth sharing. They added “particle mode” to the wind maps that show you how something would move across a given map with the wind that is currently happening. It’s hard to describe, but looks pretty sweet, kind of mesmerizing. (Be sure to hit the options and up the amount of particles for the full effect.)

  • Send Everything to Instapaper

    There’s been more than a few times where I will have a couple dozen tabs open in Safari, only to have to leave and want to send those tabs (back) into Instapaper. In the past I just CMD+W and then CMD+2 to cycle through closing windows and sending them to Instapaper. I recently lamented that I wish there was an Applescript to do such a thing — well now there is.

    Martijn Engler put his Applescript that does just that on Github for all to enjoy. Sweet!

  • Amazon Item of the Week: Columbia River Knife and Tool’s M16-02Z Zytel Razor Edge Tanto Blade Knife

    [Patrick Rhone pointed me to this knife on his blog](http://patrickrhone.com/2012/09/06/columbia-river-knife-and-tools-m16-02z-knife-review/), and encouraged me to get it. It is actually the first “tanto blade” knife that I have owned. This is the style of blade that looks a lot better, but gives you two sharp points: one where the blade breaks to form the “normal” point, and the last one where the point of the knife actually is.

    I’ve been adverse to this type of blade simply because they didn’t seem as useful to me.

    Now having carried this knife as my everyday knife for a month I will toss out the above statement. This is actually a really good knife, but also a really quirky knife.

    ### The Good

    – Fast, I mean fast, deployment.
    – Solid lock.
    – Fantastic feeling handle.
    – Good weight and balance.
    – Good steel that ships really sharp.

    ### The Bad

    – Too big for me to use as an everyday carry.
    – The closing mechanism seems utterly ridiculous to me. Yes, you can close the knife with one hand — but that doesn’t explain why in the world I want a safety on the closing function. Essentially to close this knife blade you have to hold a little lever in place and then depress the inner blade lock. It works, but it’s clumsy and stupid — this knife opens so easily the safety should be on the opening, not closing side of the action.

    ### All-in-all

    I truly like this knife, but it takes a lot of getting used to. It’s found a home on my workbench and I’ve been very happy with it. [At $35.68 with Prime shipping](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000WAC7RM/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20), it’s a bargain.

  • The B&B Podcast #80: Tips and Tricks: OmniFocus

    >Ben and Shawn share their favorite tips, tricks, and workflows for OmniFocus.

    Fun show, let us know if we missed your favorite OmniFocus tip/trick.

  • The Magazine

    Marco Arment on his new business, *The Magazine*:

    > Many publications focus on reviews and comparisons, or bring you as much news as quickly as possible. The Magazine will not serve those roles. Instead, it takes a measured approach to the big picture: rather than telling readers everything that happens in technology, The Magazine delivers meaningful editorial and big-picture articles.

    I’ve known about this for a bit now, but only saw the finished app yesterday. It’s simply fantastic, everything I would put in an iPad magazine is there. I can’t think of a single reason not to get the free trial to see just how good this will be and already is.

    Something that Marco didn’t say, but that I will, is that Marco is the type of guy that *will* deny your article if he doesn’t think it is good enough. Plain and simple. That is what it takes to pull something like this off: calling it like you see it, focusing on only the best, putting the reader first.

    **Update:** Since everyone else is mentioning it, I will be in an upcoming issue and I am honored.

  • Tim Bray Wants Off OS X, OK

    Tim Bray, complaining about the direction Apple is taking OS X:

    > In Particular · Since Snow Leopard, there’s been exactly one useful new OS X thing: windows you can resize at any edge. And there have been brutal amputations (most painful for me: loss of the Apache GUI and the moronic refusal to tell me what screen resolutions I’m using).

    One new feature?

    + iCloud
    + VIP email inbox
    + Omnibar in Safari
    + How about just the overall stability of Safari
    + Fullscreen apps

    I’ll stop. What Bray is really upset about, from what I can infer, two things:

    1. The new features are obfuscating the nerd parts of the OS. Like the screen size resolutions Bray complains about, these changes are vastly more useful to non-geeks and should be irrelevant to geeks since there are plenty of tools that can hep mitigate this that are asily found using any search engine, even Google.
    2. I think the biggest problem Bray is having is one that plagues a lot of people. Which is, unless you buy fully into the Apple environment you get limited benefit from new OS updates. So if you use an Android phone, iCloud is irrelevant to you. Likewise if you don’t use Safari the massive strides there won’t effect you. And so on. This is typical of Apple, you need to fully “buy in” to the Apple environment or you risk wondering why in the hell you keep upgrading.

    Bray won’t be better of on Ubuntu, most people aren’t. I tried doing that same thing a few times now, because it sounds so appealing to the inner geek in me: more trouble than it’s worth and I could never fully be just Linux.

    Bray’s points are valid, but not a fault of OS X. Rather they are the fault of the user only wanting to have one foot in the door of an ecosystem that requires you to dive in head first.

  • Blanc’s Hidden Radio

    Shawn Blanc:

    >The Jambox is certainly not as clever as the Hidden Radio. Nor is it as complementary to the decor of its surroundings.

    Oh, I think we know where this is going…

    Shawn mentions that the Hidden looks better and has better battery life, neither of which matter after you have smashed it with a sledge hammer out of frustration. Hidden sent out a Kickstarter survey and typically I ignore these, but I felt compelled to let them know how and where they failed in my eyes.

    Contrary to what Shawn says, I think the Jambox looks far better. It’s less clever, and has shorter battery life, but then again it works — so there’s that.

    I’ve had a Jambox for what seems like decades and I barely use it, every time I go to use it I find the battery dead. Yet I like it better.

    The Hidden could have won me over if the battery lasted a month when off and it could play for an hour straight. Not much else matters, and that’s where it failed for me. Truly, it didn’t even have to sound that great.

  • Opt-out of Verizon Marketing Bullshit

    As [pointed out to me on App.net](https://alpha.app.net/bryanjclark/post/843872), you have less than 30 days to opt-out of some Verizon marketing sharing program. Who knows what it is other than a privacy violation in exchange for a few bucks going to Verizon.

    You have to sign into your Verizon account and say no to three things. Pretty simple, go do it, then photo copy your middle finger and send it to Verizon.

  • ‘Without Keyboards’

    Interesting thoughts from Craig Grannell on a TechCrunch post about the future of writing in a keyboard-less world. One thing that grabbed me was this sentence from Grannell:

    >Like with every other creative medium, it’s the edit that’s so often important with the written (or spoken) word.

    Like most people, I talk differently that I write. To be specific: when I talk I formulate my thoughts on the fly, but when I type I am forced to think about what I ultimately want to say and how to get there. So the idea of dictating to my Mac was never something that I wanted, it certainly is something nice to have, but I never use it.

    However, on my iPhone, I seek out the dictation. It is simply much easier to dictate on my iPhone than it is to tap things out with my thumbs. Because of that, I tend to steer clear of my iPhone for anything long form.

    Which brings me to software keyboards and my odd love and fascination with them. Specifically the iPad software keyboard. Because of the, shall we say, clunkiness of typing on the iPad’s software keyboard I have found that you must type a bit slower to be more accurate (editing is a pain). And because of the slower rate of typing, I find that I transcribe my thoughts a bit more clearly.

    This, I think, is why I like using the iPad so much — having nothing to do with the one-app-at-a-time viewports — instead more accurately getting my thoughts out of my head. Ideally, then, I would love to have a writing device that is the iPad, but with width to accommodate a full-sized software keyboard — I may be the only one who wants such a device though.

  • One Device

    John Moltz:
    >My point is that I have yet to see anyone prove that you can get one device to do it all by either scaling up from a mobile operating system or down from a desktop operating system.

    Fantastic point. Moreover I think this explains why I am not one of those people that can use an iPad exclusively. Wait, I mean, I *could* use only an iPad, but I *chose* not to. And I have been wondering why lately, especially given how much I actually love my iPad and *like* the idea of using it more and more.

    That’s the thing though, because the iPad is fantastic at somethings and I *will* go out of my way to use it for those things. However, I don’t like going out of my way to use it for things that I already own gadgets that do that thing better. I’m not wanting to make calls on my iPad, or edit photos on it — but I always want to use Instapaper on it.

    I am guessing the solution is what I am only just not getting a taste of with iCloud. That behind-the-scenes-sync that just puts the data where I need it, when I need it. Moving from iA’s Writer across my devices truly is seamless for me — to me that’s far better and more productive that just having one device that does it all.

  • ‘The 5 Most Common Ways Laptops Are Stolen’

    The Prey blog lists out 5 spots your laptop is likely to be stolen from — you should feel safer if you have Prey installed, you have it installed right? Two things that caught my eye:

    1. They note that your office is a likely target. I’ve thought a lot about this and often our office is pretty open and I leave for hours with my laptop sitting where anyone could grab it and dash out. In the past I put locks on my laptops, but for a while now I haven’t had a laptop with a spot to lock it, this seems like a flaw with Apple products to me. Prey and Find my Mac are great, but they are reactive measures not proactive measures. Honestly now that I think about it, I think I will just take my laptop with me.
    2. I like the note that a fancy case attracts people to the device. It’s interesting, because as Mac geeks we like to enclose our expensive computers in expensive/nice cases. I know I won’t stop doing it, but I certainly will think twice about feeling safe leaving it in plain sight in my car, or elsewhere.

    All-in-all, good reminders.

  • ‘You Should Buy a Bidet’

    Lex Friedman making the most compelling argument for a Bidet I have every read:
    >Let’s start with a thought experiment. Suppose you’re calmly walking down the street, minding your own business as you do, when a crazed attacker smears his feces all over your forehead.

    The bottom line is what are you going to rely on to clean your face: toilet paper or water?

    Yeah, water. I don’t mean to say I am going out and getting a bidet, but I am certainly thinking about it now. Especially one of those Japanese ones with the seat warmer — nothing nicer on a cold morning.

  • The B&B Podcast #79: You Never Need It, Until You Need It

    >Shawn and Ben talk about Ben’s reluctance to use his iPad as a work device even though he says he wants to, our impressions of the Kickstarted Hidden Radio Bluetooth speaker, Shawn’s initial impressions of the new Kindle Paperwhite, and more.

  • ‘An App, or Not’

    Roger Black in a long and excellent post about The New York Times and their media strategy, makes this compelling observation:

    >Frequency and currency trump perspective and background on the web. It’s more a matter of “this just in” than “you gotta read this article.”

    That not only describes The Times, it describes almost every blog I visit. I don’t want that to *ever* describe this blog. From time to time it may, but I strive for “you gotta read this article”. When I stop to think about all the “old media” publications, there are only two that I think are currently publishing the type of “you gotta read this” content:

    – The New Yorker
    – Vanity Fair

    One of those two you would expect…

  • ‘Twitter Breaks Its Own New Rules With TweetDeck’

    Kris Holt on how Twitter’s own Tweetdeck breaks the rules Twitter set forth on displaying tweets:
    >The rules put Twitter in a tough spot, it would seem. Either it keeps Facebook integration in TweetDeck, risking the ire of developers who might accuse it of not playing fair, or it removes the Facebook feature and faces possible blowback from TweetDeck users who find it useful.

    The choice Twitter makes here is going to be fascinating to see. The only “right” thing to do is to remove the Facebook integration — and they very well may do that — but I highly doubt they do that. Instead, Twitter will ignore this and just go about business as screwing-over-developers-normal.

  • Amazon Item of the Week: Griffin Technology PowerMate

    Not a new product by any means, I lost the first one I owned and ended up ordering another — simply because I wanted to test out a theory of triggering Keyboard Maestro macros with it (you can, it’s awesome).

    Anyway, now I have a panic button of sorts for my Mac. I hit the big pretty silver knob and my Mac does all sorts of stuff. Fun.

  • ‘HiddenRadio Speaker Is Clever but Disappointing’

    Lex Friedman, for Macworld on the HiddenRadio:
    >But even if sound quality wasn’t an issue, the HiddenRadio’s frustrating ports and volume-dial mechanism keep me from endorsing it over its rivals.

    I received mine yesterday and I was pumped — no really, I was. I opened it and was met with a beautiful packaging, and a solid feeling product. Then came the problems:

    1. I had to charge the device for 4-5 hours before using it if I didn’t want to damage the long-term life of the battery. Or so said the card that came with the speaker.
    2. I then struggled to get the USB plugged into the speaker, as Friedman notes, it’s a huge pain in the ass.
    3. Then I waited 6 hours for it to fully charge.
    4. Now at home I quickly paired the speaker with my iPhone and started playing some Al Green (my daughters current favorite artist).
    5. The speaker turned off before the song finished.
    6. I restarted the speaker and kept going.
    7. I complained on App.net
    8. I restarted and re-paired everything.
    9. I came to the conclusion that the speaker shuts off between 1:30-2:50minutes of playing audio. From responses I have gotten, I am not alone.

    So as a speaker the HiddenRadio is a huge piece of shit (I emailed support, no response yet, but I emailed late at like 6pm) for me right now. If mine worked, it sounds like I’d still hate it. But hey, it makes a fantastic paperweight.

    Side note: Friedman notes that it is hard to turn with one hand, I found that to be the case only if you didn’t also apply downward pressure, as you would if you were using a screwdriver on a screw. When you apply downward pressure it turns just fine one-handed.

  • Reachability

    Dustin Curtis analyzing the design decisions behind changing the iPhone 5’s screen size:
    >It’s easy to see Apple’s thinking here – the benefits of having half an inch more of display area far outweigh the downsides in reachability. Every area of the screen *is* reachable, after all (unlike many Android phones with 4-inch+ screens), it’s just slightly uncomfortable.

    You really need to read this entire post, or at the very least the bulleted list of reasons why the iPhone 5’s other design elements makes the 4-inch screen more reachable than it otherwise would be. Things like a thinner phone allowing your hand to wrap around more easily is something obvious, but also something I hadn’t even realized was going on.

    Personally I don’t like the extra difficulty at doing rare tasks, and I don’t like the extra height of the phone when in my pocket. However, I love all the extra screen real estate when viewing lists, reading things, and typing — which accounts for about 90% of what I do on the phone. So on the one hand it is a slight inconvenience, but on the other it improves the more routine things I do on the phone so much, that I find it hard to complain about the former.

    Overall, the screen size increase is a huge win for users of any hand size.

  • ‘The Larch (Camera)’

    Andy Ihnatko on the iPhone 5 camera, comparing it to the Samsung Galaxy SIII and GX1:
    >The Samsung Galaxy S III takes just as good pictures as the iPhone 5, when the lighting is at least halfway decent.

    And then:

    >The GS III still has a ways to go before it can match the iPhone’s photographic abilities.

    Really interesting analysis from Ihnatko on the cameras, I don’t agree with his overall assessment of the iPhone 5 camera, but if his examples are the only ones than it is hard not to agree. Overall I have found the iPhone 5 camera to be 50% better than that of the 4S. It’s a really good *camera*.