Category: Links

Adam Hartung:
>Without a doubt, Mr. Ballmer is the worst CEO of a large publicly traded American company today. Not only has he singlehandedly steered Microsoft out of some of the fastest growing and most lucrative tech markets (mobile music, handsets and tablets) but in the process he has sacrificed the growth and profits of not only his company but “ecosystem” companies such as Dell, Hewlett Packard and even Nokia. The reach of his bad leadership has extended far beyond Microsoft when it comes to destroying shareholder value – and jobs.

[As I said a year ago](https://brooksreview.net/2011/05/ballmer/), he needs to be gone.

A fantastic post by `brentcas` in *The Verge* forums ((Still the place to find the best content on *The Verge*.)) rethinking the app switcher in iOS. I don’t like all of the concepts that he introduces (such as clear all apps), but I think what he shows *is* a better app switcher.

For starters I like the idea of two dedicated pages, one for settings and another for music, that show page specific controls below the menubar. The double-tap home button is massively convenient, but right now I think Apple is limiting its usefulness too much.

I always thought mine was fairly uncommon, but it turns out I am wrong (despite never knowing anyone that shares my birthday with me). But, wow, look at July, August, and September.

Engadget has an update from Kaspersky about whether they are really working with Apple or not:

>The article reports that Kaspersky Lab had “begun the process of analyzing the Mac OS platform at Apple’s request” to identify vulnerabilities. This statement was taken out of context by the magazine – Apple did not invite or solicit Kaspersky Lab’s assistance in analyzing the Mac OS X platform.

That doesn’t sound so much like the publications fault, as much as Kaspersky stretching the truth. Good luck working with Apple now, Kaspersky.

Joe Kissell on the annoying habit of getting calendars alerts spread out across all your Apple devices at roughly the same time:
>Ultimately, I would like to see a system of cascading alerts. My devices make their best guess about which one is primary at the moment, and display any alerts on just that one device. If I dismiss an alert there, that’s the end of the story. If a few minutes go by without any action from me, the next-most-likely device displays the alert, and so on. But regardless of where I ultimately see that alert, explicitly dismissing it makes it disappear from all my screens.

I like that idea and think it may be the most simple from a users perspective. I always thought another way would for Macs and iOS devices to somehow know (maybe by WiFi network) when they are near each other and only sound the alert once.

This is a really tough problem to solve for Apple, but I think we can be assured they are working on it. If evidenced by Messages on the Mac alone. When you are iMessageing you don’t get alerts on all your devices under very particular circumstances — that’s Apple’s acknowledgment of the annoyance factor that comes from multiple alerts. And Messages largely works in a very similar manner to what Kissell is suggesting.

So if you want to know the direction Apple may take with calendar alerts, I don’t think you need to look any further than Messages on the Mac.

Or more specifically: “What the Dark Sky team learned when trying to get pre-ordered copies of their iOS app to backers.”

The end result of which was a massive increase in funds spent. I look forward to reading more of their posts about their Kickstarter experience.

I never thought I would want to stick something like this on my desk or any other piece of furniture — so when these came out I dismissed them. Then my wife and I moved and we each got new nightstands — nightstands that had no way to keep our charger cables on the top.

After weeks of have to fish around the floor to plugin my phone and then try to discern in the dark if I had a hold of the iPad or iPhone charger, well I broke down a bought these. This is easily in the top 10 of best things I have bought for $10 or less.

They just work perfectly, no really.

So if you notice that you have a cable that keeps dropping to the floor when you want it on your desk, or wherever, do yourself a favor and order these.

(They also come in other colors, [like white](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B004K2YBQI/ref=nosim&tag=brooksreview-20).)

This is really interesting to me, because even though I hate skeuomorphic tricks — well — I prefer the iBooks style pagination in Instapaper. It just feels right to me. Scrolling is too tedious and the fast pagination is too fast and disorienting. I like the iBooks page flip — oddly enough.

Paul Smalera:

>It’s easy to believe that Facebook can stay in control of the Web in perpetuity by acquiring tech’s prettiest young things. But remember that a decade ago, Google looked like the substrate of the Internet. Nearly everything about the way we surfed flowed through Google. Now, not so much. While Google is far from toppled, a tectonic shift has created new land masses in the ocean, where previously there was only misty horizon.

Google was in trouble the minute TV ads started showing their Facebook URLs instead of their web address. Companies now say: “find us on Facebook” and that’s bad for Google because Facebook has its own search box free of Google ads.

Joe Simnacher and Terry Box:

>In 1962, Mr. Shelby created the first Shelby Cobra, borrowing British Ace Bristol sports car bodies and mating them to Ford V-8 engines in his Venice, Calif., garage. The Shelby Cobras finished first and second in a race held around the Dodger Stadium parking lot. The race prompted Ford to sponsor his project.

That car was a game changer.

Great little app from 5by5 that allows you to listen to the live stream and get push alerts when your favorite show is starting.

I’ve been using it for a while, and it’s a great way of listening to great podcasts do go get it.

Dustin Curtis looked into that Forbes article that claims the HBO’s president, Eric Kessler said the Internet was a “temporary phenomenon” and here’s what he found:
>It’s so unbelievable that I went to the primary source, a 40 minute video interview with Mr. Kessler, which draws a fascinating picture of HBO’s business strategy. After listening to the entire interview twice, I could not pinpoint where Kessler actually said “temporary phenomenon.”

It turns out what HBO’s president, Eric Kessler said was more along the lines that he thinks the Internet is big, but it can’t replace the deal they have going right now with cable. Which makes sense.

So good job with the Linkbait Forbes.

A new $8,000 digital camera from Leica that only shoots in B&W. Yep, you read that right.

So: why? Well take a look at the images posted on this link, they are shot at ISO 6400 and ISO 10,000 and yet they have very low noise compared to most other cameras.

That’s why.

Also the B&W looks excellent, cool camera — just wish it was in my price range.

In my [Evernote post the other day](https://brooksreview.net/2012/05/evernote-end-game/) I mentioned that Evernote should strive to be more like [Drafts](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/drafts/id502385074?mt=8) for note capture — turns out someone already has a Drafts like app for Evernote. (Buyer beware: I haven’t tried this app at all.)

Dan Miller:

> So if you swipe up on the dash, you get an em dash. Swipe up on the dollar sign and you get the cents symbol. One thing I like is that this is one way to get smart quotation marks.

I had no clue.

Yes, none of these icons will make sense to my daughter if she stops to try and figure what each picture is, but it also won’t matter. All that really matters is that people know that a floppy disk picture means `save` — so while us “old people” may be the only ones that have seen the real life objects these icons depict, it doesn’t matter as long as people know what they mean.

Still, interesting to think about.