The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Gruber on the New Twitter

    John Gruber:
    >The Twitter service this new UI presents is about a whole lot more — mass-market spoonfed “trending topics” and sponsored content. It’s trying to make Twitter work for people who don’t see the appeal of what Twitter was supposed to be. It all makes sense if you think of the label under the “#” tab as reading “Dickbar” instead of “Discover”.

    [Like I said yesterday](https://brooksreview.net/2011/12/twitter-4/), Twitter no longer wants to be seen as a tool or service — it’s not a backbone to be built a top of. Twitter is a place on the Internet. Twitter wants to be an environment that people spend time at, not a service that people spend time using without every “seeing” it.

    I think Gruber is only partially right here. There’s a lot more going on than just setting the app up for monetizing the service. I would guess that any new Twitter user that loaded up Twitter 4.0 verses Tweetie 1.0 will find 4.0 far more comfortable and useable. I don’t think that is the case because they “don’t see the appeal” of Twitter — I think that is the case because Twitter has evolved beyond what it was when people like Gruber and I first started using it.

    One thing that Gruber points out that is really at the heart of the matter is the waining support for 3rd party Twitter apps. I really wouldn’t be surprised that come 8 months from now all 3rd party apps are severely crippled in someway compared to the official Twitter clients — so much so that it becomes masochistic to use them.

    A lot of people are surprised that I *still* use the official Twitter apps — the reason I do is because I know that they are the only ones that will be around in the future. That is: I don’t think Twitter likes that there are 3rd party apps and because of that I think they are slowly trying to kill them off. Example number one was the integration in iOS. Example two is the killing of photo sharing services with the `pic.twitter.com` service.

    It’s a matter of when, not if, Twitter is going to kill 3rd party clients.

  • Normal Really Means Performance

    Walt Mossberg in his review of the Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime:
    >Asus and Nvidia build in three battery modes, and I tested only the one called Normal. Unfortunately, Nvidia now says that nomenclature is misleading, and that Normal is really meant for only high-performance tasks. So, early next year, when it switches to the next version of Android, it plans to rename Normal as “Performance,” to steer users to a less power-hungry mode called “Balanced.” I can’t say how the Prime’s battery will perform in that scenario with the new OS.

    I had to read that paragraph twice because I got confused. Why aren’t those features already present? Why ship the tablet with a battery mode mislabeled?

  • UP Refund

    Hosain Rahman the CEO of Jawbone about the UP:
    >This means that for whatever reason, or no reason at all, you can receive a full refund for UP. This is true even if you decide to keep your UP band. We are so committed to this product that we’re offering you the option of using it for free.

    They admit there is a problem with the hardware and stopped production to fix them. Good return policy, but man is that some crappy QA.

  • Twitter for iPhone Pro-Tip

    Two great tips for using the new (shitty) Twitter for iPhone app. At least this makes the app slightly more useable.

  • Twitter for iPhone 4.0

    The swipe a tweet to act on it was the best feature of Twitter for iPhone — that’s gone. It’s also a pain in the ass to switch between accounts.

    Oh it looks nice enough and in time I am sure I will get used to it, but removing the swipe gesture — that’s just idiotic.

  • Hulu’s Face Match Helps You ID That Actor You Can’t Name

    T.C. Sottek:
    >Hulu today announced Face Match, a new feature that allows viewers to hover their cursor over an actor’s face in a video to find out their name and other background information.

    That’s pretty cool. Currently I have to ask my wife and she tells me — so eliminating some steps here.

  • Garrett Murray’s Jawbone UP Review

    No need to read past his first paragraph (maybe take a peak at his great photos):
    >Here’s the TL/DR version: Don’t buy this piece of shit. It doesn’t work, it will fail, and the software is terrible.

  • Paul Thurrott on the Courier Tablet

    I think Thurrott is mostly right about Microsoft killing the Courier:
    >No, Microsoft was right to kill that device. I mentioned earlier that Microsoft is a platforms company and the big failing of the Courier is that it didn’t support a single successful Microsoft platform, not one. Well, that and the fact that no one was ever going to buy that thing, despite all the moaning and hand-wringing you see online these days to the contrary. You see the same arguments about a Zune device based on Windows Phone: Everyone says they want one, but if Microsoft produced it, they’d sell 6 copies.

    I say mostly because:

    1. I don’t think the Courier needed to support a “Microsoft platform” and
    2. Because I think that if the Courier had shipped *before* the iPad they would have sold a ton, but waiting until after the iPad would have Zune’d it. ((That’s a thing, right?))

    Interesting that Thurrott agrees that seemingly no matter how good it was to be — it would be destined to fail.

  • The Moment Before Instagram Turns to Crap

    Stephen Shankland reporting a statement from Instagram Chief Executive Kevin Systrom:
    >”I think the advertising experience is going to be extremely engaging,” Systrom said. “It’s much harder with text,” but Instagram offers photos, and brand names such as Audi, Kate Spade, and Burberry have joined Instagram.

    In other words: don’t you think it would be cool if we flooded users with picture based ads instead of just text? Well… don’t you?

  • That Guy At Your Wedding

    Marco Arment on Google Chairman Eric ‘Creepy’ Schmidt:
    >Why does Google let Eric Schmidt speak publicly? Has it ever turned out well?

    Schmidt is like that guy at your wedding — the one that no one wanted to invite, but everyone felt obligated to invite. You know the guy — the one that everyone doesn’t want to give a toast, but that everyone knows will give a toast.

  • Security Research into Carrier IQ

    Dan Rosenberg dug a little deeper into the data that Carrier IQ collects and one of the things that he found was:
    >CarrierIQ cannot record SMS text bodies, web page contents, or email content even if carriers and handset manufacturers wished to abuse it to do so. There is simply no metric that contains this information.

    He only looked at one phone on one network, but the results of this seem “less bad” than previously hyped. What’s unknown is how much the results vary from phone to phone and carrier to carrier.

  • Show Me the Money

    A wise Chinese company secured the rights to the ‘iPad’ name trademarks long before Apple released the iPad. Apple fought them in court and lost. The entire saga seems like a Chinese company saying to Apple: “Show me the money!” ((I immediately regret typing this.))

    We’ll see.

  • The National Defense Authorization Act Is the Greatest Threat to Civil Liberties Americans Face

    E.D. Kain for Forbes:
    >If Obama does one thing for the remainder of his presidency let it be a veto of the National Defense Authorization Act – a law recently passed by the Senate currently which would place domestic terror investigations and interrogations into the hands of the military and which would open the door for trial-free, indefinite detention of anyone, including American citizens, so long as the government calls them terrorists.

    I particularly like how [Wired’s Spencer Ackerman puts it](http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/12/senate-military-detention/):

    >Here’s the best thing that can be said about the new detention powers the Senate has tucked into next year’s defense bill: They don’t force the military to detain American citizens indefinitely without a trial. They just let the military do that.

    This is not a good thing. [Obama is poised to veto this](http://loyalopposition.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/30/president-obama-veto-the-defense-authorization-act/), but we should still be loud about wanting it vetoed.

    [via My Wife]

  • Bloggers Are Journalists in Washington State

    Just an FYI to Washington State bloggers. From the sounds of it we would be protected by shield laws.

  • Oregon Blogger, Isn’t a Journalist, Concludes U.S. Court

    Curtis Cartier:
    >A U.S. District Court judge in Portland [Oregon] has drawn a line in the sand between “journalist” and “blogger.” And for Crystal Cox, a woman on the latter end of that comparison, the distinction has cost her $2.5 million.

    There are two things to point out:

    1. She represented herself and I see that as a big mistake.
    2. The case is for defamation where she claims that she has a source that she will not reveal.

    What it comes down to is that she represented her claims as factual (according to the ruling) and would not reveal the source to prove that the claims were indeed factual. I wouldn’t reveal my source either, but I would certainly hire an attorney — or two.

  • EU Urges US to Bolster Data Protection Practices Newspaper

    Slobodan Lekic for the AP:
    >The EU wants the United States to strengthen data protection practices in order to create a uniform “privacy landscape” on both sides of the Atlantic, a top official said Tuesday.

    >Internet companies in Europe are now offering cloud computing services whose selling point is that they shelter users from the U.S. Patriot Act, European Union Justice Commissioner Viviane Reding noted. The anti-terrorism law has been widely criticized by civil libertarians.

    I hadn’t thought about this much before, but I can see how it would make a non-US resident/user/citizen uneasy using a service like Dropbox.

  • Determine Which Base Station You’re Connected to on a Bridged Network

    A good tip that will come in handy for me.

    I’d also like to note that you can grab the BSSID by OPT-Clicking the WiFi status in the menubar. But you already know that.

  • Amazon’s Kindle Fire Lets Kids Charge Up a Storm

    Mitch Lipka reporting on the Kindle Fire’s lack of a password prompt before you buy things, especially items from Amazon.com:
    >Others suggest turning off the wireless, which would allow only the use of previously downloaded items, such as books and games. Some forums on Amazon are filled with user after user trying to come up with ways to beat the system with limited success, including turning off the “1-Click” option.

    This was very uncomfortable for me when I was testing the Fire. So much so that once I realized this could happen I set a passcode lock on it that only my wife knows. The Fire is not a kid friendly device in any way — yet because of the price I bet many kids will get them this Christmas.

    Parents should have fun with those bills.

    “The Kindle Fire: a great gift for kids that keeps giving and giving.”

    [via The Beard]

  • Antelope Island

    John Carey kicks off his guest desktop images with a fantastic shot. Carey’s Fiftyfootshadows has long been one of my absolute favorite sites for desktops.

    It is now my mission to get featured with a guest desktop.

    Anyways, be sure to check out [all desktops](http://fiftyfootshadows.net/category/desktops/) he has — every one is fantastic.

  • Press Release: European Commission Opens Formal Proceedings to Investigate Sales of E-Books

    What Paul Thurrott failed to link to, but TUAW found, is this press release that details the ebook investigation surrounding iBooks:
    >The European Commission has opened formal antitrust proceedings to investigate whether international publishers Hachette Livre (Lagardère Publishing, France), Harper Collins (News Corp., USA), Simon & Schuster (CBS Corp., USA), Penguin (Pearson Group, United Kingdom) and Verlagsgruppe Georg von Holzbrinck (owner of inter alia Macmillan, Germany) have, possibly with the help of Apple, engaged in anti-competitive practices affecting the sale of e-books in the European Economic Area (EEA)1, in breach of EU antitrust rules.

    This paints a much less “Apple is evil” sentiment than [Thurrott’s stupid post did](https://brooksreview.net/2011/12/dickhead/).