The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • FBI to Launch Nationwide Facial Recognition Service

    This falls under the: “Cool, scary, and really we didn’t have this already?” categories. Also: CSI is a bunch of liars. ((But we already knew this.))

  • More Reason to Love Mail 5 Search

    J. Eddie Smith, IV:

    >Just the other day, through experimentation, I discovered that I can exclude results by adding a dash in front of search terms (like a Google search).

    I had no clue, great tip.

  • Japan’s Zombie Outbreak Preparedness

    Johnny Strategy:

    >Currently the only known way to quiet a zombie is to bash their brains in. This is a task that is difficult as it is gruesome, and only slightly easier if aided by a shotgun. However, kyonshi can be sedated by tactically placing a small scroll with buddhist inscriptions on the forehead (as pictured above). Also, (and this helps in assisting the first objective) kyonshi are legally blind. They detect human presence from the smell of our breath, making a cornered escape realistically possible by simply holding your breath.

    All good information to know heading into Halloween.

    [via Khoi Vinh]

  • A Bit Precarious

    Brent Simmons on the current, rather precarious, position that Google is putting RSS readers in with the possibility of killing of the syncing of feeds via unofficial APIs:
    >I’m not an RSS reader developer any more. But if I were, I’d start looking for an alternative syncing system right now.

    I’m not either, but I am worried about this. Simmons makes the excellent comparison that right now RSS readers are a lot like Twitter clients:

    >It’s been an especially good thing for RSS reader users, who can mix-and-match clients on different platforms, who can move with relative ease between one client and another. (The situation is similar to Twitter clients: users are not stuck with one client from one particular developer.)

    It’s what makes it so easy for me to stay up to date with news no matter the device I am on. If all of a sudden I have to be “locked-in” to one system you can bet it will be Reeder — and that really sucks for other developers as I will have no way to easily try their apps.

  • Netflix Loses

    Ryan Lawler on Netflix:
    >The company ended the quarter with 23.8 million subscribers in the third quarter, which is down 810,000 from the previous quarter.

    *Ouch*.

  • ‘Regarding the Condition of a 17-Month Old, Well-Used, iPhone 4’

    Shawn Blanc:
    >After using my iPhone 4 every single day for nearly a year and a half, the glass on the front and the back was still in near-mint condition.

    Ditto here, in fact the most scuffed up parts were the metal banding and the annoying plastic around the very edge of the glass. My iPad 2 on the other hand has an aluminum back that is dinged and scratched and worn. Glass is clearly better for wear, whereas aluminum is better for dropping.

  • The Apple Way to Disrupt

    Dan Frommer on how Apple would/should disrupt the TV industry:

    >Launching an Apple television without TV service would have been like launching the iPhone without phone service: It might make sense to a few people, but Apple makes products for everyone. So Apple needs to be able to say: This is the best machine in the world for watching all the television you already love. And it does all this other cool stuff. That’s a winner. (That’s the approach Apple used for the iPhone.)

    What’s the end product look like? Who knows, but you can be sure this is a large part of the goal.

  • Photo Stream Conundrum

    Dave Caolo on one of the biggest annoyances of Photo Stream under iOS 5:

    >What’s worse is that you can’t delete such throwaway photos from your Photo Stream with an iDevice. Instead, you’ve got to visit icloud.com and click “Reset Photo Stream,” which nukes the lot, good and bad. That’s why I’ve started using Camera+ again for tweeting pictures.

    During the developer betas this bugged the crap out of me — I hate(d) not being able to delete photos that don’t “belong” in the Photo Stream. Because of that I completely get where Dave is coming from, but I must admit that having used it for so long I decided to not worry about it — that’s done wonders for me.

    I bought an iPhone with tons of storage because I don’t want to have to think about such things as which photo app to use for each scenario I find myself in. To me, it’s worth the price of admission.

    Sure, it’s a couple hundred bucks more for 64GB, but that’s a couple hundred bucks that means I don’t have to worry about such things as space for Photos and circumventing Photo Stream. It’s a couple hundred bucks that gives me all the convenience in the world and none of the hassle.

    The ability to delete photos from the Photo Stream was a popular thing to file a bug report about during the betas and Apple still chose not to enable it — the problem is that if you delete a photo from the Photo Stream, should that photo also be deleted from all devices that downloaded it? And if so, then what do you do when a user *wanted* that photo to stay on a particular device?

    So Apple went the Apple way: make it painful for edge cases and perfect for the average user.

  • iPhone 4S First Phone for Low-Power Bluetooth

    Peter Svensson reporting on the iPhone 4S and the bluetooth tech Apple packed inside:
    >The phone, which went on sale Oct. 14, is the first one to have a new type of Bluetooth chip that can connect using very little power. The chip uses so little power that it can go into devices that are powered only by a standard “button cell” or watch battery.

    He notes that this allows communication with devices like watches, glucose and heart monitors — pretty neat.

  • Celebrating Steve

    A nice video of Apple’s event to remember Steve — best viewed on your iPad.

  • The Metaphors Breaking The Future

    Jon Gold on fine Corinthian leather:
    >But I’m pretty sure there’s not a thing in my physical living room called a ‘Find My Friends’. The metaphor is empty. It’s not referring to anything. It’s just a leather texture.

    It’s a great post about a trend that drives me nuts.

    [via @flyosity]

  • Power of iOS 5

    Fraser Speirs after spending a week only using iOS 5 powered devices:
    >Put it this way: I’m home now and there’s not one task that cropped up during the week that I had to say “I’ll have to wait until I get back to my Mac to finish this”. That, to me, is the interesting bit.

    This has been my experience too, the iPad 2 is an incredible tool for allowing people to travel very lightly — thankfully it just continues to get more and more powerful, while getting lighter and faster. Amazing.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 31: The Fanny Pack

    >Shawn and Ben talk about Siri, iPhone 4S battery life, Fanny Packs, Sushi and a whole slew of other tech gadgets that seem to be popping up like weeds these days.

  • CleverKite Cloud

    My thanks to CleverKite for sponsoring the RSS feed this week. They have great prices on some very fast SSD powered cloud servers.

    One of my favorite FAQ responses is in CleverKite’s [FAQ](http://www.cleverkite.com/faq):

    >But if you treat us poorly and unfairly, we will probably ask you to leave.

    These guys get “it”. [Go check them out](http://www.cleverkite.com/).

  • Making Seattle My Home

    A great overview of moving from Boston to Seattle by Matt Welsh. Though there is excellent chinese food in the city — just not in North Seattle where Welsh lives.

  • Up to 1TB in a Consumer SSD

    Estimated price: $1,300. Not too shabby and great news for what may come in future MacBooks.

  • Jobs’ Quest to ‘Destroy Android’

    Not that shocking, but I wonder whether Cook will keep up this quest against Android.

  • “Tremendous Demand”

    Jordan Golson reporting on a statement from AT&T Mobility CEO, Ralph de la Vega:
    >We’ve seen a tremendous, tremendous demand for that device even though it’s a generation old. And actually, we’re getting more new subscribers coming on the 3GS on the average than other devices.

    Wait, people want a free iPhone? *Shocking*.

  • iPad at Work

    I got my copy, did you get yours? (It’s very thorough.)

  • Using Siri to Add Reminders to a Shared List

    Great tip here from Shawn, can’t wait to set this one up.