The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Windows 8 BSOD Now Includes a Sad Face

    Look at the screenshot, tell me that will not piss you off even more when your Windows machine crashes.

    On a positive note it should be much more comical when electronic billboards crash…

  • These Four Threats Against Android Secured Motorola Mobility a $12.5 Billion Offer From Google

    Florian Mueller on Google’s premium paid to Motorola:
    >This isn’t a defensive purchase in the sense of Google becoming strong enough to retaliate seriously against its strategic rivals (mutually assured destruction). It’s defensive-defensive in the sense of merely attempting to prevent an exacerbation of the Android patent situation due to what MMI was going to do otherwise.

    Credit where credit is due, Motorola did a great job negotiating this sale.

  • Windows 8 Ushers in the Post-Post-PC Era

    Zach Epstein:
    >Apple paved the way but Microsoft will get there first with Windows 8. A tablet that can be as fluid and user friendly as the iPad but as capable as a Windows laptop.

    Define: “capable”…

  • Buy a Subscription, Get a Discounted Tablet

    That’s the line in Philadelphia at least. I think the design of the website says everything you need to know about this, erm, “program”.

  • Hands-on Preview of the Windows 8 Developer Build

    Joanna Stern on the Windows 8 tablet given out at the Microsoft conference:
    > The whole user experience feels schizophrenic, with users having to jump back and forth between the two paradigms, each of which seem like they might be better off on their own.

    To be fair she notes that most of the Metro UI stuff is pretty decent (but still needs polish). The entire system seems to break down when you need to use what I will call the “legacy” UI — no surprise here.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 26: The Web Never Sleeps

    This week Shawn talks about roasting coffee beans in a popcorn popper and I try to listen to him. We also talked about Palm Pilots and the awesome new If This Then That website.

  • Following Does Not Equal Attention

    Chris Brogan:

    >If someone is not following you on Twitter, it doesn’t mean they don’t like you. Not following means that the person has made other choices with what they want to focus on with that social network. You can be friends with someone and not follow them.

  • Charge money for your work. Dont be a jerk to people. Repeat.

    Nick Disabato:
    >Make something cool, charge people for it, take their money, keep making cool stuff. Sadly, an awful lot of people don’t practice it.

    Chicago style over the California style any day.

  • HTC Boss on Windows Phone 7, Patent Wars and Why iPhones Aren’t Cool Anymore

    John Cook quoting Martin Fichter, the acting president of HTC America:
    >I brought my daughter back to college — she’s down in Portland at Reed — and I talked to a few of the kids on her floor. And none of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacture’s devices. If you look at a college campus, Mac Book Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore.

    I had no idea that the President of HTC was using an iPhone — or did I read that wrong?

  • Twenty-Five Pieces of Basic Sartorial Knowledge So You Don’t Look Dumb

    Jesse Thorn:
    >Cell phone holsters are horrible.

    Also be sure to support Season 2 of Put This On, over at [Kickstarter](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1136753854/put-this-on-season-two?ref=card).

  • Troublesome WordPress Caching

    John Gruber in response to [this](https://brooksreview.net/2011/09/fireball-wp/) from me:

    >I’ve never used WordPress, so obviously I’m no expert on administering it, but if a smart guy like Dr. Drang has enough trouble getting it to run smoothly with caching that he goes back to running it uncached, I’m going to go out on a limb and say it’s not easy.

    I don’t know what problems Dr. Drang was having in particular, but I do know one thing: WP caching is problematic on certain webservers.

    It is not, however, hard to implement.

    WP Supercache, for instance, is very robust and only takes a few clicks to get up an running — again certain servers don’t play nicely with it. Ideally WordPress would build in a static generator or caching mechanism, but [Automattic](http://automattic.com/) has indicated that they have no interest in doing so.

    (Side note: I don’t know if Dr. Drang turned back on caching, but his site seems to be *mostly* staying up.)

  • The Future According to Films

    The next decade is a busy one…

  • The New Apple Advantage

    John Gruber:
    >But at this point, it seems clear to me that however superior Apple’s design is, it’s their business and operations strength — the Cook side of the equation — that is furthest ahead of their competition, and the more sustainable advantage.

    There is a reason Cook has always been so highly paid and that Apple has amassed a stock pile of cash. Those reasons are one in the same.

  • Why a Plain-Text Nerd Uses Evernote

    Evernote fascinates me, mostly because it is one of those services that has become so good that I want to use it, but that every time I go to use it I am turned off for one reason or another.

    That said, I am giving Brett’s system a try.

  • Hunter Research and Technology : iPhone/iPad Apps & Mac Software

    My thanks to Hunter Research and Technology for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote their robust Wx, a weather app.

    When it comes to weather apps I have tried just about every single one and Wx is just about the only weather app out there that can fully replace Weather websites for me. It has all the data and then some and their Mac version really makes me feel like I am a part of the national weather service.

    Be sure to check it out and all the other great apps they make.

  • 1Password on the Mac App Store

    One of the first things I install on any Mac I use, 1Password, is now in the Mac App Store. As part of the Mac App Store introduction it has been reduced to just $19.99 — that’s a steal for one of the best Mac apps that you can buy for yourself.

    Don’t believe me? They are already #2 on the Top Paid Apps list, with only Mac OS X to beat. Let’s help them try to beat Lion.

  • Sprint iPhone With Unlimited Data: Not That Big of a Deal

    Dan Frommer hits the nail on the head about the rumors surrounding Sprint getting a yet-to-be-announced iPhone 5 and then granting said mythical phone with unlimited data. Remember too that AT&T and Verizon both initially offered unlimited data.

    I like this thought though:

    >I’m probably also in the minority here, but I’d be much more likely to consider switching to a provider that offered data-only iPhone plans, without a mandatory voice plan.

    Count me in.

  • Apple’s Four-Year Product Rollout

    Shawn Blanc on Apples product roadmap:

    >The hardware are vessels for accessing your music, movies, apps, websites, documents, and more. Pick the device you want to use at the moment. The rest is just details.

    Every software and product release makes what Shawn said even more true.

  • “Active Users”

    What’s interesting about this Twitter blog post claiming 100 million active users is that they qualify the user count with the word “active”. Of course we know that active users are all that matter, but it is not a common way to bill your service — especially when it is estimated that you have over twice as many “users”.

    Twitter does a piss poor job of clarifying what active means, while over on [Paid Content Ingrid Lunden states](http://paidcontent.org/article/419-twitter-reaches-new-milestone-100-million-users-more-than-half-on-mobil/):

    >The 100 million active monthly users, which are based on people sending a Tweet in the last month, is an increase of 82 percent since January 2011.

    I don’t buy that Twitter would do that poor of a job measuring active users. Since you can be a very “active” Twitter user and never post a tweet.

  • Promoted Tweets in Stream Coming Everywhere, Including Third-Parties

    MG Siegler reporting on the *fantastic* news that we will all be getting “promoted” Tweets shoved in our, um, streams:
    >“We don’t think there’s anything more we need to do to make money,” he [CEO Dick Costolo] reiterated.

    Something tells me this will come back to bite him. ((Not that I don’t thinks ads are profitable — just that I don’t think they will be profitable in this scenario.))