The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Best Buy Sitting on a Pile of HP Tablets

    Arik Hesseldahl writing in the ‘cloud’:
    >According to one source who’s seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

    Yikes.

    >This source suggested that the 25,000-unit sales number may not account for units that consumers return to stores for a refund.

    These numbers are just so hard to believe. Even if *you* think that the iPad is a better than the TouchPad — it is hard to believe that a retail juggernaut the likes of Best Buy can’t find more than 25,000 people that hate Apple enough to roll the dice on a TouchPad.

    [Once again](http://www.marco.org/2010/12/31/there-really-isnt-much-of-a-tablet-market) (all together now): there is *no* tablet market — just an iPad market.

  • BlackBerry Torch 9850

    Katherine Boehret on a BlackBerry enthusiast site:

    >I’ve been testing the Torch 9850 over the past several days and while its looks will lure you in, its place in the mobile-app ecosystem will push you away. This device, which uses an upgraded 7.0 version of the aging BlackBerry operating system, becomes available from Sprint on Sunday.

    Enticing… ?

  • S&P Says Sell Google’s Shares After Motorola Deal

    The AP via The Seattle Times:

    >S&P said Tuesday that while the acquisition would include a patent trove, that might not be enough to keep Google’s Android mobile operating software from encountering intellectual-property issues. It downgraded its rating on Google’s shares to “Sell” from “Buy.”

    S&P is all sorts of reactionary lately, ((It always it, truthfully.)) but still they not only changed the rating but cut the price target by $200. That’s got to hurt.

  • Freemium Mobile Gamers Spend Most Money on Items They Don’t Keep

    Jeferson Valadares on the Flurry blog:

    >The chart shows that over two-thirds of all items purchased in iOS and Android freemium games are consumable, goods that users deplete. Measured another way, approximately half of all real dollars spent within all apps are for game items consumers don’t keep. Based on our data, the most popular virtual purchase, consumable or otherwise, is for “premium” in-game currency.

    This is an industry they are predicting to surpass $1 billion in revenue — this year. This is astonishing to me and being that I am not in the group that plays these types of games, I just can’t see the motivation to buy in-app currency to use — especially knowing that I will have to buy it again at some point.

    Again, no judgment — I just don’t “get” it.

  • Lie to Yourself

    MG Siegler on Google’s statement that Motorola will be left as a separate company and will not change their relationship with other Android partners:
    >I actually believe that Google believes that (or at least that many higher-ups at Google believe that). I just don’t believe it will be possible. And I think that eventually, Google will recognize that it won’t be possible.

    His entire post is spot on. Google is not trying to lie to others — no — Google is believing a lie they told to *themselves* and is in turn telling that lie (unknowingly) to others as a truth. You should really read his entire post to see what I am talking about.

  • “Me-too Android Handset”

    John Gruber:
    >Why do Motorola’s products matter? Which one of their products is actually important in the market, and not just another me-too Android handset?

  • “Awkward Situation”

    This is a fantastic look by Florian Mueller at the Motorola-Google deal and the $2.5 Billion breakup fee that Google will pay if the deal doesn’t go through. The long and short of it:

    1. There *is* concern that this deal will not go through by Motorola.
    2. Actually, I’ll let Mueller address this:

    >If regulatory scrutiny delays the closing of the acquisition, Google could end up buying a company that is formally enjoined from importing Android-based devices into the United States. That would be a really awkward situation.

    Awkward indeed.

  • Rope-a-Dope, Indeed

    Spot on and awesome. Read the entire post. I saw the post in question this morning and couldn’t believe how bad it was.

  • What the Price Paid Says

    Florian Mueller:
    >Google said in the conference call that it would operate Motorola Mobility as a separate business, but the price Google agreed to pay is not reflective of the value of Motorola Mobility as a stand-alone business: that’s the kind of price paid by a strategic buyer who plans to use the acquisition target as leverage for its (Google’s) own core business.

  • Are Software Patents the “Scaffolding of the Tech Industry”?

    Timothy B. Lee has a great look at the ‘patent problem’:
    >The key question is whether patents have a net effect of encouraging innovation. And there’s no reason to believe this is the case. To start with, a big chunk of patent revenues simply flows to patent lawyers.

    See also his statement on failed companies:

    >But the reason the auctioned patents are valuable is usually because the winning bidder will turn around and demand licensing fees from the failed company’s more-successful competitors, effectively punishing success.

  • The Problem with Average Star Ratings

    Spot on.

    [via Amitava B]

  • Goodbye, Cruel Word

    Steven Poole on leaving Microsoft Word:
    >Microsoft Word still uses the metaphor of the page, the computer screen that imitates a blank, bounded sheet of physical paper. For me, this is outdated and unimaginative. It has become a barrier rather than a window.

    His entire article is a fantastic read and really shows “the light” that was triggered for me when I stopped using “page layout” programs to write in. ((I define ‘page layout’ programs as anything that wants you to save the formatting of your text in a way that said formatting would be lost if the ‘document’ was to be opened in a plain text editor. More importantly anything that shows “page breaks”.))

  • Nintendo’s Pressure to Make iOS Games

    Marco Arment commenting on the strategy of a company like Nintendo selling iOS versions of their games:

    >I’m not even sure that their brand recognition is relevant enough in these markets to guarantee that their games would do particularly well there. How much of the iOS gaming market is too young to have much loyalty to Mario and Zelda? (And how much of the Facebook gaming market is too old?)

    I’d go a step further and suggest that it’s not just the brand recognition, but that the fundamental way that games make money has changed. Nintendo made money off of: hardware, accessories, and games. Zynga and others makes money off of: fake currency, ads, and in-app purchases.

    How do you make Mario into a game that sells for nothing and has IAP to make up for the difference? Game play, not just hardware, has changed. Nintendo hasn’t.

  • Converse for iPad

    This looks massively clever, what a great little tool.

  • AFP: Apple, Publishers ‘Sued for Price Fixing’

    AFP:
    >”We intend to prove that Apple needed a way to neutralize Amazon?s Kindle before its popularity could challenge the upcoming introduction of the iPad, a device Apple intended to compete as an e-reader,” Berman added.

    Apple *may* have been a party to actions publishers took with regard to price fixing, but if the entire argument depends on proving that Apple was worried about its fully-functional tablet competing with an eInk reader — well you will lose that argument. Apple never made the iPad so that it would be *just* an e-reader, never.

    This sounds like someone dragging the Apple brand into something to garner more attention.

  • RIM Forced to Rewrite Its Playbook Again

    Ina Fried, reporting in 2011 — contrary to the fact that it sounds more like 2010:
    >In the meantime, the shift means it will be even longer before RIM has a tablet capable of connecting to the Internet without Wi-Fi or a nearby BlackBerry.

    Someone needs to put RIM out of its misery at this point.

  • Theodolite from Hunter Research and Technology

    My thanks to Hunter Research and Technology for sponsoring the RSS feed this week to promote Theodolite. This is one of those apps that make you feel like you are carrying a ‘Q’ issued iPhone — it’s just really damn neat.

    The best way I can describe it is that Theodolite is like your eyes coupled with live data from a computer. You get all sorts of things to see: angles… well truly you get a bunch of data that may never be very useful, but that looks pretty sweet.

    From where I sit the top of the door across the room is elevated at +8.5 degrees from here — the knob is -2.3 degrees from me. Theodolite is very choice.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 22: Fo’ Drizzle

    This is a good one to listen in on. Shawn takes over reading the ads and does his best “radio voice”, while he also *attempts* to tell some jokes. Oh and we talk about Internet speed stuff, backlit keyboards, and standing for work versus sitting.

    Many thanks to our sponsors: [Paste Interactive](http://pasteinteractive.com/) and [InVision](http://www.invisionapp.com/)

  • The Patent System Is *Kind* Of Broken

    Yesterday [Nilay Patel posted a massive overview](http://thisismynext.com/2011/08/11/broken-patent-system/) of the U.S. Patent system. I skimmed most of it once I got half way through — the tone didn’t sit well with me. I am linking to Marco Arment’s comments on the post as this statement really got me thinking:

    >Spoken like a true lawyer: yes, the courts have given lawyers a lot of tools with which to defend patent lawsuits, but only those that actually reach the point of being heard in courts.

    You should read all of Marco’s comments as I 100% agree with him.

    Here’s another thought bouncing around my head: If we changed it so that patent disputes were decided through the USPTO instead of between lawyers — and sometimes courts — I wonder how much *less* that would cost everyone.

    That is: is what is being patented the problem? Or are the courts the problem? Or are the over worked USPTO staff the problem? Or are the laws the problem? Or are lawyers the problem?

    Don’t get me wrong, I like lawyers and think they serve a valuable purpose, but how many less patent disputes would we have if instead of a room full of lawyers it was a room full of USPTO staff and inventors — presumably people with direct knowledge of the patent and technologies and inventions at hand. ((Again this is not a solution, just a thought. Also this is not what Marco was saying, just something that he prompted me to think about, personally.))

  • Eliminating Batteries

    Christopher Mims:
    >The average human expends between 100 and 200 watts of power when exercising vigorously, but your iPhone can only accept up to 2.5 watts when charging. Somewhere, somehow, there’s got to be an inexpensive and reliable way to connect these two realities.

    I hear that [submerging humans in goo](https://f3a98a5aca88d28ed629-2f664c0697d743fb9a738111ab4002bd.ssl.cf1.rackcdn.com/the-matrix.gif) works pretty well.