The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Amazon’s Android Appstore, Not So Amazing

    Ryan Kim on Amazon’s Appstore:
    >Romanus said that after the bad review, Amazon lowered the price to 99 cents from $1.50, which was already a 50 percent discount, without explaining why.

    Sounds swell.

  • The Capacitive Button Cult Must Be Stopped

    Lukas Mathis:
    >I think phones have capacitive buttons for the same reason laptops have reflective screens, and TVs in stores have their brightness and contrast turned all the way up. It looks really cool when you see it in a store, and you don’t notice how screwed up it really is until after you’ve already bought it.

    That last bit, it’s spot on.

  • The Email Charter

    The email charter is full of great common sense ideas, like this one:
    >Ending a note with “No need to respond” or NNTR, is a wonderful act of generosity.

  • Dave Winer Deletes His Dropbox Account

    Dave Winer deleted his Dropbox account due to the [ToS changes](https://brooksreview.net/2011/07/dropbox-tos/), and notes this in his post on the subject:
    >To people who say I over-reacted. How could you possibly know?

    I am in the camp that thinks Winer over-reacted, but he is right that I don’t know yet if he did. What I do know is that the challenges that face the privacy and security concerns with Dropbox are the same that all other cloud services face — including Apple’s coming iCloud service and their past MobileMe services.

    When deciding whether to use a service like Dropbox you have to make two decisions before you use it:

    1. You must decide that the company you are going to use (in this case Dropbox) is not “evil”.
    2. You must know that anything and everything you store online could be seen by others, and use the service accordingly.

    If the changes bug you, then delete your account. If you just want to sync some encrypted data (that you encrypted) or some silly text files then use the service knowing that this data is not 100% private.

    I don’t agree with the take Winer has on the ToS, I think they are OK and within the bounds of what the law requires of them — I am not, however, an attorney.

  • WordPress Version 3.2

    A great update featuring a revamped Admin area and a fullscreen editor that is all the ‘rage’ right now.

  • The Dropbox Terms

    Over at the Agile Bits blog, Jeff does a great job breaking down the changes to the Dropbox terms of service:

    >The bottom line is that there is nothing in these Dropbox Terms of Service that gives them the right to do anything with your data that you don’t ask them to do. (The one exception is in the paragraph of the Dropbox privacy policy which states that they will comply with law enforcement requests for data stored on Dropbox.)

    I find the take to be pretty accurate, but I would say the bottom line is actually this: don’t keep anything that you don’t want other people to see in Dropbox, unless it is encrypted.

  • LaunchBar 5.1

    A great update to the best launcher you can get for Mac OS X. From the release notes:

    >The “Hide Dock Icon” option will now be preserved across updates, provided that the update gets installed via automatic software update.

    That’s a welcomed change.

  • Apple’s Latest Weapon Against Android: Nortel’s 6,000 Patents

    Ed Sutherland:
    >Translation: the patents are all aimed at hobbling Android, which along with Apple has eaten telecom veterans such as BlackBerry-maker RIM for breakfast, lunch and dinner. “The consortium will go out and seek to make a return by prosecuting the other people, particularly the Android camp,” predicts one analyst.

    Sorry I don’t buy this thinking for one second. The people Behind this purchase (mainly Apple) isn’t out to sue the pants off of any one — they don’t need to because they are already winning. This is a defensive move, it is a move that says: suing us for patent B.S. would be a very bad idea.

    Sutherland sums it up nicely:

    >As Apple and Android fight for smartphone marketshare, the Nortel patent library may become important as the struggle potentially moves from retail shelves into courtrooms.

    I for one am glad that these analysts that get quoted aren’t running things.

  • Hoban Cards

    My thanks again to Evan Calkins and Hoban Cards for sponsoring this weeks RSS feed. Evan makes some very nice calling cards at an amazing price.

    I like my calling cards so much that I have a hard time giving them out. You will too, I mean is *everyone* worthy of getting such a nice card from you?

    Just go order a few boxes.

    *Be sure to also check out the [custom letterpress work](http://www.hobanpress.com/) he does.*

  • Elliot Jay Stocks: First Impressions of Google Plus

    Elliot Jay Stocks on the ‘plus’:
    >Firstly, one of the reasons Plus is so appealing right now is because it’s not populated by the world and his grandmother — remember how much more fun Twitter was in the quieter, earlier years? — and once the unwashed masses step aboard, Plus will surely cave to their more generic needs. In all likelihood, it will become noisey, both in terms of visual clutter and content (see also: Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.).

    I honestly doubt it ever gets to that user mass, most people don’t have a need for multiple Facebooks — thus ‘plus’ would need to prove that users would be better off with Google than Facebook, which I don’t see happening. People are just too content with Facebook to move.

  • Which Boss?

    Paul Taylor reporting for the Financial Times:
    >Responding to the letter, RIM said it was difficult to believe an employee would write anonymously, rather than address their concerns directly to the company.

    I bet the employee just didn’t know which CEO to address the concerns with.

  • 7 Things RIM Must Do to Survive

    Number 6 from Jim Dalrymple is my favorite:

    >Stop making stupid promises. Mike and Jim are full of stupidity. I’ve never seen CEOs make so many stupid statements as these two did in the months leading up to the launch of the PlayBook.

    RIM is all sorts of stupid right now and that starts at the top of the company.

  • Verbs Pro

    Two huge new features: push notifications and you can stay logged in for up to 7 days. I have been testing this app for a bit now and it really is the best IM client you can get on your iPhone. I truly love this app for the few times that I use IM on my phone.

    It’s $4.99 for a limited time and well worth it.

    Update: The app is $2.99 and the IAP for the Pro is $4.99. My apologies.

  • Phone Book Company Loses Court Fight Against Seattle

    Those yellow page litterers tried to stop progress, they lost — lost big as Vanessa Ho reports:
    >As of Wednesday, more than 225,500 yellow pages have been cancelled in Seattle.

    Well done Seattle, well done.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 17: Aviators and BBQ

    Discussing Kansas BBQ, Google + and the HP TouchPad.

    Thanks to our fine sponsors: [Wren](http://wrenapp.com/) and [Seamless](http://fivedetails.com/seamless/).

  • Likability

    Shawn Blanc:
    >The iPad is more than the sum of its parts. The iPad has an intangible: *Likability*.

    The emphasis is his, not mine. I agree with this statement, but I don’t think the intangibles are what got the iPad sales going in the first place, nor do I think it is the reason people are drawn to the device. The intangible likability of the iPad is what is getting people to buy another iPad and not consider buying a different tablet — it’s what is “locking” people into the iPad.

    Shawn thinks the TouchPad has this likability and that this is reason to hope for the platform — I haven’t played with one, so I can’t say for sure — I just don’t see the TouchPad as being likable to anyone outside of the geek world. At least not in anyway close to the likability of the iPad.

  • Myspace’s 50 Million User Profiles Now Belong to an Ad Targeting Firm

    Ben Popper on the My Space acquisition:
    >But the acquisition today by Specific Media is quite different. They bought the profiles lock, stock and barrel. Now they will use them for their core business, ad targeting.

    First off, that is a lot of speculation — even for me. Every is in agreement though that it is pretty sketchy for an advertising firm to own a social network, yet they are OK with Google (who makes their money from ad sales) owning one…

  • Best Google + Article

    I am guessing this article about how to delete your Google + account is going to be pretty handy in the coming week or so.

  • Ballmer Responds to Calls for Him to Quit

    Tom Warren reporting:
    >“You cut me open and saw what was inside: Windows. Windows. Windows. Windows,” Ballmer said in an audio recording obtained by GeekWire. “Our company was born on the back of Windows. Windows underpins a huge percentage of all of our success, all of our profitability, all of the important things that we do. So, how important is it? Very, would be a very fair answer.”

    While a typically absurd comment from Ballmer, it actually explains a lot about Microsoft’s current “vision”. Also, this *almost* makes me want to join the Seattle Rotary club. Almost.

  • Wizards of Bullshit

    David Heinemeier Hansson on the idea that Zuckerberg is now really rich:
    >Now anyone with an iota of critical thinking would perhaps question whether a stock purchase of 0.01% is representative for the worth of the company at large, but not Forbes. They simply accept this fantasy 1:3000 transformation as fact and serves it up as the foundation of an article that then goes on to place Zuckerberg as the 3rd riches techie in the world.

    [See also this post of mine from January](https://brooksreview.net/2011/01/worth/).