The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • What you need to know about iTunes Match

    Chris Foresman on iTunes Match:
    >iTunes Match will let you mirror up to 25,000 tracks in your iCloud, and those songs can be pulled down to any iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad, as well as synced with Macs or PCs running iTunes. This includes tracks ripped from CDs or downloaded from the Internet, even those you may have obtained in a less-than-legal manner.

    Well there goes my theory that it would only work with tracks ripped by iTunes — this is a great read if you are interested in the one thing we can’t beta test right now. Sounds like a killer service.

  • iOS 5: 8 Other Features We Love

    Federico Viticci:
    >This one’s very simple, yet useful. iOS 5 devices will be able to sync with iTunes either wirelessly (when connected to a power source) or through the usual USB cable; but when they sync, this time you’ll be able to keep using them.

    Something tells me there are a lot more hidden gems like this in iOS 5.

  • MG Siegler on iMessage

    MG Siegler:
    >And again, while this may be iOS-only, guess who else is going to have to match this feature now? Android. SMS is about to become a cross-platform messaging platform only.

    I hadn’t thought about that, iMessage will have a big impact in the mobile world. Especially because, as Siegler notes, it is built into the current SMS app and defaults to iMessage with SMS being a backup only (or so I hear).

  • “Why Groupon is Worth $25 Billion Dollars”

    Steve Cheney writes up a nice post explaining the business of Groupon, but if we are to believe the title he used: “Why Groupon is Worth $25 Billion Dollars”. One would be inclined to think that he would answer that question — he doesn’t.

    Yes Groupon has a neat business that thus far has been hard for people to pull off, but again: massive amounts of users doesn’t mean future profitability, plain and simple.

  • Financial Times Web App

    The Financial Times:
    >We have launched a new, faster, more complete app for the iPad and iPhone which is available via your browser rather than from an app store.
    >We’re encouraging our readers to switch immediately to the new FT web app, as many new features and sections will be added over the coming weeks. Make sure you don’t miss out on these updates.

    This is a great move by FT to keep their 30% while barely effecting user experience. The most interesting thing and biggest challenge will be discovery. Will they pull their iOS app, and if so how will they tell readers that they can have a native-like experience with this app?

  • What Safari’s Reading List means for Instapaper

    Marco Arment on where Instapaper stands after today’s announcement:
    >But the more potential scenarios I consider, the more likely it seems that Safari’s Reading List is either going to have no noticeable effect on Instapaper, or it will improve sales dramatically.

    Apple has no doubt put Marco in a tough spot. From what I can see the Reading List feature is comparable to the RSS reader in Mail, but with a touch better implementation. To that end I think Instapaper will always be the ‘NetNewsWire’ of the category — meaning it is *the* app that power users flock to. However, like Marco said, time will tell.

  • Reading Time Redux

    Dr. Drang reworked his reading time for TextMate foo to make it a lot better, and he made an OS X service out of it. Great work.

  • How to Pronounce Scotch Names

    If left on my own at a bar, I am going to run up the bill with Scotch, but as any Scotch drinker knows the names can be absurd to try and order. Thanks to Esquire I don’t have to guess anymore.

    (For the record I love Glenlivet and Highland Park, neat. ((Good whiskey or whisky should always be served neat, if you think that it needs ice, then you — my friend — are *not* drinking good whiskey/whisky.)) )

  • Assange’s Air Quotes

    Jill Lawless:
    >Julian Assange told an audience at the Hay literary festival in Wales that “there are no official allegations in the public domain” of anyone being hurt by the secret-spilling site’s disclosures.

    I picture Assange putting air quotes around the word: official. I also have no “official” proof that Assange is an egomaniac.

  • Reading time in TextMate

    Dr. Drang whipped up a way to have a reading time estimate in TextMate — nicely done.

  • What if Apple and Twitter merged?

    Dave Winer speculating on Apple buying Twitter:
    >Twitter is a poor imitation of Apple, in every way.

    and:

    >Another reason Apple would like it is because it’s inevitable that Twitter will turn the screws on the news business, and Apple loves to get into position where they own the mortgage on a media industry.

    The price? Winer speculates that it would take about $10 billion to get it done — cheap.

  • The B&B Podcast, episode 14: When the Internet is Your Job

    Shawn and I talk about Typekit, cable modems that confuse us, and the great unknown (WWDC ’11).

    Thanks to our sponsors: [Typekit](http://Typekit.com/), [Idea Division](http://ideadivision.com/) and [Tasks App](http://tasksapp.com/).

  • Why Groupon Probably Paid Off Its Early Employees

    Dan Shipper on why Groupon dispersed all the VC money the original employees and investors:
    >If it doesn’t work out we’re all pretty rich. If it does work out, we’re all really rich. This would keep the entire original team together, the people who understand the business the best, so that in the next year we can shoot for a much higher valuation than the $6 billion offered by Google.

    I can see that point too, don’t agree with it.

  • ‘Groupon is Effectively Insolvent’

    Conor Sen on Groupon:
    >That being said, it’s operating like a Ponzi scheme that needs constant infusions of cash to stay afloat as it’s hemorrhaging money.

    A great point is made, the main difference between what Groupon and a true Ponzi scheme is that the investors in Groupon are aware that part of their ‘investment’ is going towards paying off old investors.

  • Jeff Croft: Briefly, on Windows 8

    Jeff Croft commenting on Windows 8:
    >Effectively, Metro works just like Windows Media Center does: it’s just an app that run atop the Windows we all know and…well, know. Just as Media Center provides a 10-foot UI on top of the existing keyboard-and-mouse Windows UI, so does Metro provide a touchscreen UI.

    He has some other great criticism, but the above highlights exactly what the problem is with Windows 8. Windows alone is fine for computers, Metro is great for touch — combining the two though is just, as Croft says, “ghetto”. Or think about it like this: how many people are clamoring for that great Windows Media Center experience?

  • Gruber on Microsoft

    John Gruber:
    >What Microsoft revealed this week is that they do not believe there *is* a post-PC era. They’re banking that the PC era will never end.

    This is not only evident with Windows 8, but in everything that the company is doing right now.

  • Sony Hacked Yet Again, Really

    Peter Bright:
    >The hackers retrieved account information from the database. They claim there are more than a million accounts in total; their BitTorrented dump just contained a sample. The database contained information about a variety of different account types, apparently related to different promotions and features operated by the company. Different sets of accounts, but with one major feature in common: they included plaintext passwords.

    Wow. Also, don’t entrust any of your information with Sony. Ever.

  • Porn Service iP4Play Goes Bust

    Travis Falstad CEO of the now failed iP4Play, the FaceTime video ‘vixen’ chat service (reporting by Nicole Martinelli):
    >Lack of FaceTime adoption and competition from webcams, coupled with higher costs to maintain quality talent…

    Wait, you mean people didn’t want other people seeing their face during a sexy video chat? Shocking.

  • Windows 8 versus iOS 5 and the iPad 3

    Craig Grannell:
    >Kudos to Microsoft if they pull this off and ‘force’ software creators to make their products work brilliantly with pointers and touch, but I worry Windows 8 will be the same old Windows on the desktop, and also the same old Windows on a tablet, just with a touch skin overlay that works really well for very few applications.

    If you look back to that [Windows 8 demo video](http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2011/jun11/06-01corporatenews.aspx), notice how they didn’t demo using Excel on the device — cause that would have been hilarious to see.

  • Twitter Archives and the Sendai Quake

    A fascinating look at Twitter, Facebook, design, reporting, and social networks through the eyes of Craig Mod who was in Tokyo the day the earthquake hit. What fascinates me most is his dissection of how each tool was used and why that is the way those tools were used and how the design of each played a part in that.