The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • A FireFox Addon is Tracking You

    Simon at InterWeb Task Force writes about the hidden tracking that the Ant Addon for FireFox is doing and the repercussions of it:

    >What if the US government subpoena ‘Reality check network corp’ for all information stored on their servers about my IP address, cooke, or UID? Lets think even more simplistic, what if a party to a divorce case subpoenas for that data to prove a partner was visiting certain sites at certain times? Assuming this data is recorded by ant.com on their server rpc.ant.com in New York (and lets face it, why would they send such data with unique identifiers if it were not recorded?), my entire browsing history is there laid before the subpoenaing court or government. Every site I visited. Every page I looked at.

    He admits that this is likely done to improve a ranking algorithm they use, but the fact that they are using a unique ID for users is a touch concerning, or at least it should be. Anyways Chrome and Safari are much better options.

  • Huffduffer

    A neat little service that creates a podcast out of audio clips you add from around the web. Also a great way to cull together all those audio interviews you have been putting off — then subscribe to those in Instacast and boom, magic.

  • Tweed

    >Tweed presents you with a list of links to new articles, blog posts or anything else posted by your friends and people you follow on Twitter as well as our own curated lists of people we read and follow.

    An interesting new app that I was able to check out before it launched (subsequently was given a promo code for). You can hook in your Twitter info and all you see is your timeline items that have links, drag the tweets with links to the right and the link loads in a stacked paper like interface. Tap to read full screen.

    The whole point is to turn your Twitter feed in to an RSS/Instapaper like service (it does support Instapaper too) — and it’s pretty interesting.

    The video on the linked page says it all ,so you should check that out. The app is currently $2.99 in the app store. I don’t know that the app is for me, but it is a pretty interesting idea.

    (A nice icon too.)

  • Microsoft Closes Up Shop on Innovation

    Jay Greene on the three year old Microsoft design studio:
    >Though Microsoft made little noise about Pioneer, it was once at the heart of the company’s efforts to capture consumer imagination. Rather than having a portfolio of products to develop, Pioneer sought to incubate design that might one day make its way into products. The ill-fated Courier tablet–something of a dual-screen tablet that predated Apple’s iPad–emerged from Pioneer. Though the device won kudos when images leaked, Microsoft decided to shelve the concept.

    Thus one of the few areas in Microsoft that was creating interesting new products is now gone. I just don’t see the logic here, but then again Ballmer is lacking in logic.

  • Amazon Boasts Ebook Sales

    Amazon in a press release:

    >Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

    This is all about the Kindle. There are quite a few people in my life that surprised me by owning a Kindle this year — I doubt Kindle ownership will be uncommon by this time next year. The device is too cheap and too good for people to not buy it at this point.

  • Devil’s Advocate Take on Twitter’s Policy Changes

    Marco Arment:
    >It doesn’t matter whether third-party clients helped make it popular. Twitter has reciprocated for years by giving such apps a compelling platform for which to sell software. Successful Twitter-client developers have made a ton of money in exchange for the help they provided in making Twitter popular.

    That’s a damn good point.

  • Apple’s Malware Solution

    John Gruber:
    >So, for the sake of argument, let’s take it as a given that this sort of thing [malware on Macs] is becoming more common. What can Apple do? Think about it. (My guess: think about why the iPhone and iPad, despite being far more popular than the Mac, have no trojan horses.)

    That’s a very clever solution, as I assume he is talking about App Stores. If users are trained that where they get apps without worries is from an Apple App Store, then they will be leery about letting any other app install itself.

    (An added bonus also being that the user iTunes account password is different than the Mac admin password. Thus users see the differentiation in the installation methods and become less willing to install outside of the App Store. Of course that is assuming a lot on the users end.)

    UPDATE: As pointed out on Twitter Gruber could be referring to many things, including sandboxing and the like.

  • “Twitter’s Shit Sandwich”

    John Gruber has an excellent take on the changes Twitter will be making to the authentication process. More and more Twitter is cramming changes down third party developers throats — the very group of people that helped to make Twitter popular. I for one would rarely use Twitter had Loren Brichter (now employed at Twitter) not made Tweetie.

    What Twitter really needs to do is convey reasons why they are doing this, not to users, but to the developer community. They need to show everyone the path they are taking.

    Now you may be thinking that I would never say this about Apple, and that they do similar things. That too has crossed my mind, but the biggest difference is that Apple has a track record of doing amazing things. So far Twitter has a track record of acquiring VC funding and changing CEOs. ((Also: dickbar.))

    Bottom line: this change is bad and Twitter needs to open up about its reasons behind the change, or prove very quickly that they made the right decision.

    (Neither of which I see happening.)

  • Parallels Transporter

    From the App Store description:
    >Use your Windows documents, pictures, music, downloads, and Internet bookmarks on your Mac without installing Windows. Parallels Transporter for App Store is all new!

    >Parallels Transporter allows you to copy documents, pictures, music, videos, downloads, and Internet bookmarks from a Windows computer to your Mac.

    Sounds killer. [MacStories](http://www.macstories.net/news/parallels-transporter-makes-pc-to-mac-migration-dead-simple/) reports the price will go from the current $0.99 to $39.99 soon. That’s not bad for how much time this will likely save most users.

  • The Tent That Turns Into Concrete in Less Than 24 Hours

    The BBC:
    >Among new innovations which could help relief efforts is a fabric shelter that, when sprayed with water, turns to concrete within 24 hours.

    That is really all you need to know about it, there is a nice Flash only video though. This kind of thing is incredibly cool, very un-sexy, but will make far more of an impact than the latest SSD controller will. ((One would hope at least.))

  • Fantastical

    I am sure you have all heard or seen Fantastical by now — it’s a little menubar app that shows you upcoming appointments and allows you to create new appointments in natural language. It’s very neat, pretty nice looks (though why make that month calendar look like a crappy paper one?!?). It will set you back about $15 and I like it, but [Justin Blanton makes a killer point](http://hypertext.net/2011/05/fantastical):

    >While it most certainly is pretty and likely a joy to use, I’m a bit confused as to why anyone would use a calendaring app and a task-management app, unless maybe they’re sync’ing their calendars with other people.

    After reading that I am going to stop using calendars and see what it would be like to do everything in OmniFocus — should be interesting. At the very least I think Justin makes a pretty strong point, because with Fantastical you would have two calendaring apps on your Mac that do more or less the same thing (iCal and Fantastical): show you where to go and when.

  • The Oona

    I just backed this clever little iPhone stand. If for no other reason that to replace the dock I use on my nightstand.

  • How People Really Use the iPad

    They asked a bunch of great questions and present it all in bar charts, my favorite question was: “Did you consider buying an Android tablet before buying the iPad?” To which a staggering 87.4% said no.

  • Encrypting Dropbox

    This is an on-the-fly encryption tool that works with Dropbox. You would need it installed on every computer that syncs with Dropbox, but that is easy enough. Drop your files into a specific folder inside of Dropbox and they are encrypted client-side to prevent unauthorized access. For now it is Windows only so I haven’t had the chance to try it.

    [via GigaOm]

  • Bill Gates Backs Ballmer

    Bill Gates has come out saying he urged the Skype deal to be done, which is executive speak for saying that Ballmer is still his man.

    Gates:

    >It’ll be fascinating to see how the brilliant ideas out of Microsoft research, coming together with Skype, what they can make of that.

    I too look forward to all the prototypes that Microsoft comes up with, only to kill the minute people applaud them. ((I’m looking at you [Courier](http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/05/microsofts-courier-digital-journal-exclusive-pictures-and-de/), oh what could have been.))

  • What Happens When It’s Google/Android Vs. Amazon/Android?

    MG Siegler on the coming of Amazon tablets:
    >Google has succeeded in building a massive platform that doesn’t fully rely on them. That’s awesome on paper. But it can work both ways. If others start to realize that they don’t need Google, what does Google do? Just sit there and take it?

  • California Bill To Give Parents Access To Kids’ Facebook Pages

    John Biggs:
    >California SB 242, proposed by Sen. Ellen Corbett, would force social networks like Facebook to allow parents access to their child’s account(s) and, more importantly, force all privacy settings to their maximum level by default. Parents can request that images or text be removed from any social network page “upon request … within 48 hours upon his or her request.”

    This is nuts, not only is it bad for Facebook’s business — it sets a bad precedent for other states to follow. The best move for Facebook is to tell California that if this law is passed two things will happen:

    1. Facebook will not allow accounts to minors in California (have fun dealing with that backlash CA).
    2. Facebook will relocate its base of operations to somewhere else — Redmond should have extra room soon enough.

    Now, I doubt either of those things would happen — but if somebody told me that I need to help parent their children, well that’s the stance I would take. Also you may be thinking that this would be great for parents because Facebook is evil — to which I respond: if that is your thinking don’t allow your kids to have Facebook in the first place. ((I am fully aware of how hard that is to limit, but there are far worse things your kid can Google than there are on Facebook.))

  • Outlook Metro UI

    Outlook 15 is getting a revamp with the Metro UI, WinRumors has the screen shot. I must say Metro UI is one of the best things to come out of Redmond lately. Here’s to hoping that they make Windows 8 look something like this and ditch the “ribbon” in Office all together.

  • Notesy 2.0

    David Findlay on the latest Notesy release:

    >While working on 2.0 I came across Ethan Schoonover’s wonderful Solarized color palettes on the blogosphere. 2.0 adds background and pen options for Solarized Dark and Solarized Light. I’m a big fan of Solarized Dark myself.

    He’s also added a ton of other features like subfolders and markdown preview with custom CSS. It’s a great update to my goto iPhone note app, Solarized makes it that much better.

  • Lodsys Responds

    In a series of stupid and confusing posts Lodsys has partly responded to it’s patent trolling ways. As always Craig Grannell has us covered with what you need to know. Mostly just know that Lodsys says a whole lot of nothing while using a lot of feel good analogies.