The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • From the Archives: My PlayBook Review

    Let’s not forget that I had an early prototype that I reviewed way back in September of 2010.

  • Flow: Task Management and Online Collaboration for Teams

    I had the opportunity to beta test the web based task management system and its iPhone app and I have to say that if I wasn’t already so invested in OmniFocus it would be the task management system that I would be using. It has some great collaboration features that I think could make Basecamp obsolete for many teams.

    It isn’t a strict OmniFocus replacement and that is good because I think for a lot of people OmniFocus doesn’t work. Flow though is now the app that I will recommend people start with when they are trying to get into digital task management.

    The pricing is also very interesting: $9.99/mo or $99/yr. ((That’s according to Ian Hines, so it’s his ass if that info is wrong. I couldn’t get the site to load to put my eyeballs on the price. Though, I do trust Ian.)) I am glad they aren’t doing a free thing, but man this seems a bit steep.

    (Also the site is being hammered right now and is running slow, which is never a good sign from a new user perspective.)

  • BlackBerry PlayBook Price

    According to the press release it will cost $499 for the 16GB WiFi only model, so kudos to them for being able to announce that. It is still not shipping and in the press release RIM announced a bunch of specs, including this gem:

    BlackBerry® Tablet OS with support for symmetric multiprocessing

    Now they are just pairing random words with computer terms.

    Oh, did I mention there is still no ship date? Because there isn’t.

    Scratch that there is a ship date for Canada of April 19th.

  • Archive Messages With a Single Keystroke in Mail.app

    What a great use for FastScripts. Works as advertised too.

  • Read & Trust Newsletter

    As most of you may have noticed I am a member of the Read & Trust network. I love the guys in this network and we just grew by one today (welcome Marco Arment!) — the group is also launching a new premium newsletter for $5/mo. I am slated to write for it and it is a weekly newsletter with each month has its own ‘theme’ that the writing will be centered around.

    I have seen the design and I know the guys writing the content and I am happy to say I think it is well worth $5/mo for some of the stuff we are going to be putting out. This is exclusive content, so you won’t see what I post here, or anywhere else (hopefully).

  • Go J Go Shirts

    Stephen M. Hackett writes over at Forkbombr.net and is a great guy and talented writer. I consider Stephen a friend and someone who is always honest with me — beyond that Stephen has a son named Josiah that has a brain tumor Stephen and his family have been battling with. St. Jude Children’s hospital has been treating Josiah and here is what Stephen has to say about St Jude:

    St. Jude treats patients without regard of their ability to pay. That’s pretty cool. To put this into perspective, Josiah’s medical bills — after just 6 months — totaled almost a million dollars. After a year, he was at just over $2 million. Just stop and think about that. It’s pretty mind-boggling. Needless to say, St. Jude is an unbelievable blessing to families with children affected by diseases like Josiah’s.

    To help give back, we’ve partnered with a local artist who volunteered to design a t-shirt. This is the shirt for the #GoJGo St. Jude Marathon team, but you don’t have to run to buy a shirt. You just have to be awesome. All proceeds go straight to St. Jude.

    I think all of you are awesome enough to own one of these t-shirts and t-shirt weather is coming up quick.

    Thanks.

  • Smart Cover for iPad 1

    Three magnets and one bottle of super glue to get a Smart Cover working on your original iPad — everything but the auto on and off works. Pretty neat. I would say though that if you do this you will want to keep the cover on at all times — nobody wants to see the magnets that you glued to the side of your iPad.

  • Why the Quick Bar (“Dickbar”) Is Still So Offensive

    Marco Arment:

    The Quick Bar isn’t offensive because we don’t want Twitter making money with ads, or because we object to changes in the interface.

    It’s offensive because it’s deeply bad, showing complete disregard for quality, product design, and user respect, and we’ve come to expect a lot more from Twitter.

    You actually need to read his entire post.

  • AT&T Agrees to Buy Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile USA Unit for $39 Billion

    A couple of things:

    1. We don’t know if this means a merger, straight acquisition, or if T-Mobile with continue to operate as T-Mobile.
    2. It most likely means T-Mobile is no more and all its customers are now AT&T customers
    3. I think this is a good thing, not a bad thing.
    4. If indeed T-Mobile and AT&T become one company, then it will make them the biggest wireless carrier in the U.S. (Wikipedia says AT&T is roughly at 95 million subscribers and T-Mobile is half that. Verizon right now is only a few million ahead of AT&T.) This matters in the consumer eye only and changes nothing about network performance.

    I doubt the DOJ will have a problem with this, how can they if they are letting the Comcast and NBC merger go through. Also Verizon will be the reason there is no problem here. This is a warning shot over Sprint’s bow — man do they need to do something relevant.

  • Episode 4 of the B&B Podcast: Pocket Protectors

    Shawn and I talked about SXSW, writing and a few other random things. I want to extend a big thanks to our two sponsors, Typekit and Lithium 5.

  • AT&T Aggressively Moving Against Unauthorized Tethering

    Richard Gaywood on how AT&T is going to start dealing with unauthorized tetherers:

    It goes on to state that users can either terminate their unauthorized tethering usage before March 27, or they will be automatically moved to AT&T’s DataPro plan, which includes tethering and costs an extra $20 per month.

    Really the only thing that should surprise people is how long it took AT&T to crack down on this. Also, if you have unlimited data right now and AT&T moves you to DataPro, then you will loose that unlimited data plan for, well, ever.

  • Life in a Solid State

    Khoi Vinh upon replacing his platter HD in his 2009 MacBook Air to an OWC SSD:

    It really is like getting a brand new computer.

  • Let’s Help Japan

    Panic:

    Panic will donate 100% of today’s proceeds directly to the Japanese relief effort.
    It doesn’t matter if you buy direct from us or via the Mac App Store, we’ll take care of it. We’ll total up sales from 10:00 AM PST Mar 17th to 10:00 AM PST Mar 18th. And we plan to donate to a mix of the Japanese Red Cross Society and Portland’s own Mercy Corps.

    Awesome, well played. Transmit is one of the most used apps and I love it. Go buy it to help yourself out and millions more people. Huge thanks to Panic for doing this!

  • All You Need To Know About The NYTimes.com Paywall

    A nice overview from TechCrunch of the NYT paywall. We knew this was coming and it’s $35/mo if you want access on all your devices — which is lame. Which means you can expect very few links to the site from me because there are other, far better writers, I would rather support and many other free sources for the same news the NYT offers.

  • A typical Buyer/Seller Exchange on Craigslist

    A great little video of correspondence Justin had with a potential buyer for his computer on Craigslist. Cracked me up. (You need to have Flash to watch it.)

  • Night Time Themes

    Chris blew my mind when he announced that, like Liz Danzico, he was going to have his blog change colors when it was night time. He put up this little post showing how he did it — fantastic.

  • Witness the Spectacle of the Apple Popup Store

    I never made it inside and every time I went by the store there was a massive line — including that last day of SXSWi. Crazy.

  • Getting the Best Use Out of the iPad’s Side Switch

    Shawn Blanc looks at how he uses the iPad lock switch (mute switch to some I suppose):

    So, yes, it now makes sense for me to use the side switch for rotation lock.

    I have always been a rotation lock kinda guy — I mean I just know somethings are right. ((It is sad that Apple lost its way for a bit with this switch and now have to only half backtrack on the switch.))

  • For Discovery, a Farewell Spin

    It kind of bums me out that the Shuttle program is done now — I always thought it is very cool.

  • Apple’s Role in Japan during the Tohoku Earthquake

    From an email sent to Kevin Rose from a friend that works at Apple in Japan:

    7 hours and 118 aftershocks later, the store was still open.  Why? Because with the phone and train lines down, taxis stopped, and millions of people stuck in the Tokyo shopping district scared, with no access to television, hundreds of people were swarming into Apple stores to watch the news on USTREAM and contact their families via Twitter, Facebook, and email.  The young did it on their mobile devices, while the old clustered around the macs. There were even some Android users there. (There are almost no free wifi spots in Japan besides Apple stores, so even Android users often come to the stores.)

    What is even re remarkable is the caree they took for their staff. Stocking food and water, and perhaps more importantly allowing staff and staff family to sleep at the stores. Awesome work.