The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Being Post-PC

    Watts Martin in response to post-PC ramblings:

    And when you can run them better on the tablet—no compromises—then “post-PC” won’t be a marketing buzzword anymore.

    We are pretty close to that for many apps — if you ask me.

  • Footnote of the Day: Marco Arment

    Marco Arment writing about which iPad 2 you should get offers this gem of a footnote in reference to his use of waiting “on line”:

    If you aren’t in New York, you probably say “in line”. Your pizza might suck, too. Sorry. But hey, your real estate is affordable. Win some, lose some.

    I love footnotes.

  • ThinkPad with ‘24 Hour’ Battery

    Charlie Sorrel:

    But the new X220 is also pretty on the inside, and its main selling point is a ridiculous 24 hour battery life. That’s enough to let you update Excel spreadsheets while a plane takes you anywhere on the planet.

    May also win the award for best battery life in the ugliest possible laptop. I mean good lord that thing is ugly.

  • How To Remove The WordPress Admin Bar [Updated]

    Finally got around to googling this and luckily there is a way to get rid of that ugly WordPress admin bar that sticks itself to the top of your WP site.

    [Updated: 3.8.11 at 10:24 AM]

    Twitter follower @Preshit wrote to tell me you can disable this in your user options (in your user profile). I had no clue, that is way easier.

  • Poll Technica: Facebook, take it or leave it?

    You have no idea how happy it makes me to get a link sent to me about a Facebook poll where 36.47% (the plurality ((Thanks to @rorycberger for the correction on the term.)) ) say they don’t have a Facebook account. Good stuff.

  • What the Quick Bar Affair Says About Twitter’s Future

    Mathew Ingram:

    Although the company has since said that a new update is on its way that will make the feature less annoying, the outrage over the #dickbar is a symptom of a larger problem for Twitter: it wants to be a business, and users have gotten used to it being a utility.

    Well said. The dickbar though goes one further and actually becomes as annoying as the flash based blinking ads found on low-rent sites.

  • The App Wall

    MG Siegler:

    I’m using too many apps of the same nature for any of them to actually be truly useful. And in fact, I now have too many apps in my life in general. I’ve hit the app wall.

    This entire article is very relatable for me and I can’t help but wonder how we better curate our apps in the future. Personally I hope Apple does it for me.

  • Landlord Wouldn’t Fix Leak For 5 Months. This Letter Got Him To Do It in 5 Days.

    I typically like to stay on topic here, but some of you may also know that by day I am a property manager and seeing this just frustrates me — it gives a bad name to property managers everywhere. If you are a renter (a lot of us are) the best thing you can do is to know your lease and know the applicable laws in your state.

    You will not believe some of your rights that you just always assumed you didn’t have.

    FYI

    One last tip — if your landlord isn’t getting something fixed that you want fixed, a written and mailed letter will do you wonders over repeated phone calls. Best thing you can do if you have called in the problem or submitted the maintenance request and have yet to see action: write a letter and mail it, be professional and concise — then once you sent the letter, call your landlord and let them know that you sent it to them.

    Disclaimer

    These thoughts are coming to you as a tech geek to a tech reader, not in any professional real estate sense and therefore, you should take everything with a grain of salt.

  • MailTags v2.6 integrates with OmniFocus Project List

    Sven Fechner:

    You can now simply select to have OmniFocus projects show directly inside (and in addition to MailTags’ own projects) Mail.app’s tagging panel. Only caveat is that you need to have OmniFocus running to get access to it’s project list. You can do the same for CulturedCode’s Things or even for both if you are one of these indecisive productivity nuts that can’t settle with one system.

    What a nice update.

  • iPad May Be Magical. Apps Aren’t.

    Om Malik:

    However, if iPad, the device, is more magical, the applications (apps) for the device are anything but. For nearly a year, I’ve been waiting (and waiting) for experiences befitting the device and its hardware capabilities. Sure, there’s Flipboard, but as the saying goes, one swallow don’t make a summer. And same goes for the iPhone and other smart platforms.”

    Malik has a good point here and furthers it by stating this:

    And yet, we’ve seen application after application come to market as just an incremental improvement of the web or desktop versions of the same (or similar) application.

    The problem is people wanting to adopt their website/service/product to the iPad instead of just designing it for the iPad. That is, throw away everything and think about what you want someone to be able to do on the iPad, then make that. All the good iPad apps I have used feel like this was the thought process behind them.

  • A Day In The Life Of A Liveblogger

    An interesting look at what it’s like to liveblog an event — sounds about how I would expect it to be.

  • AT&T, Verizon iPad 2 Data Plans Compared

    Interesting differences.

  • Marco on Smart Covers

    Marco Arment:

    The most compelling feature of the iPad 2 is its case.”

    The cover system that Amazon uses on Kindles is good, but the system that Apple has implemented seems far better.

  • Thomas Jefferson and Preparing for Meetings

    Karl Fogel via John D. Cook:

    His purpose was strategic: to show up at the meeting with something so substantive that everyone else would have to fall into the role of simply proposing modifications to it, so that the overall shape, and therefore schedule, of the project would be roughly as he wanted.”

    Now that is a clever plan.

  • “Quick Bar”

    MG Siegler on Twitter for iPhone’s latest update:

    For the most part, people seem most upset because this feature being shoved in your face, and not necessarily the fact that ads are a part of it. (The fact that the feature is overlaid on Tweets themselves if you’re not at the top of the stream is pretty annoying.)”

    At first it didn’t seem that annoying, just less than ideal, then I tried to actually use the app. Yes it is annoying and constantly feels in the way and makes the entire app cramped feeling. For the first time I am thinking about getting a third party Twitter app on my iPhone.

  • Justin Blanton on the iPad 2

    Justin Blanton perfectly sums up my biggest fear:

    I kind of can’t wrap my head around how thin it is—just 8.8mm (that’s thinner than an iPhone 4!). Whether this helps or hurts its ability to be comfortably held over a protracted session remains to be seen; my guess is that, even with the lighter weight (1.33 pounds vs. 1.5 pounds), it will make it more difficult to hold, especially since it still has the same slippery aluminum back. I really wish they’d rubberize these things.”

    I don’t agree with rubberizing it, I think that has a poor tactile feel and is prone to looking dirty. I can say though that I worry that this will fatigue your hands if you are holding it to read while laying in bed — a thin device like this requires a better grip to support the weight than a similar, but thicker, device would.

    Justin has a great look at the iPad from one of the few people I know that sold theirs because they couldn’t find a use for it.

  • Apple’s Digital AV Adapter

    A nice rundown by TUAW on what the new HDMI dongle for the iPad will and will not do. Basically you can use it on older iOS devices (the ones currently available), but those devices are limited to playing back movies and slideshows through the dongle one.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode #2

    This weeks episode was recorded earlier today — and earlier than normal — so that Shawn and I could get our iPad 2 thoughts out there. The episode title is: “Are you listening to anything I am saying?”.

    A big thanks to our two sponsors Instapaper and NoteTask, both make some great iOS and iPad apps.

  • The iPad 2

    How can it be thinner than the iPhone 4? That seems like it wouldn’t be comfortable to hold, but I will be buying this on day one. Sweet upgrade all around.

  • Apple’s Strategy Tax

    John Siracusa:

    Apple’s long-term success is tied to the success of its platforms. These platforms, in turn, rely on the efforts of third-party developers—that’s the very nature of a platform. Given this, if the health and success of the platform is to be maintained, anything that hurts third-party developers must be offset by some other advantage to customers.

    Which is precisely why I think we have yet to see the whole picture surrounding the new in-app purchase rules and the new subscription model. (Perhaps we will find out more in less than an hour.)