The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Breakup Notifier

    Because the only reason you are using Facebook is to track who is sleeping with whom.

  • Instapaper & VZ iPhone Buyers

    Marco Arment after analyzing the sales data for Instapaper:

    I’ve been assuming that the Verizon iPhone launch was going to be a massive boom, and it looks like it’s been fairly average so far. But now I have a different theory: that the Verizon iPhone demand is from more casual buyers, by definition, and will therefore be spread gradually over the next 18 months.

    An interesting analysis of the sales data for Instapaper.

  • Apple’s iPhone and the Curious World of Android Enthusiasts

    What a great way to break down the arguments.

  • SSDs Are a Bit Trickier to Erase

    Two students (Laura Grupp & Michael Wei) for the Non-Volatile Systems Laboratory at UCSD found this:

    Our results show that naïvely applying techniques designed for sanitizing hard drives on SSDs, such as overwriting and using built-in secure erase commands is unreliable and sometimes results in all the data remaining intact. Furthermore, our results also show that sanitizing single files on an SSD is much more difficult than on a traditional hard drive.

    That is not good, you can read the full paper on the subject here — this link takes you to the much more digestible synopsis. From what I can gather this is not widespread and is a result of defects on the manufacturing side — meaning this may or may not effect your SSD.

  • WordPress Syntax mode for Panic Coda

    A great tool for Coda users that also develop for WordPress.

  • Ulysses AppDate 60% off

    A huge 60% off sale on one of my favorite pure writing apps. It is no TextMate, but if you are writing a book/report or just anything over 5,000 words I would highly recommend it. You can get it for $11.99 which is a steal. A STEAL.

    Why are you still here?

  • An Apple eReader

    Brad McCarty for The Next Web:

    Our speculation is that Apple is going to introduce a mid-sized device that is specifically targeted at reading. Sure, it would still run iOS and you could use all of the iPod Touch apps on it (they’d likely even look better than they do on the iPad, due to lowered upscaling) but the main purpose of the device would be as a reader.

    I hope he doesn’t seriously believe this, but I fear that he does. There would be no compelling reason to launch such a dedicated device that would cannibalize iPad sales. I doubt we see smaller screens in iPhones, iPod Touches, and iPads — why do people insist upon squinting?

  • A traitor’s review of the Verizon iPhone 4

    Technology Viewer on why he switched from Android to the iPhone:

    But overall, it was a roll of the dice every time I wanted to use the Droid cam.   Most of the time after a fresh boot of Android the camera would work great, once, even twice.   But close the camera app, and try to use it again later, and it was a 50/50 chance, at best, that the program would crash upon starting.   Even if it did start and you took a pic, occasionally the photo wouldn’t save properly.

    By all accounts this guy was not only a fan of Android, but competent at hacking about in Android — yet he present some very compelling reasons for iOS over Android. A great read and it is more of a story than a ‘review’.

  • Host Your Static Website on Amazon S3

    Amazon Web Services team:

    You can now host an entire website on Amazon S3.

    You can now configure and access any of your S3 buckets as a “website.” When a request is made to the root of your bucket configured as a website, Amazon S3 returns a root document. Not only that, if an error occurs your users receive an HTML error document instead of an XML error message. You can also provide your own error documents for use when a 4xx-class error occurs. 

    S3 is a great service, and this is a great solution for people that don’t need things like SQL.

  • The Small iPhone Rumor

    The New York Times:

    Another person who is in direct contact with Apple also said that the company would not make a smaller iPhone at this time, in part because a smaller device would not necessarily be much cheaper to manufacture and because it would be more difficult to operate.

    Also free MobileMe (believe it when I see it).

  • Less is Perfect

    Liam Cassidy on why he switched back to Things from OmniFocus:

    Things, on the other hand, is so simple it requires almost no learning.

    The above can be both a good and bad thing. It is both the reason people love Things and the reason people love OmniFocus. Make no mistake though, OmniFocus is not annoyingly complex like, say, Microsoft Word.

  • Private Equity Pyramid Scheme

    This is a really interesting take on the current venture capitalist landscape and it would explain those stupid ‘worth‘ numbers people are bouncing around. Basically the idea is that the VCs first to invest at a company get a high valuation so that new investors come in — then the first set of investors get their money back. This repeats and repeats.

    I don’t know if this is really what is going on, but it is certainly and interesting theory for a very… unique person.

  • Apple versus Amazon

    Craig Grannell has this to say about the restrictions now in place for the App Store:

    This is about getting Kindle off of iOS, because it competes with iBooks. Thing is, Kindle being booted off iOS won’t make people switch to iBooks—it’ll make people buy Kindles. And time people are using their Kindles is time they’re not using their iPads and iPhones, potentially reducing the likelihood of them making purchases.

    I disagree, I think that if that is truly what Apple wanted they would have bundled iBooks into iOS and then rejected the Kindle app under the dubious ‘duplicating existing functions’ title. Apple clearly has easier means to booting Kindle — this is a play for more money, not for a monopoly situation.

  • Stephen Hackett’s Open Letter to Douchebags

    Stephen Hackett:

    However, linking to stories about how long someone has left to live is a different thing entirely — and is way over the line. Gizmodo, 9 to 5 Mac, Cult of Mac and others all crossed that line today.

    Amen.

  • Yudu Media Gets It

    Joel Mathis:

    There are so many iPads in circulation, Stephenson said, “whatever Apple charges, you have to be there. Don’t fight it, run with it.”

    [h/t to Mike Ball on Twitter]

  • The 4-inch iPhone display

    Chris Rawson does a great job breaking down why the 4″ iPhone 5 screen rumor is a bit off base.

  • Differences Between CDMA and GSM

    To control many of the settings you have to dial seemingly random numbers with Verizon — AT&T has sliders in the Settings.app. Oh and no holding or conference calls with more than two people on Verizon.

    But wait, AT&T doesn’t allow you to dial a hard pause — touché Verizon, touché.

    [via TUAW]

  • The Motorola Xoom: $800 Unsubsidized, $600 for WiFi-only

    Matt Burns:

    This pricing puts the 32GB Xoom nearly on par with the 32GB iPad. Both tablets ask $600 for the WiFi-only version while the 32GB 3G iPad is just slightly less at $730.

    Not bad pricing and with carrier subsides the price could be even more attractive — but can the software really compete?

  • The Simple (And Perhaps Harsh) Reality Of Apple’s Ecosystem

    MG Siegler follows up on why this move makes sense, is not in fact evil and this:

    Apple is betting that the allure of being tied into their incredibly efficient iTunes payment ecosystem (along with its 100 million + accounts tied to credit cards) will outweigh the downside of having to pay them a 30 percent fee. The same 30 percent fee they currently take from the thousands of app developers collectively making billions of dollars off of the App Store. And the same 30 percent fee they currently take for all other types of in-app purchases.

    As I told a couple of you who emailed about this: Apple is providing the billing, payment processing, infrastructure, and willing/able buyers for only 30% — seems like a steal to me.

  • Are Web Fonts Ready for Prime Time?

    Pat Dryburgh points out that using a web optimized font through Typekit will render ugly in IE if you also use the -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased trigger in your CSS file. I was using that with this site and turning it off proved to render FF Meta Web Pro a lot better in IE 8 — so to the 3% of you that view this site in IE, you are welcome.

    Also if you miss the ‘old’ look install this Safari extension.