The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • In Meetings, Pen & Paper, Not Glass and Fingers

    Randy Murray, responding to my two posts that responded to his about not using an iPad in meetings:

    Ben may be right, but only for a select few, people like himself who can master the technology to a degree that it becomes invisible. It doesn’t work that way for me and I’m pretty good with the device. Most people I know simply couldn’t operate it at the level required to take accurate notes without bringing a meeting to a screeching halt.

    I still am unconvinced that paper and pen is a better medium to use during meetings. What I do know is that you need to use what works best for you. For Randy that is pen and paper with a digital recorder, for me that is the iPad.

  • Kyle Baxter Makes an Excellent Point

    Kyle Baxter in reply to this post by me:

    That’s all possible through an iOS application and AirPlay, but there’s no way something like that could gain traction following that route. Telling users to (1) purchase an Apple TV, (2) purchase an iOS application, and (3) stream it to their Apple TV is so convoluted few regular users would get past the first step.

    That is a great point, I may have to rethink this.

  • No Opting Out From Facebook Turning Your Check-Ins, Likes Into Ads

    Jacqui Cheng on Facebook using users in ads:

    Still, there are ways in which the system could be improved, especially for those concerned about their privacy being respected. The most obvious is that users are not notified that their posts are being used in ads, and cannot block their posts from becoming ads unless they change their privacy settings to make the posts private. That’s one thing Facebook has going for it this time around, though—the company will respect all privacy settings so that only the people you’ve already authorized to see your posts will see ads with you in them.

    Ok so here is what is happening: say you check into Starbucks a couple of times. Facebook may use that data and your profile picture displaying it to other users that would normally be allowed to access this data already. Except that instead of seeing it in a normal way it is shown as an ad for Starbucks.

    This all seems rather harmless until you think about this: what happens when you check in somewhere that you would never want to come back to?

    Checking in somewhere is in no way an endorsement of that place – yet Facebook is using it as if you are endorsing it. Perhaps you are only checking into Starbucks because that is the only place you could find.

    Not only is this a privacy concern, but it could really piss off your friends if they think you are endorsing a particular place.

  • How to Turn Disaster Into Gold

    Jason Fried on apologies:

    “I apologize” is renting the problem. “I’m sorry” is owning it.

    CampFire had a lot of glitches in December and 37signals did an epic job handling the problem from a customer relations standpoint. If you want to know why they handle problems the way they do — or better — if you are having to deal with customers this is a must read post.

    I respect honesty and will forgive mistakes that are clearly explained and owned. What I don’t respect is thinking that I should just deal with the problem. This is a huge reason why I use 37signals products and why this site is hosted on Media Temple.

  • New Apple.com Design

    An all new navigation bar that looks modern and has a sweet fly-in bounce transition. Very nice.

  • “We’ll be retiring our support of OpenID on May 1”

    37signals:

    OpenID has been a burden on support since the day it was launched.

    I used Open ID on 37signals the minute it became available because it gave you a single sign on. It was a pain in the ass every time. I for one am glad to see it go and the 37signals ID that is has been in use for a while now is quite nice.

  • Read & Trust

    A new community of writers that I am honored to be included in:

    Everyone has a favorite online writer. And asking them which writers they recommend is a great way to expand our reading list and explore new topics and viewpoints. Read & Trust is committed to gathering together the best independent writers available—the ones recommended by the writers you read and trust.

  • 900-HP DIY Electric BMW Keeps Getting Better

    Keith Barry:

    The current iteration features 300 lithium iron phosphate cells in a battery pack that provides a claimed range of with 110 miles — roughly a full day of drag racing, drifting or general hooning. Propulsion comes from a DC motor designed and built by VST; it churns out a whopping 900 horsepower. That’s good for a Tesla-beating 0-60 time of 3.3 seconds. Keep the pedal mashed to the floor and you’ll see a top speed of 174 mph. That’s on par with some of the best high-performance sports cars on the road today, and it makes this homebuilt EV a worthy competitor to high-end electrics like the Audi eTron.

    If you like fast cars, click through and watch the video.

  • Fraser Speirs On the Rapid End-Of-Lifing of Android Devices

    Don’t be fooled by the title, Speirs hits the nail on the head with his analysis of the current tablet market:

    Having said that, my core belief about the new wave of “tablet computing” is that the hardware is only relevant insofar as it enhances the user’s experience of the software. These devices really are all about the software and, in particular, they are about the user interface and user experience of the software. Nobody cares which kernels these devices are running.

    This is a must read if you are developing tablets, or if you are planning on buying one that you want to keep for more than a year.

    The bottom line is this: Android has yet to prove that they will not make your device obsolete in six months time by not getting you the updates that you need/want. ((I don’t care if carriers control this, it is a major problem and one that Google has yet to fix.))

  • PlayBook Could Sell 6M Units First 12 Months

    Bull. Shit. ((The only way I could see this happening is if it was also coupled with 5.5 million returned PlayBooks. Ridiculous.))

  • TextMate User

    My favorite text editor now has a dedicated blog for fans (too bad it is on Tumblr though).

  • How the iPhone Mail App Decides When to Show You New Mail

    Basil Safwat on how the iOS Mail app handles new email:

    The addition of this extra detail has made the app less visible than if the detail wasn’t there. Lovely.

    It really is pretty neat if you think about it — read this whole post.

    [via DF]

  • Top 10 Guesses Why Google CEO Stepped Down

    A rather amusing list of ten reasons why Schmidt stepped down from Brier Dudley, this one takes the cake though:

    1. Page and Brin learned a lot from their experiment with “manage a trois.” But they finally decided a 10-year public beta test was long enough.

    A funny list all around.

  • Tim Cook and Spreadsheets

    Migeul Helft:

    “My favorite scenes were meeting suppliers,” said a former Apple executive who had traveled with Mr. Cook frequently and asked to remain anonymous because he did not want to upset their relationship. “He is Mr. Spreadsheet. If things weren’t right, he would torture the suppliers and demand improvement. At the same time, he had good relationships with them.”

    This entire article is nice and all, but left me with this one thought: Does “Mr. Spreadsheet” use Excel or Apple’s own Numbers program? It’s got to be Numbers right? But then, really, Numbers?

  • Brett Kelly on Leaving Facebook

    Brett Kelly letting people know why he is personally done with Facebook:

    The thing is, I’m one dude with a finite amount of time and attention and I simply can’t maintain 500 friendships. I don’t believe anybody can — at least not the type of friendships I’m interested in maintaining.

    Imagine those people with thousands of friends, it is a bit silly. This is a great read for anyone getting fed up with Facebook. I quit a while back.

  • “Why Eric Schmidt Had to Go”

    Horace Dediu on the management failure of Eric Schmidt:

    The real condemnation of the leadership at Google is that there has been a failure to create entirely new disruptions.

    Amen to that. Android could have disrupted Apple, instead Apple laughs it off even today. ((Reference: Tim Cook’s comments on Android tablets in the latest quarterly financial call.)) Google has been playing defense for far too long and as any sports fan knows defense doesn’t lead to championship games.

  • Lightroom or Aperture?

    Marco Arment on why he prefers Lightroom:

    Lightroom is consistently good and very stable. I’ve never felt that I was fighting it.

    I have come to the same conclusion, click through and read all his thoughts (it is a very short post) — I agree with everything he says and I have been an Aperture user since day one (only recently started using Lightroom).

  • How To: Adjust “Twitter Tools” Prefixing

    Since I started this blog I have hated the fact that Twitter Tools prefixes each tweet with something (you can set what, I had it set to: tbr). The problem is that Twitter Tools is the best plugin for tweeting WordPress posts (I feel confident saying that after testing so many of them). Most people use Twitter Tools without the other options that allow you to create blog posts out of tweets (why do we need that?).

    Now if Twitter Tools didn’t add a prefix it might get stuck in a loop of creating a new blog post from a tweet > tweeting that blog post > then creating another blog post out of that new tweet and so on. A spiral of doom if you will.

    For those of us that don’t use these options and just want to get rid of the prefix — this ‘hack’ is the solution. A great solution too — that allows you to reformat your tweets a bit.

    (Note: You have to create the plugin manually based on this code, but it is easy to do. Also the changes are commented out, so you need to edit the code to get what you want out of it.)

  • A Shared Instapaper Folder for all the #pastblast Links

    Now this is a better way to manage all this awesome links.

  • A Buck Ninety-Nine a Review

    This guy got an email offering to review iOS apps for $1.99 a review — which is rather pathetic. I wish he hadn’t blacked out the name of the company but a quick Google search of the guys name yields this and it appears he worked for Microsoft here in Seattle area.

    Oh and he has this lovely gem.