The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Duck Duck !Bang

    Related to the last item, here is something that really makes DuckDuckGo a great search engine.

  • Google’s Decreasingly Useful, Spam-Filled Web Search

    Marco Arment on Google’s useless results:

    Searching Google is now like asking a question in a crowded flea market of hungry, desperate, sleazy salesmen who all claim to have the answer to every question you ask.

    I have had great luck lately using DuckDuckGo.

  • The Rain City Superheroes

    This is a bad-ass group of superheroes keeping Seattle safe. Winston Ross:

    Jones is mostly polite with the RLSH members who criticize him, but he makes no apologies for his approach. The real-life superheroes mostly hand out food to homeless people, he reports scornfully. Superheroes are supposed to take down criminals. “They can keep feeding homeless people with sandwiches,” Jones says. “Leave the crime to me.”

    Awesome.

  • Markdown is a Skill Every Modern Communicator Should Learn

    Steve Rubel on why you should use Markdown:

    Video and imagery are critical. But, still, nothing on the web flies the way text does. Words power the web. So it’s critical that every communicator know how to succinctly organize, convey and present ideas for the web and mobile so that they build up readers like nutrients do, rather than weigh them down like junk food.

    Agreed and Markdown is a great way to write for the web. Especially when coupled with TextMate.

  • How To Fix Mac App Store “Error 100″

    If you are only experiencing the “Error 100” message Macstories can help you fix that.

  • Micron Releases Half-Terabyte Laptop SSDs

    Lucas Mearian:

    Micron’s new RealSSD C400 flash drive line offers capacities ranging from 64GB to 512GB and will be available in 1.8-inch and 2.5-inch form factors, both supporting a 6Gbit per sec serial ATA (SATA) interface.

    I can’t wait for the prices of SSDs to start dropping.

  • Blogging, Twitter and Historical Records

    Anil Dash expressing his frustration of the lack of archive for Tweets and why you should blog big thoughts:

    However, by creating a lossy environment where individual tweets are disposable, there’s also an environment where few will build the infrastructure to support broader, more meaningful conversations that could be catalyzed by a tweet. In many ways, this means the best tweets for advancing an idea are those that contain links to more permanent media.

    This is a great analysis of the problems with Twitter and the benefits of blogging. I love getting short thoughts from readers on Twitter — occasionally though people want to debate and Twitter truly is not a medium for that. Whenever I find myself getting multiple tweets from a person on the same topic I usually ask that they blog about it or email me.

    I am not trying to remove the conversation from the eye of the public — rather I want the thoughts to be archived and I want to be able to talk in greater than 140 character bursts. Keep that in mind when you are deciding how to respond to someone. If you blog about one of my posts I may not see it, so do be sure to email me the link if you think about it.

  • Angry Birds Now Coming to a Carnival Near You

    Now this is a reason to start going to carnivals.

  • Wait They are Still Around?

    Erica Naone, while reporting for Technology Review, mentions some companies being affected by a new SMS bug:

    They performed their tricks on handsets made by Nokia, LG, Samsung, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, and Micromax, a popular Indian cell-phone manufacturer.

    I didn’t even know people still use phones from these companies.

  • CarTrip

    Griffin Technology announced a product that is coming soon, allowing you to do a whole bunch of cool stuff with you iPhone and your car — most importantly figuring out what the cryptic computer codes are really saying.

    Griffin Technology:

    CleanDrive monitors your car’s performance, collecting data like fuel consumption, acceleration, top speed and engine diagnostic codes as you drive. CleanDrive crunches the numbers and displays your “Carbon Score” in an easy-to-understand format on your device’s screen. Instantaneous trip and long-term averages are recorded to give you a clear picture of how your driving habits impact the environment and the efficiency of your car over time.

    Count me among the first buyers.

  • Leaving Microsoft Hell

    Alex Wilhelm got a virus on his Windows 7 computer that left him in serious trouble:

    Every single safeguard the OS had failed, and I ended up with a full computer that I could not restore, reinstall, or boot normally in any way without facing an immediate Blue Screen of Death. I sat there in safe mode and picked at my teeth.

    Sounds lovely, this though is the best bit:

    I still love and prefer Windows 7, but I am forever adding a caveat to that statement: when it works.

    So I guess the new tag line for Windows is: “When it works”. Compare that to Apple’s: “It just works”. If you are still confused about which OS you should choose — well, actually, then I can’t help you.

  • Android Isn’t About Building a Mobile Platform

    Kyle Baxter hypothesizing that Androids Market may be poor on purpose:

    If users won’t pay for applications, what will developers use to make money from their applications? Advertising. And Google conveniently owns one of the largest mobile advertising providers, Admob.

    The entire post is a must read.

  • iPad Simulator

    Very neat CSS and Javascript iPad simulator.

  • New Daytum iPhone App

    I have been using the app for a while — it is strictly for data entry IMO — but very pretty and easy to use. I love Daytum and I will be posting about it later this week. If you already use Daytum be sure to get the free iPhone app.

  • Why Bing “Likes” Facebook

    Paul Boutin on why Bing may be a better search engine for most things (particularly if you use Facebook):

    Beyond beating link spam, your friends’ preferences and recommendations may also provide a better guide to what you, as an individual, really want to find. If, for example, you’re shopping for a new pair of shoes, the most valuable search results may not be the most linked-to pages on the Internet but, rather, what your best friends want to be seen wearing.

    It is an interesting dilemma that Google will need to deal with: unless you tie into Facebook/Twitter how do you provide results that are more relevant that page ranking? My guess is that Google would rather use tracking cookies and other methods of tracking user behavior — than they would tying you into a social graph that they don’t own.

  • RSS Is Dying [Being Ignored], and You Should Be Very Worried

    Kroc Camen:

    Google Chrome has no RSS reader. It doesn’t even try to render RSS, or even help the user with it in any way. It gives less of a crap than a French man smoking a cigarette in public.

  • Automatically add Tasks delegated by Email to Things with Applescript

    I previously posted about an applescript that will send an email to OmniFocus as a task — for those emails that you want a little tickler on. Now with the help of Sven Fechner you can set this up for Things too. It’s no OTA sync, but hey it is free.

  • Real Power Users

    Chris Clark trying to defend Facebook messages over email:

    It’s been a recurring theme this week, but the Pro users of yesteryear’s products, the people with the biggest investment in old technologies, are not the people who should be calling the shots in the design of their successors. These are the people who complain that an iPad can’t have third party software installed from anywhere but the App Store, ignoring the massive convenience and security gains the policy affords average users.

    I think this statement is massively off base:

    1. Plenty of “Pro” users that I know (myself included) are more than happy with the App system Apple has in place.
    2. There is a relatively small user base that Jailbreaks when they are not happy.
    3. Others will just move to a “open” ((Yeah, right.)) system like Android.
    4. Lastly I would argue that Steve Jobs is a “Pro” user so by Clark’s account — Jobs should not be allowed to design future systems.

    That means that clearly millions of people are wrong for buying products that Jobs makes? I think the problem here is that Clark is using the word “Pro” and “Power User” when he should be using the definition: “Niche Users”. He and his friends clearly are a niche where they are best served by something other than email. I am no fan of email, but I certainly don’t agree with what Clark is arguing.

    People keep sending me emails about this article and I can’t say that I agree with anything that he is saying in it.

    People are not flocking to Facebook because they want better email — they flock because they want to see what their ex looks like now. Facebook is not popular because it is a communication tool — nor is it an underutilized communication tool — Facebook is popular because people like to spy on each other.

  • The Problem With Ping

    Nik Fletcher on Apple’s Ping network:

    A purchase of a song isn’t the strongest indicator of a user’s liking of a song: the playing of a song is. Ping with Scrobbling would offer me far more of an incentive to visit – I care much more about what my friends are listening to as opposed to what they’re buying (and even when buying, there’s no guarantee the purchase will be via iTunes and thus tracked).

    What a great point.

  • Lending Kindle Books

    Amazon:

    Eligible Kindle books can be loaned once for a period of 14 days.

    I don’t know about you, but I rarely finish a book in just 14 days — I am a slow reader and have way too many other things going on. One would think that Amazon (by the very nature of their business) would have a damned good idea of just how fast people are reading books — 14 days seems a little bit faster than I imagine most read.