The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • National Opt-Out Day

    A call to action from National Opt-Out Day:

     The government should not have the ability to virtually strip search anyone it wants. The problem is compounded in that if you do not want to go through the naked body scanner, the government has made the alternative perhaps worse!  In an effort to try and make everyone comply with the scanners, the government has instituted “enhanced” pat downs.  There are reports from travelers across the country about how the TSA now touches the genitals and private areas of men, women and children in a much more aggressive manner.  We do not believe the government has a right to see you naked or aggressively feel you up just because you bought an airline ticket.  

    They want to do it Wed Nov 24th, also known as the day before Thanksgiving, perhaps one of the busiest travel days of the year. If I was flying that day I would be in, are you?

  • Tricorder TR-580 for iPhone

    Umm this does nothing, but I still bought it.

  • Why I Don’t Have A Commenting System (Other Than Email)

    I very rarely agree with anything Gizmodo says, in fact I do not enjoy Gizmodo at all – instead of trashing them in comments I decided to unsubscribe and just steer clear of them. Someone who’s opinion I value pointed me to this article posted by Joel Johnson of Gizmodo. In the article Johnson went off on all readers of Gizmodo, not just the commenters.

    I can certainly understand why, some of the comments that have been written about things that I have written (in places like Hacker News and Reddit) have been down right nasty. Instead of writing back, I just stopped reading them. I setup this blog from day one to not have comments, not because I don’t enjoy engaging with people, or want what I say to be the final say, rather because I want commenters to own what they say to me.

    If you are going to say something nasty about what I write you can only do so anonymously on sites like Hacker News and Reddit, otherwise you need to use Twitter, Email, or your blog. That means it will be associated with you. I have been told I was wrong countless times in emails and on Twitter – each time it was a civil and well reasoned comment.

    I love every email I get from readers, the depth and care that is typically put into sending that email to me is amazing. The conversations change and effect both the commenter and I. I have only had one bad email from a reader, which is amazing to me.

    Comments fail because when people believe that they can hide behind a cloak of anonymity they decide that they can be as mean or nasty that they want. Comments fail because most all comment systems fail to make the commenter own what they are saying.

    I disagree with most of what Johnson posted, it seems misplaced and angry – that said I can’t say that I blame him for posting it. Though there are much better ways to deal with commenters that how Gizmodo dealt with them, for instance they could just turn them off for a bit like Engadget did a while back.

  • Build and Analyze a New Podcast

    Build and Analyze is a new podcast with Marco Arment (creator of Instapaper) and Dan Benjamin (podcasting extraordinaire), I just listened to the first episode and it was truly great. Set aside some time this weekend to check it out.

  • We Won’t Fly .com

    What you need to know to stop the ‘porno-scanners’.

  • Pretend Your Mac is an iPad for Flash-less Browsing

    John Gruber on setting Safari’s user agent string to Mobile Safari – iPad:

    This trick makes video work in Safari on Mac OS X — with no Flash — from Flickr, Vimeo embeds, TED, MSNBC, and probably any other site that offers video that works on the iPad. This doesn’t work for all video, but it should work for any video that works on the iPad.

    Very clever and he mentioned this on the last episode of The Talk Show and I have been using that trick ever since, why you ask? I defer to Gruber:

    Both Safari and my entire computer as a whole run better today than they did before I uninstalled Flash. Uninstall Flash on your Mac and see for yourself.

  • A Project for the Weekend

    The OpeniBoot project:

    OpeniBoot is an open source implementation of iBoot for Apple iPhone and iPod Touch devices. It allows booting of unsigned code such as linux kernels on the device. There is also and OpeniBoot console (oibc) which can be connected to from a libusb enabled computer.

    OpeniBoot is critical for the booting and usage of linux on the iPhone as it sets up and initializes many devices ready for the linux kernel to take over. Many iBoot functions are replicated here, however when booting iOS iBoot is chainloaded from the NOR to guarantee iOS will boot without problems even with OpeniBoot installed.

    Pretty neat stuff going on MacGasm has a video of it in action. MacGasm reports that the project is hoping to get Android OS up and working on the iOS devices – which would be kinda neat.

  • AirPrint Hacktivator

    Someone wrote a program to install the needed files on your Mac that will allow AirPrint to work as it was announced by Steve Jobs. You still need 10.6.5 and iOS 4.2 to make it work. I have not, and will not try this, so buyer beware.

  • This Makes Me Ask: Why Do You Even Have Facebook?

    Danah Boyd shares two extreme techniques that are being used to keep Facebook safe, private, and drama free. One deactivates her account when she is not actively on the site, the other deletes every post from friends and even ones she makes.

    Honestly, what’s the point? If you don’t want it public don’t post it on the Internet. If you don’t want people seeing bad things only friend real friends and only post things that you won’t regret. Silly kids.

  • Hidden – Making Simplenote Private

    Hidden is a new Simplenote app that looks and feels a lot like regular Simplenote, except that any note you begin with an underscore is hidden from view, stored in a separate hidden area of the app and can be passcode protected. This is rather nice, I have a few notes that I would rather not be accessible to everyone. I downloaded it last night I like it so far, they say an iPad version is coming and that it will make the app universal, meaning you only have to pay $1.99 once.

    Very neat app.

  • Instapaper 2.3 for iPhone and iPad now available

    Instapaper was updated last night for iOS. Again another amazing update that includes OmniFocus support and automatically detects when it is night out and switches its color themes based on that. Amazing. Every time Marco Arment updates Instapaper I want to send him $5 – in fact I think I just may.

  • Aaron Mahnke Calls Us All Out

    Aaron Mahnke talking about why we are so drawn to interviews and pictures of people’s ‘setups’:

    They offer connection. They offer us a chance to connect with someone else in a way that goes beyond reading a twitter status update or viewing a portfolio. They offer us the illusion of a face-to-face conversation, the shadow of an in-person tour of someone else’s office or library or desk or home.

    An accurate and great post, be sure to read the entire thing today.

  • A World of Tweets

    It is like a live infographic that shows where all the Tweets have been coming from. Also I love this quip:

    …degrades gracefully to Flash on older browsers.

    [via Hans Gerwitz on Twitter]

  • Three reasons to use Calvetica

    Dave Caolo:

    Finally, use Calvetica because this is gorgeous

    I just started using it again after casting it aside for a while, and the landscape view is awesome. Still though I wish it just omitted past days and only showed ‘the future’.

  • The Life of a Telecommuter

    A very nice simply look at what it is like to work remotely, Christina Bonnington:

    I also often end up working later into the evening than I would if I had a commute to tend to. If I’ve got nothing better to do come 6, 7, 8pm, I might as well just keep working.

    This is the danger of working from home, most people I know that work from home always are trying to prove themselves, and often put in more work hours a week than those in real offices. That said working from home is not for everyone.

  • Tinkering With the Finder’s Column View

    Christopher Breen:

    Control (Right) click on a column handle and you’ll see three options: Right Size This Column, Right Size All Columns Individually, and Right Size All Columns Equally.

    Awesome, I had no idea. Good work reporting on Macs again Macworld. ((I honestly mean that.))

  • RIM’s PlayBook Pricing

    Jun Yang:

    Research In Motion Ltd., the maker of the BlackBerry smartphone, said it will begin selling a tablet computer in North America in the first quarter for “under” $500 as it takes on Apple Inc.’s iPad.

    Here’s the thing: didn’t RIM say that you needed a Blackberry to pair with the PlayBook – so if that is the case then the PlayBook will be an accessory that costs more than what it is accessorizing((A BlackBerry)), no?

    Here is what RIM says:

    Pair BlackBerry® PlayBook™ with a BlackBerry smartphone
    via secure Bluetooth® connection for full access to:

    Push technology

    Email, calendar, BBM™, tasks, documents and more

    BlackBerry security and data efficiency

    So you only have limited access to these things without a BlackBerry? It seems it works with apps and web content, but some things require a BlackBerry, not just any smart phone but RIM’s smartphones. Anything north of $200 seems overpriced for this to me.

  • An OmniFocus Theme

    I had completely forgot about this theme I made a while back until Federico Viticci brought it up the other day. I no longer use this theme myself, I use a modified version of Shawn Blanc’s theme and you can grab it here, but you need to have the FF DIN font family to get the look.

    If you have problems downloading the file, the original file, is here.

  • AirPrint Dead? Maybe.

    I try to stay out of the rumor game but I think MacStories is on to something here. It seems like Apple may be killing the ability to print via shared Mac OS X printers. That is, you can still print in iOS 4.2 with compatible wireless printers, but going through Mac OS X is dead for now.

    When Apple released the iOS 4.2 gold master they also pulled the iOS developer access to a beta version of Mac OS X 10.6.5, iOS developers are no longer able to get this version of Mac OS X. There also seems to be no reference to this type of printing that I can find on the online iOS documents. Apple Tech Support according to Federico Viticci of MacStories seems to confirm this.

    If true this is a major setback for iOS, and something that Apple needs to get working on. I would not be surprised to learn that this will becoming in a separate update to Mac OS X. But that begs the question – why do we need 10.6.5 before we get iOS 4.2, like so many sites are reporting…

  • Facebook, Google and Data Portability

    I don’t often read Robert Scoble, but he makes a great point here:

    Google has already lost its database to Facebook. It’s now posturing and doing that poorly. A friend said Google should be cheered for finally standing up. Oh, yeah, that’s like cheering the zookeeper for finally closing the gate after all the animals get out. It’s over. Google allowed the biggest identity theft migration we’ll ever see in our lifetimes. Those animals aren’t going back in the zoo. How do I sign on Techcrunch today? With my Facebook identity, not my Google one.

    and:

    Tonight I tried to call someone from my phone’s contact list. The number was dead. I went to Facebook, grabbed his new number there and I even made the call right from the Facebook iPhone app.

    People used to be so gung ho about data portability and allowing information to flow between networks – I miss those days.