The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • Microsoft’s Kin Humiliation

    John Gruber:

    I can’t vouch for the following, but a well-placed little birdie told me over the weekend that they sold a grand total of 503 Kins before they pulled the plug. 503.

    Holy…

  • 6 Current Technologies The Jetsons Predicted

    I always wonder if the TV show spurred the idea for these inventions, or if they were just a natural progression. I would assume a combination of both.

  • What 583k People Do Without iPods

    Apparently they pay for Sirius radio.

  • Bootstrapped, Profitable, & Proud: iTeleport

    37Signals:

    This is a good question. We believe there’s a strong culture, especially here in Silicon Valley, of taking investment early, and lots of it. If you don’t do this, you’re considered a “lifestyle” company, which is in most circles, a derogatory term. Starting off it just seemed like getting investment was the “normal” thing to do.

    At the same time, we wanted to shape iTeleport in our own vision — a company that was about more than just profits, instead it would be a place where awesome people would work on a whole range of problems — whether for-profit, or non-profit — and also wanted to create a space for personal growth and development for each of us. We didn’t believe that the investment community would have let us get away with this — and we didn’t want to spend our time trying to explain ourselves to someone else. Most importantly though, we just didn’t need any money — we had plenty of it from our products.

    This is what I was talking about.

  • New Russian Law Looks to Crack Down on Internet

    Owen Matthews:

    A law currently before the Duma would give the FSB and prosecutors the most sweeping powers they have had since the fall of the Soviet Union, from censoring Internet sites to arresting people for “obstructing investigations.” The draconian new law is in the name of fighting “extremism”—defined as anything “undermining the authority of state officials” or “insulting the honor of the Russian nation.” Internet service providers must shut down offending Web sites within three days of receiving a complaint from the FSB, and the burden of proof will be on the sites to disprove extremism charges.

    China may soon be joined by Russia.

  • Is the Web outdated, or is it just Prince?

    “The Internet [is] like MTV,” Prince said later in the Interview. “At one time MTV was hip and suddenly it became outdated.”

    Nope – that is not true.

  • Apple reportedly hard at work on serious Apple TV update

    Chris Foresman:

    First, Apple is reportedly working on a major update to the software that runs the Apple TV, which may be based on iOS. No details about the hardware are known, but it would make perfect sense for Apple to build it around an A4 variant and utilize iOS, which is already optimized for small devices and media consumption.

    Perhaps but I saw the Mac mini update as the Apple TV update. You don’t make the Mac mini look like the Apple TV and give it an HDMI port for no reason – not if you are Apple that is.

  • It’s Not The Device Or The File, It’s The Internet, Stupid!

    Mike Cane:

    Files are things. Things are on the way out.

    We already have something that can be accessed by all devices and can’t be corralled by any single company. It works wonderfully and is improving all the time.

    It’s called the Internet.

  • App Store, Hacked

    Zee:

    Some users who have had their accounts hacked have left comments on the apps they have supposedly bought complaining that up to $200 has been spent on apps they’d never personally bought themselves. (update: we’ve now heard reports of $600+ spent on some users accounts, more details at the foot of this post)

  • Great since day one

    Marco Arment:

    I buy things that are great today. They’re usually things that have been great since day one. And, more often than not, they’re Apple products.

    Exactly, I could not agree more with Arment he hits the nail on the head.

  • July 4th – YouTube Hacked, Justin Bieber Gets the Worst of It

    Samuel Axon:

    While the hack was used on a variety of videos, striking music videos featuring teen pop idol Justin Bieber was the most popular activity.

  • Instapaper. Reinventing long-form reading…

    Milind Alvares:

    Instapaper keeps things quiet. None of the formatting from the website remains. Every article you read looks exactly the same as the other — optimised for reading.

    I love Instapaper – it is one service that I would pay $20 a month for without thinking twice.

  • The Tapulous Purchase Price Mystery

    Sounds likes a good price to me if TechCrunch is right. Great pickup by Disney – forwarding looking too.

  • Microsoft Instaload: Insert Batteries Any Way You Like

    Why it took this long to do something seemingly so simple I don’t know. But kudos to Microsoft for coming up with it.

  • The Swype Revolution?

    David Pogue:

    True, you pick up a lot of speed when the letters you want are already in line with each other as in the “ask” example. But you lose a corresponding amount of speed when you’re having to bounce back and forth from one side of the keyboard to the other, as in the word “soaks” that’s four complete horizontal traverses.Furthermore, when I use Swype, I constantly encounter pop-up word selectors, indicating that Swype wasn’t sure what word I wanted. For example, the same identical swipe could mean “pit,” “pot,” or “put.” If the word you wanted isn’t there, you have to cancel out and swipe in the whole word anew. You never see those interruptions in the online video demos of Swype.

    This sounds like a you hate it or love it system.

  • Translation From Apples Unique Dialect of PR-Speak to English of the Letter From Apple Regarding iPhone 4

    “We dare you” is probably John Gruber’s best line. Well worth the read.

  • Letter Heard ‘Round the World Regarding iPhone 4

    Apple:

    Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong. Our formula, in many instances, mistakenly displays 2 more bars than it should for a given signal strength. For example, we sometimes display 4 bars when we should be displaying as few as 2 bars. Users observing a drop of several bars when they grip their iPhone in a certain way are most likely in an area with very weak signal strength, but they don’t know it because we are erroneously displaying 4 or 5 bars. Their big drop in bars is because their high bars were never real in the first place.

    That certainly explains a lot of tints over the years. Also this is Apple pushing the blame to AT&T and not contradicting what Jobs’ has conveyed in emails to customers (notice that Jobs did not sign the letter). This appears honest and offers a fix, It is not OK, but it is not wholly inexcusable. Apple should have caught this 2 years ago and they didn’t, when they did catch it they are fixing it.

  • iPhone 4 3G Data Performance

    John Gruber:

    So I’m seeing download speeds twice as fast as on an iPhone 3GS, and upload speeds over ten times faster. Latency is about an order of magnitude better as well. The iPad doesn’t fair much better than the 3GS.

    I will update with the speeds that I get tonight.

  • Breaking: Tapulous Acquired By Disney

    Interesting, no word yet on the acquisition price.

  • Symbols for iOS 4 Folder Names

    Love it. Glyphboard is a great little tool.