The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • BREAKING: Woot To Be Acquired By Amazon, Then Left To Amuse Ourselves

    The title says it all. Great pickup by Amazon (assuming a reasonable price).

  • Jim Ray on the MSNBC.com Redesign

    Jim Ray:

    Besides all of the new typography, navigation, color and multimedia, the real story is the fundamental rethink of what a story page should be. For too long, the formula of online news has been a spine of text that media elements hang off of like a sad Charlie Brown Christmas tree, competing with ads and widgets for attention. What these new pages do is suggest that a story is more than a jumble of these parts, in fact, it works best when every element ties together cohesively.

    MSNBC.com certainly is different though I don’t particularly care for it – I do like it more than the site it replaces. Also is the scrolling on the pages jerky for anyone else?

  • Facebook Apps Must Now Ask Users for More Specific Permissions

    About time.

  • Cisco Announces the Cius

    Why announce a tablet that won’t ship until 2011? Why is Wired calling it the “Blackberry of Tablets” when they have yet to see it? This whole thing is dumb.

  • Breaking the Email Addiction

    Tony Schwartz:

    It isn’t overload were battling anymore, it’s addiction — to action, and information, and connection, but above all to instant gratification.

    I am not addicted to email, but news and Twitter I am addicted to, or so says the wife.

  • Gruber on the 4

    John Gruber:

    And, for obvious reasons, the glass back raises concerns about the iPhone 4’s droppability. With previous iPhones, it was liking dropping a piece of buttered toast — there was a lucky and unlucky side on which it could land. With the iPhone 4, it’s like dropping a piece of toast that’s been buttered on both sides.

    Last iPhone 4 review I post. (also I am definitely buttering both sides of my toast from here on out – sound delicious)

  • Verizon Wireless Said to Start Offering IPhone in January – Idiots Everywhere Bank On It

    Not a stupid prediction – maybe even accurate. Still you would be an idiot to hold out hope at this point.

  • MapQuest Updates – Hopes to Stay Alive

    Today marked the first time in at least a year that I visited MapQuest.

  • Android 2.2 Froyo Now Rolling Out To All Nexus Ones

    Jason Kincaid:

    Of course, most Android users will still have to wait a while (months, in many cases) until their devices will get 2.2. That’s because it’s still up to hardware manufacturers to port the OS over to their devices — a process that can be further complicated by ‘skins’ used by some companies, like HTC’s Sense.

  • Hulu – Plus

    The first thing I am doing tonight when I get home – convincing my wife we don’t need our cable subscription anymore.

  • Kindle for Android

    This is how Amazon is going to compete – being platform agnostic.

  • What Apple needs to do now

    Adam Greenfield on Apple’s skeuomorphic design choices:

    One of the deepest principles of interaction design I observe is that, except in special cases, the articulation of a user interface should suggest something of a device, service or application’s capabilities and affordances. This is clearly, thoroughly and intentionally undermined in Apple’s current suite of iOS offerings.

    Very interesting, I like the Calendar app, but most of the others he mentions I don’t care for. It is clear that Apple uses this design metric to make things familiar, what is unclear is whether they actually like designing this way. [via Daring Fireball]

  • Windows 8 leaks show Microsoft’s eyes on Apple

    Take a quick spin through the slides. This whole thing gives me hope that Microsoft may just turn it around – competition is good, for Apple, mostly though for consumers. If Microsoft was able to create a “Windows Store” or even showcase where they could show off some of the beautiful apps that people create for the platform then I think they would start to see more loyalty and less criticism.

  • Amazon Adds Audio and Video to iOS Kindle Apps

    So now Apple’s hardware offers a better reading experience for Kindle books than Amazon’s own Kindle offers. Odd.

  • iPhone 4: the Ars Technica review

    Jacqui Cheng:

    During our time testing the device, numerous peers of ours who had no intention of getting an iPhone 4 began reconsidering it after seeing the screen — this was definitely the main reason why people started changing their minds.

  • Eye Opening Look at the ‘Open’ Android App Store

    This is the reason that Apple curates the App Store for the iPhone – trademark infringements and illegal downloading look to run rampant in the Android Marketplace. Not to mention the fact that it sounds difficult to purchased paid apps outside of the U.S..

  • An iPhone Calendar App for the Design-Oriented

    If it synced with MobileMe it would be perfect. What a great way to display your day.

  • An Apple a Day

    Great shot.

  • iPhone 4 Sales Top 1.7 Million

    Apple:

    Apple® today announced that it has sold over 1.7 million of its iPhone® 4 through Saturday, June 26, just three days after its launch on June 24.

    That is a lot of phones, I was expecting about 2 million – a bit high. This is a lot of phones, wow.

  • Decoding Microsoft’s Fantastic Passive-Agressive Numbers Post

    Great translation of Microsoft’s numbers blog post.