The Brooks Review

Category: Links

  • New Logitech HD WebCams

    Well that should cause Comcast to drop ‘unlimited’ internet access.

  • Why Instapaper Will Never Be Booted From the iTunes App Store

    God do I love Instapaper.

  • The Perils of FaceTime

    Sam Hey:

    Here’s the deal – imagine you have an iPhone 4 and the person who called you has an iPhone 4 (I know for a lot of you nerds this is a real stretch), and you take the call, and the FaceTime tone dings indicating that your caller wants to do FaceTime, and you’re on your couch ensconced in a wifi signal and you could do FaceTime — but you don’t want to. What do you do? “No thanks, buddy.” No matter what perfectly valid excuse you give, the inevitable interpretation on the other end of the line is “I don’t really want to see your face right now.”

  • On this Safari 5 Reader Hysteria

    Nik Fletcher:

    Yes, Safari does some smart stuff behind the scenes – on Lynch’s blog, his multi-page diatribe is brought into one paginated lightbox – and that eliminates ad impressions. But if Safari Reader eliminates the bullshit practice of publishers including disproportionately highly numbers of pages per article then you won’t hear any complaints from me. My own primary interest in reading online surprisingly goes beyond a headline. I take the time to read an article, and if Safari Reader makes reading much easier, then it’s the site’s fault for failing to make itself reasonably legible.

    Spot On.

  • Safari Reader and Content

    Fraser Speirs:

    Most interesting thing about Safari Reader? It shows how little actual content there is on these busy, long webpages

    True.

  • AdMob’s Response to be Kicked Out of the App Store by Apple

    AdMob:

    Let’s be clear. This change is not in the best interests of users or developers. In the history of technology and innovation, it’s clear that competition delivers the best outcome. Artificial barriers to competition hurt users and developers and, in the long run, stall technological progress.

    Let me be more clear, when AdMob uses the word ‘developers’ they actually mean AdMob. Now that you know that re-read the passage above substituting ‘AdMob’ for ‘developer’.

  • AT&T Responds To The iPad Privacy Breach

    Weak sauce response.

  • Angry Driver Buys Police Department’s Website, Launches Anti-Speed Camera Site

    Chris Walters:

    Brian McCrary in Bluff City, TN received a $90 speeding ticket in the mail earlier this year, thanks to an American Traffic Solutions speed camera the police department turned on in January. McCrary says when he looked up information to call the police department with questions about the ticket, he discovered something else: that their website’s domain registration was about to expire. So he bought it.

  • Review: HTC EVO 4G Superphone

    James Kendrick:

    I was concerned about battery life based on accounts I’d seen on the web prior to using the EVO. Those concerns were unfounded, as I find the battery lasts all day with fairly heavy usage. Battery drain depends on how the phone is used, and with so many radios in the EVO it can be hit hard. I find that a little diligence is all that’s needed to stretch the battery out all day. With normal use the lowest the battery has drained on a given day is 11 percent left in the tank at day’s end.

    You shouldn’t need to practice a “little diligence” to get better battery life.

  • Apple bans competing ads from the iPhone

    Bill Ray:

    When it comes to advertising, some information can be gathered with the user’s permission, but only if the company doing the gathering is “an independent advertising service provider whose primary business is serving mobile ads” – our emphasis. Just in case there’s any doubt the clause continues: “An advertising service provider owned by or affiliated with a developer or distributor of mobile devices, mobile operating systems or development environments other than Apple would not qualify as independent”, leaving just about everyone else out in the cold.

    This may draw another anti-trust probe, not that I think it will amount to anything.

  • Don’t Buy The HTC EVO, It Is A Seriously Flawed Device

    Michael Arrington:

    Well, I’m an Android Fanboy, and I’m telling you not to buy this device. The battery life is abysmal – MobileCrunch calls it a “dealbreaker” and I agree. Yes you can do a few things to get a little extra time out of it, but this device routinely runs out of power while sitting on standby overnight next to my bed. You aren’t just charging this once a day. Or twice a day. You need to be thinking about your next power fix just about any time you are using it. I keep chargers at home, in my office, in my car, and an extra one to suck power from my laptop. That keeps it going, but it isn’t fun.

  • An iPhone Lover’s (Initial) Thoughts On iPhone 4

    MG Seigler:

    It’s subtle things like this — things that most people will never even realize they’re noticing (but they are) — that make Apple, Apple.

    Even if you hate Apple this is a must read. Great analysis by someone who has actually used the device.

  • Father of webOS notifications leaves for Apple

    Brain drain continues – this bodes well for better notifications (current ones are terrible) on the iOS platform.

  • Apple’s Worst Security Breach: 114,000 iPad Owners Exposed

    Ryan Tate:

    The breach, which comes just weeks after an Apple employee lost an iPhone prototype in a bar, exposed the most exclusive email list on the planet, a collection of early-adopter iPad 3G subscribers that includes thousands of A-listers in finance, politics and media, from New York Times Co. CEO Janet Robinson to Diane Sawyer of ABC News to film mogul Harvey Weinstein to Mayor Michael Bloomberg. It even appears that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel’s information was compromised.

    WOW, this appears to by an AT&T problem, but really it is a problem for everyone involved. No credit card numbers, but a slew of email addresses.

  • USB Host Hack Allows Keyboards, Flash Drives to Connect to the Nexus One

    Whitson Gordon:

    This hack should let you use your phone with pretty much any USB device, like a keyboard, flash drive, webcam, and even an external monitor.

    Oh someone should do this for the iPhone, this is pretty neat.

  • Why the iPhone 4 Made AT&T Change Its Pricing

    Stacey Higginbotham:

    But even with the 2GB plan and $10-per-GB overages a video habit over the 3G network is going to cost you, and possibly make you think twice about that download — or upload. That is exactly what AT&T wants — and why it changed its pricing plans for new subscribers as of yesterday.

    I disagree with this statement, first I don’t think AT&T knew the video calling was coming. Second it is still Wi-Fi only so they are not going to make any extra money off of it. Third, I think AT&T is genuinely trying to show its Customers and Apple that it can handle the iPhone traffic so that they have more room for negotiation of extended exclusivity. This is all about limiting traffic for AT&T not about money, if it was about money they would still offer the unlimited data plan for $50 or more dollars a month.

  • Google’s new search index: Caffeine

    Carrie Grimes:

    Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

    With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

    Take a look at the graphic they have, it is supposed to show how much better the new index is, but to me it just shows how damn complicated it all is. If you can’t draw it – it will break eventually.

  • MobileDL

    This is sweet:

    MobileDL lets you remotely tell your Mac at home to download files. Just leave MobileDL running in the menubar on your home Macintosh and when you’re out and about, use Simplenote on your iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad or any internet-enabled computer to give your computer files to download. Your Mac at home downloads the file, and it’s ready for you when you get home.

  • The Most Expensive and the Coolest Home Theatre in the World

    This is amazing and I am jealous. My only question: why only enough seating for three people? Seems like a waste – and the couch doesn’t look all that comfortable – but maybe that is the jealousy talking.

  • Microsoft’s Web-Based Office Goes Live

    Pretty cool and is way faster for Mac users than it would be to launch Office 2008 for the Mac. I mainly use Apple’s iWork, but for those rare times I need Microsoft Office I am going to be using this I think.