Kelly MacLean:
> Next I see the gluten-free section filled with crackers and bread made from various wheat-substitutes such as cardboard and sawdust. I skip this aisle because I’m not rich enough to have dietary restrictions. Ever notice that you don’t meet poor people with special diet needs? A gluten intolerant house cleaner? A cab driver with Candida?
Fantastic post, despite the website hosting.
Get yourself ready for iOS 7 and install this little gem. All the app does it takes an existing picture and adds iOS 7 style blur. I thought it was gimmicky at first, but truly (as someone who has been using iOS 7 for a while now) it is needed for the home screen background.
The lighter font weight on the app names makes busy backgrounds distracting, but solid colors are boring. With Blur I have created some great little background images.
I am not kidding at all when I say this: this app really makes me smile. If you follow me on App.net you have seen my “artwork” from this app already. The screenshots say it all, but the grins don’t come until you start using the app. No, I am serious.
John Moltz takes a more in-depth look at Elementary OS for Macworld. I really like the vision behind Elementary and think it is worth keeping an eye on.
Michael Horowitz:
> Many (probably most) of these Android phones and tablets are phoning home to Google, backing up Wi-Fi passwords along with other assorted settings. And, although they have never said so directly, it is obvious that Google can read the passwords.
Excuse me while I cycle my WiFi passwords. Oh, and this isn’t some anti-Google post, so it is well worth the read.
Tom Simonite:
> Facebook and Twitter’s collision course seems more driven by their rush to make money from ads than an effort to fulfill the needs of their users.
Sounds great for users.
A great video and reflection.
Chris Chase:
> The Seattle Seahawks announced Wednesday that undercover cops dressed as San Francisco 49ers fans will patrol CenturyLink Field to deal with unruly fans during Sunday night’s seismic NFC West matchup.
Not yet, because it gets even more stupid:
> Fans who are found breaking the code will be kicked out of the stadium and forced to take a four-hour online course if they want to return in the future.
Now that’s some stupid shit.
1. How do you even monitor this?
2. Are you going to be scanning IDs with the tickets to let people in?
3. Good luck with that.
Anthony Drendel on adding in-app purchases to Sunstroke:
> Up until July 2013, I had been treating Gone East LLC (my software development company) as a hobby. I had a full-time job that was paying the bills. Consequently, I didn’t much care about earning a decent salary from my app sales. At the beginning of July my contract with my previous employer expired, and I decided to make a change and try to make a living off of my software development.
He has added a $5 in-app purchase to buy unlimited searches (these are persistent, updated, searches that one should think of as smart folders and not searches). It’s a great add to what is easily the best RSS iPhone app out there. If you don’t use Fever, Sunstroke is probably one of the top three reasons to use Fever.
So while you are waiting to spend $500, go spend $5 on this app, or the in-app purchase, or both.
I had no idea he had opened it up to a blog-type system too. All powered by WordPress.com VIP hosting — pretty neat.
Joe Mullin:
> “I hope they don’t wuss out on this case,” said Cheng. “I hope they have the balls to try it. I am not optimistic that they will, because it would be a big mistake on their part to let this case go to trial.”
Excuse me while I go do some shopping at Newegg.
Interesting web browser built off of the Chromium engine (Google Chrome). It is not like the [PirateBrowser](http://piratebrowser.com) because it doesn’t look to use Tor, instead it basically blocks trackers in as many forms as it can find and routes certain things, like searches, through proxies.
Ultimately, something like this comes down to who is building it ((Because it would be damned clever for the NSA to build something like this.)) and I don’t know anything about the company other than they are US and India based. If you know more about it, [get in touch](https://brooksreview.net/contact/).
What it takes to get at your device inside a data center, good to know if you are hosting your own stuff. That’s for a normal person, while a governmental agency would obviously have a different route to take.
I hate that Apple plays this game, but my take is [the same as Stephen Hackett’s](http://512pixels.net/2013/09/omni-app-store/).
> Perch is an always-on video communication app designed to bring you closer to the people you talk to everyday regardless of where you are. It connects two separate spaces together in a way that facilitates natural and spontaneous video conversation.
My buddy Pat Dryburgh showed me this video a while ago, and I was impressed (not just with the video). The original idea of Perch was never one that I understood, but this incarnation is very cool. You should watch the video.
Now, if only I had remote workers to Perch with. (I am thinking about setting up a Perch to my house so my daughter can talk to me whenever she needs me.)
Among his other tips, this one probably works really well:
> […] take some cool and professional-looking pictures that have super-shallow depth of field […]
The crux of Shawn’s strategy is that he is selling a legally unlocked iPhone — good pictures or not — and there’s a market for unlocked iPhones (it seems to be a strong market too).
But, I would guess that market will be a bit *less* strong this year. I say this because the Verizon iPhone 5s were *all* sold sim-card unlocked. That’s huge and that makes the supply of unlocked-year-old-iPhone-5s that much bigger. So my guess is that there will be slightly depressed pricing in the used market, but then again it’s a `5` and not an `s` model so that may help keep the price up.
Needless to say, Shawn’s strategy is *not* one that I would bank on. I’d use it as more of a “I hope I can get this, but can still pay rent if I don’t” type of strategy.
This is a fantastic tool — love it. ((It helps that I just recently learned how to use the `.bash_profile`.))
It’s the fastest around for now, but when iOS 7 launches I can assure you that there will be no need for flashlight apps any longer (unless you like that pulsing shit).
This is a fantastic little Hazel rule to add to your tool belt.
This is a fantastic post on Pressthink about how journalism can and should operate in a surveillance state. It’s interesting to think about the implications of silencing the press — but more than that it is sad to think that silencing the press is considered an option by “civilized” governments.