Back in January of 2012, I wrote this short little 7-step post on how to fix BlackBerry. After reading [this oral history of BlackBerry](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-05/the-rise-and-fall-of-blackberry-an-oral-history), I think my how-to is more than adequate.
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From the archives: ‘If I Were CEO’
Back in January of 2012, I wrote this short little 7-step post on how to fix BlackBerry. After reading [this oral history of BlackBerry](http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-12-05/the-rise-and-fall-of-blackberry-an-oral-history), I think my how-to is more than adequate.
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Donate to the Internet Archive!
When I posted about not being able to find old images, many reminded me that archive.org has them. I spent some time grabbing those images and putting them back into the posts they belong in. Crisis adverted. They are in need of funding though, I donated $100, and you should donate something too.
When I posted about not being able to find old images, many reminded me that archive.org has them. I spent some time grabbing those images and putting them back into the posts they belong in. Crisis adverted.
They are in need of funding though, I donated $100, and you should donate something too.
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‘Former Google executive to run U.S. patent office’
Diane Bartz: > Former Google Inc executive Michelle Lee has been named deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and will run the agency until a new director is named, the agency said on Wednesday. Word in D.C. is that the USPTO is heavily shopping around LinkedIn for Samsung execs to fill…
Diane Bartz:
> Former Google Inc executive Michelle Lee has been named deputy director of the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and will run the agency until a new director is named, the agency said on Wednesday.
Word in D.C. is that the USPTO is heavily shopping around LinkedIn for Samsung execs to fill the top spot.
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Apple’s Steve Park, New Favorite Apple Employee
Miyoung Kim for Reuters on Apple’s reaction to having a case thrown out where Samsung was trying to ban sales in South Korea: > “We are glad the Korean court joined others around the world in standing up for real innovation and rejecting Samsung’s ridiculous claims,” Apple Korea spokesman Steve Park said. I like Steve…
Miyoung Kim for Reuters on Apple’s reaction to having a case thrown out where Samsung was trying to ban sales in South Korea:
> “We are glad the Korean court joined others around the world in standing up for real innovation and rejecting Samsung’s ridiculous claims,” Apple Korea spokesman Steve Park said.
I like Steve Park.
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Your Privacy Costs $30/mo
Stacey Higginbotham: > AT&T said Wednesday that it has started service in four Austin neighborhoods with an offer to bring its GigaPower fiber-to-the-home service for $70 a month — but with a pretty big catch. > If you want to pay the lower rate you must agree “to participate in AT&T Internet Preferences.” This means,…
Stacey Higginbotham:
> AT&T said Wednesday that it has started service in four Austin neighborhoods with an offer to bring its GigaPower fiber-to-the-home service for $70 a month — but with a pretty big catch.
> If you want to pay the lower rate you must agree “to participate in AT&T Internet Preferences.” This means, “AT&T may use your Web browsing information, like the search terms you enter and the Web pages you visit, to provide you relevant offers and ads tailored to your interests.”
Higginbotham says that it is highly likely this is a direct response to Google’s fiber roll out, so we can still blame Google for this.
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‘TSA agent confiscates sock monkey’s pistol’
Susan Wyatt: > May said the TSA agent went through the bag, through the sewing supplies and found the two-inch long pistol. > “She said ‘this is a gun,’” said May. “I said no, it’s not a gun it’s a prop for my monkey.” > “She said ‘If I held it up to your neck,…
Susan Wyatt:
> May said the TSA agent went through the bag, through the sewing supplies and found the two-inch long pistol.
> “She said ‘this is a gun,’” said May. “I said no, it’s not a gun it’s a prop for my monkey.”
> “She said ‘If I held it up to your neck, you wouldn’t know if it was real or not,’ and I said ‘really?’” said May.
Dipshits.
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‘No Contest: Edward Snowden is Person of the Year’
John Cassidy: > According to Time, its award, which will be bestowed on Wednesday, goes to the person who, in the opinion of the magazine’s editors, had the most influence on the news. By this metric, it’s no contest. In downloading thousands of files from the computers of the electronic spying agency and handing them…
John Cassidy:
> According to Time, its award, which will be bestowed on Wednesday, goes to the person who, in the opinion of the magazine’s editors, had the most influence on the news. By this metric, it’s no contest. In downloading thousands of files from the computers of the electronic spying agency and handing them over to journalists like Glenn Greenwald, Laura Poitras, and Barton Gellman, Snowden unleashed a torrent of news stories that began in May, when the Guardian and the Washington Post published a series of articles about the N.S.A.’s surveillance activities. Seven months later, the gusher is still open.
Nope, they choose Pope Francis. I think I remember seeing a news story or two about him, I think.
(via Jason Kottke -
Punishment vs. Rewards: App Store Reviews
[John Gruber, voicing a frustration about the “rate this app” nag screens that are the scourge of iOS users][1]: > I’ve long considered a public campaign against this particular practice, wherein I’d encourage Daring Fireball readers, whenever they encounter these “Please rate this app” prompts, to go ahead and take the time to do it…
[John Gruber, voicing a frustration about the “rate this app” nag screens that are the scourge of iOS users][1]:
> I’ve long considered a public campaign against this particular practice, wherein I’d encourage Daring Fireball readers, whenever they encounter these “Please rate this app” prompts, to go ahead and take the time to do it — but to rate the app with just one star and to leave a review along the lines of, “One star for annoying me with a prompt to review the app.”
It’s actually hard to be an iOS user and *not* agree with Gruber here. Those screens are shitty and annoying.
I hate them with a passion.
If you have been following any iOS developers on App.net/Twitter that do these nag screens, you will have also noticed that Gruber’s post seems to have started to affect the app ratings overall for apps with nag screens. (Which was the point, as we hope it would inspire change.)
We hope we will eliminate these nags by giving bad reviews.
Except that’s only looking at the problem from *one* side of things.
### User Side
From the user perspective: you took time to download this app and therefore should be able to use it without being nagged to death to rate the app.
This is only logical.
As a user you also expect a stable app that is given regular updates and improvements. Again, not wholly unreasonable.
Mostly, you just want to use the app when and how you want to and then get on with your life.
### Developer Side
Developers *need* to get their apps into the hands of as many users as possible to fund the future development of apps.
Developers also know that people are unlikely to buy poorly rated apps, and that not everyone reads blogs about apps to stay abreast of what is best. Therefore developers need good ratings to fulfill the first obligation of sales/downloads and thus the nag screen.
There’s no more evil to it than that, with developers feeling like it is a small ask of their users. Again, not wholly unreasonable.
## Opposing Forces
This is where the problem exists. The developers have every incentive in the world to cause a user a *minor* annoyance and ask users to rate the app via nag screen. The developer figures this minor annoyance is worth it for the user because it indirectly helps the developer continue to work on the app.
More ratings = more installs = more money = more time spent developing the app = benefits to users. Everyone wins…
It’s rather simple. And in that vein it is in the best interest of the user in the long-term.
Except the user’s priorities don’t align with this thinking. The user faces a few problems with nag dialogs that aren’t typically expressed in the developer perspective:
1. *Your* app isn’t the only one nagging them to review. In fact, if it was just one app every once and a while nagging the users, then users would likely never care — but it’s not just one app every once and a while. Actually *most* apps, most of the time, are nagging thus creating a feeling of *constantly being nagged*. It’s like driving a school bus: what’s the harm in *one* student asking “are we there yet?” There’s no harm in that, but the fact is that once one student asks they all ask, and then you just pull the bus over and walkaway from those little brats.
2. The user has to stop their day. Think about that, especially if your app is designed to help the user accomplish something faster/better/easier. You, the developer, are asking your user to forgo the potential “productivity” benefits of your app, stop, head over to the App Store, write a few words, sign in, agree to new terms, sign in again, pick a star rating, and submit. It’s not a minor annoyance, it’s typically a big pain in the ass that takes real time.The simple fix is for Apple to allow submitting reviews from inside an app. That’d be great and simple.
But that’s not reality today, and we need to deal with reality.
It’s not fair for users to review apps one star based on the fact there was a nag screen from rating the app. We should *all* agree on this.
But it’s also not fair for developers to nag users to review their app based on the fact that “it’s vital to development and doesn’t take any time”. Again, we should *all* agree on this.
I think a better strategy is this: If you don’t like nag screens and an app nags you, don’t rate that app, but pencil in some time once a week to rate one app you like that never nags you.
It’s a matter of punishment versus reward. I think, in this case, rewarding those that don’t nag is better than punishing those that do nag.
### Side Note About Push Notifications
But, with all that said, fuck those people that abuse push notifications. Slaughter them in reviews.
[1]: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/12/05/eff-your-review
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‘Fine Art Gliclée Prints’
John Carey is now selling prints of his images and I now cannot decide which one(s) to buy.
John Carey is now selling prints of his images and I now cannot decide which one(s) to buy.
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Quote of the Day: John Gruber
“I’ve been saying for years that page view-based advertising is a corrupting force.” – John Gruber
“I’ve been saying for years that page view-based advertising is a corrupting force.” -
‘NSA uses Google cookies to pinpoint targets for hacking’
Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson, and Barton Gellman: > Apps transmit their locations to Google and other Internet companies because ads tied to a precise physical location can be more lucrative than generic ads. But in the process, they appear to tip off the NSA to a mobile device’s precise physical location. That makes it easier…
Ashkan Soltani, Andrea Peterson, and Barton Gellman:
> Apps transmit their locations to Google and other Internet companies because ads tied to a precise physical location can be more lucrative than generic ads. But in the process, they appear to tip off the NSA to a mobile device’s precise physical location. That makes it easier for the spy agency to engage in the sophisticated tracking techniques the Post described in a story Dec. 4.
It makes perfect sense for the NSA to use data from cookies to track targets, because ,as the article says, nearly everyone has a Google cookie on their machine. This site serves three: WordPress (I think there may be two here, one for WP stats and another for your login/remember me), Mint (self-hosted analytics), and Go Squared. I am now considering removing all three, especially since I don’t need the stats to show advertisers. ((I mostly use stats to see who is linking in to me, and how well received each post is.))
There are many options for limiting how many cookies your computer stores, but it does break some websites and at the very least is fairly annoying. It’d be less profitable if Google removed the unique ID, but it is the best thing they can do for users.
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A Note About Old Pictures
In March of 2012 I switched cloud providers for hosting images on TBR. I moved from the ubiquitous Amazon S3 to [Rackspace Cloud Files][1]. I made the move for two reasons: 1. I couldn’t easily upload an image to S3, set it public, and grab the URL from my iPad. I could do that from…
In March of 2012 I switched cloud providers for hosting images on TBR. I moved from the ubiquitous Amazon S3 to [Rackspace Cloud Files][1]. I made the move for two reasons:
1. I couldn’t easily upload an image to S3, set it public, and grab the URL from my iPad. I could do that from Rackspace though.
2. In my rudimentary testing Rackspace was just a touch faster than S3.With the cost being a negligible factor, I made the move. Instead of doing the wise thing an porting over all my old images to Rackspace and updating the linking at that time, I just left it be. So every image pre-March-2012 was still on S3.
I never foresaw an issue with this and on my left went. ((I should have. Fuck.))
About two months ago I got a fraud call from my credit card company telling me that there was a pending charge from Amazon for $30,000+ — and was I ok with that? WHAT!
This lead to an afternoon of my life that is rather blurry. I got in contact with Amazon support and we tracked it down to someone hacking into my AWS account in the middle of the night and spinning up a lot of EC2 instances (I had EC2 on for VPN usage, but never used it). So while my S3 bill was still only $4, there was more than thirty thousand dollars being billed with EC2.
I was frantic, but confident that I could prove in court it wasn’t me and it was a hack, but still didn’t want to have to go that far as it would likely cost my a lot of time *and* money.
Still it took hours that day, and weeks of waiting, to fully resolve the issue.
It is resolved now. To Amazon’s credit their support staff was smart, well trained, helpful, and felt on “my side” the entire time. In fact, from almost the outset of the call, the support rep told me “we will work to get these charges removed for me”. She said that often and I’d be lying to say that wasn’t what I needed to hear at that time.
During that fiasco (while on the phone with Amazon) I downloaded a backup of my S3 data (not much) with the intention of porting over the data to Rackspace because Amazon told me on the phone I had (maybe they strongly urged me, I can’t recall) to delete my AWS account and the S3 data would be nuked.
I never got around to uploading that backup S3 data, but now many of you are pinging me to let me know that old image links are broken (I know, believe me, I know).
Today I set out to repair those images, but I can’t find the backup file. ((Fuck!)) At this point I fear it was overwritten on a USB drive, so as it stands old images are just going to be broken. If I find the backup file I will update the images as quickly as I can — but it is truly not looking hopeful.
I apologize for this and am a bit red in the face over the matter.
[1]: http://www.rackspace.com/cloud/files/
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The Goruck GR1 Pictures
After I added pictures to the GR1 field pocket post I literally had halve-dozens of emails asking for GR1 pictures. Here you are.
After I added pictures to the GR1 field pocket post I literally had halve-dozens of emails asking for GR1 pictures. Here you are.
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Reform Government Surveillance
It seems to me a more effective solution than an open letter for tech giants would be one, or all, of the following: + Refuse to give any money to any political candidate. + Refuse to sell your products to any governmental agency. Including SaaS products. (Never going to happen, but would be great.) +…
It seems to me a more effective solution than an open letter for tech giants would be one, or all, of the following:
+ Refuse to give any money to any political candidate.
+ Refuse to sell your products to any governmental agency. Including SaaS products. (Never going to happen, but would be great.)
+ Create a pooled ad budget (like the one to promote this letter) to run ads (video and print) demanding reform.This will never happen, but I still occasionally dream.
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‘Meet Jack. Or, What The Government Could Do With All That Location Data’
Great look at the practical downside of automated government spying. (via Keith H.)
Great look at the practical downside of automated government spying.
(via Keith H.) -
Let It Full-Bleed
MG Siegler: > Think about how ridiculous that is for a second. A web browser needs a feature to make it easier to actually read on the web.
MG Siegler:
> Think about how ridiculous that is for a second. A web browser needs a feature to make it easier to actually read on the web.
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‘NSA morale down after Edward Snowden revelations, former U.S. officials say’
Ellen Nakashima: > Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support. Maybe if their PowerPoint slides weren’t so fucking bad President Obama…
Ellen Nakashima:
> Morale has taken a hit at the National Security Agency in the wake of controversy over the agency’s surveillance activities, according to former officials who say they are dismayed that President Obama has not visited the agency to show his support.
Maybe if their PowerPoint slides weren’t so fucking bad President Obama would put them up on the fridge and everyone could feel better.
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The Brooks Review December Membership Special
For this month only, you can get the yearly membership option on this site for $30 a year. That’s a $10 savings right to your wallet. *(Also, you are welcomed to upgrade from monthly membership to yearly and get the $30 price. Just cancel your membership, stay logged in and go to the join page.…
For this month only, you can get the yearly membership option on this site for $30 a year. That’s a $10 savings right to your wallet.
*(Also, you are welcomed to upgrade from monthly membership to yearly and get the $30 price. Just cancel your membership, stay logged in and go to the join page. Select the new membership and enter the info asked. You should now be rolled over. However you won’t get a refund for any partial month stuff.)*
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‘Cellphone data spying: It’s not just the NSA’
[John Kelly](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/08/cellphone-data-spying-nsa-police/3902809/): > Armed with new technologies, including mobile devices that tap into cellphone data in real time, dozens of local and state police agencies are capturing information about thousands of cellphone users at a time, whether they are targets of an investigation or not, according to public records obtained by USA TODAY and Gannett…
[John Kelly](http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/12/08/cellphone-data-spying-nsa-police/3902809/):
> Armed with new technologies, including mobile devices that tap into cellphone data in real time, dozens of local and state police agencies are capturing information about thousands of cellphone users at a time, whether they are targets of an investigation or not, according to public records obtained by USA TODAY and Gannett newspapers and TV stations.
This article is exactly what you expect, exactly what is stated in the above quote. What it points out though is that once you make it “ok” for one government agency to spy on people, it starts to trickle down and be “ok” for all policing agencies to spy on people.
Now it’s not just about finding terrorists — it’s about finding kidnappers, murderers, and the guy who broke into the Sheriff’s car last night. And while most of those are noble causes, unchecked, the majority of use cases become personal vendettas and lines are blurred in the name of justice.
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Quote of the Day: Wil Wheaton
“Consider this, about having perspective on criticism: If you enjoyed making a thing, and you’re proud of the thing you made, that’s enough.” — Wil Wheaton
“Consider this, about having perspective on criticism: If you enjoyed making a thing, and you’re proud of the thing you made, that’s enough.”