Recent Articles

[Debbie Cafazzo for the local Tacoma News Tribune](http://www.thenewstribune.com/2013/03/01/2494665/tacoma-school-board-raises-goal.html):

>The Tacoma School Board Thursday officially raised the bar for expected graduation rates. Board members said they want the district’s overall graduation rate to hit 85 percent by the year 2020.

They are following the tried and true Olympian mantra of trying for Bronze in an attempt to win Gold… No, wait, that’s not how it works. Is it trying to swim halfway across the pool faster than… No. Actually trying for anything less the finishing first is kind of a waste of time, right?

This is what’s wrong with “boards” — they are so goddamned worried about covering their own asses that they set half-assed goals so that, at the very least, they meet their goals and thus shouldn’t be fired.

The goal should always be: 100% graduation. Seems pretty fucking basic to me. (By the way, they are currently at 68% graduation which is absolutely horrendous.)

[Ryan Bateman has some more information about how Google treats its users’ personal data][1]:

Google stores your wifi password if you have an Android phone and sign into it. It stores it in Google’s servers.

According to Bateman, Google uses this information in its setup flow for new and factory-reset phones. Signing in to your Google account will download all of your stored Wi-Fi passwords, along with your contacts, calendars, apps, etc.

In theory, this is a fantastic idea. One less password the user has to enter, one less possible point of frustration.

But, consider for a moment:

Have you visited a friend and joined the Wi-Fi network in their home? Have you had guests over and allowed them on your Wi-Fi network so you could watch that hilarious Harlem Shake parody video? Maybe you’ve visited a small business, whose owner lets you onto their company Wi-Fi network because they aren’t savvy enough to set up a guest network.

My point is, you could potentially have dozens of Wi-Fi passwords on your phone, many of which are not your own, which are now—thanks to Andriod—stored on Google’s servers.

At least we can rest assured that [Google doesn’t have a history of controversial behaviour related to harvesting information from Wi-Fi networks][2].

Or [any of its users’ personal data, for that matter][3].

[1]: http://everythinginthesky.com/post/44230045159/google-stores-your-wifi-password-if-you-have-an
[2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Google#Information_collection_from_WiFi_networks
[3]: https://brooksreview.net/2013/02/i-cant-believe-ben-missed-this/

[I thought we covered this a couple of weeks ago](https://brooksreview.net/2013/02/ipad-workflow/), but here’s Ted Landau for Macworld, with the borderline link-bait headline: “[Why the iPad still can’t be a true Mac replacement](http://www.macworld.com/article/2028968/why-the-ipad-still-cant-be-a-true-mac-replacement.html)”

> For wired connections, you are limited to connecting only one peripheral at a time—via the iPad’s Lightning connector. And even with Apple’s Camera Connection Kit, you are limited in terms of what you can connect. Most especially, a host of USB peripherals are impossible to use with an iPad.

Also note that the iPad can’t burn CDs. WTF Apple?

And:

> Similarly, you can’t switch to a larger screen by connecting a Cinema Display to an iPad, as you can do with a MacBook. You can’t do this even via AirPlay. And even if you could, the Cinema Display is not a touchscreen, limiting how effectively you could use it.

This is a stupid point. You *can* hook your iPad to a monitor via HDMI, or an Apple TV. Yes, those are not touch screens, but they *are* external monitors. Also, laptop users typically connect an additional keyboard and mouse, or trackpad, when using an external monitor. Why? Because twisting your head to look at a large screen while typing on your laptop keyboard is lame.

Both quotes are factually accurate *today*, with the caveat: “as things currently exist”.

AirPlay, for the uninitiated, is borderline amazing. I can sit on my couch and send jitter-free HD video and audio to my TV in a matter of moments. I highly doubt Apple is content to stop there with the AirPlay technology.

So yes, connecting peripherals to iPads is crappy today but that could easily change *tomorrow*. That may sound like a cop-out, but what Landau and others are preaching reminds me of a sensational headline from 1996 by William Gibson, proclaiming that: [“The Net Is a Waste of Time”](http://www.nytimes.com/1996/07/14/magazine/the-net-is-a-waste-of-time.html). The content of Gibson’s article is even more interesting than its headline:

> That is a large part of its appeal. It is something half-formed, growing. Larval. It is not what it was six months ago; in another six months it will be something else again. It was not planned; it simply happened, is happening. It is happening the way cities happened. It is a city.

At launch, Apple knew the iPad was great for reading the New York Times website sitting on the couch. Apple didn’t know what else the iPad would *become* great for.

Even I, just month’s after the iPad was released (and I started this site), [wrote this](https://brooksreview.net/2010/08/using-your-ipad-with-your-mac-pc-to-help-you-focus/) ((Which was picked up by Lifehacker, and amazingly still gets traffic from there.)) post arguing that the iPad was best used to offload distractions like Twitter from your Mac. That was my best use-case for the iPad — to make it a place for distractions that you ignored.

Six months later the iPad was a completely different machine, and nearly three years later it can *almost* replace my Mac. Actually, over the past two days I’ve used my iPad *more* than my Mac.

And iPad is still growing.

Jean-Louis Gassée [adds to the debate](http://www.mondaynote.com/2013/02/24/ipad-and-file-systems-failure-of-empathy/):

> This brings us to a major iPad obstacle: On a “real” PC the file system is visible, accessible; on the iPad, it’s hidden.

And:

> On an iPad you don’t navigate a file system but, instead, you launch an app that has it’s own trove of documents that it understands — but it can’t “see” anything else.

Except in the case of cloud enabled apps like Dropbox, Box.net, Egnyte and so on. But yes, there is *no* way to get at the file system on iOS and now Apple will have to either ignore the half-a-dozen users clamoring for it, or have to completely capitulate and re-think iOS itself. I hope Gassée holds his breath for that one.

Or Apple could just be depending on the strength of the opportunity that the App Store presents for developers to make the apps and tools needed. From the idea of the iPad being [a terminal for a server](http://yieldthought.com/post/12239282034/swapped-my-macbook-for-an-ipad), to robust apps like Dropbox, there is and *will* be a ton of apps that make the ‘lack of file system’ argument unimportant.

[As Shawn Blanc says](http://shawnblanc.net/2013/02/the-ipad-can-be-a-true-mac-alternative/):

> The iPad is a Mac alternative — and only if you want it to be.

Astute.

The argument many make is that *for them* an iPad cannot replace their Mac *right now*. But their headlines always scream “THE IPAD AIN’T MY MACBOOK AND THEREFORE IT IS SHIT”. It’s fair to say that the iPad is missing something for you, but short-sighted and stupid to dismiss it because you can’t connect USB devices, monitors, or see the file system.

I don’t know where the future of the iPad lies, but I believe we aren’t even close to realizing the full power and usefulness that it packs.

The lovable Ben Waldie [posted a fantastic article detailing how to script Do Not Disturb mode on your Mac](http://www.tuaw.com/2013/02/04/applescripting-notification-center-scheduling-do-not-disturb/). He is using Automator and Calendar to schedule the script to turn on and off Do Not Disturb mode, but we can do one better because we have Keyboard Maestro.

I simply created a hot key trigger (and timed trigger) in Keyboard Maestro that executes the Applescript that Waldie creates for either enabling or disabling Do Not Disturb mode. It works really well, and is a great tool to add to Keyboard Maestro.

Dalton Caldwell [on the App.net Blog](http://blog.app.net/2013/02/25/introducing-a-free-tier/):

> Although App.net has had only paid account tiers thus far, we initially conceived of App.net as a freemium service. It took some time to get to this point, but we are now ready to make this vision a reality.

Marco Arment on [this change for App.net](http://www.marco.org/2013/02/25/adn-freemium):

> What developers need is for App.net to add tons of users to the service they already offer. (Conveniently, that’s also what App.net’s users need.)

> As long as the invitation requirement is in place, the free tier won’t do this. And when an invitation is no longer required, App.net is going to need to start battling the spam and abuse that all free social services face.

This is a tough issue for App.net because Arment is absolutely right: App.net needs more users for anything to be viable a year from now. So “freemium” actually isn’t a bad plan, but I think App.net went about it wrong.

The one thing missing from App.net so far has been: Spam and accounts that post links from websites. (And yes, I have @tbr for that very reason.) Today tons of websites with free accounts just sprung up.

Which is exactly what App.net should *not* want to see happening. It’s not what I want to see (and yes, I see the hypocrisy here).

Effectively App.net just made it easy for *BRANDS* and SPAM (both capitalized to show the similarity between the two words) to make their way into App.net and I really hate that. Such is life.

I think a far more clever solution would have been to change the free tier from:

– Max 40 follows
– Invite only
– Storage limitations

To:

– Unlimited follows
– Only one reply to others per day
– Only 50 followers allowed
– No PMs
– Available to anyone that wants to sign up.

The solution App.net implemented encourages leachers, whereas I think my solution encourages people to *trial* the service. My proposal would entice active, healthy users to pay while weeding out the SPAM and *BRANDS*.

I’m skeptical as to whether this was the right move for App.net.

According to [April Underwood](http://advertising.twitter.com/2013/02/announcing-twitter-ads-api_20.html) (who is a “product manager” in the “revenue” division):

>As interest in Twitter has grown, our focus has been on delivering *better* ads for users, not *more* ads. We believe our system is working well because users *like* the ads experience on Twitter.

(Emphasis is original.)

Allow me to translate that particular brand of bullshit:
“Don’t forget that Twitter, or the interest people have in Twitter, is continuing to grow. Further, we have chosen to show less ads to users, and instead charge large sums for the few ads that we do show — so mad props to us for that. We aren’t sure if this system is working, but we sure hope it is. One time, at Ad Camp, a couple of users told me they like the ad experience on Twitter — don’t confuse that with liking ads — but it’s still very encouraging.”

The rest of the article is an advertising wet dream.

[Jeff Davis offers two options for commenting Excel formulas](http://www.techrepublic.com/article/an-unconventional-way-to-comment-your-excel-formulas/1032346). The first way is the obvious comment feature, but this has downsides. The most notable downside is the red arrow that is present in the corner of the cell — something that would lead most people to worry that there is a calculation error on that cell.

It’s a decent way around the problem, but since the comment exists only as a comment function, and not as part of the formula, it is easily missed when editing the formula.

The second option that Davis mentions is by using the `N Function` — something I had never heard of before. Basically this is a hack that allows you to type a string into a formula which will always return `0`. So adding `+N(“My comment”)` will only add a `+0` to the formula. This is a really clever solution and exactly what I was talking about.

But, it does have one huge downside: it isn’t supported in Numbers.

For many this won’t matter, but Numbers removes the formula all together and simply shows the solution value. At my office we use Numbers for a few reports (rarely switching between Excel and Numbers) and it is a bit worrisome that your spreadsheet could stop being dynamic if a Numbers user opened it.

For our complex, internal, spreadsheets the N function looks like a great, albeit hack, solution.

[James Kwak in a very smart post about Excel](http://baselinescenario.com/2013/02/09/the-importance-of-excel/):

> But while Excel the program is reasonably robust, the spreadsheets that people create with Excel are incredibly fragile. There is no way to trace where your data come from, there’s no audit trail (so you can overtype numbers and not know it), and there’s no easy way to test spreadsheets, for starters. The biggest problem is that anyone can create Excel spreadsheets—badly. Because it’s so easy to use, the creation of even important spreadsheets is not restricted to people who understand programming and do it in a methodical, well-documented way.

As far as I know there is no way to add comments to document what a formula is actually doing, which is a massive problem when you are creating fairly robust and complex spreadsheets. I have a spreadsheet that I use to calculate budgets for commercial real estate. The spreadsheet breaks down the expenses by tenants, based on square footage, and whether they serve food or not.

There’s a lot going on in the spreadsheet, which is a strategic business tool for us, yet if another company got hold of it they would be lost. They would know what they were looking at, from a final data perspective, but have no clue how any of it was calculated. Simply put: it’s easier to build your own than steal mine.

That really shouldn’t be the case though. This really should be something where I can comment on the formulas so that those that follow me can use the spreadsheet without having to recreate it.

And this is only half the problem. More evident is how easy it is to break the spreadsheet just by adding in little things to help improve the readability. It’s awesome to have a powerful tool like Excel, but at the same time I always get the sense that I’m just moments away from breaking every formula in the spreadsheet.

I had always hoped Apple, or some other enterprising company, would tackle this problem — but that’s not been the case. Numbers just isn’t the same type of program (but I still like it) and every new program tackles a specific problem for specific people in a specific industry.

*(Note: As my editor points out to me, Google Docs has a [comments and discussion feature](https://support.google.com/drive/bin/answer.py?hl=en&p=spreadsheets_comments&answer=65129), but let’s face it: Google Docs isn’t Excel.)*