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Nelson Minar on Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra: >But I think Google as an organization has moved on; they’re focussed now on market position, not making the world better. Which makes me sad. Minar doesn’t think Google is disregarding their mantra, but I do. I think his above statement is actually pretty accurate because Google…
Nelson Minar on Google’s “Don’t be evil” mantra:
>But I think Google as an organization has moved on; they’re focussed now on market position, not making the world better. Which makes me sad.
Minar doesn’t think Google is disregarding their mantra, but I do. I think his above statement is actually pretty accurate because Google does seem to have ‘moved on’ and I think that while it may not be fair to say the company has been “evil” — it is fair to say they are trending towards that line.
Great update. It addresses my biggest complaint: the open front pouch that used to let all my stuff spill out. Very nice.
Great update. It addresses my biggest complaint: the open front pouch that used to let all my stuff spill out. Very nice.
This was a great talk by Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, and John Gruber.
This was a great talk by Jason Snell, Andy Ihnatko, and John Gruber.
Tim Worstall: >Boycotting Apple for better Foxconn wages and conditions is like having sex for virginity. Entirely counter-productive and exactly the wrong thing to be doing. Sounds about right to me.
Tim Worstall:
>Boycotting Apple for better Foxconn wages and conditions is like having sex for virginity. Entirely counter-productive and exactly the wrong thing to be doing.
Sounds about right to me.
Chuck Skoda: >How do we reference locations in electronic books? Historically, it’s been easy to throw out a page number, and many people were likely to have the same edition as you or at least one with the same page layout.
Chuck Skoda:
>How do we reference locations in electronic books? Historically, it’s been easy to throw out a page number, and many people were likely to have the same edition as you or at least one with the same page layout.
Georgia for iMore: >Inside the iFixit Thirsty Bag you’ll find two “molecular sieve packets”. Each of these contains powerful liquid absorption material that, according to iFixit, can reduce the atmospheric humidity to 1% RH and suck up pretty much all liquid inside your device over night. Sounds like a fantastic piece of emergency kit to…
Georgia for iMore:
>Inside the iFixit Thirsty Bag you’ll find two “molecular sieve packets”. Each of these contains powerful liquid absorption material that, according to iFixit, can reduce the atmospheric humidity to 1% RH and suck up pretty much all liquid inside your device over night.
Sounds like a fantastic piece of emergency kit to keep in your house and for $6.95 it seems like you can’t go wrong. ((I ordered 2.))
“I have a Kindle that I use to collect dust.” — Jason Kottke
Déjà Vu is your visual memory. Use the app by taking pictures of things you would like to remember. For example, products you see in a magazine, recipes you read in a cooking book, wine labels in a restaurant, Newspaper article, DVDs, CDs or event flyers. Each picture is a visual memo. A regular camera…
Déjà Vu is your visual memory. Use the app by taking pictures of things you would like to remember. For example, products you see in a magazine, recipes you read in a cooking book, wine labels in a restaurant, Newspaper article, DVDs, CDs or event flyers. Each picture is a visual memo. A regular camera app doesn’t distinguish those photos of stuff from “regular“ photos. Déjà Vu helps people organize and structure their visual memos in an easy and effective way. It does this by a tailored interface for tagging and categorization and integration of image recognition technology.
Features
* Quick shot camera (allows faster picture taking)
* Image recognition integrated
* Syncs with cloud account
* Easy search (find your visual memos by keywords and tags)
* Map location (locate your visual memos on a map)
* Available on iPhone and Web
Free for up to 30 visual memos/month. [Learn more at Kooaba](http://click.syndicateads.net/2012/01/DejaVu/brooksreview.html). 
Nick Bradbury on Facebook’s frictionless sharing and why it adds more friction: >Because in the past the user only had to decide whether to share something they just read, but now they have to think about every single article before they even read it. *If I read this article, then everyone will know I read…
Nick Bradbury on Facebook’s frictionless sharing and why it adds more friction:
>Because in the past the user only had to decide whether to share something they just read, but now they have to think about every single article before they even read it. *If I read this article, then everyone will know I read it, and do I really want people to know I read it?*
Good point and I think it applies to far more than just Facebook. It’s the same as all the auto-tweet and auto-Facebook-update junk that iOS apps love baking in. Too often these apps default to sharing with all services possible, far too often.
Look no further than someone you follow on Instagram that also automatically posts every picture to Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, and Flickr — that’s not just tiring, it’s annoying.
While at Macworld my buddy Pat Dryburgh told me that he updated the DuckDuckGo search field on the bottom of this site. We just pushed the changes today and it looks fantastic. Actually, the search field just looks like it always did. Pat just posted about how you add the very same to your site,…
While at Macworld my buddy Pat Dryburgh told me that he updated the DuckDuckGo search field on the bottom of this site. We just pushed the changes today and it looks fantastic.
Actually, the search field just looks like it always did.
Pat just posted about how you add the very same to your site, so be sure to hit the link if you don’t want the iFrame option that I was using. You can also see some of the [params](https://duckduckgo.com/params.html) he set to match link colors to the theme of this site.
Earlier today [I posted a link](https://brooksreview.net/2012/01/ibook-and-iad-pluralization-marco-org/) to [Marco Arment’s “iBook and iAd pluralization”](http://www.marco.org/2012/01/28/ibook-iad-pluralization) post. In my link post I said: >With this method (as I read it) this statement would not be correct: “I own the Steve Jobs iBook.” Instead it seems the correct statement would be: “I own the Steve Jobs book, from the…
Earlier today [I posted a link](https://brooksreview.net/2012/01/ibook-and-iad-pluralization-marco-org/) to [Marco Arment’s “iBook and iAd pluralization”](http://www.marco.org/2012/01/28/ibook-iad-pluralization) post. In my link post I said:
>With this method (as I read it) this statement would not be correct: “I own the Steve Jobs iBook.” Instead it seems the correct statement would be: “I own the Steve Jobs book, from the iBookstore.” That’s far more clumsy in my mind.
>You could, technically, leave out the “from the iBookstore” bit, but in doing so you would have no way of indicating that you purchased a digital version instead of a dead tree version.
Apparently that was odd(?) to many (judging from email and Tweets), but [Tim Ricchuiti sums up the counterpoint in his blog](http://theelaborated.net/blog/2012/1/29/sign-of-the-times.html):
>But why would anyone care to go to the trouble of specifying what version they bought? No one says “I bought the new Snow Patrol album from the iTunes Music Store.” And no one who heard “I bought the new Snow Patrol album” would assume you did so from Tower Records.
In other words here’s the arguments that I have been hearing as to why defining a book as an ebook, iBook, or physical book is irrelevant:
1. Things are changing so much that it is assumed all books are digital — or so Apple wants that to be the assumption.
2. People never say: “I bought the paperback”, or “I bought the hardcover.”
3. A book is a book — there’s no difference what kind you bought, just that you bought (and presumable read) the book.
### 1 ###
I think this argument is clearly what Apple wants, but also is very clearly *not* where we are currently at in the book market. Not enough people buy books in digital form to make the assumption that all books are digital — yet.
### 2 ###
It is true that people don’t usually clarify which version of the dead-tree book they purchased. But it is equally true that a paperback is a different book than the hardcover and thus the distinction is sometimes made. Perhaps the content isn’t different, but saying “there’s a great quote on page 51” will yield very different results depending on the version you buy.
That’s why the differentiation is important. An iBook versus paper or Kindle book *is* a very different thing than the others. They will visually look different and that’s why it isn’t fair to lump the different types of book all into one category.
These types of books are simply different.
### 3 ###
I agree that reading the book is the most important part in owning a book. But as I said above there are very real differences between the books.
Perhaps the most important of which is that digital books can be (and are) updated.
The *Steve Jobs* biography was my example because I own the following versions:
– Hardcover
– Kindle
– iBookstore book
I can tell you from first hand experience that the reading experience is very different on each of the different mediums and that’s why the distinction matters to me. I don’t care which version you bought because it changes what you read, but I do care because it may not be the same as the book I read (sometimes in the minor content differences, but always in experience and layout).
Matthew Yglesias: >And so once the basic business proposition is “this company will make the most amazing Web services available and give them away for free in order to sell you to advertisers,” plummeting levels of privacy become inevitable. Very true, he also asks the million dollar question: >The business question is that if we…
Matthew Yglesias:
>And so once the basic business proposition is “this company will make the most amazing Web services available and give them away for free in order to sell you to advertisers,” plummeting levels of privacy become inevitable.
Very true, he also asks the million dollar question:
>The business question is that if we assume some other firm or set of firms could come up with comparable quality products to Gmail, Youtube, Google Search, etc., how many people would be willing to pay a premium for privacy-respecting ad-free versions of them and how much would they be willing to pay?
[I would](https://brooksreview.net/2011/03/fragility-free/), but I am not the majority.
Marco Arment: >The books available on the iBookstore are just called books. I had no clue, but this seems *more* clumsy. With this method (as I read it) this statement would not be correct: “I own the *Steve Jobs* iBook.” Instead it seems the correct statement would be: “I own the *Steve Jobs* book, from…
Marco Arment:
>The books available on the iBookstore are just called books.
I had no clue, but this seems *more* clumsy.
With this method (as I read it) this statement would not be correct: “I own the *Steve Jobs* iBook.” Instead it seems the correct statement would be: “I own the *Steve Jobs* book, from the iBookstore.” That’s far more clumsy in my mind.
You could, technically, leave out the “from the iBookstore” bit, but in doing so you would have no way of indicating that you purchased a digital version instead of a dead tree version.
MG Siegler on Android’s money making ability compared to Apple’s iOS: >Google’s best shot to turn Android into a business with iPhone-like profits would be to create an Android-powered oil rig and get drilling. As Siegler states, it doesn’t seem silly to think that one day Android will make Google money, but it does seem…
MG Siegler on Android’s money making ability compared to Apple’s iOS:
>Google’s best shot to turn Android into a business with iPhone-like profits would be to create an Android-powered oil rig and get drilling.
As Siegler states, it doesn’t seem silly to think that one day Android will make Google money, but it does seem silly to even imagine them making iOS like profits from Android. I think this is going to become a major problem for investors as they sit and watch Apple rake in the cash. Moreover it will be hard for Google to show a direct link from Android to profits — Android seems to be set up to indirectly profit Google and I think that will make it pretty hard to justify to Wall Street.
Super short episode and the first recorded with us in the same room. Brought to you by: [Verses](http://kepner.me/versesapp).
Super short episode and the first recorded with us in the same room.
Brought to you by: [Verses](http://kepner.me/versesapp).
Tim Bray has an interesting post on cellphone screen size, where he says: >I noticed right from the start that I was always using the bigger one whenever there was a choice […] He carries one work phone and one personal phone, but they are different sizes and he likes the bigger screen. Again, Bray:…
Tim Bray has an interesting post on cellphone screen size, where he says:
>I noticed right from the start that I was always using the bigger one whenever there was a choice […]
He carries one work phone and one personal phone, but they are different sizes and he likes the bigger screen. Again, Bray:
>Yeah, there are a few occasions where I have to wiggle the phone around in my hand to reach some part of the screen. But the huge display and the soft buttons just make the Nexus S feel dinky and stupid and clumsy.
That’s the part I find interesting because I read that as: “Yes the larger phone is more cumbersome to use, but I like that.” I get one phone dwarfing another, but is wiggling a phone around in your hand really the less clumsy option?
Bray again:
>But unless I’m weird, big-screen phones are going to be appealing to lots of people.
Define “lots”…
Speaking of MG Siegler he has a great post up about Motorola’s performance in Q4.
Speaking of MG Siegler he has a great post up about Motorola’s performance in Q4.
MG Siegler on Apple’s financial results: >A new iPhone plus holiday shopping season is apparently like gasoline on a fire. That’s why my bet is that Apple keeps this ‘new’ release schedule of a new iPhone every fall.
MG Siegler on Apple’s financial results:
>A new iPhone plus holiday shopping season is apparently like gasoline on a fire.
That’s why my bet is that Apple keeps this ‘new’ release schedule of a new iPhone every fall.
Marco Arment on the reliability of Siri: >Anecdotally, I’ve had about a 50% failure rate recently. Same here and what’s more is that Siri not being ‘available’ is far more frustrating than Siri not understanding you.
Marco Arment on the reliability of Siri:
>Anecdotally, I’ve had about a 50% failure rate recently.
Same here and what’s more is that Siri not being ‘available’ is far more frustrating than Siri not understanding you.