The Brooks Review

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Leica Sofort 2June 13, 2024
Grand Seiko SBGX261February 23, 2023
Casio Duro MDV-106 Re-ReviewDecember 15, 2022

Recent Articles

  • Replacing the Human Concierge

    Jane L. Levere: >Still, the question remains whether digital concierges can ever equal their human counterparts. Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst for Forrester Research, said he did not think they would. “Nothing will ever replace a face-to-face concierge,” he said. “A guest visiting a city for the first time will have a lot of questions and…

    Jane L. Levere:

    >Still, the question remains whether digital concierges can ever equal their human counterparts. Henry Harteveldt, travel analyst for Forrester Research, said he did not think they would. “Nothing will ever replace a face-to-face concierge,” he said. “A guest visiting a city for the first time will have a lot of questions and will need to have interaction with a concierge.”

    This strikes me as something that an encyclopedia salesperson must have said. Speaking of — where’s my [Britannica](http://www.britannica.com/)?

  • Flexiglass

    I [posted yesterday about Moom](https://brooksreview.net/2011/06/moom/) and how it makes use of the damned green button again. Cody Fink has a great review of yet another app in this category called Flexiglass. What piques my interest about this app is the ‘real zoom’ option that makes the green button just throw the window to fullscreen (I…

    I [posted yesterday about Moom](https://brooksreview.net/2011/06/moom/) and how it makes use of the damned green button again. Cody Fink has a great review of yet another app in this category called Flexiglass.

    What piques my interest about this app is the ‘real zoom’ option that makes the green button just throw the window to fullscreen (I can hear former Windows users rejoicing now). It also has some multi-touch gesture support, which looks neat.

    I don’t use these apps enough to try and switch from Moom now, but it does look pretty nice. ((Bonus points for having a better name than Moom too, though that isn’t that hard.))

  • New Sony VAIO Z: Packs Thunderbolt

    Alas it is not of the Mini DisplayPort variety. I have two majors concerns with Thunderbolt: 1. That it won’t be adopted by the PC market, leading to a Mac only product that is very good, but has incredibly high-priced peripherals. (Think Firewire 800 here.) 2. That if it is adopted everyone will use some…

    Alas it is not of the Mini DisplayPort variety. I have two majors concerns with Thunderbolt:

    1. That it won’t be adopted by the PC market, leading to a Mac only product that is very good, but has incredibly high-priced peripherals. (Think Firewire 800 here.)
    2. That if it is adopted everyone will use some slight variation of the product so that, essentially, we are back to number one.

    Number two is the route Sony is taking, this is not good for anyone — they should have just used the Mini DisplayPort standard and took advantage of all the cool looking products that will be coming out for the Macs. ((I should note for those wondering that as far as I know the Mini DisplayPort is Apple technology that they are still licensing for free to anyone who wants to use it.)) Too bad.

  • Quote of the Day: John Robb

    “Facebook is an example of Madoff entrepreneurship. I win big, everybody else loses. Sure it’s viral. But it’s viral deception.” — John Robb

    “Facebook is an example of Madoff entrepreneurship. I win big, everybody else loses. Sure it’s viral. But it’s viral deception.”

  • OopsieFocus

    Shawn Blanc: >When launched, the OopsieFocus script will check to see if OmniFocus is running. If OmniFocus is running then the script does nothing and OmniFocus brings up the Quick Entry Pane for you just as it should. If OmniFocus is not running then the script will automatically launch the app and bring up the…

    Shawn Blanc:
    >When launched, the OopsieFocus script will check to see if OmniFocus is running. If OmniFocus is running then the script does nothing and OmniFocus brings up the Quick Entry Pane for you just as it should. If OmniFocus is not running then the script will automatically launch the app and bring up the Quick Entry Pane.

    This really is a great script, Shawn let me be privy to a ‘beta’ copy of it a while back and I have been using it flawlessly with Keyboard Maestro ever since. I can’t remember the last time I hit the OmniFocus quick entry shortcut and **didn’t** see the pane pop open — great work.

  • Dropbox Being Sued

    I’m not big on the “sue, sue” approach Americans take with things, but in this case I think it may be the best course of action. Dropbox doesn’t seem to think what happened was anything more than a “bug” or a fluke. I for one am not convinced that they truly think this is *that*…

    I’m not big on the “sue, sue” approach Americans take with things, but in this case I think it may be the best course of action. Dropbox doesn’t seem to think what happened was anything more than a “bug” or a fluke. I for one am not convinced that they truly think this is *that* serious. Hopefully this is the smack over the head that they need.

  • Crazy Tumblr Traffic

    MG Siegler: >Last Thursday, Tumblr hit 400 million pageviews for the day, Karp tells us. It’s close to 5,000 pageviews a second, he notes. That’s just crazy — hard to blame them for uptime issues when they are trying to handle that much traffic. ((Not to worry, I will find a way to blame them.…

    MG Siegler:
    >Last Thursday, Tumblr hit 400 million pageviews for the day, Karp tells us. It’s close to 5,000 pageviews a second, he notes.

    That’s just crazy — hard to blame them for uptime issues when they are trying to handle that much traffic. ((Not to worry, I will find a way to blame them. [Also don’t take me too seriously with this footnote.]))

  • Review: Moom

    The one feature that Mac users seem to be clamoring for that their Windows brethren have is that ability to ‘snap’ windows to half the screen. There are a ton of apps for the Mac that seek to provide this functionality, tools like [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/) and [SizeUp](http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/). Recently I stumbled across another app of this breed…

    The one feature that Mac users seem to be clamoring for that their Windows brethren have is that ability to ‘snap’ windows to half the screen. There are a ton of apps for the Mac that seek to provide this functionality, tools like [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/) and [SizeUp](http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/). Recently I stumbled across another app of this breed called: [Moom](http://manytricks.com/moom/).

    Aside from the name, I quite like Moom.

    Size Up is not a tool I enjoy using, because while I am a keyboard junkie, even I can’t remember all the shortcuts for that app. I do however like that it can “remember” the last size of the window. Divvy is very nice but again it never was something that I really liked using and quickly passed on.

    In truth, I rarely need a tool for managing the size and positions of windows on my Mac. It is something that I rarely change and can easily do “manually” or if I want it to be a constant I will make a Macro for it in Keyboard Maestro.

    Moom however, does something really incredible: it makes use of that stupid, pointless, irritating, inconsistent, green plus button found at the top of most windows on the Mac. You see, with Moom hovering over that green button presents you with options for how you want to manipulate the window. Imagine that.

    It’s actually kind of amazing that Apple doesn’t just build this in, because it *is* pretty slick.

    ### Features

    With Moom the hover allows you to manipulate the window in the following ways:

    – Full Screen (for you switchers)
    – Move & Zoom to left half of screen.
    – Same thing on right.
    – Move & Zoom to top half of screen.
    – Same but for bottom of screen.

    Once you have manipulated the window with Moom you can hover again and revert back to the original dimensions of the window — without this feature these utilities aren’t worth using.

    These features alone are pretty sweet and well worth the $5 price tag. But Moom also allows you to set up some custom controls that appear in the menu, my favorites of which are: send window to another screen and proportionally resize it, and centering the window on screen.

    It’s hard not to like Moom, it is $5 when the two competitors listed above are $14 and $13 respectively. Oh, and you can set some keyboard shortcuts if you are good at remembering thousands of those.

    Now, you can try Moom for up to 100 times for free, or buy it and it comes with a generous 60-day money-back guarantee (which is kind of amazing for such an inexpensive app). This tool is not for everyone and honestly I rarely use it, but I love it for the very fact that it makes the green plus button useful.

    **Pro Tip:** Set the app to run faceless in the preferences.

  • Best Buy’s Music Cloud Service

    Bit late on this one. But it’s another crippled and doomed to fail from the outset offering much like Google’s.

    Bit late on this one. But it’s another crippled and doomed to fail from the outset offering much like Google’s.

  • Downgrading Skype and Silver Lake to ‘Evil’

    Some more information has come to light about Skype firing executives before the Microsoft acquisition completes — all of this makes every involved party (on the Skype side) sound pretty terrible.

    Some more information has come to light about Skype firing executives before the Microsoft acquisition completes — all of this makes every involved party (on the Skype side) sound pretty terrible.

  • [SPONSOR] Hoban Cards

    Elegance is not stopping every two seconds to spell out your email to people that want to connect with you as you are trying to get out the door. Elegance is handing out a minimal, unique card. A calling card from Hoban Cards is all about elegance. Each calling card is hand printed on a…

    Elegance is not stopping every two seconds to spell out your email to people that want to connect with you as you are trying to get out the door. Elegance is handing out a minimal, unique card.

    A calling card from Hoban Cards is all about elegance.

    Each calling card is hand printed on a 1902 Chandler and Price letterpress. For $75 you get 100 personalized cards with your name and the option of either your email or phone number printed on 100% 110lb cotton paper.

    *(Editors note: The quality is top-notch.)*

  • Dropbox Breach: Fewer Than 100 Accounts Affected, but One Person Actively Exploited Security Hole

    Jason Kincaid: >First, the good news: the scale of the attack affected “fewer than a hundred accounts” out of Dropbox’s 25 million total users. But according to the letter, those accounts were all accessed by a single individual. In other words, these weren’t accidental logins due to typos — someone discovered the hole and actively…

    Jason Kincaid:
    >First, the good news: the scale of the attack affected “fewer than a hundred accounts” out of Dropbox’s 25 million total users. But according to the letter, those accounts were all accessed by a single individual. In other words, these weren’t accidental logins due to typos — someone discovered the hole and actively used it to access files that were not theirs. That’s obviously very alarming.

    TechCrunch also has a supposed email that Dropbox is sending the affected users. It’s nice that the CEO is willing to call these users and that they set up free credit monitoring — still this should not have happened.

    What’s more alarming is that someone actually purposefully started accessing other user accounts, I just don’t buy that Dropbox “knows” exactly how many accounts were accessed.

  • Some 1Password Follow-up

    I kind of had a feeling that [this post yesterday](https://brooksreview.net/2011/06/jb-password/) would ruffle some feathers, but I never shy away from posting something I feel strongly about. A lot of the responses that I received revolved around these arguments: 1. Not using something doesn’t make you an idiot. 2. You can make secure passwords without 1Password.…

    I kind of had a feeling that [this post yesterday](https://brooksreview.net/2011/06/jb-password/) would ruffle some feathers, but I never shy away from posting something I feel strongly about. A lot of the responses that I received revolved around these arguments:

    1. Not using something doesn’t make you an idiot.
    2. You can make secure passwords without 1Password.
    3. Not many people use it, so is everyone and idiot?
    4. I keep nothing important online, therefore I don’t need it.

    Arguments 1 and 2 are valid points. However in this case, with the pending doom from hackers, you really need to be using highly secure passwords — passwords that resemble something like: `F3)NqfPD^rgdMfz9t89Du=VXEojTg`. That is an average length and complexity for my passwords and I don’t know about you, but I can’t remember that password without help — and Post-It notes defeat the purpose of passwords.

    Not using 1Password is a lot like using a rope with a really *good* knot to secure your bike instead of a bike lock. Sure a lot of people won’t bother your bike or try to untie the knot, but it is undeniable that the bike lock is far more secure. The weakest point should never be the thing that you are in control of (in the bike case you can’t control how strong your bike frame is, but you can control what you lock it with).

    Argument 3 is just ridiculous, I prefer to think most just aren’t aware of tools like 1Password.

    Argument 4 is the one that bugs me the most, because it is a blatant lie. If you aren’t willing to hand over your password to a random person, then that means you don’t want everyone, or anyone else, to have access to that thing (e.g. Facebook, Gmail, Twitter, Tumblr). If that is the case, if you aren’t willing to hand over your password to anyone, then guess what? You should be using 1Password because you keep things on the Internet that you clearly care about.

    Your email alone may not be *that* sensitive, but I bet it would really mess up your life if someone hacked into it and started emailing people posing as you (like emailing your spouse, telling them that you cheated, a lie — I imagine that would make you wish you had 1Password). Again, if you are on the Internet, then you keep important things, that you want secured, on the Internet — that’s the very reason we started with passwords to begin with.

  • Truer Words

    Justin Blanton laying the smack down: >While on the topic, if you’re not using 1Password (or similar)—and you can afford it—then you’re an idiot. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but there just isn’t any excuse. No excuse.

    Justin Blanton laying the smack down:

    >While on the topic, if you’re not using 1Password (or similar)—and you can afford it—then you’re an idiot. I’m sorry to be so blunt, but there just isn’t any excuse.

    No excuse.

  • The B&B Podcast – Episode 16: Our Longest Episode Ever

    >Shawn and Ben discuss backing up, wireless networking speeds and the celebration of keeping an iPhone for more than a year. They also touch on iPhone 5 rumors, the Nokia N9, HP Touchpad and Shawn’s struggle to find a good Netflix app. Big thanks to our sponsors: [Pulp](http://acrylicapps.com/pulp/mac/) and [InVision](http://invisionapp.com/).

    >Shawn and Ben discuss backing up, wireless networking speeds and the celebration of keeping an iPhone for more than a year. They also touch on iPhone 5 rumors, the Nokia N9, HP Touchpad and Shawn’s struggle to find a good Netflix app.

    Big thanks to our sponsors: [Pulp](http://acrylicapps.com/pulp/mac/) and [InVision](http://invisionapp.com/).

  • Tweed

    A big thanks to [LithiumCorp](http://lithiumcorp.com/) for sponsoring this weeks’ RSS feed to promote their great iPad app: Tweed. Tweed is part of a new class of apps that I am starting to see trickling out, that take something we are all very familiar with (in this case Twitter) and transform the way we use the…

    A big thanks to [LithiumCorp](http://lithiumcorp.com/) for sponsoring this weeks’ RSS feed to promote their great iPad app: Tweed. Tweed is part of a new class of apps that I am starting to see trickling out, that take something we are all very familiar with (in this case Twitter) and transform the way we use the service (as a curated list of links in this case). Tweed is also a great way to introduce new Twitter users to Twitter itself — less updates about coffee and more updates in the form of excellent links that can be read right away, personally I think this is a great way to help people see the value in Twitter.

    Be sure to check out Tweed in the [App Store](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/tweed/id435667186?mt=8), it is priced at $2.99 for a limited time.

  • Verizon LTE MiFi Benchmarks

    Bare Feats: >However, the LTE MiFi not only maintained essentially the same download speeds but the upload speed jumped to 11,974Kbps — or faster than the Comcast 50Mbps cable upload speed in our lab! From the sounds of it, this is one hell of a mobile broadband device.

    Bare Feats:
    >However, the LTE MiFi not only maintained essentially the same download speeds but the upload speed jumped to 11,974Kbps — or faster than the Comcast 50Mbps cable upload speed in our lab!

    From the sounds of it, this is one hell of a mobile broadband device.

  • The Rise and Inglorious Fall of Myspace

    Felix Gillette nicely sums up Myspace circa late-2008/early-2009: >Myspace was becoming Detroit. This isn’t a knock against Detroit, but it epitomizes the problem that Myspace faced: the influential people — the ones that could change things — were leaving en masse.

    Felix Gillette nicely sums up Myspace circa late-2008/early-2009:

    >Myspace was becoming Detroit.

    This isn’t a knock against Detroit, but it epitomizes the problem that Myspace faced: the influential people — the ones that could change things — were leaving en masse.

  • Screenstagram

    Great new screensaver: >Screenstagram displays photos from Instagram. It can show you your friends’ photos or photos from the Instagram popular feed, which contains highly rated photos from across the Instagram community.

    Great new screensaver:
    >Screenstagram displays photos from Instagram. It can show you your friends’ photos or photos from the Instagram popular feed, which contains highly rated photos from across the Instagram community.

  • The ‘Mobile’ Web

    One thing that really bugs me is when I encounter an ‘mobile optimized’ website on my iPhone/iPad. I hate these sites because they are akin to going into a Ferrari dealership to see a Ferrari and instead only getting to see a Mercedes, that some guy traded in — you feel screwed over. What’s more…

    One thing that really bugs me is when I encounter an ‘mobile optimized’ website on my iPhone/iPad. I hate these sites because they are akin to going into a Ferrari dealership to see a Ferrari and instead only getting to see a Mercedes, that some guy traded in — you feel screwed over.

    What’s more annoying is when these sites don’t give you the option of viewing the ‘full-site’ — how stupid must you be to not even allow that? Then you come across sites that throw up notifications every place they can to let you know that they (in all their genius) have created a dedicated iPhone app for you — because *that* is much easier to use than following the link from Twitter.

    The situation is pretty bad right now, but just when I thought it couldn’t get worse the quality “journalism” that is the New York Post, up and [decides](https://brooksreview.net/2011/06/ny-post-stupidity/) that their users **must** use the native iPad app instead of being allowed to see the site in Safari on the device. So *now* if you follow a Post link from Twitter you are basically screwed, having to manually find that link in the iPad app — or more likely moving on to better publications.

    ### Why

    What possible reason is there to create these ‘optimized-experience’ for mobile devices, when the very nature of the web browsers that current mobile devices are equipped with are explicitly designed to work with sites as they *currently* are?

    Let’s take a look at some advantages of each “solution”.

    #### Advantages

    ##### Native Apps

    – Run faster and don’t require 100% of page elements to be loaded over the web.
    – Full of hype, which excites people.
    – Opens your site to a new market for discovery (via App Stores).
    – Can do things that you can’t do with a website (e.g. uploading from camera roll).

    ##### Mobile-Optimized

    – Theoretically loads faster.
    – The user doesn’t have to double tap to ‘zoom’ in on areas. (Theoretically)
    – Content can specifically be formatted for the screen the user is using. (Again, theoretically.)

    ##### ‘Full-Site’

    – Easier on the web site owner.
    – Instant recognition that the user is in the right place.
    – Users are comfortable with the layout and don’t have to re-learn how to use the site.
    – Cheapest option.

    ### Disadvantages

    ##### Native App

    – Expensive and a resource hog for the web site owner. (By way of time to make it and funds to make the app.)
    – Twitter and Email links don’t open in the app.
    – Most content driven sites (blogs) don’t offer a compelling reason to use the app over the website, or an RSS reader.
    – Can lead to user confusion.

    ##### ‘Mobile-Optimized’

    – Can lead to user confusion of whether they are at the correct site.
    – Often less content/features are shown.
    – Doesn’t always look great on every device outside of the iOS sphere.
    – Many users prefer the full-site experience.

    ##### Full-Site

    – Not everything that a standard ‘full’ web browser renders will render on mobile devices.
    – Likely the slowest loading option.
    – User must scroll and zoom in and out more.

    ### Just Leave Well Enough Alone

    The issue isn’t that it is hard to build for mobile, but that it is unnecessary at this point *to* port your website for mobile devices. If you really find it necessary use [responsive design](http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/) from the outset, or at the very least give me an option to go to the full site.

    What is clear: forcing users to use a crappy mobile ‘theme’ for your fancy blog is just silly and unnecessary.

    *A note: If your site tries to force me to use anything other than the full-site you run the risk of me not coming back to your site.*

    UPDATE: A couple of good points brought up by [Sean Sperte](https://twitter.com/#!/sperte) on Twitter. Mainly that I am talking mostly about designs that are made as substitutes for the full site and not designs made as alternates for the full site — an important distinction that I felt I did not make clear. Lastly that there must be different standards for web apps than for non-web apps.