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Recent Articles

  • Eric Cador on the Touchpad

    Eric Cador the HP European head made a stupid statement that has been circling the web, basically saying that the upcoming HP Touchpad will be better than number one. These statements are incredibly foolish for anyone to make because at the end of the day there is no way *any* company can make something that…

    Eric Cador the HP European head made a stupid statement that has been circling the web, basically saying that the upcoming HP Touchpad will be better than number one. These statements are incredibly foolish for anyone to make because at the end of the day there is no way *any* company can make something that is better than the best. ((The best is by definition, the best.))

    This is like an Olympic high jumper coming in and stating that not only are they going to break the world record, they will break it by 5 feet. It is a stupid statement to make.

    > We call it number one plus.

    Plus what? Plus crap? Plus B.S.? Plus stickers?

    Mr. Cador, congrats on setting your anticipated device up for letting everyone down from day one.

  • Jeff Field on Standing

    Jeff Field commenting on his switch to a standing desk: >I don’t know about you, but I can’t nap standing up. It is one of the few positions in which I can’t nap – I’m a nap champion. Jeff has some other great thoughts on standing from a guy who has found many benefits to…

    Jeff Field commenting on his switch to a standing desk:
    >I don’t know about you, but I can’t nap standing up. It is one of the few positions in which I can’t nap – I’m a nap champion.

    Jeff has some other great thoughts on standing from a guy who has found many benefits to standing.

  • Quick Takes on Five Apps #13

    In this installment I am sticking to nothing but Mac apps — well almost. Check out past [installments here](https://brooksreview.net/tag/quick/). ### [BaseApp](http://www.getbaseapp.com/) (Mac) ### BaseApp is a great menubar utility for Basecamp users. The app will alert you to any updates on your Basecamp site and show you what happened and in which project. It also…

    In this installment I am sticking to nothing but Mac apps — well almost. Check out past [installments here](https://brooksreview.net/tag/quick/).

    ### [BaseApp](http://www.getbaseapp.com/) (Mac) ###

    BaseApp is a great menubar utility for Basecamp users. The app will alert you to any updates on your Basecamp site and show you what happened and in which project. It also serves as a great way to launch into your Basecamp account. The best part: the app is now free in the Mac App Store.

    ### [Google Music Beta](http://music.google.com) (Web?) ###

    I finally got my invite to Google Music Beta. It is a pretty interesting cloud music offering as there is already music available for you to play (you select some genres you like that Google adds in music). Parts of the app is Flash and it says that it does not support iOS at this time. I had no troubles playing it on my iPhone, aside from the fact that the experience was less than optimal.

    This is still a pretty new service and likely will get better, but so long as I must download an uploader that uses my bandwidth in the background — well I am not to interested in wasting time uploading anything to it. I don’t quite know what to say about Google Music, so let me express it another way:

    ##### Do I like it? #####

    No.

    ##### So I hate it? #####

    No.

    ##### Will I use it? #####

    Not at this time, maybe as it improves by ditching Flash and giving me a better way to upload music — by not making me upload it.

    My biggest complaint is that it doesn’t do OTA sync — no joke. If I pause a song that is in the “cloud”, why in the world can’t I pick up where I left off on any other device, or when I come back to the site?

    ### [SizeUp](http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/) (Mac) ###

    This is a pretty handy Mac app that serves to move and do all sorts of crazy things to your window sizes and positions. A lot of people use this app to arrange Safari windows to take half of their screen so they can reference a webpage while writing. I’m not a fan — it’s overly complicated and not nearly as intuitive as something like [Divvy](http://mizage.com/divvy/).

    The one thing that keeps this program on my Mac: the SnapBack window hotkey. All too often a window gets resized that I don’t want to be resized and I can essentially undo that change with this hotkey — that alone will keep this on my Mac.

    ### [Weather HD](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/id411543336?mt=12) (Mac) ###

    Interesting to see how the Mac App Store is bringing a lot of apps over to the Mac that I wouldn’t expect to be all that useful on the Mac (think Angry Birds, which is far better on iOS). Weather HD is now on the Mac App Store and it well set you back $3.99. What I don’t get is that it doesn’t really do anything special.

    I have never seen the appeal of Weather HD and I think that a 283 MB app that runs in window or fullscreen mode is probably not something many people will want on their Mac. There are better things you can spend $3.99 on.

    ### [Kindle for Mac](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/kindle/id405399194?ls=1&mt=12) ###

    This has been around for quite sometime, but I just noticed that it was in the Mac App Store so I figured I would mention it again here. As far as Kindle apps go this one is firmly in last place (Kindle device, Kindle iPad, Kindle iPhone, Kindle Android, Kindle Mac/PC). It has never been my desire, nor comfortable to read a book on my Mac’s screen. Though it is nice to see that they have solved a lot of problems with the app that I ran into when they first released it.

    Bottom line: you get everything you would expect out of the Kindle reading experience, which is all you can ask for in a free app.

    *If you liked this installment be sure to check out the other [installments](https://brooksreview.net/tag/quick/).*

  • Technology Review is Way Off Base

    Christopher Mims writing on why native mobile apps are a dead business: >As is often the case with Jobs, he was just a little too far ahead of the curve (think of the Newton, his first attempt to create an iPhone-like device) which led him to later reverse himself and create a native app store…

    Christopher Mims writing on why native mobile apps are a dead business:
    >As is often the case with Jobs, he was just a little too far ahead of the curve (think of the Newton, his first attempt to create an iPhone-like device) which led him to later reverse himself and create a native app store anyway.

    The only problem is that Jobs had nothing to do with the Newton given that it was developed after he left the company. [Here’s the history of the development](http://lowendmac.com/orchard/06/john-sculley-newton-origin.html).

    >Of course, none of these utopian ideals about a future in which all apps are liberated from device-specific stores and particular platforms mean anything unless developers can make money selling web apps.

    Of course that means that consumers will have to get over their idea of: “the web *is* free.” That and of course web apps would have to find a way to offer the same if not better experience than native apps. Oh and then there are the relatively low data caps in place by mobile carriers that we would need to get around. Also the lack of ubiquitous wireless coverage. Also the battery issues associated with constant data connections. Oh and let’s not forget how to deal with redundancy if the web apps server was to go down. Then of course once we start talking about web servers we have to talk about user data security *and* privacy. Which then leads us to how that data is handled and what it stores — how and when and if a company should turn that information over to the government. That though will most likely need to be figured out by congress, so that should take only 5-10 years to get figured out, meanwhile no one has a clue how to treat that data.

    >But stripping browser chrome off of web apps seems like far less of a challenge than developing for an ever expanding array of devices. With web apps, developers could code once and be reasonably confident their app will work on any object — phone, tablet, laptop, etc. — with a standards-compliant browser. The implications for developer time and resources are profound.

    Because of course here all mobile and desktop web browsers behave the same and consistently so then we would only need to develop for “the web” and not for each device or hundreds of screen sizes. ((Yeah, right.))

    Right, wrong, or other — native mobile apps are going to be around much longer than “a few years”.

  • Quote of the Day: Jason Fried

    “When you really want to do something right, which is usually what you should be striving for, you tend to slow down.” — Jason Fried

    “When you really want to do something right, which is usually what you should be striving for, you tend to slow down.”

  • Graphene

    Alex Hudson reporting: >"Our research establishes graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel," mechanical engineering professor James Hone, of Columbia University, said in a statement. >”It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap [cling film].”…

    Alex Hudson reporting:
    >"Our research establishes graphene as the strongest material ever measured, some 200 times stronger than structural steel," mechanical engineering professor James Hone, of Columbia University, said in a statement.

    >”It would take an elephant, balanced on a pencil, to break through a sheet of graphene the thickness of Saran Wrap [cling film].”

    It’s even more amazing if you read the rest of the story. Wow.

  • Mike Monteiro’s Advice

    Mike Monteiro in an interview with Tina Lee on how he achieves his work/life balance: >Leaving at 6 every day. Not answering e-mail or the phone after hours. I will bust my ass for you between the hours of 9:30 and 6. You can have all those hours, but the ones in between—those are mine.…

    Mike Monteiro in an interview with Tina Lee on how he achieves his work/life balance:

    >Leaving at 6 every day. Not answering e-mail or the phone after hours. I will bust my ass for you between the hours of 9:30 and 6. You can have all those hours, but the ones in between—those are mine.

    That’s great advice to keep in mind heading into the weekend.

  • The B&B Podcast, Episode 12: DMs and Tacos

    Shawn and I talk about the mess that has become known as Twitter, writing link blogs and eating steak tacos.

    Shawn and I talk about the mess that has become known as Twitter, writing link blogs and eating steak tacos.

  • Mac Malware Breakdown on Ars

    A great take on the MAC Defender stuff. Worth the read, bottom line: don’t install something called MAC Defender and you will pretty much be as safe as you were in 2008.

    A great take on the MAC Defender stuff. Worth the read, bottom line: don’t install something called MAC Defender and you will pretty much be as safe as you were in 2008.

  • Quote of the Day: Macho Man

    “Best there is… past, present and future! Ohhhhh yeahhhh!” — Macho Man Randy Savage Best there ever was, [RIP](http://www.tmz.com/2011/05/20/randy-savage-car-accident-macho-man-dead-dies-died-killed-wwe-wrestler-florida/).

    “Best there is… past, present and future! Ohhhhh yeahhhh!”

    Best there ever was, [RIP](http://www.tmz.com/2011/05/20/randy-savage-car-accident-macho-man-dead-dies-died-killed-wwe-wrestler-florida/).

  • A FireFox Addon is Tracking You

    Simon at InterWeb Task Force writes about the hidden tracking that the Ant Addon for FireFox is doing and the repercussions of it: >What if the US government subpoena ‘Reality check network corp’ for all information stored on their servers about my IP address, cooke, or UID? Lets think even more simplistic, what if a…

    Simon at InterWeb Task Force writes about the hidden tracking that the Ant Addon for FireFox is doing and the repercussions of it:

    >What if the US government subpoena ‘Reality check network corp’ for all information stored on their servers about my IP address, cooke, or UID? Lets think even more simplistic, what if a party to a divorce case subpoenas for that data to prove a partner was visiting certain sites at certain times? Assuming this data is recorded by ant.com on their server rpc.ant.com in New York (and lets face it, why would they send such data with unique identifiers if it were not recorded?), my entire browsing history is there laid before the subpoenaing court or government. Every site I visited. Every page I looked at.

    He admits that this is likely done to improve a ranking algorithm they use, but the fact that they are using a unique ID for users is a touch concerning, or at least it should be. Anyways Chrome and Safari are much better options.

  • Huffduffer

    A neat little service that creates a podcast out of audio clips you add from around the web. Also a great way to cull together all those audio interviews you have been putting off — then subscribe to those in Instacast and boom, magic. [via One Thing Well]

    A neat little service that creates a podcast out of audio clips you add from around the web. Also a great way to cull together all those audio interviews you have been putting off — then subscribe to those in Instacast and boom, magic.

  • Tweed

    >Tweed presents you with a list of links to new articles, blog posts or anything else posted by your friends and people you follow on Twitter as well as our own curated lists of people we read and follow. An interesting new app that I was able to check out before it launched (subsequently was…

    >Tweed presents you with a list of links to new articles, blog posts or anything else posted by your friends and people you follow on Twitter as well as our own curated lists of people we read and follow.

    An interesting new app that I was able to check out before it launched (subsequently was given a promo code for). You can hook in your Twitter info and all you see is your timeline items that have links, drag the tweets with links to the right and the link loads in a stacked paper like interface. Tap to read full screen.

    The whole point is to turn your Twitter feed in to an RSS/Instapaper like service (it does support Instapaper too) — and it’s pretty interesting.

    The video on the linked page says it all ,so you should check that out. The app is currently $2.99 in the app store. I don’t know that the app is for me, but it is a pretty interesting idea.

    (A nice icon too.)

  • Microsoft Closes Up Shop on Innovation

    Jay Greene on the three year old Microsoft design studio: >Though Microsoft made little noise about Pioneer, it was once at the heart of the company’s efforts to capture consumer imagination. Rather than having a portfolio of products to develop, Pioneer sought to incubate design that might one day make its way into products. The…

    Jay Greene on the three year old Microsoft design studio:
    >Though Microsoft made little noise about Pioneer, it was once at the heart of the company’s efforts to capture consumer imagination. Rather than having a portfolio of products to develop, Pioneer sought to incubate design that might one day make its way into products. The ill-fated Courier tablet–something of a dual-screen tablet that predated Apple’s iPad–emerged from Pioneer. Though the device won kudos when images leaked, Microsoft decided to shelve the concept.

    Thus one of the few areas in Microsoft that was creating interesting new products is now gone. I just don’t see the logic here, but then again Ballmer is lacking in logic.

  • Amazon Boasts Ebook Sales

    Amazon in a press release: >Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher. This is all…

    Amazon in a press release:

    >Since April 1, for every 100 print books Amazon.com has sold, it has sold 105 Kindle books. This includes sales of hardcover and paperback books by Amazon where there is no Kindle edition. Free Kindle books are excluded and if included would make the number even higher.

    This is all about the Kindle. There are quite a few people in my life that surprised me by owning a Kindle this year — I doubt Kindle ownership will be uncommon by this time next year. The device is too cheap and too good for people to not buy it at this point.

  • Quote of the Day: Dave Caolo

    “Fellow notebook aficionados would nod approvingly at the guy writing important things in the same notebook once used by famous alcoholics and a psychotic, self-injurious painter.” — Dave Caolo

    “Fellow notebook aficionados would nod approvingly at the guy writing important things in the same notebook once used by famous alcoholics and a psychotic, self-injurious painter.”

  • Devil’s Advocate Take on Twitter’s Policy Changes

    Marco Arment: >It doesn’t matter whether third-party clients helped make it popular. Twitter has reciprocated for years by giving such apps a compelling platform for which to sell software. Successful Twitter-client developers have made a ton of money in exchange for the help they provided in making Twitter popular. That’s a damn good point.

    Marco Arment:
    >It doesn’t matter whether third-party clients helped make it popular. Twitter has reciprocated for years by giving such apps a compelling platform for which to sell software. Successful Twitter-client developers have made a ton of money in exchange for the help they provided in making Twitter popular.

    That’s a damn good point.

  • Apple’s Cloud Music Service

    [MG Siegler](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/18/apple-cloud-music/): >Think about it. With these agreements, Apple is likely going to be able to do the one thing that is absolutely crucial for cloud music to take off: offer library syncing without uploading. In other words, Apple now likely be able to do what Lala (the company Apple bought in late 2009 and subsequently…

    [MG Siegler](http://techcrunch.com/2011/05/18/apple-cloud-music/):
    >Think about it. With these agreements, Apple is likely going to be able to do the one thing that is absolutely crucial for cloud music to take off: offer library syncing without uploading. In other words, Apple now likely be able to do what Lala (the company Apple bought in late 2009 and subsequently shut down) was able to do: scan your hard drive for songs and let you play those songs from their servers without having to upload them yourself.

    The cloud music stuff (as Shawn and I talked about [here](http://thebbpodcast.com/2011/05/episode-11-never-punch-someone-in-the-forehead/)) is going to be very interesting for the next 8 months — as we see how it all plays out. I think Siegler is right about the way the service will work, but I doubt that it will allow you to do this with non-iTunes purchased content.

    The problem with allowing users to stream everything in their current library (regardless of where it was purchased) is that some of that music may have not been obtained legally. Now Apple likely does not care about that — Apple just wants their users happy — don’t think for one moment this was not a huge sticking point for the music labels during negotiations with Apple.

    The labels do not want you to be able to do this with things Apple can’t verify that you purchased. Doing so would be giving up on the anti-piracy tirade they have been on for most of this century. ((It’s nice that we are at the beginning of a new century — allowing me to make such bold sounding statements.))

    I don’t know what the service will look like, but I doubt that it will work like most of the optimistic audiophiles hope that it will. I doubt that you will be able to play everything in your library using Apple’s cloud service.

    I just don’t see how Apple would have gotten around that in negotiations, unless…

    #### Upgrade ####

    As I talked about in the last B&B podcast episode, I am guessing you will have to pay a one-time cloud upgrade fee on a song by song basis. Perhaps $0.30 a song, maybe less. Once you do that, those songs are available in the cloud. ((This did this before when they started the ‘plus’ music files.))

    This could be where Apple circumvented the labels. If Apple said we want all the music in the users library to be streamable (so long as we have a deal in place with the label for that music) and further told the labels that in doing so they would charge an upgrade fee that the labels get a percentage of (allowing the labels to double dip [charge twice for the same thing] — which we know they love) I could see the labels going for it.

    I could *further* see the labels being muscled into allowing Apple to charge users to “upgrade” the music in their library that they *didn’t* buy from iTunes. Thus, pirated or not, all your music would be in Apple’s cloud for a price. I am guessing they would be OK with this because it is a faster way to get money from pirates than court cases are.

    This isn’t ideal for the users, Apple, or the labels — it’s a compromise. I hope I am wrong and all the dreamers are right, it would be cheaper for me if I am wrong. I just don’t see the labels bending that much without getting their palms greased first.

  • Apple’s Malware Solution

    John Gruber: >So, for the sake of argument, let’s take it as a given that this sort of thing [malware on Macs] is becoming more common. What can Apple do? Think about it. (My guess: think about why the iPhone and iPad, despite being far more popular than the Mac, have no trojan horses.) That’s…

    John Gruber:
    >So, for the sake of argument, let’s take it as a given that this sort of thing [malware on Macs] is becoming more common. What can Apple do? Think about it. (My guess: think about why the iPhone and iPad, despite being far more popular than the Mac, have no trojan horses.)

    That’s a very clever solution, as I assume he is talking about App Stores. If users are trained that where they get apps without worries is from an Apple App Store, then they will be leery about letting any other app install itself.

    (An added bonus also being that the user iTunes account password is different than the Mac admin password. Thus users see the differentiation in the installation methods and become less willing to install outside of the App Store. Of course that is assuming a lot on the users end.)

    UPDATE: As pointed out on Twitter Gruber could be referring to many things, including sandboxing and the like.

  • “Twitter’s Shit Sandwich”

    John Gruber has an excellent take on the changes Twitter will be making to the authentication process. More and more Twitter is cramming changes down third party developers throats — the very group of people that helped to make Twitter popular. I for one would rarely use Twitter had Loren Brichter (now employed at Twitter)…

    John Gruber has an excellent take on the changes Twitter will be making to the authentication process. More and more Twitter is cramming changes down third party developers throats — the very group of people that helped to make Twitter popular. I for one would rarely use Twitter had Loren Brichter (now employed at Twitter) not made Tweetie.

    What Twitter really needs to do is convey reasons why they are doing this, not to users, but to the developer community. They need to show everyone the path they are taking.

    Now you may be thinking that I would never say this about Apple, and that they do similar things. That too has crossed my mind, but the biggest difference is that Apple has a track record of doing amazing things. So far Twitter has a track record of acquiring VC funding and changing CEOs. ((Also: dickbar.))

    Bottom line: this change is bad and Twitter needs to open up about its reasons behind the change, or prove very quickly that they made the right decision.

    (Neither of which I see happening.)