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

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  • Patrick Rhone on the MacBook Air

    Patrick Rhone speaking about his 11″ 64GB MacBook Air: So far, my experience has been a great one. I’m using it as close to “out of the box” as I can and being very picky about the apps I install. As of this writing I still have over 30GB available. That is pretty incredible restraint.…

    Patrick Rhone speaking about his 11″ 64GB MacBook Air:

    So far, my experience has been a great one. I’m using it as close to “out of the box” as I can and being very picky about the apps I install. As of this writing I still have over 30GB available.

    That is pretty incredible restraint. He lists a few apps that he decided not to install, and indeed I deleted a bunch of apps that I was not using the other day just for the hell of it. When I was reading Rhone’s initial thoughts I couldn’t help but wondering what apps he is keeping web only. For instance is Simplenote web only, or is he still using Notational Velocity or other Simplenote clients. It will be interesting to hear how he fairs after a longer period of time passes.

  • James Kendrick calls 2010 the Year of the Tablet

    James Kendrick This year was definitely the year of the tablet, even with only a few models reaching consumers’ hands. I disagree, 2011 will be the year of the tablet. Tablets no doubt took off in 2010 and the market was transformed by Apple’s iPad. But sales were far to slow, next year with more…

    James Kendrick

    This year was definitely the year of the tablet, even with only a few models reaching consumers’ hands.

    I disagree, 2011 will be the year of the tablet. Tablets no doubt took off in 2010 and the market was transformed by Apple’s iPad. But sales were far to slow, next year with more models on the market will make 2010 seem like only a few dozen were sold. Next year is the year that you come home and your grandparents are sitting around playing with their iPads.

  • Top Twitter Trends in 2010

    What I would really like to see that is missing from this list: top Twitter clients.

    What I would really like to see that is missing from this list: top Twitter clients.

  • Mg Siegler’s Take on the Cr-48

    A very in-depth look at the Cr-48. Mg Siegler does a great job going over the machine and the OS as a whole, one of the better product reviews I have seen in a while.

    A very in-depth look at the Cr-48. Mg Siegler does a great job going over the machine and the OS as a whole, one of the better product reviews I have seen in a while.

  • Random Thought: The Eventual Demise of Power Buttons

    It was late ((For me, which means it was about 11pm.)) and I was at my computer trying to figure some annoying coding problem on my wife’s website. I was tired and I stared blankly at the keyboard on my MacBook Air. I was praying that some how that keyboard would type the answers for…

    It was late ((For me, which means it was about 11pm.)) and I was at my computer trying to figure some annoying coding problem on my wife’s website. I was tired and I stared blankly at the keyboard on my MacBook Air. I was praying that some how that keyboard would type the answers for me. Then I saw that damned power button in the corner of the keyboard and it just stuck with me, I thought: why the hell is that there.

    Ok: I know the power button is there to turn on the computer (and in some case to turn it off). In over a month of owning the MacBook Air, do you know how many times I have pressed that button? Neither do I, but if I had to guess I would reckon that I have pressed it no more than 4 times, likely just twice.

    Now anybody who computed in the 90s can probably tell you that the power button was used almost daily, and the clever little ‘reset’ buttons twice daily. ((Nice job Microsoft.)) Today though most Mac users probably very rarely push the power button on their computer. Maybe only when they fly. ((Though I don’t even do that – I know that makes me bad.))

    If you really think about it, how long would you give power buttons before they go the way of the floppy disk? I bet in the next year we will start to see more and more devices that just have sleep buttons, completely lacking a dedicated button to turn the device on and off. Why would you? ((Yes, yes, planes I know.))

    Think about your iPad/iPhone, you probably press the power button at the top all the time. What you probably rarely ever do is press and hold that button to turn the device on and off, instead you just use that button to sleep the device. Same with the power button on your Mac, sure you restart it now and then, but shut it down? Nah, that is soo Clinton era. Instead you just close the laptop screen and open the screen. Simple.

    Battery life is simply too good to worry about turning things on and off any longer. Power management while our devices are in ‘standby’ modes has been perfected to the point where we no longer worry about our devices while they sleep.

    In fact the main reason we used to turn gadgets on and off was to conserve battery life, but my MacBook Air will sleep for 30 days. I can’t remember the last time I went 4 days without using my computer, let alone 30. Advances in power management are truly making off and on irrelevant in today’s electronics.

    Most office workers remember having to turn their machines off at the end of the day and back on the next morning. I doubt many do that any longer, either they are using a laptop, or on a desktop simply locking the machine when they leave is sufficient for their employer.

    I used to turn off my cell phone daily. Now I get anxiety about what I might miss when I need to reboot it. There rarely is ever a reason to turn my phone completely off.

    I am not trying to be nostalgic about things, I am trying to prove a point: more and more power buttons are becoming completely obsolete.

    In fact the only power buttons I push any more are for my TV, the Receiver attached to the TV and my dSLR. How long do you think it will be until our TVs are just always on and ready to be used, perhaps just showing a picture slideshow until we start watching a video? How long until our cameras sense being picked up and having the shutter depressed?

    I hope it is not long, because I am beginning to forget what the power button is for.

    The oddest cases of power buttons are with bluetooth peripherals, things like mice, keyboards, headsets. Why do these need power buttons? I have two bluetooth headsets in my car, both are on 24/7 and when the battery runs low I recharge them in the car. It is all rather painless and I never have to think about turning them on and off.

    Same with my Magic Mouse and Magic Trackpad: both on all the time. I never turn them off and why would I? It would be just one extra step I would need to take before using them. I am sure some of you are saying: ah, but when you thorw peripherals like mice and keyboards in a bag with your laptop they could potentially wake up that device. True, but honestly that seems like a problem that could easily be solved with the next software update. Most modern Mac users will tell you that even if you allow a bluetooth device to ‘wake’ your Mac, that it will not do so unless the lid is open, or a display is attached to it. So really if your Macbook [whatever] is in your computer bag with a mouse that is “on” – you have nothing to worry about.

    I think we could save a lot of space on these devices if we all just agree that power buttons are irrelevant.

    What if my Magic Trackpad was always off until it sensed my fingers near the device, then at that moment it sprung to life and started working. Perhaps it isn’t really off, just sleeping. Same with bluetooth headsets, they wake up when I put one on, and are sleeping the rest of the time.

    Don’t even get me started on external HD enclosures that have on and off switches on the back of them. Can you think of any more ways to annoy consumers: “before you want to use this external HD that is ugly and you have hidden away, be sure to turn in on using that small hidden black switch on the back.” Thanks for that manufacturers.

  • Save Yourself Some Typing When Visiting TBR

    I have for a while now owned the URL ‘tbr.co’ but due to how long it took me to get that URL I had already purchased ‘tbr.mx’ to use as a URL shortener. Well tonight Ian Hines helped me out and showed me how to get everything pointed at ‘tbr.co’ to redirect to the same…

    I have for a while now owned the URL ‘tbr.co’ but due to how long it took me to get that URL I had already purchased ‘tbr.mx’ to use as a URL shortener. Well tonight Ian Hines helped me out and showed me how to get everything pointed at ‘tbr.co’ to redirect to the same page at ‘brooksreview.net’.

    So if you want to go to the TBR archives you have two options:

    Archives

    or

    http://tbr.co/archive

    The latter will just redirect you to the former. So why the two? Easy, you save typing 10 characters and when you are doing that on your phone it counts. This should work with every page BTW.

  • Andy Ihnatko’s Google Chrome Cr-48 notebook first look

    Andy Ihnatko: But without a connection to the Internet, this cutting-edge machine had become little more than a Notebook-Shaped Object. The six or seven open browser tabs in front of me were just ghosts of webapps that joined the choir invisible as soon as they lost contact with their servers. I still want to play…

    Andy Ihnatko:

    But without a connection to the Internet, this cutting-edge machine had become little more than a Notebook-Shaped Object. The six or seven open browser tabs in front of me were just ghosts of webapps that joined the choir invisible as soon as they lost contact with their servers.

    I still want to play with one. Hope Google sends me one, though it is not looking hopeful.

  • Pornoscanners Actually Don’t Work

    Leon Kaufman & Joseph W. Carlson: It is very likely that a large (15-20 cm in diameter), irregularly-shaped, cm-thick pancake with beveled edges, taped to the abdomen, would be invisible to this technology, ironically, because of its large volume, since it is easily confused with normal anatomy. Thus, a third of a kilo of PETN,…

    Leon Kaufman & Joseph W. Carlson:

    It is very likely that a large (15-20 cm in diameter), irregularly-shaped, cm-thick pancake with beveled edges, taped to the abdomen, would be invisible to this technology, ironically, because of its large volume, since it is easily confused with normal anatomy. Thus, a third of a kilo of PETN, easily picked up in a competent pat down, would be missed by backscatter “high technology”. Forty grams of PETN, a purportedly dangerous amount, would fit in a 1.25 mm-thick pancake of the dimensions simulated here and be virtually invisible. Packed in a compact mode, say, a 1 cm×4 cm×5 cm brick, it would be detected.

    Yay they give us cancer and don’t catch things that metal detectors can’t catch.

    [via Boing Boing]

  • On Caps Lock

    There has been a lot of brouhaha about the lack of a caps lock key on Google’s development Chrome OS device the Cr-48. I find it very interesting that of all the companies out there it is Google of all companies that is the first to realize just how silly the caps lock key is.…

    There has been a lot of brouhaha about the lack of a caps lock key on Google’s development Chrome OS device the Cr-48. I find it very interesting that of all the companies out there it is Google of all companies that is the first to realize just how silly the caps lock key is. How often do you actually use that key? It only ever gets in my way, probably the same with you.

    Did you know though that as a Mac user you can actually rid yourself of the caps lock key right now, no tools needed?

    Screen shot 2010-12-10 at 2.58.20 PM.png

    Just pop open ‘System Preferences’, go to ‘Keyboard’, click on the button that says ‘Modifiers’ and select what you want caps lock to become. As you can see in the above screenshot I have my caps lock set to ‘no action’ so no matter how many times I hit the key it doesn’t do a thing.

    It is all rather great.

    I agree with Google, there is no need for the caps lock key, I don’t know why there ever was (though I suspect someone will email me a reason). All I can say is that most computers users today do not need the key and are probably only hindered by it.

    Go forth and rid yourself of the caps lock key, Google says it’s OK.

  • ”A new WikiLeaks” revolts against Assange

    Ossi Carp: According to the internal documents shared with DN.se, Openleaks intends to establish itself as a neutral intermediary ”without a political agenda except from the dissemination of information to the media, the public, non-profit organizations, trade- and union organizations and other participating groups.” “All editorial control and responsibility rests with the publishing organization. We…

    Ossi Carp:

    According to the internal documents shared with DN.se, Openleaks intends to establish itself as a neutral intermediary ”without a political agenda except from the dissemination of information to the media, the public, non-profit organizations, trade- and union organizations and other participating groups.”

    “All editorial control and responsibility rests with the publishing organization. We will, as far as possible, take the role of the messenger between the whistleblower and the organization the whistleblower is trying to cooperate with,” says one anonymous informant.

    That has been the thing that bugs me most about WikiLeaks, they too have an agenda, yet get mad at those that also have an agenda. Hopefully these guys will be able to live up to their lofty goal.

  • Notational Velocity Alt

    I had previously linked to a build of Notational Velocity that allowed for a better widescreen and full screen views. This version of NV from Brett Terpstra is even better, it has a widescreen layout and preview mode for people who write in Markdown. Go get it.

    I had previously linked to a build of Notational Velocity that allowed for a better widescreen and full screen views. This version of NV from Brett Terpstra is even better, it has a widescreen layout and preview mode for people who write in Markdown. Go get it.

  • A Windows Phone 7 Review by Brad Kellett

    Kellett on Windows Phone 7: Excitement, followed by disappointment. The more I think about it the more I think I will try to get my hands on one for a week or two so that I can check out the OS more thoroughly.

    Kellett on Windows Phone 7:

    Excitement, followed by disappointment.

    The more I think about it the more I think I will try to get my hands on one for a week or two so that I can check out the OS more thoroughly.

  • MacSparky Interview

    If you are interested the MacSparky blog did and interview with my about how I am using my iPhone, with a current screenshot of my home screen.

    If you are interested the MacSparky blog did and interview with my about how I am using my iPhone, with a current screenshot of my home screen.

  • Military Bans Disks, Threatens Courts-Martial to Stop New Leaks

    Wait, this wasn’t already the policy? Christ they deserved these leaks then.

    Wait, this wasn’t already the policy? Christ they deserved these leaks then.

  • Some Great Little Mac Apps

    First let’s define what I mean by “little”. Little means often overlooked, something that may not get a ton of press, but that is massively useful. Little does not mean: cheap, limited, useless. Now that I have that out of the way here are some great ‘little’ apps that I love. The Apps Hazel: I…

    First let’s define what I mean by “little”. Little means often overlooked, something that may not get a ton of press, but that is massively useful. Little does not mean: cheap, limited, useless. Now that I have that out of the way here are some great ‘little’ apps that I love.

    The Apps

    • Hazel: I talked in depth the other day about it, but it really is a great app that is often overlooked.
    • Droplr: This is an app that sits in your menubar and allows you to share things, files/code/notes/links/pictures with a short URL (d.pr). It is fast, easy and free. There are many others out there that can do the same thing, Droplr does it all in style though – especially the beautiful iPhone app.
    • IOGraph: This may not be useful for many people, it tracks your mouse path and creates a lively looking path photo out of it. Like digital art for people who suck at painting (me). The most interesting part of the app is that it can visually show you where you are wasting a lot of time with the mouse, and then I try to see if I can reduce that mouse movement using the keyboard more. For example my mouse seems to never go to the bottom right corner of my screen, but spends way too much time clicking on Menubar items.
    • Img2Icns: Just like the title says it takes an image file (preferably a PNG) and converts it to a ICNS, Folder Icon, iPhone icon, Favicon. I use it all the time for creating custom Icons and especially for creating Favicons.
    • Soulver: This is a real mans calculator, well a real computer geeks calculator that is. You can write equations in app and is spits out an answer, you get line references and a running total of all lines. I love that fact that you can see where you messed up, and you can save the files to come back to them later. It is like a mini-Excel for running some quick calculations.
    • xScope: Just about any Mac using designer is going to swear by this tool. I love it because I can measure the dimensions of stuff on the web, and check to make sure that things really are lining up. It really is a handy little tool, the demo is very gracious as well, so you can download it and use it for quite a while before you decide to buy.
    • TextExpander: I could not write without this, well I could but it would be slower and riddled with more typos. This allows you to type a short code and then it is automatically expanded into the full text that you set. For instance if I type: “MBA” it expands to “MacBook Air”. If you blog about gadgets or find your self typing the same long phrases/names out over and over then this is a must have tool for you. You can though do somethings this app does with the built in tools on Mac OS X.
    • Growl: A preference pane utility that adds a notification system to OS X. I use it to monitor Tweetie and Dropbox, but there are a host of other applications. Just remember that these notifications can and will be distracting if they are constantly coming up.
    • Perian: Another preference pain utility that allows QuickTime to open a lot more file formats than it can out of the box. It is a truly handy tool to have in your toolbox.
    • Keyboard Maestro: This allows you to program a ton of keyboard shortcuts that do everything from launching apps to moving your mouse one pixel to the left. I am working on a full write up and a look at how I use it, until then you can get a pretty good idea from the examples that come with the app.

  • No Crappy Apps

    I just got an email from Brad Gies who has setup a site called “No Crappy Apps” that analyzes the Android Market and allows users to comment and rate Apps on the site, as well as allowing developers to respond. Gies on what makes this system better: Well.. first of all we analyze not only…

    I just got an email from Brad Gies who has setup a site called “No Crappy Apps” that analyzes the Android Market and allows users to comment and rate Apps on the site, as well as allowing developers to respond.

    Gies on what makes this system better:

    Well.. first of all we analyze not only the ratings for the apps, but the comments as well.. You might notice that we don’t allow anonymous comments on our website, only registered users can leave comments. We track the comments and analyze them to find out if a commenter has only been rating apps from certain developers highly (and sometimes they rate competing apps very lowly). When our software determines that a commenter is a spammer all of their comments are disregarded for our ratings.

    I am not sure of how this actually pans out given that I don’t have an Android device any longer to browse and download apps he is marking as spam, but look at these numbers from the site:

    • 122,600 total apps
    • 3,401 spam apps

    Gies emailed me to say that he expects that the number of spam apps will reach 20,000 in the next 2 months, given that his system needs 10 weeks worth of data. That is pretty amazing and pretty sad for the Android Market. Now who is up for doing this for iOS?

  • “The Wikileaks scandal is more than just a diplomatic scuffle; it’s a war for the future of the Internet”

    Tom Mendelsohn on just how monumental the hackers defending WikiLeaks movement is: Make no mistake, if they win here, online life will change. Expect tighter government control, more regulations and sanitised information flow. It won’t end the web as a place of freedom – but it will raise the technological barriers to entry, necessitating secrecy…

    Tom Mendelsohn on just how monumental the hackers defending WikiLeaks movement is:

    Make no mistake, if they win here, online life will change. Expect tighter government control, more regulations and sanitised information flow. It won’t end the web as a place of freedom – but it will raise the technological barriers to entry, necessitating secrecy software and technical savvy. People without the IT skills may never be able to stumble upon radical ideas or free speech.

    Perhaps the most troubling thing to me personally is that this group trying to defend Assange is missing a very key point. That is whether the timing is odd, or whether Assange was truly arrested on to face charges of rape, or whether he is being detained for WikiLeaks actions seems to be lost on these hackers.

    WikiLeaks is releasing these confidential documents to expose corruption and wrong doing, to enlighten the public about what is really the true nature of events. They are basically asking the U.S. Government to own what they are doing and face the consequences of their actions.

    Sweden too is asking that of Assange. I find this all a bit hypocritical. You cannot be made about Assange being arrested and tried for rape, that is him facing actions he may or may not be guilty of.

    As for the banks ceasing funding and Amazon cutting of WikiLeaks, sure it is fair to be angry with those sites, but are you angry with them because they took a moral stand against what WikiLeaks is doing, or are you angry because perhaps they caved to governmental pressure? Either way shutting them down isn’t the right move.

    If you want to shut them down because they made a decision on their own about how they want to run their company then you are acting foolishly. That is any businesses right, you wouldn’t try to hack a business just because they refused to sell you something, would you?

    If you are shutting these sites down because they caved to pressure from others, wouldn’t you best be served by shutting down those pressuring them instead?

    I think so.

  • P.R. in a Digital World

    A short while ago Evan Williams, of Twitter, tweeted: Now that tweet was presumably read, or has the potential to be read by all 1,269,159 followers that he has (as of this writing). Not to mention the followers of the 20 other people that retweeted that message. I can’t help but think that Verizon needs…

    A short while ago Evan Williams, of Twitter, tweeted:

    Screen shot 2010-12-09 at 12.42.36 PM.png

    Now that tweet was presumably read, or has the potential to be read by all 1,269,159 followers that he has (as of this writing). Not to mention the followers of the 20 other people that retweeted that message.

    I can’t help but think that Verizon needs to pull their heads out of their asses on this one. I mean certainly not selling someone a full price phone is not worth having a million plus people think you are idiots.

  • All New Archives

    I have been working the past few days to get a better archive page up, with 100% less crap in it. I am happy to say that I have done just that, now instead of looking by month or by category just click the Archives link to the right. What you see is all my…

    I have been working the past few days to get a better archive page up, with 100% less crap in it. I am happy to say that I have done just that, now instead of looking by month or by category just click the Archives link to the right.

    What you see is all my posts, minus all of the links posts. They are not gone, you can still search for them. I just felt that those links posts are not as important to have cluttering up the archives.

    Let me know if you have any suggestions.

  • Adam Lisagor on Why AirPlay is Important

    Adam Lisagor on AirPlay: Because what AirPlay promises is that I can touch media here, and then weightlessly move it there. The entire post is pretty interesting, I had never thought about the response gadgets invoke, the ability to ‘touch’ and ‘thumb through’ your media is a pretty powerful thing.

    Adam Lisagor on AirPlay:

    Because what AirPlay promises is that I can touch media here, and then weightlessly move it there.

    The entire post is pretty interesting, I had never thought about the response gadgets invoke, the ability to ‘touch’ and ‘thumb through’ your media is a pretty powerful thing.