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

  • Idea Quote of the Day

    “Idea generation is an addiction. It is an engaging, brain-spinning indulgence that must be practiced in moderation.” –Scott Belsky

    “Idea generation is an addiction. It is an engaging, brain-spinning indulgence that must be practiced in moderation.” –Scott Belsky

  • Basecamp Notifications Delivered to Your Desktop

    BaseApp: BaseApp is a menubar application for Mac OS X that helps you stay on top of everything that happens in your Basecamp accounts. Works great, and a great idea to boot.

    BaseApp:

    BaseApp is a menubar application for Mac OS X that helps you stay on top of everything that happens in your Basecamp accounts.

    Works great, and a great idea to boot.

  • Google’s Privacy Policy Changes

    Pretty interesting page from Google showing the edits to their Privacy Policy set to take effect next month. I really like that they have this page for people, but really I don’t remember getting a notice about this, and there are a lot of edits.

    Pretty interesting page from Google showing the edits to their Privacy Policy set to take effect next month. I really like that they have this page for people, but really I don’t remember getting a notice about this, and there are a lot of edits.

  • An Email Rule I Would Love to Have

    I have talked a lot about email lately and since I was out of town this weekend checking email sporadically I came to a realization about a new email rule that I want. A little background first, I try my very hardest not to work unless it is 8a-5p M-F (not including vacation and holidays).…

    I have talked a lot about email lately and since I was out of town this weekend checking email sporadically I came to a realization about a new email rule that I want. A little background first, I try my very hardest not to work unless it is 8a-5p M-F (not including vacation and holidays). This means that if I get an email after hours or over a weekend it waits until the next time I am working, some emails go unanswered from Friday at 5:01p until Monday at 8a, it is just the way that I work. I don’t like people demanding that I be available to them 24/7, when I only get paid for 40 hours a week.

    So then you can imagine the email rule that I want:

    • Check to see if the email is in my work account.
    • If yes, check to see if it was sent between 8a-5p M-F.
    • If yes, mark as unread and leave in the inbox.
    • If no, do not display email until the next working time period.

    Now of course I can’t create this with the tools that I currently have, there are work arounds (turning off email checking for that account during those times is one) but the workarounds all suck. Why can’t I just build natural language rules like this, how great would that be?

    [This part of an ongoing series on dealing with email, to see more posts look here.]

  • The Atlantic Will Follow Paid iPad Edition With New ‘Atlantic Premium’

    Staci D. Kramer on The Atlantic for iPad: In coming weeks, the magazine publisher plans to convert single-issue app sales to an iPad digital newsstand app—and to launch Atlantic Premium, a daily bundle of everything the magazine produces online for a monthly access fee. I like the idea of more publishers creating monthly subscriptions for…

    Staci D. Kramer on The Atlantic for iPad:

    In coming weeks, the magazine publisher plans to convert single-issue app sales to an iPad digital newsstand app—and to launch Atlantic Premium, a daily bundle of everything the magazine produces online for a monthly access fee.

    I like the idea of more publishers creating monthly subscriptions for their magazine apps, but I worry that they think $4.99/mo is acceptable. You can subscribe to a paper magazine for $15-20 a year, sure there is ads but hey that is not a bad price. iPad magazines however cost $2.99-4.99 an issue and you still get ads, which is just absurd.

  • Windows Phone 7 Ad Promises A Forthcoming Revolution

    If the hardware depicted in the ad is real, then the iPhone may have a real competitor in the hardware arena. That is a sexy looking phone.

    If the hardware depicted in the ad is real, then the iPhone may have a real competitor in the hardware arena. That is a sexy looking phone.

  • Tumblr Fixes Content Attribution

    David Karp: When creating a post, you can now attribute its content (eg. a pull quote or image) to a source outside of Tumblr. That source gets clearly attributed everywhere that post is reblogged on Tumblr.  A much needed update for Tumblr, making a great blogging platform even easier, though I am still a huge…

    David Karp:

    When creating a post, you can now attribute its content (eg. a pull quote or image) to a source outside of Tumblr. That source gets clearly attributed everywhere that post is reblogged on Tumblr. 

    A much needed update for Tumblr, making a great blogging platform even easier, though I am still a huge WordPress fanboy.

  • Think you’re a ‘supertasker’? Probably not

    MSNBC.com: Supertaskers only make up about 2.5 percent of the general population, however, said study team member James Watson of the University of Utah. “Given the number of individuals who routinely talk on the phone while driving, one would have hoped that there would be a greater percentage of supertaskers,” Watson said. Possibly one of…

    MSNBC.com:

    Supertaskers only make up about 2.5 percent of the general population, however, said study team member James Watson of the University of Utah.

    “Given the number of individuals who routinely talk on the phone while driving, one would have hoped that there would be a greater percentage of supertaskers,” Watson said.

    Possibly one of the best quotes from a scientist.

    [via Rands on Twitter]

  • One Man’s Vision of a Social Workplace

    Here is an interesting post, sticking with the recent email theme we have been doing, by Amy-Mae Elliot about Luis Suarez’s email vision: “We will still have e-mail in ten years,” says Suarez. “I don’t want to kill all e-mail, but I want to help people re-purpose it. We will see traditional tools like e-mail…

    Here is an interesting post, sticking with the recent email theme we have been doing, by Amy-Mae Elliot about Luis Suarez’s email vision:

    “We will still have e-mail in ten years,” says Suarez. “I don’t want to kill all e-mail, but I want to help people re-purpose it. We will see traditional tools like e-mail redesigned to be used for what it was originally designed for.”

    For Suarez, the e-mail of the future will look something like this:

    “You get an alert, telling you how and where you can go and grab content … it won’t just be a notification system, but a read-write opportunity with the option to engage back so that information is no longer stuck in an inbox.”

  • Smoking Apples Review Twitter for iPad

    Milind Alvares really nails it in the Smoking Apples review of Twitter’s official iPad app. I love the app and think it is the best for the iPad, but it is not without its flaws.

    Milind Alvares really nails it in the Smoking Apples review of Twitter’s official iPad app. I love the app and think it is the best for the iPad, but it is not without its flaws.

  • iOS App Sales are through the roof insane

    Asymco (I wish they attributed by real names so I could reference that): If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29/app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year. If you want to know the precise reason everybody and their mom wants…

    Asymco (I wish they attributed by real names so I could reference that):

    If the current download rate is maintained (17 million apps/day) and if the pricing of $0.29/app is preserved, then $1.8 billion will have been spent on iOS apps this year.

    If you want to know the precise reason everybody and their mom wants to have their own app store, take a look at the graph they posted. Insane growth.

  • MG Siegler on the new Apple TV

    Siegler: All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

    Siegler:

    All that said, let’s be clear: this Apple TV is not the killer device in the living room. This will be more popular than the current Apple TV, but it will not be iPod/iPhone/iPad-big. And Apple seems to know that, which is why they’re still talking cautiously about it.

  • Why is everyone always writing off Netflix?

    If I think about it I see so many people quick to praise Redbox and TiVo all the while they turn their nose up at Netflix. Netflix is smart and I think they will be around longer than either company that I mentioned above.

    If I think about it I see so many people quick to praise Redbox and TiVo all the while they turn their nose up at Netflix. Netflix is smart and I think they will be around longer than either company that I mentioned above.

  • Internet as Social Movement

    The Editors at N+1: And then the internet came for the print media. This process has been longer, more intricate, and more emotionally fraught than the interaction of the internet with any other media. What a great read and I love watching all the change that we have seen these past 5+ years with the…

    The Editors at N+1:

    And then the internet came for the print media. This process has been longer, more intricate, and more emotionally fraught than the interaction of the internet with any other media.

    What a great read and I love watching all the change that we have seen these past 5+ years with the Internet pushing into every nook and cranny of our lives.

  • There is a Horse in the Apple Store

    Frank Chimero on the realization that came from seeing a horse in the Apple Store: Since then, John and I have a term called a “tiny pony.” It is a thing that is exceptional that no one, for whatever reason, notices. Or, conversely, it is an exceptional thing that everyone notices, but quickly grows acclimated…

    Frank Chimero on the realization that came from seeing a horse in the Apple Store:

    Since then, John and I have a term called a “tiny pony.” It is a thing that is exceptional that no one, for whatever reason, notices. Or, conversely, it is an exceptional thing that everyone notices, but quickly grows acclimated to despite the brilliance of it all.

    Read the entire thing, it is gold.

  • My Biggest Chrome Gripe Solved

    I have always wanted to give Chrome a fair shake and use it for a while but for a long time I wouldn’t do it because 1Passsword wasn’t supported, then they supported it. Chrome never supported keyboard shortcuts for launching links stored in the bookmarks bar and that was enough to give me reason not…

    I have always wanted to give Chrome a fair shake and use it for a while but for a long time I wouldn’t do it because 1Passsword wasn’t supported, then they supported it. Chrome never supported keyboard shortcuts for launching links stored in the bookmarks bar and that was enough to give me reason not to use Chrome, until I found this extension. This solves a lot, and I have switched to Chrome for the time being.

    [via and huge thanks to Shawn Blanc who found it from Stuart Maxwell]

  • The Reason Behind All My Email Filters

    It seems that my last post about rolling your own ‘priority inbox’ by using various rules in Apple’s Mail.app has garnered a bit of attention, and has some people questioning the technique. It seems to me like people are mis-interpreting what my reasons for creating these rules are. I went back through my post and…

    It seems that my last post about rolling your own ‘priority inbox’ by using various rules in Apple’s Mail.app has garnered a bit of attention, and has some people questioning the technique.

    It seems to me like people are mis-interpreting what my reasons for creating these rules are. I went back through my post and realized that I really didn’t put the meat of the reason I do all this, so here it is: my iPhone/iPad sanity is the main reason I apply all these rules.

    Currently iOS doesn’t support these rules, so when I get an email it is in the inbox in both my iPad and iPhone – all of my emails are there. That started to be a real pain for me on a day to day basis. I spend chunks of my week away from my Mac and away from WiFi which means that I am on my iPhone or iPad getting things done. When I see my iPhone inbox reach 30-40 emails I get a little annoyed sorting through all the crap to find the few that I really need to read especially in the 5 free minutes I have between meetings. Thus I created rules that would get rid of the stuff I don’t need to see while I am out (and perhaps things that I never need to see).

    The rules I have created have helped me to see only what is really important while I am out and about, and what was once 30-40 emails is a more manageable 5-10 emails. I can breeze through 5-10 emails in the 5 minute breaks that I have throughout the day with little problems.

    I have great respect for the fact that Dave Caolo reads each email, treating them all the same, but that doesn’t and won’t work for me. Nor do I think I would want to do that, when you send me an email that I am copied in on along with 50 other people, without even referencing me in the email, here is what crosses through my mind:

    “This person clearly just wants to show how important they are by wasting 50 peoples time all at once. Bastard.”

    That is honestly what I think, so I just hide away all that email. I filter my email with rules to hide the stuff that I feel wastes my time, and that is irrelevant for the most part. I don’t know what the ‘right way’ to do email is, but what I do know is that far to many people do it wrong. They waste too much time with emails that are sent out of laziness of them not wanting to find the answer or do the meaningless task themselves – all I try to do is eliminate that crap from my inbox.

    [This part of an ongoing series on dealing with email, to see more posts look here.]

  • iPod Touch Made Up 37.7 Percent of All iOS Devices Sold So Far

    Asymco’s estimate of iPod touch’s sold to date: If we assume about 8 million iPhones and 4 million iPads were sold during August and July, the total number of iPod touch sold is 45.2 million. This is of a course a guess, but it sounds pretty reasonable to me.

    Asymco’s estimate of iPod touch’s sold to date:

    If we assume about 8 million iPhones and 4 million iPads were sold during August and July, the total number of iPod touch sold is 45.2 million.

    This is of a course a guess, but it sounds pretty reasonable to me.

  • AP Interview: UN telecoms chief urges data sharing

    Boy RIM really can’t catch a break, everyone seems to want a peek up their skirts. Raphael G. Satter: Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, said officials fighting terrorism had the right to demand access to users’ information from the maker of the BlackBerry – Research in Motion Ltd. I thought people outside…

    Boy RIM really can’t catch a break, everyone seems to want a peek up their skirts.

    Raphael G. Satter:

    Hamadoun Toure, secretary-general of the International Telecommunication Union, said officials fighting terrorism had the right to demand access to users’ information from the maker of the BlackBerry – Research in Motion Ltd.

    I thought people outside (and many inside) the U.S. looked down at the Patriot Act, isn’t this essentially doing the same thing?

  • CoRD: Remote Desktop for Mac OS X

    I used to use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop for the Mac to connect to the Windows server we have to use at our office (our Yardi Property Management software only runs on Windows). However the other day Justin Pennington linked to CoRD and after using it for a bit I have found it t be far…

    I used to use Microsoft’s Remote Desktop for the Mac to connect to the Windows server we have to use at our office (our Yardi Property Management software only runs on Windows). However the other day Justin Pennington linked to CoRD and after using it for a bit I have found it t be far better than the offering from Microsoft, be sure to check it out if you use RDP.