bradgrier.com

Category: Future Shop Techblog

  • A spacy new way to browse music on your iPad

    Listen­ing to music on your iPad is usu­ally a visu­ally-sparse affair. Load up your play­er, nav­ig­ate to your lib­rary, and select the muisc. Play, and do oth­er things. Not any more… Outta this world! Plan­et­ary is the new (and free!) app from Bloom Stu­di­os that gives new mean­ing to nav­ig­at­ing through your music col­lec­tion. To quote the…

  • Libraries are dead. Long live the Librarian!

    I love it when coin­cid­ence and syn­ergy lead to a blog post, this post in fact. In a post earli­er this week, Seth God­in lead us through the his­tory of the Lib­rary and the Lib­rar­i­an. In his post, he even­tu­ally settled on the some­what alarm­ing concept that the Lib­rary was basic­ally dead: Wiki­pe­dia and the huge databanks…

  • #Winning on Friday the 13th

    Today is Fri­day the 13th. The only Fri­day the 13th of 2011 as it works out. This spe­cif­ic date has spe­cial sig­ni­fic­ance for me — and it has noth­ing to do with movies. Since Fri­day the 13ths occur so infre­quently, and are  some­what fam­ous, I use the day as a semi-ran­dom chance to get my digit­al…

  • Many flavours of RSS readers for iPad

    Earli­er today Feedly was rein­tro­duced to the iPad iOS world with sig­ni­fic­ant buzz — Robert Scoble pro­filed the read­er (check the video below). One of the not­able things about Feedly is its HTML 5 base — which allows the major­ity of func­tions to be device agnost­ic (Android, Win­dows Phone, etc). But on iOS devices, there are…

  • Disaster Tech

    Like many of you, I’ve been watch­ing the events in Japan con­tin­ue to unfold, and per­haps think­ing to myself, “I’m glad some­thing that dev­ast­at­ing did­n’t hap­pen here”. But what if it did, would you be pre­pared? I like to think that I am, but sadly, I’m prob­ably not. Yes, I have a first aid kit, and I’ve…

  • Review: Drobo FS Network Storage Array

    Wow, that title’s a mouth­ful — Net­work Stor­age Array — but don’t let that tech­nic­al-jar­gony sound­ing term scare you, this Drobo FS device is really as easy to use as your Fridge. And for me, that’s a Holy Grail — some­thing that you use and basic­ally for­get the complexity. Whut? But let me back up…

  • What is it about a Moleskine?

    It’s a note­book, plain and simple. A very well-made note­book, to be sure. It is, per­haps, a premi­um note­book (which would jus­ti­fy the price). I know, I have one. And it’s quite nice. Yet, Mole­skine is also a brand that brings a lot of emo­tion and sen­ti­ment to the humble note­book. Note­books are about remem­ber­ing things,…

  • More Gagarin Goodness…

    Earli­er today I noticed the Google Doodle point­ing to resources about Yuri Gagar­in’s (and man­kind’s) first orbit of the Earth. A few moments ago @mynameiskate poin­ted me at the You­Tube logo — mod­i­fied too — and links to First Orbit a free fea­ture-length movie about Gagar­in’s flight: A real time recre­ation of Yuri Gagar­in’s pion­eer­ing…

  • Oldschool Atari games arrive on the iPad [video]

    This video review of the new (and free with Pong) Atar­i’s Greatest Hits app gives you a great over­view of the games and func­tion­al­ity. Pair it with the upcom­ing iCade hard­ware iPad arcade cab­in­et and you’ve got a winner!  

  • New iPad? 56 Apps You May Want To Try

    A friend (hi @leask) recently ordered an iPad 2 and asked me for a list of apps that I’d recom­mend. Obvi­ously I was flattered and this post is the result.

  • Unleash your inner Spielberg

    I’m sure all of us have, at one point or anoth­er, dreamed of releas­ing that movie dir­ect­or deep inside, and mak­ing our own movie, com­plete with music and spe­cial effects. Well, if your dream is to make one that hearkens back to the golden days of silent cinema, then I’ve got an inex­pens­ive app for you.…

  • Not an April Fools Joke: Trainz for iPad

    Ever since the Apple II days, I’ve been a flight sim­u­lat­or geek. I’ve always been inter­ested in avi­ation, but due to my less-than-per­fect eye­sight, a career as a pilot was­n’t in the cards. But that did­n’t dim my interest in avi­ation. And giv­en my interest in com­puters & tech­no­logy, it seemed nat­ur­al that I’d grav­it­ate…