bradgrier.com

Category: Future Shop Techblog

  • Have you backed up your data today?

    Today is World Backup Day, I’m told, but to be frank, every day you should be think­ing about the safety of your data, there’s just too much of it that’s irreplaceable. So, today, I’m going to take a quick look at some of the backup sys­tems I use and have in place. Yes, I said…

  • I think I’ve bought my last desktop computer

    A couple of years ago, I was all into and enjoyed build­ing desktop com­puters, pick­ing out the right video card, select­ing the best mother­board and gen­er­ally dig­ging deep into the innards of my future com­put­ing plat­form. And design­ing the per­fect ‘office’ com­put­ing envir­on­ment with short cable runs, ample power for my accessor­ies and lots of…

  • How your mobile phone or tablet could save your life

    Believe it or not, there are many ways your mobile smart phone could be used when you find your­self in the middle of an emer­gency situ­ation,  aside from the obvi­ous — mak­ing a phone call for emer­gency assist­ance, I mean. The recent events in Japan and New Zea­l­and have shown that when dis­aster strikes, get­ting the…

  • Apple vs the App Developers

    Pre­vi­ously I’d writ­ten about the impend­ing launch of Gar­age Band for iPad, and men­tioned how Apple’s release of this app will chal­lenge smal­ler inde­pend­ent app developers in the music cre­ation space. Today’ I’m at it again. With yes­ter­day’s release of iOS 4.3, it seems that Apple has again taken a bite out of a developer­’s rev­en­ue…

  • How-To: Streaming stuff around your house

    In this increas­ingly wire­less world, it seems odd that it’s actu­ally kinda dif­fi­cult to get music or oth­er media from one device to another. In my case, I have pho­tos, movies and music all stored on a cent­ral stor­age device on my net­work — a Net­work Attached Stor­age device, or NAS. Get­ting to that media eas­ily…

  • A Tale of Two RPGs

    Two cool Fantasy Role Play­ing Games have caught my atten­tion lately on my iPad; The Battle for Wesnoth and Battleheart. Yes, they’re both RPGs, but are so dis­sim­il­ar in their approach and exe­cu­tion that they’re not really tread­ing in each oth­er­’s space, so to speak. Here’s why… It’s Big The Battle for Wesnoth (which I’ll…

  • Did Apple just kill a small part of the music industry?

      Ever since the iPhone and iPod Touch caught the atten­tion of developers of developers with an interest in music, there have been music apps in the iTunes App store. With yes­ter­day’s announce­ment of Gar­age Band for iPad these smal­ler niche developers could be chal­lenged by the vast devel­op­ment resources Apple can bring to bear. Gar­age Band iPad…

  • Need a mic? Find a Yeti.

    In the last few years it’s got­ten a bit easi­er to use a micro­phone to record audio on your home com­puter — USB head­sets with qual­ity micro­phones have been avail­able for a while, but only recently have USB desktop micro­phones oved out of the niche and spe­cialty retail­ers into the main­stream, driv­en mostly by the…

  • The gauntlet has been thrown: HP’s webOS TouchPad

    Yes­ter­day Earli­er today in San Fran­cisco, HP revealed a few new products; the new Veer, the Pre 3, and the new Touch­Pad — a dir­ect com­pet­it­or to the Apple iPad. And the Touch­Pad is going to be a very cool device. My thoughts: Same weight as an iPad — I was hop­ing for lighter Cool…

  • Woot! New Canon Rebel T3 cameras

    Last year around this time, Can­on intro­duced the Rebel T2i (also known as the EOS 550D). An awe­somely speced-out cam­era, as all the Rebel’s are, aimed squarely at the con­sumer Digit­al SLR and home video mar­ket — yes, the Rebel T2i was a true hybrid. Well, today Can­on reprised that tune with the announce­ment of…

  • It’s cold! Pamper your tech

    With the amount of gear I have around I’m sur­prised this does­n’t hap­pen to me more often. The weath­er in Edmon­ton has been rather cool of late, in the ‑20 to ‑30 degree range in fact. And today, since it’s warmed up to a reas­on­able ‑2, I decided to drive the car, rather than our oth­er,…

  • Hardware helps information be free

    Inform­a­tion wants to be free, an inter­est­ing phrase sum­ming up the concept that tech­no­logy has the poten­tial to be lib­er­at­ing, rather than oppress­ing. It was first used in the 1960’s and attrib­uted to the founder of the Whole Earth Cata­log. Today, that phrase is often used to sup­port open file shar­ing activ­it­ies. And recently I…