bradgrier.com

Category: News

  • A first quick look at Google Wave

    In one word, inter­est­ing.  To quote from the Google Wave team: A “wave” is equal parts con­ver­sa­tion and doc­u­ment, where people can com­mu­nic­ate and work togeth­er with richly format­ted text, pho­tos, videos, maps, and more. But what’s not said, is that it’s a col­lab­or­at­ive envir­on­ment. In oth­er words, without a group to com­mu­nic­ate with, Google Wave…

  • Finally. The must-have app for your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch

    I’ve been in love with Drop­box for a while now, so much so I’m pro­mot­ing it in my adspace in my sidebar. Drop­box has made it much much easi­er to trans­fer files between com­puters. Sure, I could email them, but that’s not at all eleg­ant. All I do with Drop­box is copy a file to…

  • Citizen Journalism cuts out the middleman

    Over at the Future Shop Techb­log I pos­ted this item about the dif­fer­ence between journ­al­ism 40years ago (when we were land­ing on the moon) and today. The upshot is that the Tech is cut­ting out the middle­man, and mak­ing journ­al­ism more access­ible to everyone. But is it qual­ity journ­al­ism? Does hav­ing a J‑school sheep­skin really…

  • Godspeed Apollo 11

    It was 40 years ago today, and the Amer­ic­an space pro­gram put it all on the line send­ing three young avi­at­ors to land on the moon. Wow. I don’t think we’d even con­sider that a risk worth tak­ing now. Some­where along the line we lost our abil­ity to take risks.…and return to the Moon. I’m lucky to have…

  • Me? A Professional Blogger? Yep, somewhat.

    Today I became a pro­fes­sion­al blog­ger for Future Shop, the Cana­dian tech­no­logy retail­er. Pro­fes­sion­al as in ‘com­pensated’ for my writ­ing. No, I’ll not be leav­ing my most excel­lent day job, I’d need a bunch more of these to make blog­ging my sole source of income 🙂 and I’m not that prolific 🙂 You’ll find me (and…

  • Reasons why I unfollow someone on Twitter

    Recently I had a great dis­cus­sion on Twit­ter about Unfollowing…a much dis­cussed top­ic of etiquette amongst the Twitterati. One school of thought is that when someone fol­lows you on Twit­ter, it’s prop­er for you to fol­low them back. That’s not my belief though. If that were the case, then it would be impossible for me to…

  • No reason NOT to get a new computer this year.

    Only in Canada ‘eh? Pity! The recently announced Cana­dian Budget seems to have a dir­ect boon to me. I was­n’t expect­ing it. I was expect­ing more of the same gen­er­al eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus pack­ages, etc. But here’s some­thing that applies to me directly. Temporary 100-Per-Cent Capital Cost Allowance Rate for Computers In light of the eco­nom­ic slow­down, Budget…

  • Getting Things Done with Gmail?

    Usu­ally Google Apps for Busi­ness is the last of Googles free online applic­a­tion suites to receive new fea­tures, but ever since Google enabled Google Labs with­in Apps for Busi­ness, new fea­tures are rolled at the same time. Today Gmail received a simple Task List manager: Like many of Google’s enhance­ments, it’s a very simple imple­ment­a­tion —…

  • What to know when changing website hosts

    A couple of weeks ago I found the fol­low­ing in an email from my webhost: Your web host­ing account for bradgrier.com has been deac­tiv­ated (reas­on: site caus­ing per­form­ance problems). Although your web site has been dis­abled, your data may still be avail­able for up to 15 days, after which it will be deleted. After a quick call…

  • Live election night coverage online (Canadian Election)

    Anoth­er Cana­dian elec­tion has come and gone. Pro­grammed main­stream media cov­er­age was again, less than inspir­ing. I found that to truly enjoy this nation­al exer­cise, you have to watch it in the com­pany of friends, as you would a Sat­urday after­noon hockey game. I spent elec­tion night online. Using a vari­ety of free sources, I…

  • Lesson learned: Relying on one of anything is bad (Gmail Down)

    Well it’s been just over a year since this post was writ­ten, and Google’s Gmail is down again in a most sig­ni­fic­ant way. Looks like folks on Twit­ter are pretty vocal about it this time too! And it seems that this post is still rel­ev­ant, sadly. I’ve re-opened the com­ments on this one as some…

  • Bag Open. Cat Out. Internet in danger! OpenDNS to the rescue?

    Your ISP may be vulnurable to the Multi-Vendor DNS Issue. Here's how to tell, and a simple fix you can do to protect yourself.