bradgrier.com

Tag: applications

  • 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…

  • Boppin’ with the BeBot!

    iPad music and synth apps all seem to be try­ing to exactly rep­lic­ate the exper­i­ence of using a real syn­thes­izer or instru­ment, like Vir­tu­oso Piano 3 . Recently I dis­covered BeBot, an iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad music app that breaks that stereotype. Accord­ing to the developer, BeBot is: …Part syn­thes­izer, part anim­ated robot. Touch­ing the screen causes the robot to…

  • How to run your favourite desktop utilities from almost any computer using Portable Applications

    In the course of my day, I use two or three main desktop and laptop com­puters in two or three dif­fer­ent parts of the city. And yet, work­ing on dif­fer­ent devices, I still have access to a core set of tools and util­it­ies that I find essen­tial to my daily work. Here’s how I do it. Some…

  • Remote control your computer from your iPad

    Some say that the iPad is a magic­al device. I won’t go that far, but it is kinda cool, though it does have its short­com­ings — espe­cially when you com­pare it to a desktop or laptop com­puter. There are just many things done much bet­ter on a com­puter than on an iPad, which is why…

  • Lots to think about when diagnosing a slow Internet

    Occa­sion­ally I get a tech ques­tion in the inbox that is quite com­mon. So much so that it makes sense for me to put and answer the ques­tion here where more can read and bene­fit from it.  By the way, if you’ve got some­thing you’d like to ask, feel free to drop me a line…

  • How to view PDF files on your iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch with DropBox

    Drop­box really is an amaz­ing com­put­ing and file shar­ing applic­a­tion. I was ini­tially intro­duced to it when I needed to eas­ily share files with vari­ous com­puters across the inter­net — and email was not an option. Recently my wife asked me for anoth­er solu­tion to view­ing PDF files on her iPod Touch. She’d been using…

  • Things to do with your new iPad, iPod Touch or iPhone

    Black Fri­day has come and gone, and you’ve likely got a new gad­get, gizmo or toy — I’m going to assume it’s an iPod Touch or iPhone — which is a per­fect oppor­tun­ity for me to dig into my archives and pull out a few posts that may help you and your new baby. 5 favour­ite…

  • Revisiting my 5 favourite iPhone, iPad & iPod Touch applications

    It’s been almost six months since I picked up my iPod Touch and pos­ted about my 5 favour­ite iPhone & iPod Touch applic­a­tions, so I thought it’d be time to see if they’re still my favour­ite, and if not, which are now. Here’s my pre­vi­ous picks: The iTunes Applic­a­tion Store Flight Con­trol Ever­note Google Apps Safari And…

  • TweetDeck — now with more awesome!

    In the wig­gly world of Twit­ter apps, com­pet­i­tion is get­ting pretty tight between the lead­ing desktop con­tenders; Tweet­Deck, See­smic, and new-kid-on-the-block Mixero. Today Tweet­Deck launched their latest update, with some pleas­ant sur­prises: Con­ver­sa­tion win­dow — View an entire dia­logue all at once. Video play­back — Watch Qik or 12seconds video clips from the com­fort of TweetDeck.…

  • 5 favourite iPhone & iPod Touch applications

    I recently bought an iPod Touch to replace my very cool, yet aging Palm T|X. The iPod Touch does­n’t yet ‘fit me like a glove’ but I’m sure after time it will, and I’ll doc­u­ment my exper­i­ences with it here. Pre­vi­ously I’d writ­ten that I was rather unim­pressed with the ‘WiPod’ as I called it then.…