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Month: March 2011

  • 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…

  • Calling All Scientists — Google Science Fair Entry Deadline Looms

    Well there’s only 5 days left (as I write this) for stu­dents world-wide com­plete their exper­i­ments, write-up their sum­mar­ies, and cre­ate their sup­port­ing video (or slide present­a­tion) for entry into the Google Sci­ence Fair (http://google.com/sciencefair). I’m really look­ing for­ward to see­ing the cre­ativ­ity shown in these entries — espe­cially any that relate to liv­ing in a…

  • 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…

  • A great couple of weeks to be an iOS gamer

    Three excit­ing games were released for iOS devices in the last week and a bit. One was from a well-estab­lished com­puter and con­sole devel­op­ment jug­ger­naut. One was from a (now) block­buster com­pany that made their name on the iPhone and iPod Touch. And the final one from a small but respec­ted Cana­dian design house, is…

  • Oldschool Awesome — Sword and Sworcery brings it!

    With an allu­sion to a massive psy­cho­lo­gic­al exper­i­ment, the new Super­broth­ers Role Play­ing Game release, Sword & Swor­cery, brings a new / old 8bit look to iPad gam­ing. Oh, and the game can integ­rate with your Twit­ter account, extend­ing the game­play into the Social Media world.  While I down­load the app and start play­ing (for an…

  • Garage Band for iPad Explained [Video]

    If you’ve been won­der­ing what all the fuss is about — this 12 minute video will walk you through all that is Gar­age Band on the iPad. Very well done!

  • 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…

  • My most anticipated game of 2011 [Video]

    I loved Portal. It was a chal­len­ging, enter­tain­ing and darkly humour­ous puzzle game in a First Per­son Shoot­er style. And later this month, Valve will release Portal 2. Yes, it’s more Fun, with Science! Basic­ally, you have a gun that cre­ates a port­able hole that is a gate­way to anoth­er port­able hole. The Blue-ringed hole is…

  • WordPress blogging on an iPad just got easier

    Earli­er today, Word­Press released ver­sion 2.7 of their iOS blog­ging cli­ent. And I’m happy to say it works well so far, though I’ve only giv­en it a very simple workout. Pre­vi­ously I’d tried the Word­Press app but had a num­ber of prob­lems pub­lish­ing from it, ran­dom crash­ing etc. So I nuked it from orbit —…

  • 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…

  • Emerging Tech: This magazine app knows what you like

    You’ve got an iPad and all the pop­u­lar magazine, con­tent, read­ing apps like Reed­er, Flip­board, Pulse, and FLUD. Well now there’s a new one using tech­no­logy from the Uni­ver­sity of Brit­ish Columbi­a’s Labor­at­ory for Com­pu­ta­tion­al Intelligence. It’s called Zite, and is it ever cool. But first, the video. Why I like it It’s a learn­ing app. Log…

  • 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…