bradgrier.com

Category: Future Shop Techblog

  • FX Photo Studio is a great addition to your iPad Darkroom

    It seems that new photo cap­ture and edit­ing tools for Apple’s iOS devices are being released every day. Often they’re aver­age qual­ity tools avail­able for a buck.

  • Looking for a smart phone? Consider the Palm Pre 2. Seriously.

    Over the last few weeks I’ve been check­ing out the Palm Pre 2 — the next gen­er­a­tion key­board / touch screen data­phone from HP. Pre­vi­ously I’d not con­sidered a webOS phone much of a con­tender against the tra­di­tion­al lead­ers (Black­berry and iPhone), but this little unit changed my mind. In this review, I’ll touch on the…

  • Free photo app Instagram just got better

    The free and pop­u­lar instant pho­to­graphy shar­ing app for iOS, Ins­tagram, just pushed an update through — and it’s a nifty little update too! Aside from some bug fixes, two new fil­ters were added in the 1.0.7 update; Walden Hefe And one has been retrieved from the cut­ting room floor after a bit of a…

  • 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…

  • When is an iPad not an iPad?

    Ok, per­haps it is actu­ally “magic­al and revolu­tion­ary”. Or per­haps we’re just mov­ing toward the day that yes, there really is an app for that. Smart phones and tab­let com­puters are set to explode this year, but what will really move the hard­ware is innov­at­ive soft­ware cre­ated by developers who can see bey­ond the tra­di­tion­al fare…

  • Speed up your Internet experience by using the right DNS server

    Last week I saw this Life­Hack­er art­icle (via AppleIn­sider) about NameBench, a win­dow util­ity that tests the speed of your sys­tem’s DNS serv­ers. And I was won­der­ing if my DNS was as fast as it could be… Pre­vi­ously, I’d switched my DNS ser­vices over to OpenDNS, a free altern­ate DNS Pro­vider that adds value as: Ultra-reli­able, glob­ally-dis­trib­uted…

  • My top Apps of 2010

    Everyone’s got a Top ‘some­thing’ of the year list, so I thought I’d jump in with my picks for Top Apps of 2010 — with a little twist; only one app, per plat­form, amongst the 3 plat­forms I use (Win­dows, iOS (iPad), and Inter­net). Yes, Inter­net, for my pur­poses is a plat­form — it’s mostly…

  • 3 Awesome Photo apps for your iPad

    Now I know what you're thinking -- Brad, the iPad doesn't have a camera so why would I want photography apps on it. Well, because the iPad is portable, has a great screen that presents photos better than any other mobile device, and lets you d...

  • Kodak All-in-One is awesome asset in the digital darkroom

    “Man that sucker’s huge”, was my first thought as I unboxed Kodak’s new flag­ship All-In-One photo print­er. But that stands to reas­on, as the Kodak ESP 9250 All-in One Print­er (hence­forth known as ‘the 9250’ or ‘Kodak Unit’), does a lot more than just print. And that’s why it’s so hard to write about these Swiss…

  • Indoor or out, the Soulra shines!

    Over the last few weeks I've been listening to my iPod Touch tunes with a ruggedized solar-powered sound system -- the Soulra. And this could be one solution to a problem I've had for a while now; how to take my music outside with me and ...

  • Show your parents you care — tech style

    It’s highly likely that many of you, like me, are responsible for technical support of your families’ computer systems and internet connection. Earlier today I found a great little microsite (by Google) that’ll help you suppo...