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Tag: Media

  • 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…

  • Checking out library books on your eReader?

    Got a Sony eReader and use the Sony Reader store? Well check out the little blue & white box in the right-hand sidebar on the page. Yep, you read correctly -- you can check out books from the library and read them on your eReader.

  • My device isn’t what it was yesterday.

    One of the neatest things about com­puters, and now port­able com­put­ing devices (like my iPad) is that with a quick down­load, the unit’s func­tion changes. If the prom­ise of port­able tab­let com­put­ing plays out, mobile tech­no­logy will be the next big wave in the tech biz. And why not, we’re only lim­ited by the ima­gin­a­tion…

  • How social media tools can enhance and extend the reach of an event

    This past Fri­day I went to a fun­draiser Celebrity Chef event hos­ted by a friend and loc­al Edmon­ton social media per­son­al­ity (and Bacon Guy) Jerry Aulenbach. Held at a loc­al premi­er bur­ger res­taur­ant, the even­ing was one of good food, good con­ver­sa­tion, and a lot of glow­ing screens. The res­taur­ant had set aside a sec­tion…

  • The Decline and Fall of the Physical Media Empire

    When’s the last time you bought a CD — the actu­al phys­ic­al media? Do you remem­ber the artist or album name? I can­’t remem­ber either. It’s just not a media format that has rel­ev­ance to me now, in the age of wifi and online media stores. When once upon a time I used to have my…

  • Tablets will be the story this holiday season

    The iPad has been out for a bit now, and it’s the tab­let that all the oth­ers will be com­pared against as they jockey for pos­i­tion going into the hol­i­day season. But over­all, I think this is the year that tab­lets finally start to make some head­way into the mar­ket­place; a mar­ket­place already crowded with…

  • If it’s everywhere, is it special?

    Once upon a time, not too long ago, in the lat­ter part of the last cen­tury — say the 60’s and 70’s, con­sum­ing media was clumsy and cum­ber­some. It seemed that you had to make a spe­cial appoint­ment with your hard­ware to listen to the latest band or show some friends your latest pho­tos. You…

  • Legacy Hardware loses flagship application

    Five years ago I mod­ded my first Xbox to cre­ate a Media Centre. The soft­ware I ran, and still run is the über awe­some XBMC (for Xbox Media Center). But now it seems that the days of using my ori­gin­al Xbox as a media cen­ter are numbered — the developers are stop­ping work for that…

  • Journalism and Big Media challenges for the future

    Last night I happened to catch the CBC Radio pro­gram Ideas. They were play­ing the 2009 Dalton Camp Lec­ture in Journ­al­ism delivered by ex CBC Journ­al­ist and cur­rent Wiki­me­dia Exec­ut­ive Dir­ect­or Sue Gardner. After a bit of an intro­duc­tion, she gets to the real meat of the mat­ter — how the busi­ness mod­els are work­ing…

  • Best music player ever. Songbird 1.1.1 now with watched folders.

    I’ve writ­ten before about Song­bird, the free, open-source music play­er based on the Moz­illa / Fire­Fox platform. Basic­ally Song­bird rocks. Well, now there’s extra-new-and-improved Song­bird good­ness as the update was released this even­ing, with the one sig­ni­fic­ant fea­ture it’s been lack­ing up ’till now — the ‘Watched Folder’ feature. To quote from the song­bird release email:…

  • A few Twitter tips for TV media

    Recently I had the oppor­tun­ity to help intro­duce a loc­al TV news anchor to the rather con­vo­luted world of Twit­ter, via Twit­ter. That ses­sion gave me pause to think about what the TV news media really knows about this new media and its denizens. So, to save repeat­ing myself, and per­haps help a few oth­er…