Tech Blog

When the iPad was first released, many people didn't get it.  It's just a big iPod Touch was the common theme tossed the iPad 's way.

Now, as the fastest electronic device in history , many are getting on board with iPad and finding new and unique ways to make it work in their lives, here are a few of the more groundbreaking ones.

In which I review the Chinese version of Titanic, trash talk Stephen Spielberg, and compare watching Jennifer Aniston movies to an alien invasion.

If you have friends with iOS devices there is a good chance you've heard strange sounds of "Weeeee", explosions, crashes, pigs oinking, pigs laughing, and the occasional "ouch" coming from their devices. Yes, I'm talking about Angry Birds. Do I have it? Oh yes on both my iPhone and in HD on my iPad. Am I addicted to it?

Yeah, yeah I am.

Look I might be biased because I think Kimli is really cool and a friend of mine, but seriously do you follow her iOS app recommendations? No? Well go! Do it now! Like today, she has three spiffy free games to try out. I found a very, very calming yet additive game called Splode thanks to Kimli. Yeah it's $2 now, but it was free when she featured it (score!).

We're all pretty busy these days so the chances of missing your favourite show from time to time is pretty high. Beyond solutions like torrents to watch the episode you missed, many broadcasters are now putting their shows up online for your viewing at your leisure pleasure. Myself I caught the Woz episode of Big Bang Theory online (and I'll have to do it for last night's as well actually), and the experience was…okay. Which begs the question:

Do you watch shows streamed to you on your computer?

Do your kids have a Facebook account? What about a website or Twitter handle?

My boys are 3 and 9mos and they have all of the above.  Call me crazy, but I like the ability to toss photos to Facebook or funny sentences to Twitter as a way to diarize my children's lives. Zacharie , my 3 yr old, says some wild things and being able to instantly pop them on Twitter lets me share with the family.

And I'm not alone, a new survey shows more than 80% of Canadian toddlers have their pictures on Facebook and a software manufacturer is using the stat to highlight we're all vulnerable to identity theft and pedophiles.

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 it’s neat that there’s computer remote control software for the iPad.

One of the easiest I’ve found to use is LogMeIn’s Ignition . Part of the LogMeIn family, Ignition lives on your iPad (or iPhone, or iPod Touch, or Android) and allows you to control any computer you’ve registered with the LogMeIn service...

Some of you may remember that a while back I posted a strongly-worded argument that NHL Slapshot should be released with classic controls. Turns out absolutely no one responded to it... well, that's a lie, actually; the fittingly-named timhortons73 did respond on the day of NHL Slapshot's release to say he completely agreed. Which was nice, but far, far too late to save NHL Slapshot's from the fate of being released without classic controls. But I still got it, I've still played it (and a lot!) so what do I think of it, even with that handicap?

With many game developers implementing 3D technology into all of their latest titles, it should come as no surprise that Treyarch's Call of Duty: Black Ops is joining the ranks in what could become the definitive 3D game experience.

Do you already have your iPad?  Or are you waiting for the various new flavours that are about to come out?  With word this week from Microsoft's Steve Ballmer that Windows 7 tablets will be hitting the marketplace in time for the holiday season, as well as word that the Android tablets will be out soon and the annoucement last week from RIM regarding the BlackBerry PlayBook, which version are you looking forward to the most?

In which I discuss the latest blockbuster from Korean director Lee Joeng-Beom, and '80's action movie cliches.

Canada's cell phone industry may be headed for a big shake up. Rogers has announced it is about to start testing 4G technology in Ottawa.

Often referred to as LTE or Long Term Evolution, Rogers claims the 4G network will be capable of speeds of up to 150 Mbps. That's about seven times faster than the current HSPA+ network which can only offer to 21 Mbps (at select times).

"Our customers increasingly want anywhere, anytime access to information, communications, entertainment and transactional experiences on their device of choice," said Rogers CEO Nadir Mohamed.

Upon the announcement that Call of Duty: Black Ops was going to be playable in 3D, I got a chance yesterday to see just what that looked like for myself. I had already seen a preview of the game in August at X’10 in Toronto, but this experience was something altogether different.

Part 3 of my interview with Lyle Workman, Get Him To the Greek's Music Producer.

Part 2 of my interview with Lyle Workman, Get Him To the Greek's Music Producer.

Facebook made some big changes today.  Privacy was finally addressed and the way we communicate with Facebook , the way we allow Facebook to communicate with other sites and the way we communicate with people we know on Facebook .

Three big changes that, on the surface, seems to show Mark Zuckerberg has no hard feelings about that movie we've all been rushing out to see this week.

Nicholas Stoller's hilarious 2008 comedy Forgetting Sarah Marshall brought us the debut appearance of Aldous Snow, an out of control British rockstar and frontman of his band Infant Sorrow, played by the charismatic Russel Brand.  Fast forward to 2010 and Stoller's back with another uproarious adventure in Get Him To The Greek , starring the hypersexual, fatuous yet oddly relevent superstar, as he makes his grand comeback at L.A.'s historic Greek Theatre.

I recently had the pleasure to speak with Lyle Workman, the talented music producer who helped bring the songs of Aldous Snow to life in both the feature film and the official soundtrack Infant Sorrow .  No stranger to the music business, Lyle's toured with such big names as Sting and Beck , recorded music for Norah Jones , Sheryl Crow , and Shakira , and has produced music for hit films such as The 40 Year Old Virgin , Knocked Up and Superbad .

Everyone hates a party bus, right? Those buses or limos or firetrucks or whatever full of screaming, usually very drunk, revellers that tend to ruin your walk home or (even worse) ruin your entire night if you get stuck in a car beside them. However! There should be no reason to hate the Wii Party Bus, probably because it's actually caleld the "Wii Party Mobile" and it'll be visiting Future Shop stores in British Columbia, Ontario and Quebec, showing off Nintendo's latest party game.

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 Desktops, Laptops, Netbooks and Data Phones.

So, why consider a tablet? Here’s a few things to think about.

A couple of years ago, SanDisk launched the Sansa Fuze, a nice budget portable media player that resembled the third-generation iPod nano, but had a unique look and feel to it. Now, two years later, they’ve launched the Fuze+, a very capable player that comes at a great price.

Sometimes I feel like a dental hygenist reminding people to floss, but every 6 months or so, I find it necessary to get on here and bang the backup monkey.

I've told you about external drives , physical copies and all sorts of different ways to make sure you never lose your important data.

So here it goes again.

Back it up. Please.

When a review unit of the Toshiba A660-042 arrived at rgbfilter, I wasn’t sure what to make of it.  The A660-042 is Toshiba’s high end Satellite laptop, and comes complete with NVidia’s 3D Vision technology.

I had just come off trying Sony’s 3D in the PS3 and  remained unimpressed with 3D in the home.  So my expectations were set pretty low.  I may have been wrong, but I was also surprised at how much more than a ’3D laptop’ this was…

Two major Blizzard releases in a single year?  Believe it.  Today the creators of World of Warcraft announced the highly anticipated third expansion pack, called Cataclysm , will be available on December 7, 2010.  The expansion will be available for PC and Mac, effectively ensuring millions of fans of the subscription-based MMORPG will have something to look forward to this holiday season.

Panasonic has jumped back into the gaming market for the first time in more than a decade, unveiling a new handheld platform with the tagline "We Are Online Gaming."

In case you missed this on my TNW post or Macgasm , it appears that when you get an Apple TV in Canada the whole "TV" option is missing.

If you're into location stuff, like say Foursquare, you might have been a little lost today. You see Foursquare has been down for the count for pretty much the entire day (it still is as I'm writing this). Now, besides the joke of who is checking into the server room...with others I hope...when I service like Foursquare goes down, and people really notice, it means that you've "made it".

In which I take a break from watching movies, by watching more movies.

Wow. I complain that the tech news week is slow, so what happens? Stuff. iPad speculation, high-tech worms, a new tablet computer from RIM and much, MUCH MORE!

In which I discuss the Japanese suspense film Cold Fish, Tropical Fish, and lesbian finger puppets.