Tech Blog

DJ Hero 2, which releases October 19, is packing an incredible 105 songs transformed into over 80 unique mixes from some of the top DJs in the world.

ArenaNet knows what gamers want: real, relevant, playable gameplay–and their booth at the Penny Arcade Expo proves that they’re on board with it. Each demo terminal gives gamers the opportunity to play for up to 40 minutes and experience either the opening levels of the game or an advanced character. It doesn’t matter which option you pick, however, as both are equally epic.

Dark Horse Rising

Guild Wars has always been a bit of a dark horse in the MMO world; built as a pay-once, play forever model, it cut across the grain of many other MMOs, offering end users a massive amount of content, as well as featuring paid expansions.

The team at ArenaNet made a conscious decision to re-imagine everything without reservation. That means that Guild Wars 2 doesn’t look, feel, or play like any other MMO you’ve enjoyed in recent years.

Calgary may not have as many Twitter superstars as places like San Francisco, Toronto or Vancouver but those that do use Twitter make it easy to follow the herd by hashtagging. Almost everything that happens in Calgary on Twitter is hashtagged #yyc - a great model that each local Twitter community should adopt.

With just a few seconds of his keynote address this week, Steve Jobs through the first shovel of dirt on a device that was already dead.  With a new logo for iTunes, sans CD, the company that took digital retailing of music mainstream completely buried the old way of doing things.

Taking place about 3 years after the events of Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas spans an area about the size of the Capital Wasteland, but it’s not quite the post apocalyptic environment.

Since Vegas wasn’t directly targeted in the attacks of the Great War, they still have power, which means there’s going to be a lot more colour in the new game.

I'm going to take some time off this Labour Day weekend (on my Honeymoon to be exact), and while I'm not planning on doing any work, that doesn't mean I'm going to untether completely . It isn't just that I want to stay in touch, it's also that I like to write and jot things down, so I need a certain amount of tech with me to do that. Not to mention, I'll be taking pictures, so there is that gear too. Beyond my usual " what I carry in my man-bag " stuff for just being out and about, I'm tossing in:

If there are two things that always go together it's geeks and space. Well my fellow geeks, at least those with iPads, you have got to stop what you're doing and download the new NASA in HD iPad app . It's free, don't worry about that, and once you have the app in front of you if your first words aren't "wow" you need your head adjusted.

It’s about time Apple finally started taking the living room more seriously, even if the word “hobby” is still attached to it in a tongue-in-cheek way. And while cramming in some great functionality in a little box is great, there are still some things the new Apple TV appears to be missing.

You and I can't use Twitter to be confrontational, we don't have any equity with employers to get over the hump.  When celebrities and athletes sound off on Twitter its an instant way to switch on a spotlight and ascend to center stage. There is only one man on the center of the CFL stage right now, Nik Lewis of the Calgary Stampeders.

Okay the Apple event is over. A goodly number of people have updated to iTunes 10 and are experimenting with Ping (I'm underwhelmed), but yeah that's what we could get and use now , but what about the stuff we have to wait for? What are you most anxiously awaiting?

Do you stare at a computer monitor or screen all day? You need to protect your eyes regardless of the activity. From gaming, to surfing the web, or simply doing your job at work, protecting your eyes from the damage and itchy burn caused by a computer screen is becoming an important issue in today's tech dominated world. That's where Gunnar comes in.

So you get your first DSLR, you have your kit lens and you're ready to take some pro-looking shots of your family members, pets, things sitting around... etc. Then what happens? You point the SLR in someone's face hold down the shutter button and that built-in flash pops up to assist with brightening up the subject. The picture is eventually taken 2 seconds after you were hoping and now you have a photo of your aunt and uncle with bright, awfully lit faces, eyelids half-open and you start asking yourself... but this is a DSLR! Why do these photos look like I took it with my point and shoot?

Dana Sissons, Public Relations Manager for EA, talks to me about the latest version of Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, developed by Criterion Games, makers of the Burnout series and set in the fictional Seacrest County, based on the California coastline. This offers up a variety of racing environments, with the four major variants being forests, mountains, desert and ocean.

Critics of Apple products have long pointed to the "Apple Tax" as a crux of their arguements against the products. Apple 's gadgetry is consistently higher priced that similar products with similar horsepower.  Fanboys respond by touting the company's esthetic qualities and point to the high profit margins that continously propel the stock<br><br>

Lovers of Apple products understand there is an Apple tax to be paid.  If you want the elegance of a BMW or a Mercedes , you're willing to pay a premium for the privelege - same with Apple products.  The problem comes when the Apple tax is extended to an all out money grab with an off base currency conversion.

Let's be honest here: if you have a basic understanding of the filmmaking technique known as machinima , you probably eat, sleep and breathe video games.

Easily the most popular machimina ever created is Rooster Teeth Productions' Red vs. Blue, a web series which debuted in 2003 using the game engine from Bungie Studio's Halo: Combat Evolve .  Rooster Teeth has gone all out with their latest DVD release for the series, Red vs Blue – The Blood Gulch Chronicles: The First Five Seasons.

Earlier today Apple unveiled the new look of the iPod product line, starting with the tiny Shuffle and ending with a slimmer and more powerful iPod Touch. New form factors, new hardware and new capabilities were evident across the product line, and a few of the iPredictions turned out to be pretty close to accurate

For those of you eagerly awaiting the BlackBerry Torch in Canada, both Telus, Rogers and Bell have officially announced September 24th as the release date for this device.

While the buzz earlier this week was all speculation about hardware changes and improvements, today Steve Jobs and Apple snuck in a potentially great enhancement to the iTunes ecosphere -- a little thing called Ping.

Apple likes to control the message and they did that with today's unveiling of the upgrade to iOS4 and new iPods in not only a press event in San Francisco, but one that was for the first time streamed to the internets, they took another new step by streaming their own announcement at Apple.com.

The new EA Sports NHL game for the Wii comes with a stick and features Gretzky where he belongs, in blue and orange.

I have two dogs, miniature Daschunds. They’re about 6 inches tall at the shoulder and about 14 inches longs. Weiner dogs. Doxies.

I now have a scanner, and it’s a Doxie too! It’s about 2 inches tall, and about 10 inches long. Appropriately named. But the name doesn’t do justice to the scanner itself. The Doxie is one cool and powerful little scanner in a very tiny package.

Anyone who tends to record audio or video that requires transcription later on (being a journalist, I know this all too well), likely knows how tedious and repetitive the experience can be. While not the automated solution I was hoping for, I won’t argue with free software that helps me do the job faster and with more precision.

One of the highlights of X’10 was getting a chance to go “hands on” with Microsoft’s controller-free controller Kinect.  The various mini games in Kinect are actually quite the workout, and though there is lag, it didn’t seem to affect gameplay.

We're ending off August the right way with collectors' editions announced for two of the most anticipated games this holiday season.  Disney Interaction Studios have revealed their Collectors' Edition for the Wii-exclusive Disney Epic Mickey , while Capcom showed off their glitzy Dead Rising 2 High Stakes Edition .

As a recent student, I'll be honest, I had no clue what software I needed until it was often too late.  But the right software can make all the difference and make your life so much easier.  Here are some suggestions on what software you will want to help ensure your success.  And make sure you check out the end of this post as there are some great tips on how you can get this software at prices that won't break your bank.

It's no secret that Ontario is a growing hotbed for video game development, with investment in the province heating up in recent years.  Building on Ontario's growing prominence in the global games industry, Interactive Ontario will soon be presenting their flagship 2010 IN Conference, a cross-platform, multi-stream conference where vetrans of the interactive industry from around the world come to share their knowledge, and showcase their cutting edge technologies.  This year's event will be taking place from September 12-14 at the Carlu in Toronto.

Aleissia Laidacker from Ubisoft Montreal takes me through some of the opening of Assassins Creed Brotherhood, and chats with e about some of the new features in both single and multiplayer modes.  Ubisoft appears to have further refined and added new elements to the engine, which includes a lot more horseplay (literally), some new mission variety, and at least one multiplayer mode that they’re openly talking about.

There ARE some spoilers in the video above, and after the break, so keep that in mind.

The world's largest video game concert event, Video Games Live, is returning to Canada for 16 action-packed shows in Spring 2011.  Legendary video game music composer and creator of the concert series, Tommy Tallarico, made the announcement on Saturday during his panel discussion at the Fan Expo Canada.

Technically speaking, to achieve the sharpest photos possible one generally should follow the simple rule of "two or three stops down from your lens'" maximum aperture. But why is this?

When (competitor) announced that its new Kindle would have free 3G access for users to be able to buy ebooks wherever they could, it started to make me think that Apple could very well do the same thing with one of its iPods. After all, giving users an open door to the iTunes Store can’t be bad for business, can it?

Starting to DJ is a definitely an undertaking and it can be a bit stressful. I personally never wanted to blame equipment for my shortcomings which lead me to seek out the best gear, keeping costs in the back of my mind, (until I hit the cash register) but that's not the case for most of us.

It wouldn’t be back to school without a little gaming treat, so Nintendo is making it easier for you to get into the swing of things with lower prices on their top selling portable systems.

If you couldn't buy a dictionary, would you even notice? When was the last time you picked up a paper-based dictionary to look something up? I think I looked maybe a couple months ago, but last night I consulted a dictionary several times. Through Spotlight, on my computer. Hmm. Word has come this morning at the next edition of the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary might not come out in print at all ( Mashable & GigaOm ). I don't know if this no-print declaration would include the smaller abridged versions that most of us have on our shelves (I do, actually have an unabridged dictionary here, but not the Oxford), but what if it did? Would you notice?

I've only r ecently joined not only the iPhone 4 world, but therein the iPhone world as well, so the last five days have been spent downloading apps and learning the ins and outs of the device (it's a good thing that the September issue of MacLife is all about the iPhone 4). There is one feature that I'm really dying to try: FaceTime. My wife doesn't have an iPhone 4 (she will soon though) and while I know several  of my friends have iPhone 4s, I didn't really want to bug them over the weekend. Interesting thing about FaceTime, while Apple is billing FaceTime as a huge thing, it might not be catching on as fast as Apple might have thought. Which might just be okay, because I bet it will.

Once again we’re on the cusp of Apple’s annual Fall ‘event’ . Over the last few years it’s been focused on Apple’s vision of music, entertainment, and the hardware technology needed by us, the consumers, to realize that vision.

So in two days, September 1, we’ll know what that vision of the future looks like. But there’s been a lot of speculation online as to what’s coming down the pipe, especially with the iPod line, so I thought I’d take a look at a few of the more interesting things I’d seen

Microsoft announced today that prices are going up on Xbox Live subscriptions in four territories, including Canada. The upside is that unless you buy Xbox Live in the worst way, you're not going to pay anymore.

The iPod classic is probably a thing of the past as of this year, but it’s also time for Apple to cut the cord on one of the remaining three lines. The touch is too useful and multifaceted to give up on, so that leaves the nano and the shuffle. Why not just merge these two and make it easier on consumers?

Well then, it must be back-to-school season, as the tech kids are all getting restless, buying new things, and preparing for the run up to the holiday season. Oh, and Apple is planning something rather large for later this week...