Tech Blog

I remember the day in 1982 when my dad first plugged in our Commodore 64 .  We bought it on a trip to California, he picked up a second television to use as a monitor.  We plugged it in at our camground and were hypnotized by the warm glow tossed off by the blinking cursor.

Now, in 2010 I've got an 8gig usb thumdrive on my keychain and the iPhone in my pocket is infinitely more powerful than my first internet toy.

Moore's Law is the power behind the affordably and power of computing today.

In wrhich I discuss the Vancouver International Film Festival, Danish documentaries about North Korea, and my Natalie Portman fantasies.

Remember back in 06/07 how you'd be constantly invited to "see who's looking at your profile" on MySpace ?  It was just a phishing scam to get some malware on your computer or access your personal information yet tens of thousands (maybe millions) fell for the bait.

Now the same is happening on Facebook .

With the new NHL season less than a week away, I’ve now spent time playing all three of the major NHL releases that have come out so far. The results have been at times interesting, frustrating and familiar.

Who said Facebook was just all about violating our privacy? Turns out Facebook also is about adding useful updates to its most popular features, in this case Photos ( Inside Facebook and TNW ). Before our pictures were pretty scaled down to 720 pixels, now they can be a nice 2048 pixels, which should be good for most of us. Now, in the tagging department, like you can on Flickr, Facebook will let you bulk tag the pictures to make things a little speedier.

There's growing circumstantial evidence that RIM's salvation in the tablet market, might actually be a fake ( TNW and Singularity Hacker ). This isn't to say that the PlayBook won't exist, but that it doesn't exist now. What does this say about Canada's tech darling?

That they're scared.

Having recently moved out into my own place, I had decided long before the move that I would save the $30 per month and not get a landline. I figured with my smartphones, Skype and even MagicJack, I would be set in communicating with people. The prospect of getting a SkypeIn number appeals to me as an office number contacts can reach me at, but Skype still doesn’t support Canadian numbers.

The Xbox Dashboard getting a fall update is about as dependable as the leaves changing colour and pumpkins popping up at every corner store.  If you’ve already signed up for the preview program (now closed), you should have it now.

Though we Canadians don’t get all the goodness of our US brethren (no ESPN and no Zune Pass), the update does support Canadian Netflix access, and gives the user an idea where Microsoft is headed, not just with the Xbox, but with it’s interface metaphor across a wide swath of services for the next few years.

Last week, I wrote a post outlining my first impressions of the BlackBerry Torch after being among a few who were able to take the device home and start using it. Now that I’ve had more than 10 days to play around with it, I’ve got a much better sense of what the handset is capable of, and unfortunately, where it misses the mark.

Countless times, I've seen tourists and casual snappers walking around on a nice day taking pictures with the standard Canon, Nikon.. etc. camera strap around their necks. Ergonomically, these are a pain and can cause strain on your neck, even affecting posture. The discomfort can set in against your vertebrae after several minutes; but what about a DSLR around your neck for hours at a time?

I'm about to let you in on a secret that will make your the rest of your internet life very easy.

I'm getting you in on the ground floor of a digital home that will let you have a professional digital identity for a very long time.

It's a clean, simple home for all of your social media sites giving people you meet the chance to find out about you with just one quick click.

When SteelSeries first sent us the Xai, I was initially a little sceptical of this unassuming black mouse. I had never used a mouse from a ‘boutique’ gaming hardware manufacturer like SteelSeries or Razer before.

What could they do any better than the established peripheral manufacturers like Microsoft and Logitech? A lot of these ‘pro’ gaming mice were too flashy, and were promoting specs like super-high DPI and refresh rates. I am not a ‘pro’ gamer.

A few years back my wife introduced me to an entertaining book called Earthweb ; a science fiction novel set in the near future. The book introduced to me a couple of interesting concepts that are just being realized in our daily life today -- the first is that of a social currency or rating system that we’re seeing developing online in the form of crowdsourced reviews (music, movie, etc).

The second, and perhaps socially more important one became real today here in Canada...

Despite previous rumours that the Nintendo 3DS would arrive in Japan before the end of this year, Nintendo has instead decided to schedule releases in the East and West within a month of each other.  Nintendo's handheld gaming console with 3D capabilities now has an official launch date: February 26.

Sony and Naughty Dog’s announced an Uncharted 2 re-release set for next month with Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Game of the Year Edition today. The game’s sold over 3.8 million copies and has hosted over 125 million online games since its release last October. I can think of no better recipient.

The virtual economy is heating up. GigaOm reports that Facebook Could Make $250M From Virtual Goods Next Year ; make money from stuff that isn’t tangible. Stuff you can’t hold in your hands. Yet, the concept of virtual isn’t really new, it’s really just a new label applied to an ancient concept.

There was quite a lot of controversy when Valve announced Left 4 Dead 2 rather than--as with other games--supporting Left 4 Dead forever, for free, but I can't help but feel that it was maybe a bit churlish considering Left 4 Dead 2 was 100% new content and (I think) pretty good value. However, if you've been holding onto your copy of Left 4 Dead, refusing to buy the sequel, rejoice! New content comes your way (and it's also coming to those with Left 4 Dead 2, too.)

3D has been the topic of a lot of discussions in the tech field recently; some consumers love it, some don’t, and some don’t know what to think. When folks actually get a chance to start watching and playing in 3D it generally leaves a positive impression. I know it did with me–I’ll absolutely deal with 3D glasses for the type of immersive gameplay I can get with 3D games on the PS3 .

When 3D movies are done right they’re pretty awesome. The sense of immersion becomes seamless and you can really feel like you’re a part of the action. Well, you might not, but I really do. I saw Toy Story 1 & 2 last year in 3D and was ready on day one to pay the extra five bucks to see Toy Story 3 in IMAX 3D this year (it was worth every penny). I skipped Clash of the Titans in 3D (saw it in 2D... I liked the original more), but I’m going to pony up for Resident Evil 3D at some point in the next few weeks.

While RIM tries to keep putting on the brave face, we all know that it's threatened by both Apple and the onslaught of Android devices. The Torch looks like a decent enough phone, but it keeps getting delayed here in Canada. Today we have the announcement of the new PlayBook tablet ( Krypto's post , Buzz's post , my post ) that is RIM's entrance into the tablet market. But is RIM on the road back to greatness?

It was rumoured for a while, and hardly came as a surprise, but Blockbuster finally filed for bankruptcy protection in the U.S. last week. What I found interesting was that the man who runs Blockbuster Canada said events down south don’t affect Canadian operations at all.

Techcrunch Disrupt is going full-force right now and one of the best announcements of the day has to be Automattic announcing a partnership with Microsoft (no, the Devil did not just lob a snowball at you) for WordPress.com to replace Live Spaces .

Today, at DevCon , Research In Motion revealed their Blackberry Playbook in an announcement that smelled like something Steve Jobs would do, but fell just a little short.

We've had the iWorld defined to us as young, hip and stylish.  Blackberry has been staid, formal and business.  The Mac / PC debate in your pocket, if you will.

The announcement of the Blackberry Playbook and the way it will be rolled out falls right into that dynamic.  The PC always tries to outcool the Mac, but just can't quite make it.  The new RIM toy looks great, but the Canadian kids dropped the ball trying to catch up with Cupertino today.

The BlackBerry Developer Conference is going on now and they've just announced their new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and the BlackBerry Tablet OS.  Here's a rundown of what we can expect!

We've been bamboozled. There I said it. After a two week hands-on period I can comfortably say Netflix Canada is nothing like it's counterpart in the US. I was hoping for the best but I have to admit I am deeply disappointed in the watered down service we get north of the border.

I got my first taste of Netflix earlier this year when I was able to trick my Xbox 360 into thinking it was in the US through some IP masking. I was able to download Netflix to the dashboard and stream movies. While the streaming service did not give me access to the full Netflix library I still got a decent selection of flicks to choose from. Eventually I got tired of hiding my IP address and gave up on the American version of Netflix.

A couple of weeks ago, before the craziness of Fan Expo and TIFF , Sony Ericsson was kind enough to send us the new Xperia X10 Mini for us to review.

In the video above you can see our un-boxing of the phone, and a short review, where I go over the main features of what they claim is the ‘The worlds smallest Android phone’ .

The X10 Mini was also recently awarded ‘European Mobile Phone 2010-2011′ by the European Imaging and Sound Association (EISA).

Last week was busy, this week less so. Yet there still was news, including a severe Facebook outage and a Twitter hack...

Ping may be championed as a new way to discover new music, but I'm still finding it the old fashioned way - through a music video.

Now that MuchMusic and MTV find little time to play videos in their programming, the gang from Arcade Fire targetted the design of the video for We Used To Wait to the web, harnessing the power of HTML 5 to make a memorable clip.

It's the sort of personalized interactive experience that can only happen online and will move copies of their new disc, The Suburbs .