Tech Blog

One of the big news items of the past week has been the attempted terrorist bombing of a Detroit-bound plane and the subsequent security restrictions on air travel. Right now, we're in a transition from a period where many travelers brought only carry-on baggage to now when, for the time being, we can't carry anything on. Yes, I know that these rules are only for U.S.-bound passengers for the moment, but I have a sneaking suspicion that even in Canada we're going to see some new rules come into effect shortly. So, if you need technology for work, play, vacation, etc. what's the best thing to do to travel with tech? Read more...

Anyone notice that Twitter had a wee problem with hackers last night? Okay, technically it was their DNS records that were compromised and not Twitter itself, but the effect was the same—Twitter went down and a very non-Twitter message was posted in its place. Given that the hack didn't involve the DNS system, but rather Twitter's account on the service, it's time again to talk about best practices for not getting hacked and some advice on what to do if your GMail account is hacked. Read more...

I'm a big believer in not reinventing the wheel, so I try to look for existing solutions to questions or problems I'm having. One of the best sources I know is LifeHacker and as luck would have it, they've just posted their list of the best how-tos of 2009. Sure you might not need all of the how-tos, but I'm pretty sure you'll be able to use at least a couple of them. Read more...

After weeks in beta, the latest update for Snow Leopard (10.6.2) has come out as well as some security updates for 10.5. It's a hefty update, my feeling is that 10.6.1 was pushed out fast to fix some key issues, but 10.6.2 is more of a refinement and fixing things that can only come out after enough people use it and start hitting issues. One of those key issues is the mysterious guest login-disappearing data bug (that's a pretty big bug, actually). Read more...

I "follow" something like 6800+ people on Twitter. I say "follow" in quotes because I honestly can't read all those tweets. There is just no way. For a long time I've been grouping the people I follow using TweetDeck, now Twitter has started to unveil its own groups feature to users (Twitter groups hasn't been rolled out to all users as yet)—Essential: 8 Things to Consider Before Using Twitter Lists - Twitter Lists; Limitations, bugs, impact, and brilliance - scobleizer's posterous—and I think most folks are cautiously optimistic about this new tool. Read more...

For the past month, and last week especially, I've been doing the final push on my book (due out in late November). If you've ever had to write a book or giant document or just something you needed to focus on absolutely completely, you know how hard it can be to eliminate distractions. Since I've been spending a lot of time lately working on reducing distractions to a bare minimum (eliminating them is a fool's errand), I thought I'd share my tips and tricks with you. Read more...

I think it's pretty safe to say that everyone writing on this blog is a geek and I'm pretty sure we do most of our own tech support. Some of us (me for example) have actually been front-line tech support people, but geek or not you too do a lot of your own tech support. Frankly it isn't very hard, tech support people don't have chips implanted in themselves to give them special power over electronic devices, all of us have just learned some simple tricks over the years that help us solve problems. Read more...

Let me guess: you turn the set on with your Sony remote, change the channel with your cable remote, scramble for the Yamaha remote to fix the volume when the COMMERCIALS OH WHY ARE THEY SO LOUD come on, and you've got a Blu-ray or DVD remote tucked into your couch somewhere. Stop hating your home theatre - there is a better way. Read more...

I'm pretty sure that most of the Tech bloggers here do a lot of work in the cloud (I know that Brad, Buzz, and I do). And while I recommend a lot of cloud computing services (like Gmail and Google Reader), I rely on desktop apps to connect to those services and get things done. While I like having backups in the cloud (DropBox and CrashPlan) I also have local backups using TimeMachine. Why these half-cloud, half-app solutions? Because The Cloud isn't perfect, yet, and I'm not the only one who feels this way: Read more...

Mac users, question for you--How often do you use the option key? Not too often? Yeah, me too, well until Snow Leopard because I've learned that this oft overlooked key unlocks a wealth of features and nice touches in the OS. Seriously. The best part is that once you start trying option-click extras, you just won't want to stop. For the longest time the only thing I really used the option key for was to type accented letters and other special characters, but lo and behold there is a lot more to the option key than just making special characters. Read more...

Now that most of us have laptops or netbooks, I thought some tips for getting the most out of your battery might be in order. You know how all laptop makers claim you can get hours and hours of battery life and you never seem to be able to? I’m betting those estimates are based on running a system with so little going on that it couldn’t tell you what time it is, in the real world however we need to get stuff done so here are some real world tips for getting the most out of your battery life. Read more...

If you want to make some new friends on the campus, then you need to make your room the social center of the building. Here's a rundown of the gear I profiled on Shaw's Urban Rush today. Read more...

One of the cool new features of Snow Leopard is supposed to be that you can drag a file to an icon in the Dock, then that apps windows will appear and you can drop the file onto that window. I thought awesome! So instead of having to arrange all my windows around to, say, upload files to my servers or email something to someone I can just drag and drop them! Well I tried it this morning with CyberDuck and it didn't work. Hrm, must be CyberDuck! Can't be me! Yeah, right. Read more...

One of the new and nifty features of Snow Leopard was supposed to be that now all Mac users, not just the iPhone and iPod Touch users among us, can sync there contacts with Google. Cool! I've been wanting needing this ever since I learned that it was possible for iPhone users--Mac OS X's Address Book Can Now Sync Google Contacts (Update: For iPhone Owners Only, UGH) - Address Book - Lifehacker - Mac OS X's Address Book Can Now Sync Google Contacts (Update: For iPhone Owners Only, UGH) - Address Book - Lifehacker--so following those directions I, erm, hacked my iPod preferences to make iTunes think I had an iPhone or iPod Touch. It never worked. Sure I had the option there in Address Book to sync with Google, but yeah nothing. Read more...

This morning I told you how I was prepping for Snow Leopard, so now it's installed and ... Read more...