Tech Blog

Hey, it's December! Time for holiday related puns, OK? Seems like it's well worth to note that what's gotta be an anticipated Nintendo 3DS title, Mario Kart 7, drops tomorrow.

“Segway will be to the car what the car was to the horse and buggy.” — Dean Kamen, quoted in Time on December 2, 2001

"Ginger" (the Segway's code name) hasnt quite lived up to the hype, so on the 10th anniversary, here are 10 Segway fails:.

So you just bought Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception, finished it and now you're ready to shelf it. But why do that when you can get $50 in store credit, actually a gift card, from Future Shop for trading it in? 

Google has been undergoing a bit of a makeover the past few months as each of their services gets folded into a new look that started with the release of Google+.

Here are some tours of the changes to find out exactly what Google did and how you can maximize your user experience.

Just when I thought we were lucky enough to receive one exclusive Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 video, along comes a second video given exclusively to Future Shop.

The holiday is by far my favourite time of year. Family, friends, food and fun gifts! I stumbled across this nifty retro item through my colleagues over at Native Union and Future Shop: the Moshi Moshi Pop phone attachment. Apparently, retro is in this holiday seasons, and this accessory really brings the "pop."

Canadian iPad owners can now enjoy BBC's content for the price of two pints of Guiness or $8.99 a month ($84.99 a year)

Available today on the iOS App Store for iPad users (no iPhone or iPod Touch app yet) the BBC iPlayer App offers 1500 hours of content, that can be streamed directly to the iPad or downloaded for future consumption.

I found an old post I wrote on December 1, 2006 in the Wayback Machine on the Internet Archive.  

It was an interesting look at how much the prices have (or have not) changed for gadgets and which ones truly had staying power.

Earlier this week, Bethesda released a Skyrim patch for PlayStation 3 users experiencing a pesky, yet rare save file bug.  Now that users have had a chance to test out the new v1.2 update, it seems that a fresh batch of problems have emerged.  Not the kind of news you necessarilly want to hear. 

Whether it’s been an underlying or obvious trend in gaming this year, 2011 has seen a considerable increase in remakes of older classics. And we’re not talking about taking a game from the 80s and reimagining it, we’re looking at games of the last decade getting the HD and 3D treatment. Nostalgia seems to be in this year in a big way.

The 2011 epic fantasy film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 made its much-anticipated home video debut on November 11, taking the top spot on the home entertainment sales charts for the week ending November 13, despite releasing on a Friday instead of the traditional Tuesday and only being on sale for three days.  It's been Potter-Mania ever since, as fans have been snatching up copies of the eighth and final instalment of the Harry Potter film series on DVD, Blu-ray and 3D Blu-ray.

Call it magic (or perhaps in this case, wizardry), as we've been lucky enough here at the Future Shop Tech Blog to receive an exclusive online clip showing never-before-seen production footage with commentary from director David Yates.  If you're a Harry Potter fan, and there are millions of you out there, you won't want to miss viewing this incredible behind-the-scenes footage.

They have an iPhone, and iPad, an iPod and a MacBook.  

That's all you need to know to quickly scan this list and find a gift for the Apple fanatic in your family.

Here's some interesting news. Square Enix has teamed with Ubisoft to inject Assassin’s Creed Revelations into the upcoming Final Fantasy XIII-2.  Ubisoft will be lending Square Enix Ezio's costume and make it an optional outfit for Noel Kreiss, one of the main characters of Final Fantasy XIII-2, via downloadable content. Weren't expecting that now were you? 

In a world of rapidly-changing technology, the old adage that bigger is better has gone the way of the dinosaur - the exception, of course, being the size of your flat-panel TV.  And so it begs the question, does smaller mean cheaper, or lesser quality?

The idea of a “smartpen” isn’t a new concept, since Livescribe and other companies have been making them for at least a few years now, but the functionality and usability of these things continues to improve. Even though this marriage of old school handwriting and digital recording requires special paper, it’s still cool to be able to do a number of things with it that save time and energy.

Let's call a spade a spade.  Last year's Kinect Sports, much like Wii Sports some four years prior, was really a tech demo used to demonstrate the power of their respective motion control technologies.  Whereas Wii Sports introduced us to the motion sensing capabilities of the Wii Remote, Kinect Sports took us one step further and completely eliminated the motion controller from the equation.  Relying completely on full body gestural motions, we bowled, boxed and sprinted to sports stardom in the comfort of our very own living rooms.  As the best-selling Kinect franchise, a sequel was inevitable, and so here we are one year later with Kinect Sports Season Two, a game that introduces us to six new sports hoping to get us moving yet again.

lf you can't be home for Christmas, technology can take you there.  I love this image of a holiday feast surrounded by monitors.  It really is the next best thing.

Maybe this shouldn't come as a surprise, seeing as how Bethesda's massive titles have always been riddled with pesky bugs, but if you own a PlayStation 3 copy of The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim these bugs could be a bigger burden than imagined. A PS3 save file glitch has caused incredibly slow framerates, environment texture load problems, friendly dragons and "occasional performance issues after longterm play" (as stated on Bethesda's blog).  These are only some of the many problems, which I have fully outlined below, but Bethesda has tended to them with Patch v1.2. 

Since the release of the anticipated Uncharted 3: Drake's Deception there's been lots of talk about the game's sluggish and unresponsive gunplay -- from what I've noticed, it's been a hit or miss for many. There have also been other issues, primarily with multiplayer.  Luckily, Naughty Dog has listened to the fan feedback and fixed the issue with a recently released patch, v1.02.  

Google and Disney have signed a deal that makes the studio's full length movies available throughYouTube. Movie's have been available for rent on YouTube since the spring, but Google has never really pushed the service.  With Netflix stumbling, now might be the time to pounce.

Before you go crazy with your Cyber Monday deals tomorrow (and after the Black Friday deals this week) don't miss out on this if you're a Gears of War 3 player (and yes, apparently i *am* Future Shop's resident Gears of War newshound):

It's been 40 years since Gene Wilder last doned his flamboyant purple velvet jacket and pronounced gold bowtie as Willy Wonka, the eccentric chocolate factory owner he so cleverly protrays in 1971's Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory. This perennial family classic returns this holiday season with a brand new 40th Anniversary Ultimate Collector's Edition from Warner Home Video.

Buying something for the techie on your list that has everything, or gets rather particular about the kind of gadgetry they play can be difficult, especially if you don't speak their language.  

So instead of trying to get the specs right for their new computer or camera, and instead of buying a plain gift card, why not go gag?