Tech Blog - Page 2

Mona Simpson's eulogy for her brother, Steve Jobs, made headlines around the world when she revealed his final words.

Oh wow. Oh wow. Oh wow.

Those were the final syllables he spoke to his family around his bedside before he drifted off to death hours later. Jobs didnt have a Twitter account, so those are the final words we have from him. 

Others, however, have had their final words memorialized in 140 characters or less.

No, really there’s an app for the upcoming Vancouver civic election. Hokey? Kinda pointless in a couple weeks? Yeah, sure on both counts, but that’s not the point here. Civic elections often aren’t the most thrilling electoral events, so anything that can help answer questions, boost interest, or reach people where they “are” is a good thing in my book.

Did you hear a strange sound today? Something like relief, but also tinged with a little excitement? Yeah that would because thousands of Google Apps users can now finally use those email addresses with Google+.

Newsflash: Google Maps isn’t perfect. Yeah, yeah, blinding flash of the obvious. Believe it or not Google knows this and would really like to fix that, so they are asking for our help. Yes, according to the Globe and Mail finally Google Map Maker is now available in Canada.



In the past couple weeks the YouTube channels of Sesame Street and Microsoft were hacked. In the case of Sesame Street the hackers posted porn into the channel and Google was able to take care of it quickly. Microsoft didn’t get porn, just embarrassment. Here’s the question: Could Google’s own two-factor authentication have prevented both of these hacks? Maybe.

Zite for iPad—born in Vancouver through research at UBC and now owned by CNN—is one of those “best of breed” apps that makes keeping up with the news nearly painless. Except if you have lots of people using your iPad. So while you might be interested in all things Mac your spouse might what to keep up with all things knitting (which is what it would be in my house) and having those two interests in Zite can be a little annoying. Especially if, for example, you read some things of shared interest and keep giving thumbs up and thumbs down to the same content. Zite feels your pain and has created a simple solution: user profiles.

Twitter is all about listening.  Never mind about what you have to say, if you really want to "get" what's going on in the social sphere, listen.

If your Twitter follow list has expanded from a few dozen to a few hundred to a few thousand keeping track of the different conversations can get a little hectic.

TwitCleaner is a website that promises to help you clean up your stream by filtering out the garbage.

This week Google enabled Google+ users to start sharing their circles with other users. Many folks, like me, who were included in circles by folks like Robert Scoble, Thomas Hawk, and Jason Calacanis saw their follower numbers jump. Hugely. Many users, like Fraser Smith found that their number of followers on Google+eclipsed their number of followers on Twitter. Which confirms what many of us have been thinking—It isn’t Facebook Google is gunning for first, it’s Twitter.

I’m an unabashed fan of everything Kobo does. I’ve long held that Kobo gets ereading better than anyone else—even that other book seller based in Seattle—and their recent Kobo Pulse announcement shows that they are on the same, solid track as always. By connecting the Kobo app with Facebook and your Facebook friends, Kobo brings the experience of reading a book with a group of friends in a book club to every page of your book. Creepy? Maybe (you can turn it off), but I think the capability in the app is going to set the stage for more collaboration—think classrooms people—in the future.

Happy birthday Google! I remember seeing this new “Google” thing when it first started off as an upstart search engine. From the beginning you could tell that the results were better and more closely matched what you were really looking for. I remember as a new blogger—using Blogger in fact—I got first crack at Gmail and haven’t looked back (that would be April 27, 2004). Now that Google is 13, a teenager, what’s next?

For those of you, like me, who are into Google+, the mobile app had been updated with scads of new versions. The Android version was updated a couple days ago and the iOS version updated yesterday afternoon. From Google’s post you can get a sense of how fast new features are being added. Remember G+ is only a few months old and is still growing and expanding all the time. Often check out G+ on the mobile app, if nothing else to keep up with things.

Facebook unveiled their new master plan at the F8 conference yesterday.

That plan? To own you.

While the Interwebs were all abuzz about some social network, Google released an update for Google Chrome Beta today and made the revamped new tab window active by default (you could try it before though about:flags). I think it’s pretty slick and unlike Firefox, when new updates come in the beta (or dev or Canary) builds, it actually makes a positive difference in the browser.

Yeah we might be a little biased around here, but we think Empire Avenue is quite the hot item. Sure, it would be great if you bought shares in me, the real story here is that Empire Avenue is fast out of the gates with support for the new Google+ API. Sure, it might be a limited rollout at first, but it looks like they beat Klout to the bunch, which they must think is cool.

One of the things I’ve always liked about Flickr was the easy granular control over pictures. I have pictures of my kids up on Flickr, but to protect their privacy only people I mark as family and friends can see them. This is great, but what if I take a picture of something close to my house or their school and I don’t want strangers figuring out where that actually is? Today’s geotagging in cameras and software makes it easy to figure out where people live and work. Sure this isn’t a problem if your friends and family know (unless you’re hiding from them, in which case you shouldn’t be posting stuff online), but what about the world? Personally tend to turn geotagging off on my cameras, etc because I don’t want to accidentally reveal locations I’d rather keep private. Maybe now I won’t have to because Flickr has rolled out something to hide location info from people around sensitive areas. They call it geofencing.