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Well, it's been a long while since I've had something new to announce. I apologize for that, school has to take precedence over blogging and fun, unfortunately. But, i come to you today with something new and exciting to announce!

My second app, Simplenote for Playbook is live in the BlackBerry AppWorld!

This app is a native gateway for the popular Simplenote service, which already has apps on all other major platforms, most notably iPhone. I had, for a while, used the Web based site on my playbook for this app, however i decided that enough was enough, and people needed a good native app. So, here it is.

I spent the first few weeks of summer developing it, perfecting it, testing it, and doing just about everything i could to try to break it. Fortunately, i couldn't. So now, it's live!

Everyone who has a playbook should go and download my app. I know it's shameless self promotion, but I made it for the betterment of the platform, and for the enjoyment of all. So, everyone, go and enjoy it!

I do plan, in the near future, to bring this app to android tablets, and maybe to android phones. Keep watching here, and i'll post all news on future updates, and more!

You might remember how I said that in a few weeks time, i'd be the proud owner of a BlackBerry PlayBook? Well, that time has come. I am now using my playbook on a daily basis, for just about whatever i can. Mostly, my uses revolve around school, as that's what most of my time is being consumed by at the moment.

At first look, this is a really sleek machine. The interface is very well designed, all the transitions are smooth, and everything just seems to flow. Nothing seems to be able to slow down this thing. Flash runs beautifully in the browser, as do youtube videos and other such web elements. The only complaint i have is that javascript is sometimes a bit laggy in the browser. Everything seems to render fine, it just is a bit slow. Other than that, it's perfect.

Still though, as many people have complained, it lacks native email or blackberry messenger. I am able to use the tablet optimized version of GMail in the browser, but it doesn't give me push or fetch notifications or anything. That's something i'm waiting for. RIM says it should be out within 60 days, so i'm holding my breath. The did deliver on the video chat application, so there's reason to be hopeful.

The tablet itself has two cameras, both of which take HD 1080p video. The video quality is incredible. It doesn't do frameskips like other devices (Droid X) do. It captures at full 1080p, 29 frames per second, in all its glory. The picture quality is okay as well. It's not perfect, but hey, it's on a tablet.

There are a few applications that are not present at all in the AppWorld for the PlayBook. One is a twitter app. There is no good twitter app in the app world. All that seems to be there are the basic 'twitter trends search' app that everyone got from the Flash Builder Burrito example applications. Everyone is still waiting on developers for this one. Another one that's missing is Skype. I don't know what the status of this one could be, given the recent MS acquisition of skype, but I'm still hopeful. It does also lack a good Dropbox app. It has BlueBox, which is promising, but it is missing the very important upload feature. Currently the only way to access this feature is through the browser. But that is coming soon, and i can't wait to see it. The tablet did come with the documents to go suite, which is nice. It seems to work great, except it lacks a few features that Docs to go on other platforms has. But i'm sure those are coming in an OTA upgrade in the future.

In all, this is a very solid device. I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a smaller tablet to enter their life.

I will post some reviews on applications on the playbook in the near future, to give everyone a taste of what's available on this platform.

All for now!

Well, the 2010 holidays have come and gone. For me, they were a time to spend with family, and also playing with my newest gadgets and tech. So here, I offer you a roundup of the neat things I got, and recommend that you go and check some of these things out for yourself.

First of all, we got, for our house, a new Hitachi TV. It's pretty swell, but that's not what I want to talk about. Remember way back when, when I had said that we had gotten a Logitech Revue from Adobe MAX? Well, a few weeks ago that arrived, but we were still without a tv to plug it in to. Well, that has changed.

We hooked it up, it completed its system updates, and within 20 minutes we were rolling. At first impression, it's a very slick and refined system. You can set it up to connect to your netflix account, cable box, tv, stereo system, and just about anything else that can be controlled. Currently, we have it set up to control only our TV, as the basic cable we subscribe to does not come with a cable box. Now, many people had complained about the controller that goes with the Revue. I do agree on some level with their complaints (i.e. it's bulky, and almost too big), but to a much larger level I do not agree. Honestly, I enjoy being able to sit down on my couch and dial up a youtube video or web address without having to use the keypad on my remote. Having the full keyboard there is extremely helpful. Pair this entire system with the logitech harmony app for iPhone or Android, and you have a perfect home entertainment system. I highly recommend this one.

The next thing I received is a Seagate FreeAgent GoFlex. This drive has 1TB of storage, which is about triple what I had before. Half of this drive is now my Time Machine backup, and the other half has become my main unit for external storage. I don't have much to say about this drive, except that it's fast, reliable, and small. I highly recommend this one too.

Lastly, the thing that I liked the most was the Nook. For those of you who don't know, the nook is essentially Barnes & Noble's answer to the rest of the E-Reader market. Now, I did not get a NOOKColor, nor did I want one. I don't have much faith in an LCD display being as readable as an E-Paper display. I trust those much more. So far, it is a very fast, ver versatile e-reader. I can from it very easily download books off the B&N market, and also use Borders Desktop to sync books to it from the Borders eBook store. The E-Paper display seems to be very quick to refresh, and the small touchscreen on the bottom also seems much more responsive than I had expected it to be. This too, I highly recommend for any student or anyone who reads a lot and doesn't like to carry around many books.

In the end, the holidays went pretty well for me. What about for you? Let everyone know how your holidays turned out in the comments!

All for now!

We all are familiar with the WIndows Aero window previews when you hover over the items in the taskbar. This is the one feature from Windows that I wish was built in in Mac OS. Well now, with HyperDock, it's as close as it gets.

HyperDock does just what you'd expect it to do. Except it also can do more than you'd expect. It does give you a preview of the open windows in an application when you hover over the dock icon. However, it also integrates window snapping. So if you drag a window to a side of the screen it fills that half of the screen. Pretty neat. It also allows you to control iTunes via configurable mouse shortcuts. This little app is packed with features other than that, and best of all at the moment it's free! So why not spend your Sunday afternoon and give it a try? Head on over to the HyperDock site to download this neat little app.

All for Now!

Well, it's no secret; BumpTop is out in the wild for Mac! For me at least, it has replaced Finder for the short term if not for the long run.

At first look, wow. BumpTop is great. And you'd be right. It completely replaces finder on your mac, and integrates all the functionality of it. you can still access all the features of finder; QuickLook, spaces, and any other features that you rely on. They all work. Opening a folder opens a Finder window on top of everything. Amazing. However, there are a few great features that I'd like to highlight for everyone.

The first of these features that makes BumpTop so much better than Finder is the ability to stack items on top of each other. You can select a whole pile of items, and turn them into a stack, just as you would on a regular desk.

In the Pro version, you can use the two-finger scrolling on your trackpad to flip through the stacks. If you don't have pro, you can double click the stacks and they will open in a grid view that looks very similar to the grid view in Mac OS when you open a dock stack. Soo much better than finder, for so many reasons.

Another great feature that I'd like to highlight is the ability to control the size of items on your desktop. you can click on an item, and grow or shrink it depending on its importance to you, just as bigger documents would be on a real desk. You can grow and shrink them to make them suit your needs.

The last thing that I'd like to highlight is the walls that you have to put things on. You can double click on any of the four walls to move the camera view to that wall, on which you can pin stuff, like a real wall. This gives you that extra bit of desktop real estate when ever you need it.

The one feature that I would love to see built in is the ability to span multiple monitors. It is not currently there, but I'm sure it will appear in the future. I highly recommend BumpTop for mac and windows, even with its $30 price tag.

All for Now!

WriteRoom,MacHeist,Shareware Apps

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I am starting a new Youtube videos on How To do things in Creative Suite and or Mac OSX. I'll do any other products as well, however I prefer to stay within the Mac platform. If anyone has any suggestions, then leave a comment letting me know what you want to see. As I said, I'll do anything that you want to see.

The first one in the series should come out next week and be called, "Why iMovie 08 Sucks".

Again, leave some comments and let me know!

All for now!

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