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At the end of February I met up with a few friends in Lake Tahoe, California, for a few days of skiing in the Sierra Nevadas. It was my visit to California and I was extremely excited to check it out. Unfortunately, this winter was one of the worst on record for snowfall and the [...][IMG]http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/images/17/00/44/60/72/446072.jpeg[/IMG]
As 2011 comes to a close, I thought it would be fun to take a look back at my favorite albums released this year. I listened to a lot of music. With great services like Spotify and iTunes Match recently released, I found myself listening to music constantly. I continued to explore new genres and, as [...][IMG]http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/images/17/00/40/21/48/402148.png[/IMG]
Earlier this year Apple announced iTunes Match alongside its iCloud offering. iCloud allows you to access your music from all of your devices and download (or stream) the music you want to listen to. iTunes Match is intended for users who have music in iTunes that was not purchased from the iTunes store. This could [...][IMG]http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/images/17/00/38/90/75/389075.png[/IMG]
With the launch of the new iPhone 4S last week, Apple introduced an intelligent personal assistant named Siri. Apple acquired the company, Siri, in April of last year and has since been integrating their software into iOS. Siri uses advanced natural language processing to assist with making phone calls, scheduling meetings, sending messages, or simply [...][IMG]http://media.newschoolers.com/uploads/images/17/00/37/38/55/373855.png[/IMG]
I’ve always been a huge fan of action sports films. There’s just something magical about watching some of the best athletes in the world travel to incredible places, ski/bike/ride ridiculous lines, and hit enormous jumps. It’s exciting to me because I can relate to the emotions they must be feeling, and I can appreciate the [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/34/52/89/345289.png[/IMG]
This coming Monday will be exactly 2 years since starting the P90X workout program. I first heard about the workout DVDs from a friend and later discovered that they were quite popular on late night infomercials. I decided to try it out and quickly realized that this was the real deal. This program is intense [...]
If you haven’t noticed, the mobile photo sharing space has been exploding lately. Facebook, Google+, and Twitter are all including photo-sharing as a major feature in their mobile apps. Smaller startups, such as Instagram, Path, and now Pool Party, are starting to get quite a following as well. Instagram continues to be my favorite photo-sharing [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/31/78/14/317814.png[/IMG]
Two weeks ago a couple friends and I headed up to Snowshoe Bike Park in WV for a weekend of downhill mountain biking. This was my first trip downhilling, but I generally do 3-4 days of cross-country mountain biking each week. The allure of downhill biking is a combination of lift access, big bikes, speed, [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/31/38/84/313884.jpeg[/IMG]
I installed OS X Lion (10.7) this week on both my personal and work Macs. I spent some time over at roaringapps.com checking application compatibility for my frequently used applications. Everything was reported to be working fine in Lion so I decided to take the plunge and upgrade my OS on the first day it was [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/31/38/77/313877.png[/IMG]
Spotify announced this week that it’s finally coming to the US. The streaming music service has been hugely popular in Europe since it started in late 2008, but presumably the record label deals have kept it from reaching the US… until now! Spotify offers three plans: Free, Unlimited, and Premium. The service is currently invite-only [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/31/30/99/313099.png[/IMG]
This weekend I read a linked post on The Brooks Review which really irritated me. The linked post was about the popular 1Password application. Justin Blanton says: “While on the topic, if you?re not using 1Password (or similar)?and you can afford it?then you?re an idiot. I?m sorry to be so blunt, but there just isn?t [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/16/18/88/161888.png[/IMG]
I’ve been thinking a lot about the Mac App Store lately. The store is essentially the same thing as the iOS App Store that exists for iPhone and iPad devices, except for Mac OS X applications. The App Store makes it extremely easy to download and install free and not-so-free software. The store features the [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/03/94/09/39409.png[/IMG]
A week ago, my wife Caitlin had her iPhone 4 stolen at a local restaurant here in Raleigh. She was eating with some friends and decided to move outside near the end of the meal. The iPhone presumably slipped out of her pocket as she was getting up. A few minutes later she realized it [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/03/89/68/38968.png[/IMG]
While working on my blog this weekend, I stumbled upon the archives and started to read through some of my old posts. I found a screenshot of my iPhone home screen from August 2008. It’s fascinating to see the apps I was using back then and see how my “top apps” have changed over time. [...]
Over the past few months I have been carefully following the news and reviews about Blackberry’s new tablet, the Playbook. I’m not exactly sure why, but something about Blackberry has sparked my interest lately. (Basically, I think their future is looking disastrous… but that’s a topic for another day.) I’ve been surprised by the significant [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/03/83/59/38359.png[/IMG]
Over the last month or so I’ve been on a quest to create the perfect cup of coffee. I’m definitely not there yet, but I think I’m headed down the right path. As a Software Engineer, it’s absolutely critical that I have a good source of tasty coffee (and, good coding music) in order to [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/17/00/03/20/20/32020.jpeg[/IMG]
If you’ve been following me on Twitter this week, you’ll know that I recently picked up a shiny new iPad. I decided not to write a review of the iPad right away, but instead spend a week using it and report back with my findings. It’s really easy to jump to conclusions (good or bad) when [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/70/50/7050.png[/IMG]
Wow, I haven’t written a blog post in weeks! The weather has been getting really nice here in Raleigh, NC and I’ve been trying to spend as much time outside as possible. Although I might not have been inspired to write about tech lately, I’ve definitely been keeping up with it. One of the most [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/64/55/6455.jpeg[/IMG]
I was originally planning to do a post about Google Buzz this weekend, but then something reminded me about Google Wave. I don’t know about you, but I haven’t heard anything about Wave in weeks. It occurred to me that one of the most hyped products of 2009 might have fallen completely on it’s face. [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/41/73/4173.jpeg[/IMG]
As some of you know, I am the web developer behind the Penn State Snowboard Club (PSSC) website. I built the site from the ground up 3 years ago when I was attending Penn State. The website has evolved a lot since then and has signed up over 1,200 users. The past couple months I [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/41/23/4123.png[/IMG]
If there was any doubt about Apple’s stance on Adobe Flash before Wednesday’s keynote, you can kiss that goodbye. During the keynote, Steve Jobs was casually browsing the web (it was a bit awkward, actually) and he spent a few minutes on the New York Times site. As he scrolled down the page, there was [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/34/00/3400.png[/IMG]
Today Apple finally announced the tablet that we’ve been hearing rumors about for the past year. The rumors were so intense lately that they actually started to get annoying even to a big fanboy like myself. The event was pretty exciting. It was great seeing the incredible new UI design built specifically for the new [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/32/86/3286.png[/IMG]
Just over 4 weeks ago I decided to deactivate my Facebook account. I’ve had an account since freshman year of college (5+ years ago) and this was the first time I ever deactivated it. I used to be an avid user of Facebook. In fact, up until about 12 months ago, I would spend probably [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/32/04/3204.png[/IMG]
For the past few months I’ve been casually working on a new website for my friend, Ben Birk. He is a snowboard photographer who I met a couple years ago during my involvement in the Pennsylvania ski/snowboard scene. He spent this past winter in Lake Tahoe, snowboarding and shooting photos every day. Ahhh, the life! [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/20/00/2000.png[/IMG]
On Thursday Google announced a project they have been working on called Google Public DNSĂ‚Â . The Domain Name System, or DNS for short, is something that we use hundreds of times each day but hardly ever think about. DNS is used to translate easy-to-remember hostnames, such as www.google.com, into the actual IP address for the [...][IMG]http://media.nscdn.com/uploads/images/1/00/00/13/05/1305.png[/IMG]
