Author: Doug Groves

dougplanet.com is his personal blog, which is withering on the vine. If you poke around it, you’ll find out that he’s an animator and broadcast designer by trade, usually pushing pixels in either After Effects or Lightwave 3D. If he absolutely had to pick a favourite all time writer, it would be Harlan Ellison more days than any other. If you don’t know who Ellison is, then Doug weeps for you. Doug also likes long walks on the beach, mainly to collect improperly discarded medical waste for an undisclosed project of epic proportions.

Stantum multitouch running on a Slate PC

November 27, 2009November 27, 2009 Doug Groves display, multi, multitouch, resistive, Stantum, Touch Park3 Comments

Stantum, who earlier this year demonstrated their innovate resistive touch screen technology which incorporates both multitouch and pressure sensitivity on a mobile screen at Mobile World Congress are showing a new update to the Touch Park software. This time it’s running on a Slate PC, which is a modded Dell Mini 10 netbook. This suggests that Touch Park has moved on up in the world to the x86 architecture found in PCs. Among the capabilities are pressure sensitivity, pixel resolution and 10 point multitouch. There’s no mention if 10 points…

The most expensive phone in the world… so far…

November 27, 2009 Doug Groves 8 Comments

If you think the above image is of some tacky new case for the iPhone 3GS, trimmed in Swarovski crystals, the de defacto mobile phone gems of choice.. well it would be understandable. You’d be wrong though. What this photo actually depicts is the world’s most expensive mobile phone, at least until some OTHER millionaire decides to out shine the Aussie business man who paid the equivalent of $3.3 million CDN for this… Priced at £1.92 million , 10 months in the making , the whole casing was created with…

Harmony Universal Remote Roundup

November 26, 2009February 16, 2010 Doug Groves Harmony, Harmony 1100, Harmony 700, Harmony 900, Harmony One, HTPC, Logitech, review, universal remote7 Comments

Before the Canadian company Intrigue Technologies (makers of the original Harmony remotes) was bought out by Logitech, obliterating the remote clutter in one’s living room or den was largely an exercise in frustration, either dealing with incomplete solutions or spending hours ‘training’ your universal remote to do exactly what you wanted to. If you were one of the few, you actually made the leap to the JP1 forums, which turned certain models of remotes into veritable powerhouses of IR control, after making a custom cable that allowed your Radio Shack…

“Rogers On Demand Online” – Hulu North or just another VOD?

November 24, 2009November 24, 2009 Doug Groves Hulu, Rogers, VOD0 comment

We’ve talked about the lack of a Hulu-type service in Canada on a number of occasions. In the US, Hulu is a free service that allows users to watch full TV episodes and movies from a number of content providers in an on-demand service on their computers, either via a web browser or dedicated client. The service does contain advertising, but is less intrusive than watching over the air or cable broadcasts. Rogers announced that they have partnered with 15 network content providers to allow streaming of content from 19…

A look at Ninja Assassin: the title is not redundant.

November 24, 2009 Doug Groves Ninja Assassin, review4 Comments

‘Ninja Assassin’ isn’t trying to change the world. It’s an over the top bloody ninja movie, capturing the sometimes cheesy feel of 80’s ninja movies, notably the Ninja series starring Sho Kosugi. To that effect, it works very well. The film takes every supernatural element applied to ninjas, and treats them as real, to the point where they actually disappear in shadows, and can heal themselves with the power of their own will, to sometimes spectacular effect. Before I go on with the review, I just want to clear something…

If you smoke your Mac could be a biohazard.

November 23, 2009 Doug Groves Apple, smoking0 comment

That’s right. According to a Consumerist story, at least two individuals had their Applecare extended warranties voided because the computers lived in households that had at least one smoker. The resultant residue inside the machines was enough to have them considered biohazards by Apple. To be clear, it’s not that the computers were damaged BY the smoke, but the presence of nicotine in the computer itself. Today, April, 28, 2008, the Apple store called and informed me that due to the computer having been used in a house where there…

Free Xbox LIVE Weekends – who needs eHarmony?

November 20, 2009November 20, 2009 Doug Groves Microsoft, Xbox 360, Xbox Live1 Comment

The Xbox LIVE Dashboard update has been launched, adding Facebook, Twitter, HD instant streaming via the Zune Marketplace and more. To give more people a taste of it, the Xbox LIVE team is taking a page out of the eHarmomy playbook, and is running free-weekend promos, which start today in many regions, while Europe starts on November 25th. As for the update itself, the main interface remains the same, and the additions are for the most part well done. The real stand outs have to be the Facebook app which…

YouTube getting all Hulu – that’s a bad thing

November 20, 2009November 20, 2009 Doug Groves google, online video, Popcorn Hour, YouTube31 Comments

Starting on December 2nd, YouTube is planning on blocking access to content based on where and how it’s being delivered. This according to Popcorn Hour’s COO Alex Limberis: On November 18, 2009 Syabas, makers of the award-winning Popcorn Hour product line, uploaded a message to their Media Service Portal that said, “As of Wednesday, December 2, 2009, YouTube will no longer be available to Popcorn Hour users.” Please understand that this is neither a technical glitch nor a decision the company has voluntarily made. To be clear, Google has changed…

Internet Explorer 9 getting HTML 5 support and GPU acceleration

November 20, 2009 Doug Groves IE 9, Internet Explorer, Microsoft, Windows0 comment

Internet Explorer may be the most popular browser in the world, but that’s only due to its inclusion with Windows itself. Mozilla’s Firefox has been steadily clawing at IE’s market share for a couple of years now, and Google’s been pushing Chrome, though with less success, so far. Microsoft tried to change that with IE 8, which actually has a very nice interface, but still presents rendering issues in a number of sites, rgbfilter.com included. This is supposedly going to change with IE 9, with more standards compliance in general,…

Google Chrome OS reveal party

November 19, 2009November 19, 2009 Doug Groves 1 Comment

It’s been a while since Google first announced its foray into the desktop OS market, but today is the launch party, and the open source project is free to download. If the above video, in all its treacly glory, isn’t enough of an indication, Chrome OS may already be obsolete. The new OS is a lightweight Linux based operating system targeting low end computer systems such as netbooks running both X86 desktop and ARM based mobile CPUs. It’s designed from the ground up to run inside the Chrome browser, right…

Flash 10.1 pre-release available

November 17, 2009November 17, 2009 Doug Groves Adobe, Flash, ION, Nvidia5 Comments

The long awaited version of Adobe’s Flash with support for video card (GPU) acceleration is now available for the PC in pre-release form. The new version offloads much of the video processing to the GPU, allowing for what is said to be much better playback performance. This is especially good news for those looking to add inexpensive ION based PCs to their home theatre setup, or want better Flash performance on their netbooks, as Flash based video is just about the only format that has playback issues in high definition. …

Amazon Kindle available in Canada

November 17, 2009 Doug Groves Amazon, Kindle2 Comments

Amazon has announced that the Kindle ebook reader is now available in Canada, which bring an integrated ebook reading experience to the market. Besides books, Canada will have wireless access to over 90 newspapers on a single use or subscription basis. In the US, customers can browse and buy books directly through the device using a 3G connection, for a fee of 10 cents per book. There is a similar deal with one of Canadas wireless carriers, but as of yet that carrier hasn’t been announced. If you’re interested in…