Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

VegScan is a social tool / game that scans bar codes of products and allows people to quickly identify if an item is vegan or vegetarian. You earn points and achievements with the more items you add to the community.

You can sign up for the beta program at www.VegScan.com

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I have entered into a relationship with a new piece of high tech equipment, Drobo. Drobo is a self proclaimed “Data Robot”. In technical terms its a ASD (Attached storage device) running a custom version of RAID 5. When coupled with a DroboShare, it becomes a NAS (network attached storage) device.

In non tech terms, its an external harddrive that is expandable (up to 16 terabytes!) and can keep your data secure. The droboshare allows your computers to connect to it over your home network.

In the past I have blogged about how I love backups and how having good backups have saved my ass. The Drobo is the next evolution in my backup strategy.

I have recently moved away from my Windows Vista desktop and started to use my new Mac Book Pro as my main computer system. I eventually want to retire all the desktops on my network and run only laptops. I wanted to find a solution that was robust, expandable and allowed all of y computers to share a pool of data. After doing some research on popular NAS setups, I decided to go with Drobo.

One of the things that I liked about Drobo was how mindlessly easy it is to add more hard drives to the system. It’s so easy that I shot a video of myself adding a terabyte of storage in less then 30 seconds.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Right now I’m just testing the Drobo / DroboShare out. Once I get acquainted with it I’m sure there will be more blog posts.

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Things I was right about:

• Apple will announce a tablet device
• new version of the iPhone OS, 3.2.2
• iPad will run on the iPhone OS
• iPad will run iPhone applications
• The iPad will have a 10 inch screen (9.7 inches is close enough)
• 16, 32, 64 gig versions
• Verizon will not be involved

Things I was wrong about:

• There will be a new iPhone
• The new iPhone will have a new camera. The iPad doesnt have any cameras!

Apple has sample code to accomplish just this task. The Reachability class is not shipped with the SDK, but is part of a sample project of the same name. http://developer.apple.com/iphone/library/samplecode/Reachability/index.html

Using the reachability class:

Set up:

• Download the reachability project from Apple
• Copy Reachability.h and Reachability.m to your project.
• Add the ‘SystemConfiguration’ framework to your project.

Sample Usage:

Reachability *reachability = [Reachability sharedReachability];
 [reachability setHostName:@"www.JoshHighland.com"];
 NetworkStatus remoteHostStatus = [reachability remoteHostStatus];
 
if(remoteHostStatus == NotReachable) {
 //no internet connection
 }
 else if (remoteHostStatus == ReachableViaWiFiNetwork) {
 //wifi connection found
 }
 else if (remoteHostStatus == ReachableViaCarrierDataNetwork) {
 //EDGE or 3G connection found
 }

To most people, sending a single message to 10 people might be excessive, for me, it severely limiting. I am in charge of organizing activities for several organizations, social groups, and occasionally my church. The ability to send a single message to a large group of people has been so handy. Now if I need to send a txt message to 50 people, I’m going to have to send the same message 5 times. Talk about a step backwards!

Apple has also modified the messaging applications so you have to pick the phone number for the person you are trying to text, even if the contact only has one number. Before the MMS update, if only one phone number was in the contact, it would be used. The number of clicks has increased from 1 to 2. So, texting 10 people now requires 20 clicks instead of 10. Double the effort. I can’t see how this is progress. It feels like AT&T and Apple don’t want people to send as many text messages, so they are making it harder to do.

Dear AT&T thank you for giving up MMS messaging after all these year, but please give us back our mass texting abilities!

“RotoPhoto” is my first iPhone app. It’s a simple tool that allows you to rotate the orientation of a photo taken with the iPhone. The internal sensors of the iPhone are designed to know what direction is up at all times and auto rotate the iPhone camera for you, so no matter the angle you take the picture they are facing up. If you have owned an iPhone for an extended period of time, then you know that the iPhone can get confused when you take a picture when the camera is pointed down or up, and your picture comes out sideways. The iPhone doesnt have any built in facilities for adjusting your photos. RotoPhoto is a tool that fills that gap.

With RotoPhoto you can fix your photos orientation before sharing them with friends.

RotoPhoto is avaliable for $0.99 USD on the iTunes store.

You can check out http://RotoPhotoApp.com for more information

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