LibArtTech

When I began this blog earlier this year, I had obviously hoped to be a bit more regular in my postings, and in the future maybe that will happen. For the time being however, I'll need to be content with a bit less content here. However, I didn't want to end the year without doing a quick tech year in review. 2012 was a very interesting year for technology, and I can say with confidence that I've dubbed this year, "The Year of the Tablet". No single consumer technology has taken the world by storm this past 12 months as the tablet. Although tablets have been around in some shape or fashion for many years, it was when Apple released the iPad in 2010 that things really started to change. Suddenly you had a tremendously usable tablet interface on top of pretty good hardware. It took a couple years for competitors to finally get in to the game seriously, but in 2012 everything exploded. This was helped tremendously by the introduction of the Nexus 7 by Google, openin

iPhone users rejoice! Google Maps is back! Today you can download a new standalone app for Google Maps for your iPhone. To top it off, it's a better offering than the old Google Maps you could get! First and foremost, it's a vector based mapping system. The one feature I've LOVED on Apple Maps is the vector based nature of it. It means no more sitting around waiting for 'tiles' to load, the maps are drawn based on geometry and not images. Overall, one of the best things to come to mapping software in a long time. The new Google Maps app also has nice tilt zoom features, with 3D renderings of buildings, and free rotation of your view. Everything else is as you'd expect it from Google Maps, with much more information than other mapping products. Only two criticisms: I want to be able to turn off the tilt zoom and rotation. I'd like that the be a preference. I want a full iPad app (coming soon apparently) Otherwise, it's a great app, and worth