Category Archives: Reviews

Freshly Squeezed Reviews: In Defense Of Apple Maps

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By Frank Petrie The big troika of smartphone navigation apps are Google Maps, Waze, and Apple Maps. I believe that recently Apple has brought its maps app up to parity and then some. On November 28, 2007, Google Maps for Mobile 2.0 was released. On September 23, 2008, coinciding with the release of the first Android device. Google then broadened its market with an Android version. And not to be left out in the cold, Apple inevitably adopted a version of Google Maps. With the…

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Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Video Duke Shows Promise

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By Frank PetrieOptical discs, remember them? Now they seem almost as antiquated as 8-tracks. (Google if you don’t know what they were. I believe that The Flintstones used to use them. Google them, too.) Streaming video is king. Other than subscription services and sites such as You Tube, Vimeo, social media has most likely become part of your daily  life. Now suppose there’s a specific video that you want to watch. Of course, you can access these sites via WiFi on your desktop. But supposed…

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Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Video To Go

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By Frank Petrie How many times have you been held hostage by a family member, friend, or neighbor and forced to watch seemingly endless home videos of their kids, a recent family trip, sporting event, or what have you. Well, now there’s a book to prevent you from becoming one of the hostage takers. You can make videos that people actually enjoy watching! It’s written by videographer and reviewer Wally Cherwinski, “Video To Go’. These days, making good video isn’t about having the best and…

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Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Thumbs up, Downie

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By Frank Petrie If you love collecting video or audio media from the Internet for your personal use, this is the app of your dreams. When on the Internet, we barely scratch the surface of all the media that is out there to feast on. Personally, I have become addicted to rare sound clips, bootleg sound clips, and occasionally I find obscure movies or television programs. In the last year, I have come across a wealth of material on YouTube. From rare songs that were…

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Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Swift Be My Playground

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By Frank Petrie Opening Apple’s recent event for the new MacbookPro, they started the program off with a video showing how Apple can help the disabled to be as productive as anyone else. To drive the point home, the video was created by the person with a neuro-muscular disease in the opening and closing shots! As with the genesis of most apps, developers get their ideas from a futile search for an app to fulfill a specific need that they have. Being wheelchair-bound myself, I…

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Freshly Squeezed Reviews: Browser to Ride

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By Frank Petrie Today, there must be nearly three dozen web browsers to choose from to use on your Mac. Back in the day, there were basically three main choices for a Mac browser – Safari, Netscape Navigator, or Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (which was nicknamed Internet Exploder for reasons obvious to users). There were some browsers on the fringe but they were few and far between. As computing became more common in the household, the number of browsers to choose from slowly started growing. I…

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