February 2011

Music Diary Notes: TuneSecure – Making the (Same Old) Piracy Argument New Again

Why is it that music files were the first ones that were widely pirated, yet now account for ~3% of files downloaded in a recent survey? Bandwidth – or more to the point, convenience! But as internet access speeds and download methods have evolved people are downloading movies and games and other massive files more frequently than music. For a long time folks in the RIAA and MPAA and other related media industry groups have keyed on THAT – the ever-increasing ease of piracy – as a route to eliminate piracy by making it inconvenient / uncomfortable for pirates. Their…

News

Mobile Fun’s TypeTop Swivel Mini Bluetooth Keyboard for iPhone 4 Case Creates the Smallest Mobile Office

With so many keyboard cases being introduced in the past few months for the iPad, people who were using their iPhones as mobile offices might have been feeling a bit left out. They need feel that way no longer. With the introduction of Mobile Fun’s TypeTop iPhone 4 Keyboard, the iPhone comes into its own. Swivel design gives many different angles to use iPhone and Keyboard Adds a stand to your iPhone for FaceTime and viewing media Full QWERTY keyboard makes typing easy Built in battery won’t take power from your iPhone 4 Connects wirelessly through Bluetooth Adds just 0.9mm…

News

dB Cases Crank It Up

Just can’t quite hear your iPhone or iPod Touch but hate earbuds and a big-honkin’ add-on amplifier unit is nowhere in sight? The folks at dB Cases have a solution for you.

News

Amazon Adds Unlimited Free Streaming for Prime Members

I joined Amazon Prime last year by way of a free one-month trial and somewhat reluctantly paid the $79 annual fee, but by the end of the year the service had easily paid for itself in terms of greatly reduced shipping costs, no minimum to qualify for free shipping, priority treatment and so on. At the same time, my wife bought me a Roku XDS for Christmas and my family has greatly enjoyed the simplified access to Hulu+, Netflix and rental movies through Amazon On-Demand. We recently decided to (once again) cancel Netflix due to the selection and our usage…

Gear Bits

GD Quickie: Joby Yogi for iPad- “I Reviewed It and Still Use It”

I spent the morning trying to catch up on phone calls. That meant I didn’t get out of my chair once. At a certain point, however, I got to feeling quite antsy and knew I needed to do something. I haven’t run in quite a while due to an ankle strain but it was feeling better and I NEEDED to run. I also needed some loud music to motivate me. My treadmill has speakers and an iPod dock but it doesn’t get quite loud enough. On the other hand, the speakers I recently attached to an Airport Express for streaming…

Events

MWC: One Last Look at Mobile World Congress 2011

Beyond hamming it up with wandering oompah bands at Mobile World Congress, Helena and I managed to get hands-on time with some of the new devices and technologies that will be causing a stir in 2011 and beyond! HTC’s New Android Devices HTC won me over with their lovely new ChaCha. After using the BlackBerry Bold for a week, with its tiny little keys that I never got used to, the generously sized keys on the ChaCha, along with its softly curved body … I so wish that my Tru SIM had been installed in one of these babies. Helena…

Reviews

Mediafly Drives Apps for Ford Reality Show: Focus Rally America

If you are a devotee of reality TV programming you already know about this next event-related app/app-related event, The FocusRallyApps/Ford Focus Rally: America. Kicking off on American Idol and revisited this week on the season début of Amazing Race, the Focus Rally pits six two-person teams in brand-spanking new 2012 Ford Focus hatches driving around the country utilizing social networking to decipher a series of clues that will lead them to a grand prize of $100,000 and a new Ford Focus. Mediafly, a market leader in multi-screen media solutions is providing applications to extend the viewership to mobile and tablet…

News

The Hidden Price of Our Gadget Obsession: Child Labor

One item that came through in Apple’s Supplier report last week was a marked increase in issues with child labor in supplier facilities, particularly in China. The report noted that Apple ” audited 127 facilities and found 91 cases including 31 workers who had been hired prior to reaching the legal age, but were no longer underage or no longer employed at the time of the audit.” Before you get out the Apple-bashing hammer, remember that EVERYONE making devices is using these facilities – Dell, Asus, Acer, HP, even Samsung gets loads of stuff from these plants. This means it…

Reviews

The Aligata iPhone Leather Sleeve Review

Uncomplicated good looks, even contrasting stitching, and leather which will only get more beautiful over time as it is used … these are what you’ll get when you purchase an iPhone leather sleeve from Aligata. Don’t be fooled by the name, though; the iPhone Leather Sleeve will also fit other similarly sized phones and devices. Because he knows how much I like this combination, Tom from Aligata sent me a nude beauty sleeve with yellow stitching. This particular type leather usually comes with white stitching, but for a fee (and a little bit of prior-to-ordering discussion) you can specify other…

Editorials

Steve Jobs Health and Our “Right” to Know

If you take a close look at the site over any given period of time you’ll notice that there are some types of content you see elsewhere that is rare here are Gear Diary. You won’t find a lot of posts having to do with the latest rumor coming from the blogosphere; after all these are simply rumors, and more often than not they end up being false in the end anyway. This is particularly the case with Apple, although I’ll admit that when it’s a day or two before a key press announcement, if the overwhelming consensus is that…

Reviews

iPhone Accessory Review: id America Gasket Brushed Aluminum Case

It is pretty amazing to consider the variety and range of styles of iPhone cases that you can find.. There are simple silicone cases, leather cases that double as a wallet, and metal frames that suspend the iPhone in the midst of what looks like an exoskeleton. Today we’re going to take a quick look at one of the more unusual cases we’ve seen, The Gasket Brushed Aluminum Case from id America. From the Company: Conceptual inspiration: Inspired by the shape of a head gasket on a performance engine, our Gasket Brushed Aluminum Case transcends technology with its unique design…

Reviews

iPad Accessory Review: The Kensington KeyFolio Wireless Keyboard Case

When the iPad was first released Apple make sure to immediately offer a keyboard dock so that people who wanted to use the device for productivity would be able to type on it with great speed and accuracy. The dock was rather expensive and because of its size, shape and weight it wasn’t the most mobile accessory. I purchased one immediately I found myself not using it all that much. This was in part because, when my iPad was in a case which is 99% of the time, the dock was unusable. It assumed the iPad was entirely naked and…

News

You Didn’t Want to Know This: Mall Food Court Trays Dirty as a Toilet

Have you ever eaten at the mall food court and had your kids drop stuff on the table and say ‘hey don’t eat anything that falls off of your tray, the tables are filthy!’? Well, it turns out that the trays themselves are no better! According to a non-scientific study done by the CBC: Swabs taken from trays in food courts at three malls were sent to University of British Columbia microbiologist Bob Hancock, who analyzed the samples. The malls involved were Pacific Centre in downtown Vancouver, Park Royal in West Vancouver and Metrotown in Burnaby “We saw as many…

News

ContentMatters Translates Borders CEO’s Email

Content Matters has taken the time to give a more honest interpretation of Mike Edwards’ email, and it does a great job of hitting the high (er…low) points in Borders’ history. My favorite bits: So around 3 years ago, Amazon came out with this Kindle e-reader. As my mama said – who the heck wants to read a book on a computer? So we did the smart thing and ignored it. Our friends at Barnes & Noble came out with their own version, called the Nook. And we ignored that one too. Then last year, our private equity investors told…

Music Diary

Jonas Hellborg / Shawn Lane – Time is the Enemy

I had never been one to peruse YouTube for songs and music video clips … until I decided to start including them with my music reviews as a simple way for folks to get a sample of an artist’s sound. Then I found myself hooked! Now I will regularly check out artists of interest on YouTube to see their songs performed in a number of settings, and also use it to check out full versions of songs when the measly iTunes / Amazon sample just isn’t enough – or if I get a desire to listen to a song while…

Game Diary, Reviews

Super Ball Escape for iPhone/Touch Review

I have a running joke with one of my students about the iPhone being so much better than her Android phone. We joke about battery life and applications and games. The other day she was so proud to show me a new game where you tilt the phone like a board to guide a ball around a maze to. I laughed and told her IOS has plenty of games like that and some of them were much more involved than just moving the ball around the maze. She asked to see one so I searched for something cool. I stumbled…

Reviews

The Mili Power King P18 External Battery Review

Word spread yesterday that Apple might be looking to radically change the makeup of the batteries they use and, if this rumor bears fruit, have batteries in their devices that last much much longer. Just imagine how great it would be to have an iPhone that gets a few DAYS of runtime!? Unfortunately it is just a rumor. Moreover, while such advances would be great they do nothing for us as we sit her using the current devices available to us. For that we need external batteries and, as the saying goes, bigger is better. We’ve looked at a few…

Gear Bits

GD Quickie: What in the World is this Crazy Old Man Doing??

What is this crazy old man in the nightgown doing? Is he- A. Playing the bongos on his head B. Pretending to be Carnac the Magnificent C. Taking his temperature without anything having to actually touch him? If you said C you are absolutely right. Elana took her dad to the hospital for a follow-up on some surgery he had a few weeks back and saw this new way of taking temperatures for the first time. The Exergen Coproration‘s mission is to “Change the way the world takes temperature”. Yup, without even having to touch Mark’s forehead the nurses were…

Gear Bits, News

GD Quickie: Vintage Swedish Army Belts Ready to Do Battle With the Bulge

In a world of “new and improved” sometimes the best things are “old and broken in”. I mean seriously, if you compare the build quality of the appliances we put into our first house almost 20 years ago with the ones we installed in our current home 6 years ago it quickly becomes apparent that older things are sometimes far more durable. That goes for some clothing too. That’s where Inventory Magazines treasure trove of old Swedish Army belts comes in. As they explain, The perfect belt always seems to elude us, well some of us. One member of our…

News, Vehicles & Gear

Mark Levinson Helps Lexus Celebrate Launch of CT200h

The automotive audio industry has been a busy and competitive business segment for several decades. What began on the west coast in the 1970s spread to the rest of North America in the ‘80s and from there to the OEM side for automakers around the turn of the millennium. Entering its 10th year with luxury brand Lexus, Harman and Mark Levinson recently celebrated their latest partnership for high-end mobile audio with the release of the new Lexus CT200h hybrid sport wagon.

Music Diary

Music Diary Quickie: Jason Parker Quintet – Jay Z Mashup!

Given how much I talked about Jason Parker since discovering his music & intriguing business model early in 2010, it is not surprising that I’ve been eagerly anticipating more news on his Nick Drake project. Well, now we have more … but it wasn’t what I expected! Jason works with a rapper/remixer named Spekulation, and as he notes here had sent him early cuts of stuff from the upcoming Nick Drake project for feedback. Spekulation, as Parker says: cut up our take of “Day Is Done” with Jay-Z’s “Can’t Knock The Hustle”, and lo and behold it was magic! Spek…

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