March 2012

FoxFi Android WiFi Hotspot App Now Available on Google Play!

It is very frustrating to be sitting with a WiFi-only device, a smartphone with loads of monthly data remaining and the capability to act as a hotspot, only to be thwarted for using the capability because your carrier wants you to sign up for a $20 monthly fee to use the hotspot … and you don’t want to pay. There have been numerous solutions to both tethering and hotspot creation, but most hotspot apps have required users to root their device, something which can have other unwanted effects (such as having to root in the first place).

Game Diary, Reviews

Rhythm Heaven Fever Nintendo Wii Game Review

The Nintendo Wii exclusive game Rhythm Heaven Fever challenges essential gaming reflexes as well as your musical rhythm.

News

FREE Readability Android App Launches on Amazon AppStore

Readability was a small app that hoped to make browsing the web better by making it a more simple and streamlined reading experience, but ended up gaining notoriety for publicly taking Apple to task for the in-app purchase revenue sharing system. Now the app has finally arrived on Android, and is launching exclusively on the Amazon AppStore for Android, and for FREE! The app has gotten solid early reviews, and is definitely worth checking out. Here is the overview: Read on Your Terms Readability turns any Web page into a clean view for reading now or later on your computer…

eBooks

The Agency Model Is Under Fire, but the Author’s Guild Is Fiddling As It Burns

Last week, news broke that the Department of Justice is pursuing legal action against publishers and Apple for their “agency model” pricing structure. Under the Agency Model, books are not sold wholesale but at a fixed price with a set amount going to the retailer and the publisher. No retailer has pricing flexibility, and they are barred from offering coupons, discounts, and other ways to undercut the competition. This is, to put it bluntly, incredibly anti-consumer. Imagine shopping for eggs, and the grocery store has to offer eggs at the same price as Target, 7-11, and the gas station because…

Gear Bits

What Do You Do When the Internet Is Down?

I’m not going to lie — this looks more like the way I behave than I’d care to admit; okay, minus the crying in the mirror part. My family can tell you that when I am trying to edit or write and the internet goes down, I am an absolute pain in the butt to be around; grumpy and moody and prone to random curse word outbursts. It’s not pretty. I’m almost as bad when our WiMax internet service is hiccuping and slower than usual. Anymore, I try to leave and go on a long hike when this happens, but sometimes ……

Gear Bits

Android Developers Can Now Develop on the go with AIDE

In yesterday’s post about Post-PC or Plus-PC, I mentioned that you could generally not write programs on mobile devices. This is not true as of today. As I was reading through my feeds at lunch, I noticed a story on the Register about AIDE. AIDE is short for Android IDE or Integrated Development Environment. An IDE is an editor that is specifically for writing programs. In this case, you write programs for Android. AIDE is not necessarily targeted for developers to use their phone to write programs. It’s targeted at developers using devices like the Asus Transformer and Transformer Prime….

Music Diary, News

Stream Esperanza Spalding’s New Album ‘Radio Music Society’ on NPR Before Next Week’s Release!

With a ‘Best New Artist’ Grammy and the immensely critically and commercially successful (by jazz standards) ‘Chamber Music Society’ recording behind her, Esperanza Spalding faced the daunting task of producing a follow up. When I heard last year that the title would be ‘Radio Music Society’, I knew that she was shifting her focus from the ‘chamber jazz’ feel of much of her last outing to something more funky and pop-oriented. Of course, that direction can be a dangerous path – you can succeed, but you can just as easily alienate existing fans without making new ones. Fortunately, based on…

News

Lenovo Recalls Many of Their M70z and M90z Think Centre All-in-One Computers

Did you purchase a Lenovo ThinkCentre M70z or M90z All-in-One Computer? Or did you win one of the three that we gave away here on Gear Diary? If so, then you’ll want to pay attention to this recall notice. There are 16,000 M70z and M90z units affected, and the recall is focusing on the power supplies specifically because they can overheat and become a fire hazard! There have been two (world-wide) reports of this happening, and Lenovo is asking that people immediately stop using their desktops until they know for sure whether or not it is one of the affected…

News

Get Your Geek On with the Unicorn City Trailer!

Every now and then you come upon a movie trailer that really gets at your inner geek … well, at MY inner geek anyway! This is one of those moments. I saw a blog post by Jay at Rampant Games about Unicorn City, and simply HAD to check it out!

Editorials

Should We Stay or Will We Go with Windows Phone?

Dan: This is the fourth and final part of our look at Windows Phone and the HTC Titan. In Considering the Move from an iPhone 4S to Windows Phone Titan, we talked a bit about the operating system and its history. In Comparing the iPhone 4s Hardware to the HTC Titan and Dipping into the Windows Phone User Interface, we addressed the user interface and some of Windows Phone’s key features. In Checking Out Windows Phone Speed, Apps, Camera, Music Player and Games, we looked more closely at the applications that we are using as well as the camera and a few additional aspects of the…

Reviews

Everki Titan Checkpoint Friendly Laptop Backpack Review

If you are anything like me, there is plenty of gear that you carry everyday. All of this stuff may not be used daily, but it has to be available since you never know. I am totally guilty of carrying too much stuff with me back and forth from work or on trips. With that said, carrying the gear is an important task. My favorite choice of bags is always a laptop backpack. Maybe it is the fact that I spend the majority of my time at a school so backpacks are everywhere or maybe I just like the way…

Events, News

Facebook Launches Timeline App Platform: Viddy launches Facebook App at SXSW!

Now that Facebook’s new Timeline feature has rolled out to the general public, companies are looking to find innovative ways to use it to provide services to users. Today at SXSW, Viddy in conjunction with Facebook’s launch of the Timeline App Platform is bringing their popular video app to Facebook. With Viddy for Facebook, users can share video content directly to Facebook, and Viddy videos can now appear on a person’s timeline, News Feed and ticker. As noted in the press release: “Watching videos with friends is inherently social,” said Justin Osofsky, Director of Platform Partnerships at Facebook. Viddy is…

Gear Bits

Is it really the Post-PC Era, or Is the Plus-PC Era Simply Continuing?

Ten years ago I bought one of the first devices I ever had that could be classified as a post-pc device or as I like to call it, a plus pc device. That was a Toshiba e740 Pocket PC. This was the first device I had outside of a laptop that included wi-fi. I remember taking the e740, a flexible USB keyboard, the keyboard adapter and a compact flash modem on a trip with me and chatting with my wife and other family members every night on a SLOW modem. It wasn’t ideal, but it worked. I also remember my…

Gear Bits

Chilling New Home Video of the Challenger Disaster

I still remember sitting in the formal living room of my fraternity house watching the Challenger launch back in 1986 (hard to believe it has been 26 years now). If I had the chance to go to watch it live, I would have done it in a heartbeat – my family was vacationing in Florida a few years back, and the schedule was supposed to have us there for a launch, but it was pushed back. We still got to see the shuttle being moved towards the launch site, and that was thrilling to behold. But of course Challenger ended…

Reviews

What’s My Heart Rate Measures by Just Looking at the Screen!

This morning I was feeling great after we got a lot of outdoor time and exercise due to the unseasonably warm weather this weekend, and I really pushed myself on my morning jog (based on my speed I can’t bring myself to call it a ‘run’), and so by the time I got home I was really winded. I checked my heart rate to be sure I was in my normal range before doing my indoor workout. Imagine if I could just check my heart rate anywhere I went using my smartphone and just having it look at my face!…

Vehicles & Gear

2012 Buick LaCrosse with eAssist

Poor Rip Van Winkle, if he were to awake today he would not recognize so many things that have exist today that were not here when he laid down to take his nap. Things like smartphones, American Idol, children not being spanked – and Buick. Sure, Buick was a division of General Motors 20 years ago but it looked nothing like it does today. Perhaps no other automotive division has undergone such a radical product transformation as Buick has in the past two decades. As one of the surviving members in the GM family, Buick dealerships no longer resemble the…

News

You and Your iPad Can Travel Light with BlueLounge’s Bonobo Series iPad Sling

BlueLounge’s new Bonobo Series iPad Sling looks like a great way for you and your iPad to travel light. As the company explains, Our new iPad Sling stylishly accommodates your everyday necessities. Ultra-light, modern, and sleek the iPad Sling features a padded main compartment, a zippered exterior pocket, easy-snap magnetic closures, and a comfortable cross-body fit. It’s the ideal accessory for commuting to the office, or simply to the coffee shop. For all iPads.

News

Really Cool Time Lapse Pregnancy Video Shows 9 Months in Under 2 Minutes!

I am really happy that I made my wife let me snap a couple of shots of her while pregnant with both of our kids. A couple of weeks ago when our ‘baby’ turned 14 we were flipping through and it was a sort of time lapse as we looked at my wife as she progressed and then the baby and our son as he grew. But this cool video shows the entire pregnancy from start to finish, one week at a time. It is amazing to watch the personal changes, the move from smaller to bigger space, and so…

Editorials

Does the Concept of “Fat Books” Still Matter in an eBook World?

Photo courtesy of 3D Photoshop Actions “I never read fiction online. I read for substance, and to me there’s no substance in a pixel. ” –Jonathan Franzen, BarnesandNobleReview.com (ironically), 2008 I’m basically as different from Franzen as it is possible to be–I pretty much only read fiction (and everything else, for that matter)–online. And as I was reading yet another book review for some massive new book–I think it was the new translation of Haruki Murakami’s “1Q84”–it struck me how often in book reviews the reviewers mention the length of the book: “It’s a thick book”; “it’s a slim volume”; “Rowling’s…

Editorials

Running, Technology, and What Really Matters

(Me, 2 years ago) I fully intended this to be a post about over-reliance on technology. You see, in one week I am running my fourth half-marathon, and I really, really, really want to set a new personal record (PR). I have trained hard, and obsessed over every run, and my biggest dilemma is whether to use my Garmin Forerunner during the race, or whether it will psych me out too much to have all that data strapped to my wrist. For those who don’t live and breathe running, a Garmin Forerunner is a wristwatch with GPS that tracks your…

Gear Bits

“Would You Believe…” It Is That Close?

The very first time Maxwell smart’s “Would You Believe…??” made an appearance on the Classic TV show Get Smart, it was in reference to Smart being tortured after being captured by the enemy. He says, “The most fiendish torture ever devices by man- the water torture. A drop of water on the forehead every minute for 300 gallons… Would you believe it?” (Reply, “That’s pretty hard to believe.”) “Would you believe a quart?… What if they came by once a day with a glass of water and an eye-dropper?” Well, Apple has its own form of torture and this is…

« 1 … 5 6 7 8 9 10 »