June 2012

Waterfield Cozmo Lets Your Gear "Go First Class" Review

Reviews, Travel

Waterfield Cozmo Lets Your Gear “Go First Class” Review

So you got one of the new MacBook Pro with retina displays and love it. But there is a problem. Thanks to its thinner design and lighter weight the 15″ notebook is far more portable than its predecessor but you aren’t quite sure what you should use to carry it. Waterfield SFBags has some great options. In fact, they have a new section on the site that gather’s the best options for carrying the MBPr in one place. You can check it out here. They all look great, and I’m thinking about picking up one of the new, larger-size Travel…

Extra, Extra! Zinio To Sell Themselves Instead of Magazines!

eBooks

Extra, Extra! Zinio To Sell Themselves Instead of Magazines!

If you are a regular reader of Gear Diary, you probably know about Zinio, the digital magazine people. If you do, you might be surprised to hear they are for sale; and if you haven’t, you probably buy digital magazines from B&N or Amazon, if you buy any at all. CNN has the scoop on the sale: FORTUNE — Zinio, a digital magazine reading platform that competes with Amazon’s (AMZN) Kindle app and Apple’s (AAPL) Newsstand, is seeking a buyer, Fortune has learned. The San Francisco-based company has hired investment bank Montgomery & Co. to manage the process, with one…

Slacker Launches Personalized Lifestyle Stations with ABC Radio

Music Diary, News

Slacker Launches Personalized Lifestyle Stations with ABC Radio

Here at Gear Diary we have a bunch of Slacker Radio fans. For me, aside from listening to my massive iTunes collection, Slacker is my ‘go to’ spot as they offer on-demand streaming content as well as a great array of preset music stations. Recently they also introduced highly customizable ESPN radio stations, and now they have teamed with ABC Radio to launch new ‘Lifestyle’ stations. These stations are called Men’s Life and Women’s Life, and offer targeted content for each gender. But if that sounds limiting – as it did for me – rest assured that you get the…

MacBook Pro with Retina Display; Why We Bit

Editorials

MacBook Pro with Retina Display; Why We Bit

Dan: In last week’s newsletter, Judie and I began to address our first impressions of the new MacBook Pro with Retina display. I sat down to flesh out a more in-depth post but soon realized that what might be more compelling was why we both felt this computer was worth the price of admission in the first place. I certainly won’t speak for Judie, but I thought I would lay out my reasons for buying the MBPr and why, after  using it for a week and a half, I realize they were spot on. In order to fully explain why this…

Music in 2012, The Juncture of Art and Tech

News

Music in 2012, The Juncture of Art and Tech

Music purists like Mike may not be all too happy about this post but I can live with that. I’m a huge fan of the iOS app Discovr Music. It lets me find bands and performers who are related to one another. For example, I might start with one act and then find three or four other acts that were influenced by them or influence them. Most recently using Discovr Music led me to Late Night Alumni via a rather circuitous route. I love the music, the mix of some Downtempo tracks and some more Trance-related tracks that LNA offer….

The WhaleTail Tablet Vacuum Dock and Handle Review

Reviews

The WhaleTail Tablet Vacuum Dock and Handle Review

I do a lot of news items here at GD — just keeping you folks abreast of new offerings, deals, and the like.  Every once in a while an item pops up that makes me think, “Yeah, okay, I’ve gotta give that a try.”  Such an item was the Octa WhaleTail tablet stand/holder.  I mean, it just looked cool, and I have been in search of a decent “holder” for my iPad ever since I got it.  Not just to hold it up on a table, but also to hold it up, ya know, in front of my face.  This…

First Drive: 2013 Nissan Altima

Vehicles & Gear

First Drive: 2013 Nissan Altima

Quick, name the No. 2 best-selling car in America last year. Difficult, isn’t it? I, for one, did not realize the Nissan Altima was the second-best selling car in the U.S. in 2011, nor have I really given it much thought (or digital ink) save for the coupe we took to New Orleans a couple of years ago. Altima has been on sale here in the states for two decades now and for 2013 Nissan has decided to lean a little heavier towards revolutionary (as opposed to evolutionary) for what will be the fifth-generation of the car. Granted, they have…

a-JAYS ONE+ Headphones Review

Reviews

a-JAYS ONE+ Headphones Review

In recent years we have seen an increasing number of headphones that use tangle-free, flat cords. They really do help you avoid having to deal with the tangled mess that is wired headphones. Plus, they look and feel neat. That’s why I was excited to review the a-JAYS One+ headset when it was offered to me. After all, not everyone can afford $150 for in-ear headphones, and that’s what I’ve been reviewing lately. At $59.99, the a-JAYS ONE+ look like a bargain. I was even more excited when I saw the box. It is unusually done in oval-shaped plastic., and…

Microsoft Surface: The Trojan Tablet For Digital Textbooks?

eBooks

Microsoft Surface: The Trojan Tablet For Digital Textbooks?

Just about two months ago, Barnes and Noble and Microsoft announced that B&N would spin off their NOOK and college bookstore businesses into “Newco”, to be jointly owned by both companies. Obviously this has been good news for B&N’s finances, but aside from the press release both sides have been very quiet. There were rumors that B&N would be part of Microsoft’s Surface tablet event, but that was proved wrong. However, I think Surface tablets are a big part of why Newco was formed. When the joint venture was announced, I pointed out this benefit on the Microsoft end: As…

ReAuthored for New iPad; from Dead Tree Book to iPad Case

Reviews

ReAuthored for New iPad; from Dead Tree Book to iPad Case

We’ve seen a lot of cases for the iPad (and there are many more to come). Some follow a familiar theme, while others are more unique. The case we are looking at in this review is one of those “more unique” ones. It comes from a company called ReAuthored, and it gives new life to old books even as it protects the “book-killer” that is the iPad. The iPad cases they offer are approximately 11″ high, 8.5″ wide and .5″ deep. They weigh about a pound. Why are the dimensions and weight just “approximate”? Simple. ReAuthored cases are made from…

Us+U Swivel Portfolio for Kindle Fire Review

Reviews

Us+U Swivel Portfolio for Kindle Fire Review

Sarah has had a Kindle Fire since Christmas, and she loves it. She uses it for reading, watching movies, and playing games. For a while her primary case was one she found at Brookstone that was clearly a repurposed Blackberry Playbook case. So Sarah was very excited when we had the chance to check out the US+U Swivel Portfolio! US+U is not just a typical case maker though. They give 3% of the net revenue from each case to various charities, meaning purchasing this case does more than outfit your Fire, it does something good for the world at the…

Making Siri Work for You; Some Gear Diary Suggestions

Gear Bits, How to Do It Yourself!

Making Siri Work for You; Some Gear Diary Suggestions

Image courtesy of headlondon.com Siri is an interesting innovation.  I remember back in my early days  in the tech biz, when I read about and heard plenty of people talking about a) how voice recognition was just around the corner, and b) how voice recognition was dang hard, and it was going to be a long ways out in the future.  Of course, in those days a 500 MB drive was considered “wow, that’s big!”, so you can guess how naive both sets of opinion were! Now we have Dragon Dictation and any number of other voice recognition software apps….

2012 BMW X3 'Simply The Best'

Vehicles & Gear

2012 BMW X3 ‘Simply The Best’

I know what you’re thinking, “Oh, here we go, another fanboy litero-gasmic rambling extolling BMW as the king of the blah, blah, blah…” Yep. Only I am not your typical “drank-the-Bimmer-koolaid” automotive journalist, in fact, it took me a long time to even recognize some of BMW’s prowess in the driving arena, and I still believe there are many other vehicles out there in their respective categories that outshine these Bavarian crèmes. Not so in the case of compact crossovers. After a week with the new BMW X3 I believe this is the best little CUV on the market today….

GasBuddy for iPhone

Reviews

GasBuddy for iPhone

I know I am old and have finally become “that guy”. You know, the one that tells the kids how gas went sky-high during high school during the first Gulf War. It actually went over $1 a gallon, and we could not cruise town near as much as we could the summer before. Wow! Were those not the days? Driving across town seems to break the bank with today’s gas prices. My wife and I have a habit of watching gas prices as we travel. We do not always stop when we see a deal, but one of us always…

DiRT Showdown for PlayStation 3 Review

Game Diary, Reviews

DiRT Showdown for PlayStation 3 Review

The latest instalment in the award winning DiRT video game series features racing events, demolition derbies, and special stunt (a.ka. Hoonigan) events plus split-screen multiplayer and online options with competitive challenges in on and off-line modes.

The Worst Solution Ever for "Show Rooming"

eBooks

The Worst Solution Ever for “Show Rooming”

If you listen to traditional retailers, online websites like Amazon are hurting them through what’s called “showrooming”, where the retail store becomes a place for consumers to check out items, but buy them online instead. There’s a lot of debate over the solutions (Target pulled all their Kindles, for example) but Rich Adin at The Digital Reader has the worst suggestion I have ever seen: Of course, there is no practical way to prevent such comparison shopping by consumers. A b&m retailer can fight back by no longer carrying any Amazon-branded merchandise, which is the approach Target took, but that…

Fujitsu Introduces the ScanSnap S1300i for PC and Mac; Fast Scanning and Powerful Integrations

News

Fujitsu Introduces the ScanSnap S1300i for PC and Mac; Fast Scanning and Powerful Integrations

My move toward becoming increasingly paperless began a number of years ago when I saw my cousin Jamie’s ScanSnap scanner. I was impressed with the speed with which it was able to create digital copies of hard documents. I bought the same scanner and then, when I “saw the light” a year later, swapped it out for the version that worked with Macs. (Current models work with both Windows and OS X.) In the years since I have used and reviewed a number of other ScanSnap scanners. In spring of 2010 I reviewed the S1300. (Read the review.) And last…

Jabra Supreme UC Bluetooth Headset and USB Adapter Review

Reviews

Jabra Supreme UC Bluetooth Headset and USB Adapter Review

We took a look at the Jabra Supreme headset back in October. (Read the review.) It was an impressive Bluetooth headset; it offered active noise cancellation, and the headset was designed for noisy environments. The active noise cancellation cut through much of the ambient noise and allowed for clear conversations on both sides. Sure, the active noise cancellation created a funky feeling in the ear, but the pay off was clear, clean, crisp phone calls. Also impressive was the actual design. While I don’t tend to be a fan of large noticeable Bluetooth headsets, this particular offering has the convenience…