Articles by Christopher Gavula

Gevey Ultra S Carrier Unlock – Multiple Versions and Multiple Confusion

About a month ago the iPhone 4s unlocks started to appear. This is an excellent thing if you want to use your locked iPhone 4s (especially AT&T users!) outside of your normal carrier. Since AT&T fees overseas are astronomical and don’t even work in all countries (even when the GSM radios support connection) this is one of the only ways to handle traveling if you have an AT&T iPhone 4S. Among the recent entries into this arena is Gevey, long known to be the “high quality” player in the unlock world. Well this time I think they made a mistake and…

Gear Bits

The Hunger Games, Hit or Hype?

image courtesy THG – The Hunger Games Blog at http://thg-thehungergames.blogspot.com/ It seems that everywhere you turn people are talking about the release of the feature film The Hunger Games this week. Here at Gear Diary, we are the same way and we have been burning up the wires talking about it too! Some have read the books, some not. Some think it’s all hype, some not. In the end, we decided to share with you our thoughts going into the release of this high-profile film! Read on…

Editorials

Seeing Past the Roadblock of Technology

I’m a tech guy. I’m in a tech-related job and I love tech and gadgets and all the good things they bring to life. But sometimes, just sometimes, technology gets in the way. Sometimes we find ourselves unable to see past it and unable to function without it. And sometimes that causes us to fail to see the real problem. I was thinking about that a lot as I ran into exactly that kind of problem this weekend, and it reminded me of another, similar incident from a few years ago. So here are some of the things that happen…

News

Navigon Updates Navigation App for Android

I’m a fan of navigation apps for mobile devices. I’ve been talking about navigation applications for a lot of years now and Navigon has been one of the more interesting players for a long time. They have history going back to the Windows Mobile days, consistently offering one of the nicest looking apps in the field. Now Navigon, a part of Garmin, is releasing a new version of their navigation app for Android. According to their press release, this version contains a number of interesting new features: NAVIGON Widget: Users can add the new NAVIGON Widget to their phone’s home…

Events, News

Garmin’s CES News for Android Users, Golfers, Drivers and … You?

Garmin, who seem to be going like gangbusters lately (including the addition of Navigon to their lineup last year) have released a preview of what they are showing at CES this week. In their press release they are announcing some new and update products including: – Garmin Smartphone Link is the first Android app that provides live services to a PND utilizing the smartphone’s data connection. – The new nüvi® 3500 series: Garmin’s newest flagship personal navigation devices and the company’s first GPS navigators that combine the ultra-thin form factor with a large, 5-inch glass display. – Garmin® Approach™ G6…

Editorials

Rant: Trapped in Hell (Okay, Microsoft Support – Same Difference!)

image by signap I haven’t posted in a while. Life has a way of getting in the way of the things you’d like to do sometimes. I missed writing here – a lot – but the world is a crazy place (a new job, a new city, a new apartment). Things are finally getting back to a semblance of calm and order. I finally have some time to start writing again. In a twist of divine comedy and coincidence, I have run into a support incident that has got me completely annoyed and provided me with an excellent platform…

Reviews

iPhone Accessory Review: Magellan ToughCase for iPhone 3G/3GS and iPod Touch

I’ll admit it. I’m tough on my electronic devices – especially my phones. After a couple of years with me the cases are usually scuffed and marked. Amazingly, I’ve been lucky and not had major problems with screen scratches (even though I do NOT use screen protectors). I think my phones survive, however, because I always make sure I use some kind of protective case as a daily driver. When Magellan offered us the opportunity to review their ToughCase, it seemed right up my smartphone-abuse-laden alley. Not only did it offer a strong rigid case, but also GPS signal improvement,…

Reviews

Shanghai Mahjong for iPad

Mahjong is one of those games that has always fascinated me – both the solitaire version that most PC gamers are familiar with and the competitive version of mahjong (sometimes called the “real” mahjong). Shanghai Majong is one of the former – the solitaire version of the game. For those who have never been exposed to the game, the idea is simple – a number of tiles are places in a stacked pattern on the board and you need to find open (free on one side) pairs in order to remove the pairs from the board. The goal is to remove all of the…

News, Reviews

Quick Look: SPB TV for iPhone

SPB has had their SPB TV product out for WIndows Mobile devices for a long time, and it’s always been considered an excellent app. Recently they released it for the iPhone – something many people were eagerly anticipating. Let’s take a quick look at this latest release for the iPhone!

Editorials

Another Day, Another iPad

photo credit: powerbooktrance Okay, okay. I’m weak – I admit it! I lasted nearly a week before I finally caved in, went down to Best Buy, and picked up an iPad which I now have been playing with for about 12 hours. So of course, I now have a few observations and because the world hasn’t had nearly enough iPad opinion pieces, I’m going to share with you! First – the device and it’s potential really are amazing. Despite all the hype and the nonsense and even a few drawbacks, I’m really impressed with this thing. Although I’m…

Reviews

Navigon Pushes out MobileNavigator for iPhone version 1.50

Last night, Navigon released another significant update to their MobileNavigator product for iPhone – version 1.5. In this latest update, we get some interesting features including social networking connections to Facebook and Twitter, we get the presentation of multiple routing choices (Navigon calls this MyRoutes), as well as the addition of a 3D terrain display called Panorama 3D View (for an additional fee). I went right out and I bought the 3D update and have been taking a look at it as well as the other new features. So let’s go take a quick look at the new features of…

Reviews

PDF Reader from Kdan Mobile Software for iPhone and iPod Touch

This past week I did a review of Documents to Go Premium. I really like that product – it does a wonderful job of working with MS Office documents. But a lot but my main use of it is as a PDF reader – really a secondary function of that program. So when I saw a new stand-alone PDF reader program for only 99 cents I decided I had to take a look so I bought a copy and started playing. So how did it do? Let’s take a look!

Reviews

The Documents to Go Premium 3.1 for iPhone Review

The last few weeks have been interesting. We saw the release of a lot of new products during CES earlier this year. One of those products was the version 3.x of Documents to Go Premium from DataVis. Now, quickly on the heels of that, they have release version 3.1 which adds even more improvements including Google Docs support! On a personal note – my own life has been a crazy roller coaster with my day job sending me all over the place and then getting seriously ill, all of it ramping up to this past week where I had to rush…

News

Learn a Little Irish for Free!

As a fan of language learning, I just discovered something very cool. Through today, iPhone and iPod Touch users can download Byki’s Irish language app from the App Store for free! Normally, most of the Byki apps are $7.99, so this is an excellent way to see how Byki approaches vocabulary and phrase learning while putting on a little Irish! I have the Byki apps for a few different languages on my iPhone and computer. The Byki language apps are really good at helping you learn vocabulary and phrases from a wide variety of languages and now, for St….

Reviews

Review: Memorize Words for Spanish for iPhone

Sometimes applications are big and splashy and exciting. Sometimes they are quite, unassuming, and just do what they do very well. But it’s not often you run into applications that don’t even really present you with a startup splash screen before going into the actual program. Memorize Words for Spanish isn’t flashy, it goes right into the program with out announcing itself via a title screen, and its name isn’t particularly flashy or clever, but it clearly speaks to the thing that this application does – it helps you memorize Spanish words. I’ve looked at a lot of different language applications over the past…

Reviews

Navigon MobileNavigator for Windows Phones Review

A few years back, I was a big fan of OnCourse Navigator version 5 running on Windows Mobile PDAs. The interesting things here is that OCN5 was really just the name for the North American release of Navigon MobileNavigator. And although OCN 5 wasn’t terribly stable, it was one of the best-looking navigators out there at the time. So then they disappeared from the North American market. OCN 6 was actually a rebadged iGo 6, not a Navigon product anymore. So now, on the heels of a successful iPhone product, Navigon have reentered the market with MobileNavigator for Windows Phones. So where did they go? What happened? More important,…

News

Quirky Cable Caps

Quirky, who use a community-driven process to determine which products to bring to market, and brings many products to market very quickly, have released their latest effort – Quirky Cable Caps. These caps, in 6 different styles, are designed to protect the (male) ends of USB cables and wrap up any excess cable as well. They each have a wild-looking head which slides over the cable end, and a rubber band type of body used to tie up the excess cable. The six styles available are: Printer Man, Phone Dude, Camera Gal, Eye Baller, Egg Man, and ‘Da Bulb. They are…

Reviews

4iThumbs Tactile Keyboard for iPhone

photo courtesy of cultofmac.com The idea is pretty clever: You take a thin clear plastic layer, much like a screen saver, and give it a few “bumps” to force your finger into the correct locations, and you will make typing on the iPhone a better experience. 4iThumbs has done just that. They released their Tactile Keyboard for iPhone to help you in typing better and faster on the iPhone without obscuring your vision of what’s on the screen. Does it work? Read on…

Events, News

PriceGrabber.com: Now In A Convenient App for iPhone

I admit it – I can be cheap sometimes. As such, I’ve used pricegrabber.com for years to compare prices on things – especially technology-based products. Now it seems that it’s made its way directly to the iPhone in the form of the PriceGrabber App for iPhone. The folks at PriceGrabber recognized that many people now use their cell phone as a resource to access the web, researching pricing and other information about products they may be interested in. So now with this new application you have access to the information on PriceGrabber.com with a nice application front-end. You can see pricing…

Reviews

Mr. Puzzle Genius 3D Puzzle for iPhone / iPod Touch

It’s no mystery that I’m a fan of casual gaming. So I was excited when recently I was given a copy of Mr. Puzzle Genius 3D Puzzle for iPhone. This game looked like it might be a real challenge with possibly lasting play value. So did it hold up to the hype? Let’s take a look…

How to Do It Yourself!, Reviews

Staying Motivated: Learning a Language on a Budget, Week Six

photo credit: woodleywonderworks So you’ve been at this language learning thing for a while now and you find yourself losing interest – or getting too busy – or whatever the case may be! Now a few days or even weeks have gone by and you need to get yourself back into studying again. One of the most important things in learning a language is to keep working at it and using it. If you don’t, you will start to lose what you’ve learned already. So how do you keep yourself motivated? How do you keep things interesting? This week, I’ll…

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