Archive by Author

My Roku 3 Remote Saves the Day!

Gadgets have become packed with more and more features, many of which we end up forgetting about or just never use. When the Roku 3 was announced, we had an internal discussion at Gear Diary about how the headphone jack in the remote was a useless feature — who would hook up headphones to a [...]

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Moxtra for iOS Review – Moving Mountains of Info into Manageable Folders

I use my iPad for just about everything — notes, pictures, writing posts, browsing the web, etc. In many ways it is how I aggregate every bit of content I need, like, or want to reference. The iPad does all this for me on the hardware side, and I’ve been testing an app called Moxtra [...]

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Save Big on a Lifeproof Case for the iPhone 4S

Looking for a way to protect your iPhone 4S? Maybe you’re still early in your contract and want to protect your investment. Or, like me, you want your phone protected and safe until the iPhone 5S comes along. Either way, if you want an incredibly protective case at a jaw-dropping price, Eversave has you covered [...]

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Windows 8 Start Menu Reviver Review

If you’ve read my review of the Toshiba Z930 Ultrabook, then you know two things: I loved the computer, and I hated Windows 8. Much of that animosity comes from the awful Start screen/Dashboard, which is obviously designed for touch interfaces and not mouses and keyboards. ReviverSoft thinks they can help people like me with [...]

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Whiteboard Calendar Review

Put down your smartphone. I know you’re rushing to your favorite App Store, trying to figure out what a whiteboard calendar app is. You won’t find this on your phone or tablet. But it’s the greatest shared calendar solution that Sarah and I have tried. It is open enough that we can customize it endlessly, [...]

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TiVo’s Exclusively Terrible Offer

In 2006, I bought a TiVo Series 2. It was a great device, and it lasted me until mid-2011, when it finally stopped changing channels and went on strike. It retired to that great recycling center in the sky/the next town over, and we moved on to bigger and better electronics. TiVo however, sends me [...]

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Èton Announces the BoostSolar Charger

  My wife Sarah goes camping a few times a year. I usually outfit her with external batteries for her iPhone, but if those get passed around with everyone charging their smartphones, they don’t last long without outlets. We also live in New Jersey, and like most New Jerseyans, we have a lingering fear about [...]

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B&N “Innovates” by Becoming Yet Another Tablet Company

News broke today that Barnes and Noble is opening up the NOOK hardware to Google, adding Google Play to their NOOK HD and HD+ devices. Is this a canny move to capitalize on tablet demand, or a desperate grab for any port in a storm? Does this actually matter to the average buyer? As our [...]

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GE’s Incredibly Creepy Matrix-Themed TV Ad

Apparently GE’s ad people are living in the late 1990′s. I can’t judge them for this, since my musical tastes are clinging tenuously to the earlier part of the same decade. However, I do question what they were thinking with their latest ad touting their medical equipment business. And since GE apparently bought all the [...]

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Tagg the Pet Tracker Review

I rarely give a “don’t buy” rating to gear. I try really, really hard to find some good aspect to products, because so many times the issues are opinion and not fact. A particular phonecase may not be my taste, but it could be yours, or I might miss a certain feature that someone else [...]

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Are You Still Using Mailbox?

When Mailbox, the app designed to tame, manage and control your inbox, arrived, I was thrilled. I was the first person on the Gear Diary team to gain access, and for the first few weeks I was doing nothing but singing its praises. Judie, Dan and Mike all joined over the next several weeks, but [...]

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Do You Own a Car?

There were some amazing discussions at Telenav’s Waypoint conference a few weeks ago about GPS, mobile navigation, and how we approach our smartphones and integration location services into our lives. One offshoot of that discussion, though, was whether GPS navigation would matter in the future, since car ownership is apparently on the decline. I was [...]

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Confessions of a Doctor Who Newbie

  I am trying to rectify a big hole in my Sci-Fi viewing history, and finally giving “Doctor Who” a shot. I knew it had a huge cult following, I knew it was from the BBC and it involved a time machine, but otherwise I was pretty much entirely in the dark about the show. A [...]

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The Gear Diary Guide to Infographics

Spend enough time on the Internet, and you’ll find an infographic. These are “educational” graphics that distill bits of information into pretty pictures and at-a-glance factoids. As a concept, they aren’t terrible, but only if they’re used as a summary for a full report. Unfortunately, lately they’ve become flashy vehicles for marketers with an agenda. [...]

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Great Gifts and Gear for Mother’s Day — You’ll Be Thanking Us!

We went hunting for some of the best gifts for mom and dad. We shared them, as well as some special Newsletter Subscriber-Only giveaways, in a special mid-week Gear Diary Newsletter a few days ago. Then we realized that whether you are a newsletter subscriber or not, you may be looking for a great Mother’s [...]

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Zact Debuts Industry’s First Smart Mobile Service with “Never Overpay Guarantee”

As far as I’m concerned, the more choices there are out there among cell phone service providers the better.  Yes, [...]

My Roku 3 Remote Saves the Day!

Gadgets have become packed with more and more features, many of which we end up forgetting about or just never [...]

Google Announces Game Center Clone ‘Google Play Game Services’

Google Games Center

At Google I/O last week we got to see a number of new things, including the music service we already [...]

Dale Carnegie Training Offers Eight Smartphone Apps for Free!

“Industrialist” Dale Carnegie started a training course to help people learn to success in a capitalist system, and he did [...]

Toast Real Wood Cover for iPad mini Review Redux

I reviewed Toast’s wood back for the iPad mini back in March. (Read the review.) It went on easily and [...]

Summer Handheld Console Video Game Guide

Handheld game systems are great on long summer car trips or on the beach, so grab a quality arsenal before [...]