Francis Scardino

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How to Do It Yourself! July 20, 2012

How to get Amazon Prime Streaming Media and Flash Content to Play on your Nexus 7

Amazon Prime Streaming “Ronin” on Nexus 7 Flash is dead…or is it? Although Adobe Flash is no longer support on the latest version of Android 4.1 (Jellybean), that does not mean you can’t enjoy the benefits of Flash content and movies. The move from flash-based content to HTML5 has been long underway but the [...]

Nexus 7 and Android’s JellyBean Feature List, Google’s App Updates

Image courtesy of Android Advices Unless you have been hiding under your cloak of invisibility, or just been spending a little too much quality time in your fallout bunker, you probably know that Google’s latest tasty treat of an OS (Jellybean) has hit the streets. So far the only devices running the new OS [...]

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News July 12, 2012

by Francis Scardino

Tokyoflash Goes ‘Online’ with their Latest Wrist Accelerated Geek Watch

Image courtesy of Tokoyflash The latest Tokyoflash Kisai model popped up on their site today and as usual there is a launch day (48 hour) discount. The latest model, dubbed the “Online”, is their first to sport a built-in accelerometer. It works by a flick of the wrist and reveals the time. The large rectangular [...]

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News July 12, 2012

by Francis Scardino

Google’s Actually Making Some Money on the Nexus 7 and Not Just Taking One for the Team

Image courtesy of iFixit With the Nexus 7 official launch potentially minutes or hours away there has been a pretty solid stream of news about it around the web. A recent teardown (IHS iSuppli) reveals the 8GB Nexus 7 is earning Google a 24% profit on hardware alone. Of course they earn even more on [...]

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News July 12, 2012

by Francis Scardino

Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO Offers Capped ‘Free-To-Play’ for New Users

Image courtesy of SWTOR Not so long ago in a Galaxy not so far away, The Old Republic MMO was released to the world, and from what I gather it received a not so warm welcome from this galaxy. To those heavily vested in the MMO world The Old Republic’s pay to play was [...]

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News June 18, 2012

by Francis Scardino

Microsoft Announces Surface Tablet In Both Standard and Pro Attire

Image courtesy of Microsoft It’s been some time since Microsoft came out with a decent piece of hardware. Short of the Xbox and Kinect I think the hardware team has been sinking to the lower end of the giant’s revenue stream. Well, after seeing highlights from today’s live event, I think that is about [...]

A Response to GameSpot’s MOH: Warfighter Article; Let’s Remember why we Play Games

Image courtesy of EA, Medal of Honor The other day a friend showed me an article on GameSpot that made me perk up a bit; they published an article on Friday called “When did regenerating health become realistic”. As an avid fan of First Person Shooters, and a veteran of two Iraq tours myself, [...]

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News June 13, 2012

by Francis Scardino

Gammatech’s 12″ Convertible Durabook (U12Ci) Gets the Ivy Bridge Treatment

Image courtesy of GammaTech Last year we were able to get a hands on review of both the GammaTech U12C and the S15C2 ruggedized notebooks and both measured up pretty well to the Durabook name. The newest tablet to the Durabook ruggedized comes by way of a U12C refresh. The U12Ci is an updated version [...]

Windows 8 Consumer Preview; Official Download Available for the Masses

The official Windows 8 Public Preview is available for download directly from the software vaults at Microsoft. I am not really sure what is different from the previously available beta but assume some of the updates and fixes have been implemented. So far the verdict on Windows 8 has really been hit and [...]

Chameleon KickStarter Could Bring the Ultimate Customization to Your Android Tablet’s Home Screen

Image courtesy of KickStarter/Teknision One of my favorite things about the Android platform is the ability to customize the UI to fit your needs. There are literally hundreds of theme engines and thousand of themes to pick from, as well as thousands of widgets, live applications, and media feeds. I was browsing Kickstarter the [...]

A Possible Glimpse of Google’s Nexus Tablet Specs; Things Are Looking Pretty Good

Original Image courtesy of Samsung I’m not really one to care too much about leaks and non confirmed pre release info, but the Nexus Tablet is something I have been waiting quite a while to get my hands on. Not really knowing much about it yet — except that it will be running truly [...]

Nike+ Fuelband Review; ‘The Out-Of-Shape Geek’s Dream Fitness Motivator

It’s been few weeks since the release of the Nike+ Fuelband and, until last week, I had been unable to get my hands on one. This is probably the first fitness related gadget I have ever bought and, besides the super geek-esque Back to the Future style LED’s on it, I was excited to [...]

Whirlpool Sticks Me with the Dirty Laundry, but Lowe’s Picks up the Tab

Image courtesy of automaticwasher.org Is it really that hard to get good customer service anymore? Is the fine art of quality customer service a thing of the past? Looking through some past rants we’ve had here on Gear Diary, it’s evident that some companies just don’t care about anything dealing with “after the sale.” Even [...]

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Rants and Raves April 3, 2012

by Francis Scardino

Does iOS Need a User Interface Overhaul?

I posed a question to my fellow staff at Gear Diary, asking all iPhone users why Apple hasn’t really changed their UI since 2007. As a non iPhone user, my questions stemmed from a post that Carly had put up about her finding her original iPhone, when she posted a side by side of the home [...]