Yahoo

In Apple We Trust

As you may have heard, Apple has surpassed Exxon to be the most valuable company in the world. This is hot on the heels of Apple having more money than the Federal government before the debt ceiling was raised. This indicates two things; one, the country needs some financial overhaul, and two, Apple is an unstoppable business machine. Clearly what we need to do is combine Apple and our currency! Forget the dollar, start counting in iPods instead! Surprisingly, these line up quite nicely: $1 bill=white Apple earbuds $5 bill=iPod Shuffle $10 bill=iPod Nano $20 bill=iPod Touch $50 bill=Wifi iPad…


Quick Google Tip — Multiple Account Sign-in

Several months ago, Gear Diary’s email switched to Google Apps. As a result, I learned about a pretty neat Google trick — multiple account sign-in. Effectively, it lets me be logged in at my primary email address on one tab and have my Gear Diary email opened and signed in on a separate tab. Helpful, but not earth-shattering. However, in the last few weeks, I’ve had two different people flip out with excitement when I taught them this trick, mainly because their schools and businesses have switched to Google Apps. Both of them thought they were stuck signing in and…


New Story/Study: iPhone Owning Parents & Social Media

I’m not one of those parents who is totally panicked by the idea of all the kinds of scary things that are made available by new tech like cell phones, social media, and the like.  Yes, there are a lot of scary things kids can access or be sucked into via new technology.  But as a guy who spent his childhood in the late 60s and 70s, it’s not like it was a non-stop, safe party for us, either.   Yup, you can get talked into stuff by strangers over your cell phone, or via Facebook, or Yahoo IM, or…



Hulu+ Arrives on XBOX Live Today! Hooray or Meh?

Hulu+ is available on your Mac or PC, your set top box such as the Roku we have (but alas not Apple TV), your iPhone or iPad, and your Playstation 3. With the computer devices you can use the ‘standard version’ for free but gain much greater access to programming with the $7.99 monthly fee. On other systems you need to have a ‘Hulu+’ account to access anything – though you can get a trial account on most systems. Now you can finally catch up on those episodes of Glee on your XBOX 360! Some background on Hulu: Hulu’s ambitious…


Retrospective Review: Revisting WebOS and the Palm Pixi Plus

With the upcoming HP WebOS tablet and Pre 3 smartphone featuring great-looking features such as touch-sync, it is interesting to take another back at WebOS as it exists today. Recently I came upon a nearly free deal for a no-contract 8GB Palm Pixi Plus which I was easily able to activate on Verizon to test. I used the Pixi as my sole phone for two weeks, enough to develop some things I loved about the phone and WebOS … and some things I didn’t like so much! The Hype: The thinnest Palm mobile phone yet, the Palm Pixi Plus for…


Android Device Review: Motorola Atrix, Laptop Dock and Media Dock

It was my last day at CES 2011 and we had already had quite a full morning. I was exhausted, but Francis just kept pushing. “I want to go see Motorola. I want to go see Motorola.” And he kept whining, “I want to go see what Motorola is offering and I want to go now.” He wore me down. So I acquiesced. Okay, so perhaps that’s not exactly how it happened. In actuality it went something like this: Francis – “Hey Dan, what do you say we go check out Motorola?” Me – “Sure.” And, thanks to Francis, we…


Has Technology Made Us Obnoxious or ‘Fun’?

The roll of smartphone users is increasing exponentially, and perhaps not surprisingly the amount of people ignoring what used to be common courtesy has also increased. What I DO find intriguing is that it is extremely likely that many folks who complained about people speaking loudly on cell phones years ago are now doing exactly that themselves! From a Yahoo report of a Reuters survey: “The poll of 2,000 adults revealed that most U.S. adults wished people practised better mobile etiquette and found the lack of cellphone manners extremely annoying, even though about 20 percent admitted to poor etiquette themselves….


Mediafly Drives Apps for Ford Reality Show: Focus Rally America

If you are a devotee of reality TV programming you already know about this next event-related app/app-related event, The FocusRallyApps/Ford Focus Rally: America. Kicking off on American Idol and revisited this week on the season début of Amazing Race, the Focus Rally pits six two-person teams in brand-spanking new 2012 Ford Focus hatches driving around the country utilizing social networking to decipher a series of clues that will lead them to a grand prize of $100,000 and a new Ford Focus. Mediafly, a market leader in multi-screen media solutions is providing applications to extend the viewership to mobile and tablet…


Gatekeeper’s Post – the Huffington Post for Books?

There’s ample evidence that we’re at a crossroads in book history. Borders is struggling to survive, and publishers, editors, authors, and consumers are working to find their place in the brave new world of ebooks. Luckily, they don’t have to do it alone, thanks to the launch of Gatekeeper’s Post! I had the opportunity to speak with Jeff Rivera, Editor in Chief of Gatekeeper’s Post, about the launch of the site and what he hopes to accomplish with it. Effectively, they’re looking to create a place where everyone from librarians to authors to agents to readers can keep up on…


Forever Lazy: Lazy at Home, Good – At Work, Not So Much

In early December I spotted a video on the Yahoo home page about Forever Lazy.  AP had run the story which was sort of a rags to riches success tale about how the company’s two founders had left their corporate jobs and created a product, basically from their sofa and because of a few celebrities liking their idea had begun to see serious growth. The Forever Lazy bills itself as an adult “onesie”.  Like a one-piece sweat-suit, it’s meant to be worn offering ease and comfort.  It’s complete with pockets, a hood and even zippered hatches in the front and…


Our Government at Work: CPSC Avoids Lead-Laden Glass Recall By Redefining Audience

Image courtesy of the AP When you think of the target audience for 10-ounce featuring colorful images of characters from the Wizard of Oz or a variety of well-known super heroes, would you say the audience is: (a) Under the age of 12 (b) Over the age of 12 If you guessed (b), then you are thinking along the same lines as the Consumer Product Safety Commission, the government agency set up to help keep consumers safe. When the test results showing the glasses had 1000 times (!) the level allowed in a product for children back in September, the…


R.I.P. Irving Kershner, Director of Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back

In the aftermath of the massive success of George Lucas’ Star Wars in 1977, it was somewhat surprising that for the sequel he chose not to direct it himself, but instead sought out an old mentor and respected director in Irving Kershner. As was remembered recently, it was for a couple of reasons: the motivation was because “if the second one worked, then he could make more. If the second one didn’t work, then that would be the end of Star Wars”, and the reason to choose Kershnerwas “because [he] knows everything a Hollywood director is supposed to know but…


Halloween Chats Get Spookier with a Surprise IM+ Theme

Starting on October 30, you can enjoy a spooky pumpkin theme behind all of your IM+ Lite or IM+ Pro chats. Beyond the cute new wallpaper, IM+ is a solid instant messaging client which not only handles your MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber and ICQ chats, it also takes care of Twitter, Facebook Chat and MySpace. You’re push-notified anytime someone tries to contact you, and getting set up couldn’t be more simple. It’s so funny, because up until just a year or two ago, I thought of SMS as something you did on your phone only, while instant messaging was…


Disc No More! Wii and PS3 Now Have Netflix Streaming Channels!

See that image … that is the disc you would need to load and run in order to stream ‘Watch Instant’ movies on Netflix if you had a PS3 or Wii.. Yes, you needed a disc to watch disc-free movies. Strange, I know. A few weeks ago when Netflix introduced streaming content to Canada we got a hint that a change was coming, since the PS3 didn’t need a disc to stream content there. Now we have the official announcements – neither the Wii nor the PS3 need a disc to stream Netflix anymore. For the PS3, the change comes…


iPad Apps From Shape Services That Are On the Way

We don’t mean to add to your high-tech frenzy but some of our favorite applications (and some new soon-to-be-favorites) are going to be coming to the iPad. We just got word of three that are coming from our friends at ShapeServices And they all look AWESOME! What applications are talking about? Let’s see now — IM+: All-in-One Messenger The Award winning instant messenger for iPhone/iPod Touch that lets you chat within MSN, Yahoo!, Google Talk, AIM, Jabber, ICQ, Facebook, MySpace, Skype and Twitter is coming to the iPad. STATUS- APPROVED!!! iDisplay Turns your iPad / iPhone into a convenient side…


Verizon *Finally* Updates Motorola Droid to 2.1 … so who cares?

Image courtesy of TalkAndroid Operating System updates are a funny thing – we just got one from Apple the other day (OS X 10.6.3), but how many folks who have applied it really even know what it does? Sometimes it is just the fact that something is known to be coming that builds anticipation – even if we don’t really know what we’re waiting for! With that in mind, I woke up to find that my Droid had downloaded the 2.1 update and was ready to install. I knew this was coming – but had already said I wouldn’t believe…


Flip AT&T’s Control over the Backflip

If you bought a Moto Backflip, you probably noticed the odd use of Yahoo Search over Google, and the incredible amount of AT&T bloatware included on the device. Unfortunately, short of rooting it there’s not much you can do about either of those, but AT&T did something far worse to the Backflip that you WILL want to change. Every other Android phone offers an option to install apps from outside the marketplace. Sometimes it is a beta (like the Swype keyboard beta), other times it is things like PDANet, a tethering utility, that isn’t sold through the marketplace. If you…


IM+ Lite for BlackBerry Review

An ongoing problem these days is simply how to keep up with everything and everyone? You’ve got email, Twitter, Facebook, Instant Messaging (or IM’ing as the kids simply abbreviate it these days).   Don’t forget SMS texting.  Unless you’re out on Mount Kilimanjaro you better get used to the expectation of being connected — and reachable — by at least ten different communication methods.   And they’ll all be used before you even get a phone call. With this onslaught of communication overload, how are you going to manage?  Are you going to ball up in the fetal position and cry yourself…


Wii Game “New Super Mario Bros” Is Fastest ‘Single Game’ to Sell 10 Million Copies

We have read about how many copies the 2009 mega-hit game Modern Warfare 2 sold, but that was across three different gaming systems. Now a game that is a Wii-port of a super-popular DS game of the same titles that is essentially a new version of a classic Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) game has claimed the crown for being the fastest game to sell 10 million copies. The game has been out for eight weeks in North America and Europe and less than a month in Japan. Most folks anticipate that within a few months at most New Super…


MyDeskFriend Pingo Review

I have a confession to make.  I like penguins.  Part of this is I am a Linux user and Tux, the Linux mascot, is a penguin.  The other part is they are so darn cute.  That’s why I decided to take a look when Arimaz offered to send a sample of MyDeskFriend AKA Pingo. Part Tamagotchi, part Facebook app, part Tux Droid and all cute.  That about sums up this tiny robot that fits in your hand.  MyDeskFriend comes with a little USB docking station, Pingo the Penguin and a little rubber visor that Pingo wears.