In Gear Chat 14 Larry and Dan talk about the new Kindle… and why we ordered them. We also talk about Dragon NaturallySpeaking 11 and, of course, iPhone and iPads. Intro Music- Lean On Me- Sounds From the Ground Solarstone’s Chill Out Remix…
Show me a person who could watch the Pixar movie Wall-E without getting a little bit misty, and I’ll show you a person with a heart of stone. The premise was that Earth, long inhabited by wasteful humans was eventually rendered unusable, and there was a mass exodus to a fleet of spaceships provided for by the Buy N Large corporation, which the company that had sold the products which helped contribute to all of the waste on Earth in the first place. Are you with me? So Buy N Large tells the Earthlings that they will only be on the…
The iPad is a runaway hit. We all know that. We use it at our desks. We use it in the kitchen. We use it in the living room. We use it everywhere. And it’s lack of a built-in stand is, at times, a pain. Let’s face it, you don’t want, or can’t, always hold the 1 1/2 pound device. Fortunately there are a growing number of excellent options out there. And those ranks just grew by one with the announcement of the UpStand from Just Mobile. As The Company Explains- The UpStand™ will float your iPad at just the…
Many of us like to keep our iPhones as sleek as possible. I personally prefer to use my iPhone 4 naked. But I also know that it’s just not practical to do so. I want to keep my iPhone looking as new as possible not only because I enjoy looking at “minty-fresh” gadgets but I also realize that in under a year Apple will be most likely be coming out with the next generation iPhone and I’ll most likely be selling this one to finance the new. The better condition a phone is in the more money it fetches in…
Last month I reviewed the Darkspawn Chronicles DLC, saying that even at “$5 in Microsoft Points … it has questionable value.” I found it “a single-minded module that lasts about an hour, adds a single new item to the main game, and offers little replayability” … and was really just an average add-on in general. Now I am back after playing through the new DLC Leliana’s Song (announced here). So how did they do THIS time? Read on and find out! The Hype: Assume the role of Leliana, a young bard involved in a criminal ring that deals in political…
I rely on my iMac’s “clipboard” a ton. Between Twitter, the Internet, e-mail etc. it seems I’m constantly copying and pasting links and other information between one client to another. Often times I copy more than one item too and that means I have to go back and forth between the applications to retrieve and re-copy each time. An even larger problem occurs when I want to paste something I copied earlier in the day but have already copied something else thus over-writing the item I want. A nice little free utility I stumbled across the other day called Jumpcut…
A survey just out shows that 73 percent of adults plan to use a computer or Wi-Fi-connected device while traveling this summer. No surprise there. It goes on to note that nearly half of those vacationers plan to access the Internet through their host’s home network! This according to a consumer survey conducted by Opinion Research for Cisco’s Consumer Products group. Here are the survey results… * 59 percent of adults plan to use a computer or Wi-Fi device while visiting family and friends this summer, and 37 percent said they will tap into their host’s wireless network to access…
There won’t be any leaving you in suspense during this review. I’m just going to come right out and say. I love the OtterBox Defender for the iPhone 4. I’ve been a diehard Defender user for sometime now. Almost all the firefighters in my company use Defenders on their devices, mostly Blackberries or iPhones) and the Defender for the 3Gs was my personal case of choice as well. If your tough on your iPhone there is simply no better choice for protection your precious device than the Defender. OtterBox didn’t waste any time getting the Defender for the 4 to…
It is no secret that I am a sports nut. It is how I make a living and sports have been a daily part of my life for many years. Most of these sports are the usual, football, basketball, baseball/softball. I played these sports, I coach these sports and I am a fan of these sports. One thing people do not know about me is that I was a skater in the mid to late 80s. My buddy had a 12 foot half-pipe and we skated everyday. In fact, I made the varsity baseball team as a freshman and my…
I think by now I’ve made it known that I am frothingly anti-piracy, so the new ruling in the UK that bans the R4 Revolution and similar devices thrills me. The high court set a new precedent by adjusting that it is illegal for the R4 card to circumvent Nintendo’s security systems in order to play content on the DS. In the US this sort of thing isn’t necessarily illegal to sell, but since they are such piracy-centric devices even Amazon who used to be a big seller of the devices has stopped supplying them. Basically the R4 is an…
Just check out that image, called ‘Solargraph’. It is from the UK, taken of Bristol’s Clifton Suspension Bridge. The lines are the travel of the sun over time, showing the motion of the earth relative to the sun, as well as periods where no sun at all was visible. According to Wired, photographer Justin Quinnell made the images: from the simplest of cameras: a soda-can with a 2.5mm hole punched into the metal and a sheet of photographic paper hidden inside. Because photo-paper is so much less sensitive to light (in the darkroom you’d typically expose for 10-seconds or more),…
… and also the most hated by golfers! I remember when it came out my Uncle who was an avid golfer saw it right away, as did my cousin who was visiting with family from Georgia. Two very different opinions, one from a middle-aged golfer who thought it was stupid and one from a guy a couple years older than my brother and I who thought it was hilarious. Pretty soon we saw it (remember back in those days you didn’t need to rush to the theater on opening weekend!) … and it has remained one of my all-time favorite…
Last Friday night my family went to a nice downtown Corning pub, and noticed printed signs all around stating that a new policy would permit only one free soda refill, after which guests would have to pay for another full-priced drink. I really didn’t think anything of it until I saw this post on Consumerist: According to the article: This dire message at a Tucson Italian beef joint claims the restaurant’s dissolution of its free refill policy has to do with outside forces conspiring to make soda syrup too pricey. Have you seen anything like this in your town, or…
Every year I take one of my daughters on a weekend trip to NYC. This past weekend on our annual excursion we stumbled across ECOWRIST at a street fair in the Soho section of Manhattan. ECOWRIST was founded by husband and wife team David Gandy and MarQuerite Hamden in 2008 and the pair hand-makes watches from recycling, the use of natural materials, and minimal wastes to ensure as little effect on the environment as possible. From the ECOWRIST web site……….. The primary components of the watches are bamboo, tagua nuts, acheera seeds, coconut, wood, cow’s leather and canaflecha (reed in…
Solar power has been a promise since I was my son’s age. In the future. we were all supposed to have roofs covered in solar cells and not having to use ugly power lines to power our lives. We were barely able to get to the point of powering calculators. Fast forward 20 years and while there have been advances, we still don’t drive solar cars and we still have to have power lines run to our homes. Thankfully, there are more things run by solar cells than back when I was 11 and some of them are fun too….
I loved Icon’s Rogue 2 Flashlight. It was the most durable flashlight I have ever had the opportunity to use. It was bright and well designed and will last many years. Paul Kim, the designer of the Icon line of flashlights is a genius at designing flashlights that are not only very good-looking, but very functional. That’s why I jumped at the chance to review flashlights of another shape and size. Icon sent me a Link and a Solo LED Flashlight and they are the smallest lights that Icon makes. First up is the rugged and handy Link. The Link…
The folks here at Gear Diary are in lots of different industries: financial, tech, rabbinical, teaching . . . me, I’m a technical writer. I write books and “topics” about technical topics for a living. Computer manuals, network system reference pages, instructions on how to install everything from giant Cisco routers to that teeny 2Wire modem some of you may be using in your houses. That’s my trade; it’s how I make my living. As such, I am a believer in copyright, and the rights of content creators to a reasonable and fair return on their work. These folks (and…
At long last Apple has released a standalone trackpad that brings the MacBook Pro controller to your iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro but goes one better by almost doubling the size of the trackpad. As the Apple store notes- Magic Trackpad gives you a whole new way to control what’s on your Mac desktop computer. When you perform gestures, you actually interact with what’s on your screen. You feel closer to your content, and moving around feels completely natural. Swiping through pages on screen is just like flipping through pages in a magazine, and inertial scrolling senses the momentum…
I have consistently sung the praises of Soldak Entertainment since their first game released in 2007, which they have earned by consistently serving the RPG community with well-made, fun and interesting games. The most recent release from Stephen Peeler and crew is Din’s Curse – but let’s take a quick look at their earlier releases. The first Soldak game was Depths of Peril (DoP), which was interesting because it featured a dynamic game world. At the core was an action RPG, but DoP offered much more than a simple Diablo-esque experience. As a player you head up a faction charged…
Dexim is one of the leading manufacturers of accessories for a variety of mobile devices. The company has a wide range of products for the iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry, HTC and now the iPad. The company recently launched several cases for the Apple iPad and they were nice enough to send along two of their new offerings for me to review. The Dexim Durable Protection Sleeve for the iPad is made from thermoplastic polyurethane. Also known as TPU this material is harder than straight silicone and offers a fit that’s tight and form-fitting. The Sleeve is available in either black…
Let’s finally get to it. Photography in the iPhone (smartphone) era. A couple of years ago I wrote a column of how I was choosing my 5mp Nokia cellphone camera over carrying my Nikon D-SLRs each and every day for my photography needs. In all honesty, I had been leaving my Nikons behind for several years in favor of a Canon SX-IS series point and shoot digital camera. Aside from sporting events, the Canon satisfied my image-making needs and I still carry a Canon with me at work and on most vehicle shoots for my reviews. But I am never…