October 2010

Gear Diary Deal or Dud #7: The Bacon Wave

Cooking bacon at home often presents challenges. If you cook it on top of the stove you’re left to deal with the large amount of grease that continually builds up in the pan while cooking. If you go the microwave route you’re dealing with paper towels and are limited by the amount you can cook at one time. The As Seen On TV Bacon Wave promises an easy and efficient way to cooking large quantities of bacon with simple clean up. The product claims to uniformly cook up to 14 slices at one time as well as lower both calories, cholesterol and fat. This…

Reviews

Review: StarXscape Lite

Gaming is starting to come to the Android platform in earnest as representative of the amount of downloads of the recently released Angry Birds. Games are really starting to hit Android en-mass. Just before Angry Birds came out, MHill System let us know about an interesting game for Android called StarXscape. Your mission in StarXscape , if you choose to accept it, is to free the stars that are held captive by the evil Octramon. You along with your faithful sidekick Krudo will travel galaxy by galaxy freeing the stars held in octacages. What does that mean as far as game…

Editorials

End of a Long-Lost Era: Sony Finally Kills the Cassette Walkman (In Japan)

Ah, the Sony Walkman … that wonderful device that has let parents add ‘hearing loss’ to their list of worries and kids add ‘was listening to my Walkman’ to their reasons to justify ignoring their parents. It was the first mainstream product to really let you take your music anywhere without forcing others to let you know your favorite mix tape included Debby Boone, Christopher Cross and the Bee Gees … well, until you started singing along, anyway. This past week Sony announced they were ending production of the cassette Walkman after 31 years. It might be hard for some…

Reviews

Daniusoft Video Converter Ultimate Harnesses the Power of Nvidia CUDA Windows Software Review

Image courtesy of Daniusoft With so many devices being able to replay video these days, converting and encoding is a skill that should be known. Most devices now include software to handle this task for you but sometimes it just doesn’t encode the way you want it to or simply cannot convert from the file type you have. Years ago when the copyright cracking* became an art form, people who wanted to make legal copies of purchased DVDs had to use software such as DVDShrink, DVD decryptrr, and DVD Fab. It used to be a grueling multi-step process which involved different…

Reviews

iPad Case Review: iSkin Duo

There was a time when I was a HUGE fan of silicon skins for my devices. The excellent protection, wide array of color options and variety of designs were just some of the reasons I would, at times, choose a silicon case over a leather one. More recently however I have found myself choosing leather when I decide on which case to use. All this noted, iSkin’s new silicon iPad case offerings have me rather tempted with regard to opting for the brightly colored silicone. One of the designs they are now offering is the iSkin Duo for iPad. It…

eBooks, News

Kindle Books Getting ’14-Day Loaner’ … Expect nook-Like Limitations

When we bought my wife a nook, and then her sister and niece got nooks of their own, a great thought was ‘hey, this LendMe feature will be GREAT’. Sadly, the three have them have yet to exchange a SINGLE BOOK, despite all being voracious readers! Here is the promise from Barnes & Noble: Share favorite eBooks with your friends or family. Most eBooks can be lent for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the eBook you want to share and send it to your friend’s NOOK, computer, or handheld device enabled with our NOOK software. In…

News

Alex Anderson, Creator of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dead at 90

I don’t know about anyone else, but one staple of my childhood cartoon viewing was the Rocky & Bullwinkle show. The high-pitched squirrel and block-headed moose, along with the not-so-well-disguised Russian spies Boris & Natasha, My. Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right, and so on wove a wonderful set of memories that have lasted through the decades. Today we learn that the creator of those shows, Alex Anderson, has died at the age of 90 after suffering for years with Alzheimer’s disease. For many years it was assumed that Jay Ward, the producer of the shows, was sole creator. That is…

Reviews

HeyTell Review

Remember years ago when Nextel’s Direct Connect phones were all the rage? They aren’t used widely today, but back then the familiar beep of the walky-talky feature was something heard often. Thanks to a tip from a YouTube friend I’ve been using a new iOS application called “HeyTell” which mirrors the Nextel Direct Connect function. HeyTell turns your iOS device into a walky-talky. You record short (limited to 30-seconds) voice notes and they are transmitted to another user and played on his/her iOS device. The application utilizes push notifications to alert users when new messages have arrived so once you send the…

How to Do It Yourself!

Android Market Blues – Are Carrier App Restrictions Beating You Down?

Ah… Android. The allure of a completely open system. You’re in control, unlike on iOS devices. Right? Right? Sometimes, not so much. Turns out, AT&T Android-touting users, for example, can only install applications in the Android Market. Recently, Travis asked about installing non-Market applications on an AT&T Android smartphone, and Francis told him a few possible ways to do this. It’s definitely a source of frustration for users on carriers with such restrictions. Removing a standard feature of Android is simply an annoyance to users, and can be circumvented, as the Tested.com article How To Install Apps that are Filtered…

Editorials

Random Scary Stuff: Privacy vs. The Internet

We all know that being a so-called ‘netizen’ requires sacrificing a bit of privacy. The problem is knowing exactly where that line is between what you need to expose to get business done and what you should keep private even at the expense of being able to do something you want. Well … as the funny Venn diagram above shows, it isn’t easy to find that line, and often not even in our control! Because as a recent WSJ.com article shows, our ability to find the balance between online activity and personal privacy is being greatly outpaced by the race…

Editorials

Eenie Meenie Miny Moe… MacBook Airs but Which Way to Go?

When Apple announced the new MacBook air this past Wednesday I knew immediately that I would be ordering one. The question was – which one? Dan- Let me go back a few years. I have always wanted a thin and light computer that allowed me to do everything but was simple to lug around. When my arthritic wrists became increasingly painful the need for a light notebook grew significantly. As a result I ordered the first MacBook Air as soon as it was available. In fact, mine came in the very first day the computers were hitting the United States….

Editorials, Travel

The Five Stages of Smartphone Withdrawal

Regular readers of Gear Diary may remember I got married earlier this month. We just returned from our honeymoon, a fabulous week on beautiful San Salvador Island in the Bahamas. It’s absolutely gorgeous; white sandy beaches, sun, drinks, food…what more do you need? Well, in my case, the one thing missing from the island (and the one thing that had Sarah practically doing cartwheels of joy) was the distinct lack of internet service. Yes, I had to go an entire week without a smartphone. Just like the five stages of grief, I went through five stages of connectivity withdrawal. It’s…

Reviews

ADT PULSE Interactive Security System Review

When the new ADT PULSE system became available in my area I immediate jumped at the chance to have it installed in my home. PULSE not only allows for the ability to arm and disarm one’s home security system from anywhere in the world, it does much more. The new ADT PULSE system is all about home automation. It includes lighting, temperature control, video, and more. As a kid this sort of thing seemed like something that would exist in the far, far future, maybe not even in my lifetime. But it turns out that future isn’t far off at…

Music Diary, Reviews

Music Diary Review: Pat Metheny Orchestrion Live!

Image courtesy Hans Speekenbrink via AllAboutJazz.com Last night I took my family to see Pat Metheny and his Orchestrion live at the Anderson Performing Arts center in Binghamton, NY. Early this year I noted the introduction to the technology here and reviewed the CD here. When the concert tour was first announced, I was unsurprised that the nearest spots would be about four hours away from me (one thing I really miss about the Boston area!) So when a follow-up set of dates was announced in May that would bring Metheny within an hour … I grabbed tickets right away…

How to Do It Yourself!, Reviews

Quick Look- iMovie ’11 Movie Trailers… Fast, Easy, Fun

iLife ’11 has a neat new feature for making movie trailers. It is fun, easy to use and… well look for yourselves… From iMove’11 you select, “Create a New Project” and “Movie Trailer”. You pick your theme and then get to work… You change the text in the Outline to be whatever you like… Add clips from the imported movie event clips Then adjust either the text or the clips to better fit the storyboard. You can preview and, when happy, export your new movie trailer. Have you created a trailer using the new software? If you have… check back…

Reviews

ListMonger for iPhone Review

I recently received an email from Paul at Inspiretis, an iPhone app developer. Having seen one of my reviews in which I confessed my obsession with list making, Paul offered to send me a review copy of his new iPhone app, ListMonger. I downloaded the app and I’ve been playing with it for about a month. To be frank, I really like ListMonger. It packs a bunch of features into a few basic, easy to use screens. Among the features are: Nested lists – and not just at one level. I only tried it for three levels (a list with…

News

IsoToner’s smartTouch Gloves Review

It has been getting cold here in the northeast. This morning was quite chilly and it’s only going to get worse. That means jackets, hats and – of course – gloves. And that is a problem if you’re one of the growing number of people who use the touchscreen device. You see, capacitive touch screens need some sort of resistance to register taps, slides and other kinds of input. Fingertips work great… gloves do not. .Yes, sadly gloves and iPhones don’t mix well. There are a number of solutions were just out there. You can opt to use a stylus…

Reviews

Bumper Holster for iPhone 4 Review

iPhone protection is a bit of a double-edged sword for me. Everyone knows I’ve got a bit of an obsession with cases, but truth be told I like my iPhone best naked. Since I often carry my phone in my pants pocket keeping it as slim as possible is important. It is for this reason that I have been using a bumper style case in conjunction with a back skin more than any other combo. I had been looking for a better way to carry the phone (pants pockets just get to crowded with other stuff) when I came across…

News

TOM BIHN Introduces Cache sleeve for 11″ Apple MacBook Air

TOM BIHN is ready for the new MacBook Air notebooks with their Cache sleeve. There is one for the new 11″ MacBook Air that is available for pre-order and one for the 13″ that is already shipping. Here’s how the company describes their sleeve: A padded sleeve for your laptop, the Cache is designed to protect your laptop against scrapes and scratches. Its 1/4″ (6mm) thick foam padding laminated with an exterior of four-ply Taslan and an interior of brushed tricot cradles your laptop. No noisy Velcro® or zipper, the Cache closes by simply tucking a generous flap into the…

Reviews, Vehicles & Gear

2011 Mazda MX-5 Miata

A few years back, the good folks at Mazda chose to drop the Miata tagline on the most popular two-seat convertible sports car in the world, instead going only with the MX-5 designation. I guess this gave the cute little bugger more of a “macho” image as many consumers have thought of Miata as more a “chick’s” car. Masculinity intact, I thoroughly enjoyed my week in the Mazda MX-5 Miata, which I dubbed “Miazda” purely to enhance the confusion. In 2006, Mazda launched the third-generation of the fun little roadster and it did not share a single component with previous…

Reviews

Trainyard for iPhone/Touch Review

We are all feeling the financial pinch! Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99. Yes, I am a sucker for puzzle games on my IOS devices and love to find new games that fit the Blue Plate Special price. Trainyard is currently on sale for $.99 so jump on this one quickly. It is always interesting to see the many ways developers can create a puzzler. I have a soft spot in my heart as a train lover for this one. My dad loves to watch trains and…

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