January 2011

2011 North American Car and Truck of the Year winners announced

The 2011 Ford Explorer has been named North American Truck of the Year at the 2011 North American International Auto Show in Detroit this morning. As a finalist it beat out the Jeep Grand Cherokee and Dodge Durango for top honors. In the North American Car of the Year competition, two of the three finalists are electric vehicles, although one does have a range extending gas engine on-board and this is what clinched it to make the Chevrolet Volt as the top car over the Nissan Leaf and Hyundai Sonata.

Events, Gear Bits

The iPad in Action In Las Vegas!

This morning was my last morning in Vegas. Yes, CES is over. As I was checking out of the hotel I noticed something I had missed when I checked in on Monday. The simple LCD screens at the front desk aren’t screens at all. No, they are iPads that have been secured into the desks with a bezel wrapping around them. The only thing that gave them away as iPads was the telltale button that remained exposed at one side. The iPads were not being used as simple screens though. No, they were used to display the bill, interact with…

Reviews

Review: GlowCrazy Glow-In-The-Dark Fun

Despite being a gear geek, I still want my kids to have activities for inside that are not on a television or video game system. In their life, most of what they know come either of those ways. We do play with Lego toys, slot car tracks and board games, but those get old to the boys. What we need is something unique that seems magic. Enter GlowCrazy which happens to be both unique and does seem like magic. The good folks at GlowCrazy sent me and my boys a sample for review. My boys play hard and are self…

News

Contour GPS Adds Bluetooth to Hands-Free Video

It’s an issue as old as Xtreme Sportz. You’ve strapped a video camera to your helmet, and you’re convinced it’s absolutely killer footage. Unfortunately, you taped the camera at the wrong angle, and instead of seeing your wicked skating set everyone sees the sky. Luckily, ContourGPS has a hands-free video camera that solves this issue by turning your phone into the viewfinder via Bluetooth. I can see where this would be helpful since without some sort of screen you don’t know that your camera is aimed properly. However, may I make a suggestion? If you’re going to be using this…

Events, News

First Ever Demo- Motorola Atrix 4? Phone To 20? Desktop to… 24? iMac

Francis and I got to spend some intimate time with Motorola’s Xoom powerhouse tablet and Atrix smartphone and we came away impressed. Toward the end of the demo we asked for a chance to try something new; we asked to take over the Atrix while it was connected to a 20″ monitor, keyboard and mouse and use it, in conjunction with LogMeIn, to take over my 24″ iMac in New Jersey. The result… The smartphone took over and controlled my Mac seamlessly. We asked if anyone else had done this, and were told this was, at least in their experience,…

Events

CES: VIZIO

VIZIO is moving toward all connected televisions. VIZIO is introducing a universal wireless HD video and audio kit sub $200. Can put about 20 Myers away from TV and it will stream the content. They have introduced their first dual band router for video and computer wireless access. 7 and 9″ portable LCD TVs. For Mobile and auto applications. Their new Cinematic Experience id available in 50, 58 & 71″ (240Hz) sizes starting in June. Connect with Skype to any VIA HDTV for video chat. Head to head video gaming on one screen, by using versus lenses. Each set has…

Events, News

2011 May Actually BE the Year of the Tablet

It is actually looking like the tablet bonanza promised last year will finally arrive. Francis and I just found ourselves in tablet-Ville. Prototypes and actual shipping models were everywhere and almost all were running some version of Android.

Events, News

ProClip Makes Francis’ Day

Francis doesn’t own a single Apple product. Yeah I know… some day he will come to his senses but for now he is committed to remaining unenlightened. His phone of choose right now… the Samsung Vibrant. The problem with that is that there are tons of accessors for iPhones but when it comes to phones like the Captivate there are few choices. Francis was sharing his tale of woe when we stumbled upon our friend Johan at his ProClip booth and… wouldn’t you know it, ProClip has a carholder that IA designed specifically for the Captivate and its top-positioned microUSB.

News, Vehicles & Gear

CES Garage, Day Four

Day Four is all about the unveiling of the new Ford Focus Electric, an all-electric version of the next-generation Focus subcompact. The all-new Focus Electric is Ford’s first-ever all-electric passenger car. (OK, maybe its first-ever mass-produced electric car as Mrs. Henry Ford was reported to spin around the Dearborn countryside in an electric car in 1914.) The zero-CO2-emissions, gasoline-free version of Ford’s popular small car is the flagship of the company’s growing fleet of hybrid, plug-in hybrid and all-electric vehicles coming to North America and Europe by 2013.

Reviews

Spider-Man Turn Off the Dark Review

Last night for Sarah’s birthday we went to see “Spider-Man: The Musical”. It was supposed to have officially debuted by now, but due to some unfortunate accidents they’ve pushed back the official debut, so what we saw was still the preview. However, it was still a fantastic experience, both for Sarah (as a theater geek) and me (the comic book geek)!

Events, News

Gear Diary Live at CES- The Lenovo U1: A Year Later It Looks Better than Ever

Dino and I spent some time this afternoon at the Lenovo display. We had the opportunity to look at all of the new computers that will be offered by Lenovo this year. Trust us, there are a ton of them and we will have a look at many over the next few days. Right now, however, we wanted to take a few minutes to look a little more closely at their most unusual and innovative product–the Lenovo U1. This is both a tablet and a notebook computer. We saw a version of this computer last year when we were here…

Editorials, Game Diary

SpiderWeb Games Founder Jeff Vogel On Why He Avoids His Own Forums

Many actors claim to avoid reading reviews of their own work, for a variety of reasons. Likewise, if you go on video game forums, you will either see absolutely no official contact or it will be through ‘community managers’ like on the Bioware forums. Ever wonder why that is? SpiderWeb Games Founder Jeff Vogel (who has run his own ‘indie’ game company where he is the head programmer, designer, writer, and so on, since 1994) wrote an entry on his ‘Bottom Feeder’ blog about just that. Here is a quote: It’s a little different on my company’s forums. But only…

Events, News

Vision Objects Makes Their CES Debut

Vision Objects has been developing and refining handwriting recognition technology since 1998, with their software being partnered with some well known products, such as the Livescribe pen series so well loved by several Gear Diary writers (including yours truly). Despite being well known for their handwriting recognition prowess, which is available in different forms for Mac OS X, Windows, Linux, Android, Symbian, and Windows Mobile, this is the first year that Vision Objects set up shop at CES. To coincide with its first CES appearance, Vision Objects is introducing several new products. As described by their press release: MyScript Studio…

Reviews

iPad App Review: Korg iMS-20

I recently reviewed Korg DS-10 Plus, the analog synthesizer for the Nintendo DS that emulated a Korg MS-10 analog synthesizer. Now Korg is back – this time with the iMS-20, a full translation of the classic Korg MS-20 for the iPad. The Hype: KORG iMS-20: Transform your iPad into a complete analog synth studio! Product Highlights: – A complete recreation of the legendary Korg MS-20 analog synth – Built-in 16-step analog sequencer to control the sound – Music production studio with the MS-20 mono synth, a six-part drum machine, and a mixer – Kaoss Pad function allows intuitive performance and…

Game Diary, Reviews

iPhone/iPad Review: Rock Band Reloaded

The original Rock Band for the iPhone was a decent hit in spite of trading real-feel instruments for tapping on a screen. This is because it was designed to look and feel like the console game and had a good selection of songs to go along with a well designed and functional interface. Now Electronic Arts is back with the next entry in the series … Rock Band Reloaded! Let’s see how they did, and whether it is worth paying again for the new game. The Hype: – PLAY 33 SONGS! Instantly launch into 15 legendary tracks, with additional FREE…

Events, News

Casio- “Viva LaRevolution”; Us “Revolution? What Revolution”

What do you do when you have nothing of substance to say but it’s the biggest technology event of the year? Why you hold a press conference of course! And then you use words like “digital revolution” and “create fantastic works of art” over and over and over and over again. That was the experience we had yesterday afternoon at the Casio press conference. Yes, the company that first brought digital photography to the world had nothing of substance to offer today but that didn’t keep them from holding a press conference and talking for a seemingly endless period of…

Events, News

CES: Handsets and Tablets, Oh MY! All from Motorola!

Today at CES Verizon had their day in the sun! During that announcement they officially announced what looks like a great handset in the new Droid Bionic, plus the new Xoom Tablet. Both are due to hit Verizon early this year. The Droid Bionic boasts from the press release: Packing a dual core processor with each core running at 1GHz, delivering up to two GHz of processing power, and 512 MB RAM, the sleekly designed DROID BIONIC smartphone with 4G LTE delivers a mobile Internet experience that’s up to 10 times faster than 3G. This means consumers can stream their favorite…

Events, News

Nike Introduces the Nike+ SportWatch

Garmin has been the undisputed leader of GPS running watches for several years. Timex and Polar have similar devices, but neither has captured running hearts quite like the Garmin Forerunner line. Nike has the “poor man’s Garmin” with their Nike+ system, and at CES they stepped it up with a new GPS-based Nike watch. According to Nike: Starting April 1st, get the extra push you need with the Nike+ SportWatch GPS powered by TomTom. Not only does it track what you do, it tracks how you do it, then makes you want to do it again and again. Here’s how:…

Events, News

A Huge Gear Diary Thank You to Card Munch

So CES is well underway, and we are running from sun-up until late at night. Along the way we are seeing all kinds of great tech, speaking to awesome people and… collecting tons of business cards. Well, actually, that’s not quite true. If this were last year we would be collecting tons of business cards but this isn’t last year and we aren’t collecting any business cards at all. Thanks to the Card Munch iPhone app and the generosity of the folks at Card Munch, Judie and I haven’t collected a single business card. Instead we take the cards, grab…

Events, News

CES- Iomega Superhero Dock

I spent some time this morning at the Iomega booth and had a chance to see their news Superhero dock for backing up and charging iPhones and iPod touches. The unassuming dock does a trick that, surprisingly had not been done before. The dock will charge your device but it will also backup photos and contacts to the included SD card. To use it you download the free app that will be available soon and then, whenever the device is docked the app will launch and back up the most precious content on it. It works with all generations of…

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