May 2011

How You Can Help Tornado Victims in Missouri!

The pictures coming out of Joplin, Missouri are horrific. It’s awful to see what the tornado has done to people’s homes and lives. But thanks to the power of the internet, there is something you can do! In fact, there’s a few ways you can help. One, a consortium of bloggers is working to raise money for the people of Joplin through Paypal, and it’s an easy way to help even if you’re far away. Bloggers without Borders (BwoB) is a blogger-based charity whose mission is to help people—bloggers and readers alike—by harnessing the good will of the blogging community….

Reviews

iPhone Accessory Review: WOW-keys Keyboard for Mac, PC, iPhone and iPod touch

For the last few months my MacBook Air has been my main computer. It works quite well for me and, thanks to the large solid-state drive and the ability to connect it to a larger monitor, it serves as a desktop computing platform quite well. When I do connect it to a larger monitor, I like to have a separate keyboard and mouse so that I don’t have to worry about the placement of the laptop itself. Until now that is meant using a magic mouse and Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard. I’ve been trying out something new, however, and it’s a…

Game Diary, Reviews

Gear Games Review: Boxer App

One thing that the constant Apple march of technology from the 680×0 to PowerPC to Intel has done is decimated your ability to run old software. From 1996 until Apple killed off the ‘Classic Environment’ with the move to Intel Hardware, I would play Star Wars Dark Forces on my Mac every six months. The Mac version was superior in every way to the DOS release – double the resolution, enhanced audio, and so on. But since the ‘death of Classic’ I have had to use DOSBox (or SheepShaver on Mac) to play older games. These tend to require some…

News

Today is Towel Day … Do You Know Where Yours Is?

This morning my younger son left for school carrying his towel … since he became a big fan of Douglas Adams Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a year or so ago he ALWAYS knows where his towel is! He has been excited about celebrating ‘Towel Day’ all week. Unfortunately he wouldn’t let me take his picture for this post! Towel Day was created just after Douglas Adams death in 2001, in a post that said: Towel Day: A Tribute to Douglas Adams Monday 14 May 2001 06:00am PDT Douglas Adams will be missed by his fans worldwide. So that all…

Reviews

Android Device Review: HTC Verizon DROID Incredible 2

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Music Diary

Music Diary Songs of Note: In a Sentimental Mood

Have you ever just had a song come on and you and your spouse/boyfriend/girlfriend/significant other just start dancing? Last night the song Skywriting by a never popular British group ‘The Bible’ came on my wife’s iPod, and we had a nice little dance … to the amusement and embarrassment of our kids. I makes me think back to one of my favorite moments from The Cosby Show – at the end of an episode, Cliff drops a record on the turntable (look it up, kiddies), and on comes a gorgeous song and then he and Claire begin playful snuggling and…

Editorials

Bloomberg Businessweek: A More Nuanced Approach to Discussing Nuance Please

Let me begin by making it clear that I have no formal association to Nuance, the leader in voice recognition technology and innovation. I do not work for them, they do not directly advertise on Gear Diary, and I have personally paid for all of the Nuance software I have or currently use. I have, however, beta tested upcoming products for them, and I hope to continue to do so. Nuance “does” voice recognition, text-to-speech software, and much more. I have been using their products for years and, since encountering wrist issues associated to rheumatoid arthritis, have come to rely…

Music Diary

Pop Goes the Music Diary: Original Cindy Ain’t Down With That

OK, so my family has been on a Dark Angel kick lately, plowing through the entire series on DVD (which I grabbed on Goozex). One of the best things is the endless stream of quips from ‘Original Cindy’ (OC). She always seems to have a comment to match the situation, such as when Normal gets involved with a transgender woman who discovers she is a lesbian … “Original Cindy is just too straight to hook up with a science-fiction girlfriend.” Anyway, this weekend we watched some of the Billboard ‘Awards’ show, which largely tossed out popularity prizes and reminded us…

Gear Bits, News

Random Cool Video: Classic Sesame Street

I consider my family fortunate – I grew up watching Sesame Street when it was brand new, and my kids got to experience it as well during a time when both classic and new material was presented side-by-side, and there were plenty of videos, computer games, and music CD’s to enjoy! Last week my wife was shuffling on her iPod and ‘What do I do when I’m alone’ came on, a hold-over favorite from when the kids were little (I still have Rainbow Connection on my iPod!). Then this weekend a post at Buzzfeed looked at a bunch of classic…

Reviews

Photography Gear Review: USBfever HDMI Adapters and Retractable Audio 3.5mm Jack AUX Auxiliary Cable

My pile of field production equipment is ever-growing. I am a “one-man-band” of sorts so I am constantly looking for gear and “doo-dads” to make production work easier. Recently I picked up a great set of headphones (which I will feature in a separate post), and I learned the Swann RC helicopter won’t lift my HDHero POV camera — so no aerial shots for right now. When I first began updating all of my camera gear, I remember receiving a note from USBFever.com announcing some HDMI to mini HDMI adapters and cables. I also remember saying to myself “What the…

Music Diary, Reviews

ATunes Open Source Media Player Review

The trend toward strangely-capitalized programs is really annoying. The mediaplayer aTunes is trying to follow the iTunes naming model somewhat slavishly, so we’re stuck with that I suppose. Of course, that means sentences starting with the name of the program are either capitalized wrong or the word is capitalized wrong. Such choices! Installation was smooth and trouble-free, with a language selection dialog less impressive than Songbird, but sure to cover most use cases (darn, no Korean!). It also allows you to optionally install the source code for this GPL-licensed open source program, the only one in the set to do…

News

Random Cool Video: What Would You Do

‘What Would You Do’ is one of those ‘if we happen upon it’ shows my family will watch occasionally on Friday. The show sets up actors playing roles on hidden cameras in public places. Some of the ones we have seen are different teens (boy/girl, black/white) attempting to take a bike chained to a pole, hateful speech lobbed at an overweight girl, a spouse (again, male & female) trying to instigate a tryst in a bar on their anniversary while the other spouse is in the restroom. The goal is to see how normal bystanders will behave when confronted with…

Editorials

Android Owners: Screenshots or Movies … Pick One

I have been reviewing games since … well, since before the advent of smartphones anyway. And yet I have always managed to be able to come up with screenshots from my chosen device -Newton, Psion, Palm, Windows Mobile, iOS … but not Android. For some mind-numbing reason Android lacks a built-in screenshot utility. No problem for many – just ‘root’ the device and install one of the many screenshot utilities on the Android Market. Heck, that almost makes it seem like it is sanctioned officially!. But it isn’t – and that is one reason I have not rooted my Android…

Gear Bits, News

Random Cool Video: Watch Family Guy ‘Its a Trap’ for FREE!

Over the last several years Family Guy has taken on the original Star Wars trilogy, with Blue Harvest and Something, Something Dark Side. Last December they released the final entry ‘It’s A Trap’ on DVD and Blu-Ray, and on May 22nd the show aired as the finale for the 9th season of Family Guy. The episode is once again a humorous retelling of Return of the Jedi using series characters in place of the original actors, but keeping the personalities of the Family Guy characters largely intact. General opinion seems to be that this is the weakest of the three…

Music Diary, Reviews

Clementine Open Source Media Player Review

Clementine is a very clean-looking media player, inspired by the venerable Amarok player from Linux, and even using the Qt platform so it works in several flavors of Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. The installation is quick and simple, with no options presented to the user besides folder for the program. Unlike most media players, Clementine does not prompt the user for a music folder during the installation process. My 4000+ track test library was read and available in just over two minutes, although the program remained responsive during that time so I could do other things while waiting….

News

Skooba Design Adds Tenba Photo Bags to Portfolio

In response to many customer requests, Laptop bag manufacturer Skooba Design has partnered with the well-known Tenba brand to add photo/video carrying cases to Skooba’s product offering. Skooba will act as a reseller for the 35 year-old photo brand, which is a division of a separate company. The Skooba website is set up with quick links to match your lifestyle needs. One of four tabs – photographer, fashionista, road warrior and tech lover – will take you to a page with bags suited to fit your exact needs. I love this new offering of the Tenba bag lineup. I still…

Reviews

Portable Speaker Review: The Bomb from iFrogz

I cannot tell a lie. I love speaker solutions. With music being totally mobile and always available in my pocket, I love having many ways to listen to my audio content. Some options are quite expensive and include bluetooth connections and high-end audio, but sometimes I just need something inexpensive, easy to carry and convenient. iFrogz has introduced a speaker system that fits this category and they call it, “the Bomb”. I have been able to spend a little time with the Bomb so let’s take a look and see how it sounds. The Bomb is a reasonably priced speaker…

Music Diary, Reviews

Songbird Open Source Media Player Review

Although you’d barely know it from the mainstream media, there are other portable audio players besides the iPod and there are other media management programs besides iTunes. There are some great freeware and commercial alternatives to iTunes. This series will focus on three of the most full-featured open-source media programs available for Windows. All of them are also available for Mac OS X, and all but Songbird are available for several flavors of Linux besides. Let’s start with the most prominent, Songbird. Songbird started out in 2006 as a multi-platform program based on Mozilla’s XUL framework. After four years of…

Gear Bits

Amtrak says, “Browse While You Ride, but No App Store for You!”

I’m on the Acela train from New Jersey to Washington DC, where I will be attending a conference for the next few days. The train is super comfortable, fairly quiet and it even has WiFi. The WiFi connection has been solid and, while not exactly speedy, it is more than fast enough. It certainly is impressive when you take onto account that I’m flying down the NorthEast Corridor, and have better connectivity that Judie does right now AT HER HOME!! I did find one thing a bit surprising though; I was able to do everything I wanted, until I went…

Editorials

The HTC Flyer: Mobile Computing Then and Now

The HTC Flyer has arrived. It is the latest device from HTC and their jump into the tablet market. This isn’t their first major move into the mobile computing world though. No, back when the UMPC was the big deal HTC brought out an innovative device that had the potential to take the world by storm. It didn’t but a quick look at the two of them together makes it clear: the Flyer is pretty much a direct descendant of… Oh just watch the video.

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