2011 | Gear Diary

Music Diary Songs of Note: Sun Ran Live from Saturday Night Live in 1978

The depth and breadth of music featured on Saturday Night Live in its first decade is stunning – from Frank Zappa to Miles Davis to Gil Scott Heron and many more, there was seemingly no boundary the show wouldn’t cross. They proved that for sure in May of 1978 when they featured their first extraterrestrial artist – Sun Ra! Jazz musicians are now viewed as being anti-technology, but that wasn’t always so – Quincy Jones recorded the first synthesizer in 1964, Pat Metheny was a pioneer of guitar synthesizers, and in 1956 Sun Ra recorded the first electronic piano recording….

Editorials, News & Features

Yet Another Reason Why It Seems Android Users Love to Relive Their Windows Suffering

I have been an Android user since 2009, and have no intent on switching. But let’s be honest – in many ways the OS mirrors DOS and Windows. For example, on my original Droid, the split between the internal storage and SD card was absurd – I would have 14GB of memory on my SD card, but get ‘low memory’ warnings trying to install a 2MB app because nothing would let itself be installed in ‘HIMEM.SYS’. Another Windows-like behavior? The Add/Remove Control Panel – or, the ‘Manage Applications’ system item. This is the place you go to move apps to…

News & Features

Cobra Tag Helps You Find Anything Including Your Phone

Are you the type that misplaces things like keys, your car remote or your purse? Then the Cobra Tag may be for you. Cobra Tag is a Bluetooth device that works in conjunction with your phone. Once set up, if you walk away from the item your phone will alert you that you forgot your keys. What if that item is your phone? Cobra Tag has that covered too. If you walk away from your phone AND have the tag, then the tag itself will alert you that you left your phone behind. The app works on Blackberry and Android devices. No…

News & Features

Proof Psychedelia Is Alive and Well: Llamas with Hats

If you have kids in the tween to teen years, you likely experience the ‘world according to YouTube’. It has been shown before that YouTube is a leader in how kids see and interpret the world – they listen to music on YouTube, watch movies through clips, get comedy and trends there, and experience new content before it hits anywhere else. Anyway, one of big things that kids love on YouTube are micro-episodes – shorts that are a couple of minutes long and generally a bit off-kilter in terms of content. A couple of classic and well-known examples are Charlie…

News & Features

In a Sea of Generic Chains, One Local Pizza Shop Inspires a 1400 Mile Trek!

It is always interesting to see a ‘local flavor’ story, a positive human interest story with no downside. These stories remind us that there is good in the world, that in spite of recession and war and political strife and violence and natural disasters, there remains the possibility for the small and simpler pleasures often though to be the purview of forgotten times. And when one of those stories touches close to home, all the better. Such is the case in a story being featured on CNN, Good Morning America and other places – the story of a man who…

News & Features

RIP Microsoft Reader

If you used a Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device, you probably were somewhat familiar with Microsoft Reader. It was Microsoft’s answer to the niche ebook market, though it was left behind as Mobipocket was purchased by Amazon, eReader by Fictionwise (and the combined entity by B&N) and of course the rise of dedicated ebook readers like the Kindle and NOOK. Still, it was one of the early ebook pioneers, and now Microsoft is putting it out of its misery. Before you wail and gnash your teeth, though, Microsoft is doing this in a very orderly fashion. They’re giving almost a full-year…

Reviews

iPhone 4 Power Gear Review: PhoneSuit Elite Battery + Case

I’m a big fan of iPhone battery cases that combine protection and extra battery life into a single package. Since the release of the original iPhone, we have looked at a number of these hybrid case-batteries, and today we’ll take a look at PhoneSuit’s latest offering: the PhoneSuit Elite iPhone Case. The company is not stranger to this kind of battery case, and their experience shows in both the Elite’s design and its functionality. From PhoneSuit: The PhoneSuit Elite iPhone Case extends the battery life of the iPhone by more than doubling its power capacity. Users can now experience up to two…

Game Diary, News & Features, Reviews

Gear Games News: Star Wars Jedi Knight II Comes to the Mac App Store

It has been just about a year and a half since I did a retrospective review on Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, concluding: Jedi Knight II has aged very well. The graphics scale nicely on new systems, but it also performs as you would expect an 8 year old game to run – flawlessly. The gameplay is missing some of the new mechanics such as sprinting that have become commonplace, but otherwise retains a tight and modern feel. The melee combat feeling Raven software developed has yet to be surpassed in any game in any genre since. For…

Gear Bits

Living under a Rock? Nope, under a Bubble

At times I’ve been told I live under a rock. Maybe I do sometimes but its nice and quiet there. 🙂 And it sure beats living in a bubble doesn’t it? Well maybe not. Check out this bubble hut, the Crystalbubble. Its shape …was voluntarily designed with the goal to offer a dreamy space without disturbing the nature and the environment. The hut and its walls were reduced at their minimum. Cristalbubble hut is both suited to spend an unusual night in the nature and taking advantage of a multifunction life space all year long, even at the bottom of…

Editorials

Apple Moving into HDTV Market? Here’s a Great First Step

Last night I was a bit under the weather. I went in search of something to watch and came upon the new Starz/BBC series Strike Back on my iPad’s browser. A few taps of the screen and it was playing on my large Samsung HDTV. It was just another reminder of the way in which Apple’s technology can create a seamless ecosystem for work and entertainment. Then today Cult of Mac published a post entitled Could Apple Enter Sub-$1K Premium TV Market With A Real iTV? In it they write News that high-end TVs are nearing the sub $1,000 range…

Reviews

Review: Griffin Beacon Universal Remote for iOS

It looks funny. It does exactly what it promises. And, at least for me, it is in the running for “iOS Accessory of the Year”. Okay, I’m exaggerating a bit but I’m pretty serious about how cool I think this iOS hardware/app combination is. The Griffin Beacon is the universal remote on steroids. With this odd piece of plastic powered by four AA batteries and a free download from the App Store I have taken my Samsung HDTV remote, my TiVo remote AND my Apple TV remote and put them away. Now all I need is one of my iOS…

eBooks

MindTheBook: Crowdsourced Book Recommendations

Looking for a good book on a particular subject? There’s always trolling Amazon and checking out their suggestions, or browsing Borders Barnes and Noble, but now there’s a new way to add to your library: MindTheBook. Basically, you ask a question, like, “How to make money on the internet?” and other people suggest titles. Those titles can be voted as helpful or not, and below the book listing is a link to Amazon (and a link to the Kindle version where available). It’s a neat idea, though it needs a strong userbase and lots of participation to really succeed. I’d…

Yum Log

Yum Log: Avion Tequila the Tastiest Product Placement Ever

In what has to be one of the best pieces of product placement, Avion Tequila had a key role in the last season of HBO’s Entourage and has made a few cameo appearances during this year’s final season of the hit show. Thing is, according to CNBC they didn’t pay a penny for it. Tequila sales overall have been on the rise in recent years and Avion has joined with the likes of Patron and Cabo Wabo as a tequila you’ll want to order this way: You: “I’ll have a margarita. Hold the salt. Hold the lime. Hold the Triple Sec.”…

Vehicles & Gear

Infiniti Redesigns the Flagship, Delivers All-New 2011 QX56

Photos by the Author While the flagship QX from Infiniti arriving in new form and function was news in and of itself, what really excited me was the possibility of its beefier powertrain rolling over to the shared platform of the Titan pickup. I have seen the new spec sheet for the 2012 Titan and my bubble burst – more of the same old, same old I am afraid. The large rigs in the Nissan/Infiniti stable all shared the same basic architecture that supports the same V-8 engine pushing the rear or all four wheels on a frame-based skeleton so…

Editorials

Smile, Facebook Is Watching You!

Three requests I encountered this summer: Scenario 1: Parents make a big purchase, and need to specifically instruct their children not to talk about it on Facebook. Scenario 2: A baby is born, and the new parents ask that no one posts pictures of the baby before they do. Scenario 3: A very private couple gets married, and guests are instructed not to tag or add photos on Facebook. What’s the theme here? If you guessed Facebook, you win! In each of these scenarios, it had to be explicitly stated that being present at someone else’s event, or tangentially related…

News & Features

Putting Android Tablet Sales In (Humorous) Perspective

The iPad is not yet 1.5 years old, and Android tablets are approaching their first anniversary. But while one product is mature and selling well, the other is still struggling to find success, and with some good reasons – the fragmentation that plagues Android smartphones is worse on tablete; app compatibility restrictions are often nonsensical; and the core design choices made are often counter-intuitive. Marco Arment, the creator of InstaPaper and Marco.org has put together an amusing look at how the sales of all Android tablets compare to sales of some obscure video game console ‘failures’. HP hasn’t released any…

News & Features

Meme Meets Classic: THIS is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things (Like Movies)!

Internet memes have been around since the ‘Dancing Baby’ and before, and tend to follow a typical cycle – they get started, get a hold with the tech-oriented folks of a certain community, then often grab a larger following. Occasionally they become fully mainstream, but that is fairly rare. One such curiosity is ‘Nyan Cat’, which got started in April of this year, and has only spread since then. Here is a bit about it from Know Your Meme: About Nyan Cat, also known as Pop Tart Cat, is an 8-bit animation depicting a cat with the body of a…

Reviews

Review: Sena Folio for iPad 2

One of the first high-end leather cases I had the opportunity to review for the original iPad was the Sena Folio. It was made from gorgeous leather, was beautifully crafted and actually looked better as it “wore in”. Sena offers two different Folio cases for the iPad 2 in addition to the Florence that we have reviewed recently. One of the Folio offerings, the Sena Folio Classic, maintains the same style as the original but adds the magnetic sleep/awake functionality. The additional design goes by the simple name “Folio”. It offers three different positions thanks to two built-in stands but…

eBooks

Class Action suit filed against Apple, 5 other eBook Publishers

As reported on Macrumors.com, Hagens Berman, a Seattle-based law firm that specializes in class-action suits involving antitrust and intellectual property, has filed a class action lawsuit against Apple and 5 other Publishers of eBooks alleging collusion of Apple and the 5 other named defendants to defeat Amazon’s attempt to sell eBooks at discount prices. Here is an excerpt from the Hagens Berman website: According to the suit, publishers believed that Amazon’s wildly popular Kindle e-reader device and the company’s discounted pricing for e-books would increase the adoption of e-books, and feared Amazon’s discounted pricing structure would permanently set consumer…

Reviews

Able Planet SI350 Sport Earphones Review

Headphones… We’ve check out a bunch. Some have impressed us. Some… Not so much. So when a new pair of headphones come on the market we want to check them out. And when they come from a company we know we are even more interest. That’s the case here with the new offerings from Able Planet. Judie introduced Able Planet to Gear Diary readers in this post way back in 2008. Mike looked at pair of their gaming headphones in this post. And Judie checked out a pair of their headphones with active noise cancellation here. I met with the…

Reviews

Kindle Cloud Reader iPad Review: Simple to Use, Awesome to Behold!

Carly highlighted the new Amazon Cloud Reader a couple of days ago, which provided a web-based solution for reading – and purchasing – Kindle books from Amazon.com on pretty much any device regardless of native app support (except for the BlackBerry Playbook, which is just in a woeful state at this point). While many companies, Amazon included, have discussed moving more apps to platform-independent HTML5, the timing of this release seems to good to be true, as Carly indicated with her ‘Don’t Tread on Kindle’ tagline. We have just seen a rash of changes, starting with Kobo, then Amazon, and…