2012

Synthetik Park’s Wall Aquarium Is Eye-Level Gorgeous

Watch how my thought process goes … 1. We have a Beta fish named Brad; he lives in a goldfish bowl that sits on our credenza, and every chance she gets, our cat Avah likes to drink water from his bowl. She’s not trying to eat Brad, or at least we haven’t seen her try, but she seems to love his fish flavored water. This bothers me, because she has been known to lap his water down to less than half a bowl when we have been away. 2. In order to really see Brad I have to bend down,…

Gear Bits

SoundHound, the Awesome iOS App of the Day

I was driving in the car and a tune came on that was awesome. It wasn’t familiar and I wanted to make sure I could hear it again so… at the stop sign of course, I pulled out my iPad, fired up SoundHound, and I searched for the song.

Music Diary, News & Features

Music Smasher Searches Across Streaming Music Services

If you are contemplating signing up for a streaming music service, or are unhappy with the one you are using, chances are one major consideration is the music library. While ‘music discovery’ is all well and good, ultimately we all want to just want to listen to music. Now we hear of a new service developed by Matt Montag called ‘Music Smasher’. As the screen at top shows, you simply enter some terms and the site searches across all of the major streaming services. According to Montag: “I developed it to simplify the task of searching across Spotify, Rdio, Grooveshark,…

Gear Bits

How Big is Big? How Small is Small? Find Out on The Scale of the Universe 2 Website

“Space is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it’s a long way down the road to the chemist’s, but that’s just peanuts to space.” – The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy Yes, space IS big, but that is only one side of the coin of the known Universe—there are items known and believed to exist that are incredibly small. Cary and Michael Huang have created a fascinating web page, The Scale of the Universe 2 that permits the scientifically voyeuristic to view a large number of items in the Universe…

Reviews

The Startech USB 3.0/eSATA Quad Bay Docking Station Review

Image courtesy of StarTech Those of us in the IT business know that you simply can’t have enough tools to get the job done. Anything to make life easier, and give you more time to for other things is usually worth it’s weight in gold. StarTech makes some of the coolest and hard to find computing equipment on the market. Almost everything I have used from them works exactly as they said it would and stands up to the harshness of the IT worker lifestyle. Today we are taking a look at one of my favorite products from StarTech,…

Reviews, Travel

Plantronics Marque M155 Bluetooth Headset Review

It is not uncommon for us to have an item or two as part of a giveaway but to have four of the same item ready to send to four lucky Gear Diary readers… that IS unusual. The giveaway item is, as Judie posted the other day, the Plantronics Marque M155 Bluetooth headset. Yes, we have two of the M155s in white and two in black to give away and the contest doesn’t end until Sunday. At an MSRP of $59.99 (you can get it for less if you price check on the internet) it is one of the less…

Reviews, Yum Log

Just Chill Out with Bottle on Ice Wine Cooler

Contrary to popular belief, you’re not supposed to drink red wine at room temperature or white wine straight out of the refrigerator. Most whites taste best after being allowed to warm up about twenty minutes after being removed from the fridge, and your better Chardonnays and White Burgundies really shine at cellar temperature, which is about 55°. Red wines generally drink best at close to 65°, which unless you live in my grandparents’ old house, probably is a bit colder than room temperature. So the easy rule of thumb is to take white wine out of the refrigerator twenty minutes…

News & Features

U.S. Cellular Drops Prices, Offers $100 Activation Credit for ALL New Customers, and More!

If you are in the U.S. Cellular coverage area, you should already know that they work really hard for you as a customer, and reward loyalty in a way that simply doesn’t happen on other carriers. If you are in their area and DON’T know this … now is your chance! There are several new things going on starting today.

Gear Bits

A Quick Look at the Bones Link II iPhone Adapter

Sometimes it is the little things that make all the difference. That’s the case with the Bones Link II. Let me back up a bit. The other day I ordered a 16GB RAM upgrade from Crucial for my new iMac. At under $100 it was a great deal. When I went to check out I was offered the opportunity to buy the Bones Link II iPod/iPhone adapter at half price since I had purchased RAM. Normally it is $11.99 so at half that I figured why not and ordered one. The adapter is described this way … Here’s a great way to…

Gear Bits, Travel

Yes, I Can Hear You Now; Thanks to Vonage Mobile

This is a sponsored post, all opinions written here are mine. Make Calls, Save Money Have you tried Vonage’s new mobile app? It lets you make free calls to other people using the Vonage app. It lets you save 70% over the major mobile carriers and 30% over Skype’s rates. It works over WiFi, 3G and 4G wireless data networks worldwide, with WiFi being the most economical method of all. And it is simple. The interface is familiar, you can add calling credit right on the device itself themselves in increments of $4.99 and $9.99 and the call quality is…

Music Diary, News & Features

Alfred Music Releases ‘152 of the World’s Most Beautiful Songs’

Most musicians are constantly looking for new material to play – stuff we write or songs by other people. In fact, learning the tools and techniques employed by others is often inspirational to creating works of your own. But fundamentally, learning great classic songs can help you get work as a musician and please audiences if you have their favorite in your repertoire. Now Alfred Music, who acts as the official print music publisher of thousands of popular artists, songwriters, and composers, has released a great collection of 152 songs arranged for piano, vocal and guitar.

Music Diary, News & Features

National Learn to Play Day on Saturday March 31st, 2012

National Learn to Play Day is an even being sponsored in the UK by the ‘Music for All’ charity on Saturday March 31st, 2012. Her are a few details: On this day, the UK’s musical instrument shops will open their doors and offer free instrument “taster” lessons to the general public. There are 15 million people in the UK that either want to play an instrument or used to play one. The Day is designed to welcome people into music shops and to inspire them to get playing. People are often surprised to discover that they ARE musical and simply…

News & Features

Keurig Introduces the New Keurig Vue Brewing System

Most of the Gear Diary team and many of my friends know that I love my Keurig machine. Brewing many different hot drinks from coffee to cocoa, my Keurig is my morning friend, and I’ve even been known to fire it up in the evening? However, there’s one thing that my Keurig can’t do — milky drinks like latte’s and cappuccinos. Well, Keurig has done it again and brought out a new brewing system called the Keurig Vue.

Editorials, Vehicles & Gear

Cadillac Celebrates 100th Anniversary of Making Cars Less ‘Cranky’

Talk about taking technology for granted, how about the electric starter? Cadillac is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its debut of electric start technology that first appeared in its 1912 Cadillac Touring Edition. Before this ground breaking innovation, cars were a bit “cranky.” Literally. Back then it took a hand crank and some muscle power to turn over the motor to be able to drive your vehicle.

Editorials

Want Android 4.0 or Google Chrome on Your Phone? Don’t Buy a Motorola!

Recently Motorola talked about the difficulty and complexity of updating the operating system on phones, placing the blame for the ‘expectations game’ squarely on Google and how they choose to roll things out: When Google does a release of the software … they do a version of the software for whatever phone they just shipped. The rest of the ecosystem doesn’t see it until you see it. Hardware is by far the long pole in the tent, with multiple chipsets and multiple radio bands for multiple countries. It’s a big machine to churn. So when Google released Android 4.0 Ice…

Reviews

Hands-On Review of the Republic Wireless $19 ‘Unlimited’ Cell Phone Plan

Back in early November I wrote about Republic Wireless, a company offering a compelling $19 a month unlimited plan with no contract. I ordered a phone the same day, and it arrived late in December. Let’s take a quick look at what they have to offer! The Hype: Newsflash: anything a cell network can do, the Internet can do better and cheaper. So we think a truly smart smartphone should make a habit of using Wi-Fi for everything. Surfing. Texting. Sharing. And, yes, even talking. There isn’t an app for this. And you definitely shouldn’t have to download any special…

Vehicles & Gear

Mazda Makes Minivans Cool(ish) With Mazda5

How does one go about making a minivan cool? Mazda makes it a Mazda5. While more of a “mini” minivan, the 2012 Mazda5 offers what they term “seductive smartness” design elements, unique not only for this segment but any segment close to it. The Mazda5 was developed in the middle of last decade as the automaker’s answer to dwindling minivan sales and as a replacement for its own MPV model. Dubbed a multi-activity vehicle (MAV) the Mazda5 is compromise between wagon and van and after spending a week behind the wheel of one I find it offers the perfect blend…

Gear Bits

$30 off Eyeglasses at Costco

Despite my reputation of being very clumsy, I have worn glasses for over 20 years without breaking them. Until last week’s vacation, when I left them on the bed and smashed them. Oops. To be fair, being at sea apparently exacerbates my natural klutziness, since I also went flying off a water tube, fell off a chair, and walked head first into a tree branch. So I guess I should be happy my glasses were the main victims. However, this did mean I needed new ones, and I apparently picked a good month for it! Costco has a coupon for $30 off…

Reviews

The Incipio Stowaway for iPhone 4 and 4S Review

While questions remain about the security of Google Wallet (can you say “hackable??” I knew you could!!), the search for the perfect “iPhone case as wallet” continues. We’ve looked at a number of them and all had their positive attributes. Sadly, all were also hampered by some significant flaws. Has the Incipio Stowaway made the right design decisions? Is this the perfect everyday iPhone case as wallet? Let’s take a closer look.

Gear Bits

La Plata Time Rings Are a Low-Tech Puzzle for these High-Tech Times

You can only sling so many angry birds at chortling pigs before your mind goes numb and you want something … different. Sometimes the simplest things can captivate the imagination; a case in point would be this lovely low-tech and natural puzzle made from a slice of cypress. The puzzle is made from the wood of Cypress trees, that died naturally and it does keep me wondering about the history of the tree and its surroundings. Unfortunately I didn’t find this object too near to the region of the Patagonian Andes lakes, where it actually comes from. I simply never been there,…

Reviews

Where Can the Case-Mate Phantom Travel? Just About Anywhere!

I have just returned from a weeklong cruise along Costa Rica and Panama, and of course, my trusty iPhone came with me. It was safely swaddled in a Case-Mate Phantom Case, which I’ve had for a few weeks. My intention was to write-up the full review when I returned, but as the trip played out this review took on a bit of a different turn, so read on for more!

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