Judie Lipsett Stanford

The Plantronics Discovery 975 Bluetooth Headset Review

photos by Kevin It seems as if finding the perfect Bluetooth headset has become a never-ending quest for me; it’s not just about finding one that keeps me from sounding like a fish in a barrel anymore, it’s also about finding one that fits my ear without making me look like a telephone operator or worse – a borg. Just to make things really difficult, so many headsets seem to fall into one of two camps: ridiculously complicated and over-featured or utterly simplistic and featureless. Finding a headset that strikes a balance between sound, comfort, and features has become my…

News & Features

The Rolling Razor Looks Tricky

I’m not too sure that the Rolling Razor is that much safer to use: after all, nicks and scratches are common with even the most basic stick styles, and I can only imagine the damage I could inflict with something like this. But according to the Rolling Razor site, using one helps to eliminate irritation, nicks, cuts, razor bumps and burn.

Events

Conquering New York During the Windows 7 Tour

Last weekend I had the opportunity to be part of a small group of tech bloggers invited to attend several Windows 7 launch events in New York and Washington DC. I wasn’t totally clear on exactly what we would be doing on this trip before going, but I figured no matter what, it would be fun, and the food would be good. I was right… Thursday Tripit is my Friend Travel is almost always an adventure when flying out of San Angelo Regional Airport, and this time was no exception. My 9:05 a.m. flight was delayed, but at least I…

Reviews

Enlighten, Case-Mate’s Gorgeous New Lighted Kindle2 Cover

photos by Kevin One of the things that I love about the Kindle – its eInk screen – is also one of the things that makes using the Kindle a bit difficult when lighting is poor. It seems silly in a way to complain about not being able to read a book in the dark, because it certainly isn’t something anyone could do with the dead tree version, but there are a couple of reasons I think it chafes more than expected when people read from non-backlit devices. I think many who use eReaders have also experienced reading on other…

News & Features

Brinell Purestorage Hard Drives for the Ferrari Set

If you wear Zegna suits, have a home in the Hamptons, and if your other car is a Ferrari, then a plastic casing on your portable hard drive would be nothing short of gauche. It’s for you that the brinell purestorage line was created… With the brinell purestorage product series, brinell, the Karlsruhe-based creative designer, has put portable hard drives on the market, setting new standards in the area of IT peripherals. Not only do these units rank among the most compact USB hard drives in cheque card and pocket format with a capacity of up to 500 GB, they…

Reviews

Review: Sleek Audio SA1, an Altogether Different Audio Experience

Here’s the dilemma: you’re listening to your favorite music, and outside noises are not only bleeding in, they are making your music less clear. Most people would turn up the volume to block the unwanted noise and amplify their audio. The only problem is that in the process, they might also be causing irreparable hearing loss. Then there’s the matter of bass and treble – sometimes your left ear needs more bass and your right more treble, and that’s not exactly something you can set on an equalizer. How do you handle that? Sleek Audio, a two year old company…

News & Features

The Flurry Alarm Clock Wants to Wake You with Weather

As much as I love living in the rural countryside, there are certain products and services which I would like to use – but simply can’t. One of them is the new Ambient Devices Flurry Alarm Clock, which not only tells the time with dual alarms, it also wakes you to an animated weather forecast for that day and the next. Features include: • Intuitive “Pop-Up” alarm buttons are visual status indicators, easy to set and use. • Network connected clock is always accurate and never needs setting. • Integrated 2-Day weather forecast provided by AccuWeather.com for 150 U.S. locations….

News & Features

Are YOU the Master of the Digital Universe?

Skooba Design is looking for the ultimate digital gear-head. Could it be you? Their new “Master of the Digital Universe” contest gives techies from all over a chance to “put up or shut up” as they duke it out for the title. The prizes look amazing! Among other goodies, the grand prize includes something truly unique the opportunity to work directly with a Skooba designer to create a custom-made, one-of-a-kind laptop/gadget bag, to be handmade by a Skooba craftsperson, only for the winner. As the company says, “as is fitting for the Master, it will be the only bag of…

Editorials, Events

Balloon Boy – a Timeline of Deception

Where were you when you first heard about the now-infamous “Balloon Boy” incident? On Thursday, October 15th, at a little past 2 p.m. Central Time, Dan and I were IM’ing when he abruptly told me to turn on CNN. Once I did, the screen was filled with the image of a large silver balloon speeding and spinning, thousands of feet above the Colorado countryside. The balloon supposedly carried a six-year-old boy, appropriately named Falcon. For the next hour, Dan and I chatted back and forth – with interjections from the Gear Diary Team as we all emailed about the situation….

How to Do It Yourself!, Reviews

Rosetta Stone TOTALe Program, Week 7

Buenos Noches. This week I began Unit 3, Lesson 1, and as had happened when I began the previous other two, I was immediately immersed into a new world where unknown words were being thrown at me as if I should understand their meaning and context. But this time was armed with something I hadn’t had before — an ever expanding vocabulary. By paying attention to what was being written or said, even when I couldn’t understand much of it, I was able to pick out words I knew that helped put the unknown words into context, even when their…

Editorials

Seriously Live Messenger, What is the problem?

I am used to getting random spam instant messages through my Live Messenger account, but today has been a banner day, and I say that with total sarcasm. Today I have received at least five random IMs from a different address (which I immediately block after the message arrives), and each one has been completely trashy. I’m posting the least offensive here, and the truly offensive ones after the break. Bear in mind that I have my Live account set so that I am not supposed to get any messages from people who aren’t contacts, and yet…they keep coming, and…

News & Features

Cordless Charging with the Powermat Wireless Charging System

We’ve mentioned WildCharge – the company that allows you to use inductive charging with nearly any mobile phone or other power hungry gadget – before on Gear Diary, but tonight I realized we hadn’t given any coverage to Powermat, another company with a similar premise (but a better looking design). What premise would that be? Why the one that says plugging your devices in to charge them is so passé; the idea that all you should have to do is lay your gadget on a mat to charge it, even if the trade-off is having to keep your phone in…

Editorials

Impressions on Windows Mobile 6.5 and the AT&T Pure Windows Phone

This is a joint review between Wayne and me. Wayne is primarily a Blackberry and iPhone user, and he has also dabbled in Android, Palm, Windows Mobile and WebOS. I am primarily an iPhone and Nokia / Vertu user, with an extensive background in Palm and Windows Mobile. We were recently sent the new HTC Pure Windows Phone to review, because it is one of the first of several new Windows Phones to use the new Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. Wayne’s comments will be the ones in black; mine will be in blue italics. Microsoft unleashed an upgrade to…

News & Features

Windows Mobile 6.5 is Officially Released

Last week Wayne and I had the opportunity to sit in on an NDA workshop discussing the new and updated features of Windows Mobile 6.5. Wayne got hung up and couldn’t attend (pesky day job getting in the way, again!), but I was able to sit in an hear a bit about 6.5 and Marketplace, Microsoft’s new software store for Windows Phones. Those of you who read our GearChat back in February will recognize many of the new 6.5 screens, and yes – the Zune-like interface is still present.

Reviews

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Week Six into the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Program

¡Hola! When I left off last week, I was near the end of Unit 2, which meant a lot of review work and another upcoming milestone. Would this milestone slay me as the first one had? Would I finally “get” the difference between morado (purple), marrón (brown), gris (gray), conoso (gray) and conosa (gray)?

Reviews

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Week Five into the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Program

¡Hola mis amigas! This week, I was greeted by an instructional video that started the minute I signed into TOTALe. It gave a great overview of what the different parts of the course entailed, and how to navigate the various sections…and I couldn’t help but wonder why it didn’t show the first time I started the program! Of course, the likely culprit is my slow satellite connection of doom; it is totally possible that the screen tried to show when I first started the program five lessons ago, but was reset in all of the screen refreshes. Ah, country living……

Gear Bits

Bioshock Bento is too Cute to Eat!

I’ve long been fascinated by the patience and artistry that goes into making a Japanese Bento Box; if you aren’t familiar with these, then you should start by looking at these images on Google as well as this Flicker Pool. As explained in the introduction on one of the multitudes of Bento Box sites I’ve found: As with so much of modern Japanese culture, the aesthetic (especially for children and young women) is strongly based on a compact cuteness. If you went to a school where kids brought packed lunches, you know how much it means to a kid when…

News & Features

Pseudoscience at its best: the Uxsight 1.3M Pixels Portable Digital USB Iriscope

You’ve got to hand it to pseudoscience. Why? Because how else could someone like me – a person without an MD – have a chance to speak with absolute authority about things of which I know absolutely nothing. And there are even cool gadgets that you can use while practicing pseudoscience, things that can help make you seem professional and knowledgeable, things like the Uxsight 1.3M Pixels Portable Digital USB Iriscope. Allow me to digress for a moment… Back in the fall of ’86, I went home from college with one of my sorority sisters for the weekend. Before we…

Editorials

Dear Gossip Mongers Who Don’t Bother to Fact Check…

I ordinarily shy away from posting anything remotely political or religious on this site, unless it has a direct tie to something involving tech, and every writer on Gear Diary has been instructed to do the same. I do not need to know how anyone voted in order to decide whether we can break bread together, nor do I need to know a person’s religion (or lack thereof) to be able to tell if they are a good person. But today something happened that made me decide that it was time to break my rule. I have finally. had. enough.

Reviews

Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Week Four into the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Program

¡Hola Amigos! Even though I had the new Dan Brown book, The Missing Symbol, delivered wirelessly to my Kindle DX this week, and even though I have spent every spare moment I could trying to sneak in a few chapters, I still managed to get a good chunk of my TOTALe lesson done. Yay me! Now I can tell you that “Me llamo Judie,” which will probably not sound as elegant as Julia when pronounced properly, since the J’s in Spanish are essentially H’s. Hoolia verses Hoodie…guess which one wins? 😉

Reviews

The HTC Snap and Sprint HTC Snap Windows Mobile Smartphone Review

[Ed note: This review is being simultaneously posted on Gear Diary and Just Another Mobile Monday.] Quite often HTC will release several versions of a single model, and depending upon whether you buy an unlocked or carrier subsidized version, you might end up with very different features. Such is the case with their new QWERTY Windows Mobile Smartphone, the Snap. I was sent their unlocked European version, and Doug received the US Specific Sprint branded device; my comments will appear in black, and Doug’s will be in blue italics. The Unlocked HTC Snap (European Version) The first thing that impressed…

Articles by Judie Lipsett Stanford