Articles by Zek

Lems Shoes Primal 2 Review

I love sneakers. Even before I became a runner, I vastly preferred sneakers over any other footwear. It still makes me sad that my office is business formal, and the first thing I do when I get home is shuck my work shoes and slip into sneakers. So I take my sneakers very seriously, and when I say that the Lems Primal 2’s I’ve been testing for the past week are some of the best sneakers I’ve ever worn, that’s praise I don’t give lightly. What makes these shoes so great isn’t any one thing, but a combination of things….

Gear Bits, How to Do It Yourself!

Turn off iMessage Before Switching away from iOS

I ordered a new Lumia 928 yesterday, and am anxiously awaiting a shipping notification from Verizon. In the meantime, I am beginning to research this huge leap into a whole new platform. Microsoft has a very helpful website that gives you an idea of how to transfer your calendar, contacts, and email, as well as answers some frequently asked questions. All my contacts are in Gmail, and I have an Outlook.com account, so I am in good shape there. However, I did find a thread at the Apple support forums that raised a red flag-apparently switching operating systems without turning…

News & Features

Enervee Takes Comparison Shopping to a New, Energy Conscious Level

There are a million ways to shop by price online. You can sort lowest to highest, seek sale items, look for free shipping, and head to sites like eBay to try to get a better deal. There’s also plenty of places that will tell you how eco-friendly a device is, or will be over its lifetime. Enervee is looking to combine those metrics into one website that gives you a price, features, and environmental impact breakdown on major household appliances, so you can see what the true price of an item will be over its lifetime and whether you need…

Editorials

The iPhone Doldrums – I Think I’m Ready for Something Different

A bit less than two years ago, I excitedly drove to my nearby Verizon store to give up my Motorola Droid and jump ship over to an iPhone 4s. I was sure this would be a great match, and my days of smartphone-hopping were over. And they were, for quite a while. But over time I’ve grown frustrated, and the iPhone has begun to feel a bit stale. My main frustration has been with the battery life. My 4S started behaving atrociously about three months ago; I would routinely get under 8 hours of standby and maybe 5 hours of…

Gear Bits

My Roku 3 Remote Saves the Day!

Gadgets have become packed with more and more features, many of which we end up forgetting about or just never use. When the Roku 3 was announced, we had an internal discussion at Gear Diary about how the headphone jack in the remote was a useless feature — who would hook up headphones to a remote to watch TV, when they could just plug headphones into a tablet and have the same private viewing experience? We use our Roku 3 all the time but never gave the headphone jack a thought, until today when I stumbled upon a situation where…

Reviews

Moxtra for iOS Review – Moving Mountains of Info into Manageable Folders

I use my iPad for just about everything — notes, pictures, writing posts, browsing the web, etc. In many ways it is how I aggregate every bit of content I need, like, or want to reference. The iPad does all this for me on the hardware side, and I’ve been testing an app called Moxtra that does this for photos, documents, notes, and audio files. It can be standalone like a scrapbook or collaborative. How does it work, and how well does it work? Read on to find out! Moxtra organizes your content into “binders”, rather than folders or categories,…

Reviews

Windows 8 Start Menu Reviver Review

If you’ve read my review of the Toshiba Z930 Ultrabook, then you know two things: I loved the computer, and I hated Windows 8. Much of that animosity comes from the awful Start screen/Dashboard, which is obviously designed for touch interfaces and not mouses and keyboards. ReviverSoft thinks they can help people like me with their newest product, the Start Menu Reviver. Can it get me to accept Windows 8, or at least tolerate it? Read on to find out! Installing and setting up Start Menu Reviver is a snap. Once you download it, there’s a quick setup that remaps…

Reviews

Whiteboard Calendar Review

Put down your smartphone. I know you’re rushing to your favorite App Store, trying to figure out what a whiteboard calendar app is. You won’t find this on your phone or tablet. But it’s the greatest shared calendar solution that Sarah and I have tried. It is open enough that we can customize it endlessly, but also has great privacy settings depending upon the use environment. It also never needs a software update, reboot, or recharge. Yes, it is a simple, wall-mounted whiteboard. But it has done more to keep us organized than any Google Calendar or variant smartphone app!…

Gear Bits

TiVo’s Exclusively Terrible Offer

In 2006, I bought a TiVo Series 2. It was a great device, and it lasted me until mid-2011, when it finally stopped changing channels and went on strike. It retired to that great recycling center in the sky/the next town over, and we moved on to bigger and better electronics. TiVo however, sends me emails regularly offering us all sorts of deals to return. Today’s, though, is definitely the weirdest. Apparently TiVo blasted this offer to every former subscriber. They probably should have filtered it though, since as enticing as $6.99 a month TiVo service is, I am pretty…

Gear Bits

B&N “Innovates” by Becoming Yet Another Tablet Company

News broke today that Barnes and Noble is opening up the NOOK hardware to Google, adding Google Play to their NOOK HD and HD+ devices. Is this a canny move to capitalize on tablet demand, or a desperate grab for any port in a storm? Does this actually matter to the average buyer? As our own Mike Anderson asked, “Is abandoning their own ecosystem a desperate move?” I think this is great news for the ten bloggers who really love the NOOK HD hardware. Except for a few Android users who can re-download their apps across their phone and NOOK, the…

Gear Bits

GE’s Incredibly Creepy Matrix-Themed TV Ad

Apparently, GE’s ad people are living in the late 1990’s. I can’t judge them for this since my musical tastes are clinging tenuously to the earlier part of the same decade. However, I do question what they were thinking with their latest ad touting their medical equipment business. And since GE apparently bought all the daytime airtime and has been playing the ad non-stop on news channels, I’ve seen it many, many times, to the point where I can follow along with the script. Which gets creepier every time I watch it. Seems like someone saw a few random scenes…

Reviews

Tagg the Pet Tracker Review

I rarely give a “don’t buy” rating to gear. I try really, really hard to find some good aspect to products, because so many times the issues are opinion and not fact. A particular phonecase may not be my taste, but it could be yours, or I might miss a certain feature that someone else never uses. But then there are times when gear fails so miserably that I can’t in good conscience recommend it, and unfortunately my experience with Tagg the Pet Tracker falls into that category. It’s a shame, as Tagg has some really great features, but those…

Editorials

Are You Still Using Mailbox?

When Mailbox, the app designed to tame, manage and control your inbox, arrived, I was thrilled. I was the first person on the Gear Diary team to gain access, and for the first few weeks I was doing nothing but singing its praises. Judie, Dan and Mike all joined over the next several weeks, but not all of us are still using it. Who is? Who isn’t? And for those who quit — why did the shine wear off? Read on for our thoughts.

Editorials

Do You Own a Car?

There were some amazing discussions at Telenav’s Waypoint conference a few weeks ago about GPS, mobile navigation, and how we approach our smartphones and integration location services into our lives. One offshoot of that discussion, though, was whether GPS navigation would matter in the future since car ownership is apparently on the decline. I was surprised how many people in the discussion knew teenagers who didn’t drive much since my experience living in the suburbs was that you needed a car if you wanted to get anywhere beyond your housing development. I did some googling, and apparently, it is a…

Gear Bits

Confessions of a Doctor Who Newbie

I am trying to rectify a big hole in my Sci-Fi viewing history, and finally giving “Doctor Who” a shot. I knew it had a huge cult following, I knew it was from the BBC and it involved a time machine, but otherwise, I was pretty much entirely in the dark about the show. A few friends on Facebook gave me some important tips, and I’ve learned a few things from the first six episodes, so I thought I would share my limited understanding with any other Doctor Who newbies out there! Things I have learned that have surprised me:…

Gear Bits

The Gear Diary Guide to Infographics

Spend enough time on the Internet, and you’ll find an infographic. These are “educational” graphics that distill bits of information into pretty pictures and at-a-glance factoids. As a concept, they aren’t terrible, but only if they’re used as a summary for a full report. Unfortunately, lately they’ve become flashy vehicles for marketers with an agenda. Here at Gear Diary, we want to make sure we properly educate our readers to understand infographics, and the best way to do this is clearly to fight fire with fire, so we’ve helpfully put together this “Anatomy of an Infographic”! What triggered us to…

News & Features

Re-Timer Offers Portable Light Therapy for the Sleep Deprived

During the waning months of my career at Borders, I worked two weeks of overnights during a store remodel. Actually working in the middle of the night wasn’t the hard part, what was tough was going to bed when it was broad daylight and waking up as the sun was setting. I bought a sleep mask, which helped, and I had very considerate roommates who tiptoed around and kept it quiet near my room. In any case, the experience left me with a lot of respect for the people who work third shift and other odd hours. There are many…

Gear Bits

Amazon Is Looking for Feedback on Their New Television Pilots

Looking for an idea of what to watch this week? Amazon is following in Netflix’s footsteps and gearing up to launch their own original content, but they’ve crowd-sourced their choices. They have twelve original pilots, from kid-friendly to decidedly adult. You can offer Amazon feedback on what you liked best, which they will use in their determinations of which gets greenlit. We watched two tonight — Alpha Dogs and Onion News Network, and I have to say that we were impressed with the quality of both shows! Alpha Dogs was the better show by far. The concept was a bit…

Reviews

AnyList for iPhone Grocery List Manager Review

I am always on the lookout for a good app to make grocery shopping go more smoothly. Ideally, I’d prefer that we get all our groceries in one day of running around, since it eliminates that “Oh crap we forgot ____” mad rush to the store mid-recipe. I’ve used to-do apps, as well as simple list apps, but over the weekend I stumbled on an app that has two features which make it hands down my new favorite. What’s so great about AnyList? Read on for the highlights! One, and the quest that led to finding AnyList, was that you…

eBooks, News & Features

Reader Rocket Aims to Easily Compare eBook Readers

Despite many predictions to the contrary, eBook readers are still going strong. They may not be as flashy as tablets, but they are great devices with long battery lives, clear readable screens, and lightweight both in size and on your wallet. Most people tend to pick an eBook reader based on their bookstore preferences, what their friends and family use, and similar criteria. But if you’re the type looking for lots of statistics and specifications to compare and contrast, it can be tougher to find truly technical reviews of eBook readers. That’s where Reader Rocket, a newly launched site, thinks…

News & Features

Moxtra Parters with Salesforce.com, Evernote, and Kaffeine for Easy Group Collaborations

Have you heard of Moxtra yet? Don’t worry, it’s not a large insect about to attack — Mothra. Moxtra is a collaborative platform that lets you take all the different kinds of content around the web, from videos to notes to pictures, and stick them in a collaborative “binder”, making group work fast and efficient. They’ve been growing like crazy since their launch, and today they are getting an even bigger boost by integrating with Salesforce.com, Evernote, and Kaffiene! The Evernote integration is a pretty great concept. Evernote lets you share notebooks, but this makes it a bit cleaner, since all…

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