Zek | Gear Diary

Gear Bits December 29, 2012

Sick in Bed? It’s FaceTime to the Rescue!

I have the flu. It’s quite inconvenient, especially since we are trying really, really hard to keep Sarah from catching it. As a result, I am staying in a different room on another floor, plus both of us have been armed with Lysol every time we enter a common area. The real bummer is not being able to hang out together. But this is temporary, and we’re working around it — by using FaceTime! It’s a bit silly, but it makes both of us feel less lonely, and it beats facing each other in a common area and setting off…

eBooks, Reviews December 23, 2012

Byook Enhanced eBooks Review

Various developers have been trying since the original iPad to make enhanced and video eBooks a success. There seems to be this impression that books+tablet+video=profit! Yet plain old eBooks have managed to hold their ground quite nicely, leaving the question of whether there’s really a market for a book with video, music, and other bells and whistles. Byook think they can add to the eBook reading experience, and I had the opportunity to test a few of their titles and experience the multimedia eBook for myself! My first Byook was Sherlock Holmes “The Adventure of the Speckled Band”. The Byook…

News & Features December 21, 2012

Pocket Informant Continues to Shine and Adds New Updates and Bug Fixes

I am about to head to my first CES experience in just a few short weeks, and already I have learned something very important: the schedule is an absolute beast. Everyone wants to meet, there are only a few short days, and juggling all those commitments is going to be rough. Luckily, I am not leaning on the anemic iOS calendar to handle all this, but I have the always amazing Pocket Informant to help me out! There are a few reasons why I recommend Pocket Informant as a more robust calendar and tasks option. One, it’s far, far easier…

eBooks December 20, 2012

Barnes and Noble’s Very Clever eBook Gifting Promotion

I’ve said for a long time that Barnes and Noble’s key to success in the ebook world was through their retail channels. The more they find ways to leverage the advantage of being both the neighborhood store AND an instant gratification web presence, the better they will be able to compete with Amazon. It looks like they are looking for creative ways to do that, and their latest one is actually pretty clever. This newest promotion is called “Buy One NOOK Book, Gift One NOOK Book for Free“. The concept is pretty great all by itself; buy one qualifying ebook,…

Gear Bits December 20, 2012

All Those Junk Emails Are No Accident!

(image courtesy TLC) My morning routine during November and December is pretty simple; wake up, throw on warm clothes, grapple the dog into his leash, start our walk, and use my iPhone to begin the mass deletion of every “ONE DAY SALE” email that’s hit overnight. I don’t even read most of the subject lines, I just skim and delete. Unfortunately, that’s exactly what all those retailers don’t want…and there’s more to their strategy than just gunking up our inboxes. The Wall Street Journal has an utterly fascinating article on how email marketing works, and what retailers aim to accomplish…

eBooks December 18, 2012

Are eTextbooks Fully Baked Yet?

Digital textbooks always sound like a great idea on paper. They save money! And children don’t struggle under the weight of giant books! What’s not to like? Well, there’s the medium for reading on them for starters. Kindles crashed and burned on the college level, and while iPads are great, they are also expensive and far more fragile than a spiral bound notebook. Some schools have managed to have pilot iPad and computer based textbook programs successfully, but it still leads to many questions: who pays for the iPads? Do you upgrade them yearly? What about textbook licenses, are they…

Gear Bits December 15, 2012

Truly Dedicated Christmas Decorations!

One of my favorite childhood traditions was when my family would drive around and check out Christmas lights. Being Jewish, we didn’t decorate our house with sparkly lights and blow up Santas, but we loved looking at all the houses that did. We would go out for a family dinner, and then instead of just heading home, we would drive around and debate the best and worst displays. I was all excited to get Sarah hooked on this tradition, and she informed me at dinner tonight that a shortcut to her office had yielded the mother lode. She promised the…

News & Features December 13, 2012

Even More Arrested Development Coming Soon!

I have a few shows I really love. When I’m home sick, nothing makes me feel better like a Buffy the Vampire Slayer marathon. But there’s one show I can watch over and over and over, that never stops being funny, and that seems to have new jokes even when I can’t remember how many times I’ve watched it: Arrested Development! So needless to say, I am beyond excited at the latest news about the Netflix revival of the series. Not only is it coming back via Netflix, which we’ve known for a while, there was just so much good…

News & Features December 13, 2012

ArchetypeMe Makes Finding New Content Fun and Personal

Finding new things to read online can be remarkably difficult. Everyone has their “usual” websites, via RSS, or Flipboard, or Twitter. And there are sites like Stumbleupon that give you fun random ideas. But it can be hard to set the parameters for new sources just right — either you’re looking in too broad an area, or you get so focused on a narrow niche that you miss out on finding anything new and different. That’s where ArchetypeMe.com steps in to make your morning news and coffee routine that much more interesting. What is ArchetypeMe? It’s an approach to content…

Gear Bits December 11, 2012

Careful! That Mannequin Is Watching, Waiting, and Profiling

Admit it. You think department store mannequins are creepy. They stare ahead with their cold dead eyes, looking perfect and unnatural. No one in real life poses like that, and their dimensions often make Barbie look realistic. At least they aren’t REALLY watching you…right? Sadly, Businessweek has popped that bubble of hope: The EyeSee looks ordinary enough on the outside, with its slender polystyrene frame, blank face, and improbable poses. But inside, it’s no dummy. A camera in one eye feeds data into demographic-profiling software to determine the age, gender, and race of passersby. The year-old device is designed for…

Gear Bits December 10, 2012

Quick Impressions of the Surface Tablet

I am going to state right up front that my time with the Surface tablet was very limited. I was at my local mall and saw a Microsoft store, so I swung by to see the demo model. However, I didn’t intend to put it through its paces, nor did I have the time or opportunity in a crowded mall on a Saturday afternoon. But this did give me one unique opportunity; I treated the Surface not like a tech blogger would, but like a regular consumer who knew nothing about it and spontaneously decided to check it out. My…

eBooks December 8, 2012

Barnes and Noble Finally Steps Up!

Looks like Barnes and Noble finally got the kinks worked out of their eReader/Fictionwise transition! A few days ago I saw reports that the transfer links were finally working properly, and sure enough, clicking through promised me a forthcoming email with more details. This time, the message didn’t come with a side of time travel, so I figured it had to be fairly accurate. Finally, yesterday, I received an email with the promised code, and, miracle of miracles, my eReader account transferred! Here’s what the email said: Dear Fictionwise/eReader Customer, Welcome to Barnes & Noble and NOOK®! You are ready…

News & Features December 7, 2012

Does The Shutdown of “The Daily” Mean Anything For Digital Magazines?

New broke this week that “The Daily”, Rupert Murdoch’s iPad-only newspaper, was being shut down. The four people who read it were probably heartbroken. Sarcasm aside, the real question is whether the death of The Daily is indicative of a larger issue. Businessweek brought this question up, pointing out that Newsweek plans to go all-digital in the shadow of a nasty fall from grace for the competition. At the same time, as Slate points out, an iPad-only newspaper was naturally limited, which probably also hurt The Daily’s chances of survival. Still, The Daily died due to a myriad of reasons,…

News & Features December 4, 2012

Sleep Better At Night Knowing Skynet Is Being Studied

Any good geek knows that “Terminator” isn’t just a great sci-fi story, but a cautionary tale about computers run amok with too much intelligence. It’s all fun and games until Twitter and Tumblr get ahold of the nuclear codes. Instead of just letting this fear live in the “what if” realm, researchers at the University of Cambridge have formed the “Cambridge Project for Existential Risk”, which is analyzing how to prevent a robot uprising. From their website: Many scientists are concerned that developments in human technology may soon pose new, extinction-level risks to our species as a whole. Such dangers…

Gear Bits December 1, 2012

The Importance of Reading Customer Reviews

Sarah and I are staying with my parents temporarily, and overall it is working out well. However, there is one issue that makes life difficult: the WiFi reception in my parents’ home is terrible. The router sits all the way on one side of the house, and picking up signal in our room (downstairs and on the opposite end) is very dicey. I needed a simple, cheap way to extend the signal, and Joel suggested the TP-Link mini router he had reviewed. After I read Joel’s review thoroughly, I headed to Amazon to check out the device. The price was…

Reviews November 30, 2012

Eemov Nano Stabilizer Arm Review

Smartphone cameras and camcorder abilities have improved by leaps and bounds over the last few years, and that means that more and more they are becoming our go-to devices to record precious memories and important events. Where you used to see someone carrying anything from a point and shoot to a full DSLR, you now see people whipping out their iPhones or Android devices (and sometimes even iPads!) As a result, the camera accessories people used to use with their dedicated cameras are now being reinvented as smartphone compatible. I had the opportunity to review one such device, the Eemov…

Gear Bits November 28, 2012

What Would a Nationwide Secession Really Look Like?

I have to admit, my main response to all those petitions to secede after the presidential election was to laugh, shrug, and move on with my day. However, one very creative author came up with a much more entertaining take on secession, turning into an alternate history account of what civil war would look like if every state fended for itself. Slate has the full tale, but here’s a taste: The first real occupation attempts happened when attempts were made to secure more assets. The Republic of Texas sought to gain strategic advantages in the Central United States. To do…

Gear Bits, Yum Log November 28, 2012

Cocoa Beans Channel Coffee Beans with Choffy

While I cut way back on my coffee consumption after I stopped working for Borders, I still appreciate a well made cup of coffee. The coffee snob in me won’t touch flavored coffees, but I do like the occasional mocha flavored treat. In the course of surfing around the web today, I came across a coffee-like product so delicious and unusual sounding, I ordered a bag right away. What was it? CHOFFY! What’s a Choffy?: CHOFFY IS BREWED CHOCOLATE! 100% PREMIUM COCOA BEANS ROASTED AND GROUND TO CREATE A RICH DRINK THAT PROVIDES LONG-LASTING ENERGY AND WHOLE-BODY WELLNESS. Richer and…

eBooks November 27, 2012

Barnes and Noble and the Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Fictionwise Shutdown

The Barnes and Noble transition of Fictionwise and eReader to NOOK has been steadily going from bad to worse. First, they had difficulties moving books to the NOOK platform. Then, a huge swath of customers (including both Judie and I) received an error message that our email addresses were not recognized. The Thanksgiving holiday intervened, but it doesn’t look like anyone has even attempted to fix these errors since last week! I emailed Barnes and Noble last week, and was told “We’re working on it.” Yesterday, my curiosity got the better of me and I tried my initial email and…

Editorials November 26, 2012

How to Kill an Online Community in Three Easy Steps, by Runner’s World and Rodale

I used to love hanging out on the Runner’s World online forums. They were a treasure trove of information, support, and stories about running. I have met people from that site at races, and have challenged myself with online mileage games organized through the forums. Unfortunately, over the last year or so there has been a huge issue, so much so that it’s actually driven users away from the forum entirely. Want to know how Rodale is killing a thriving online community? Read on! Step one: SPAM! Everyone hates spam. Does any reasonable person actually click on the “make $1,000…

Gear Bits November 25, 2012

iOS Breaks into the Restaurant Business

I am used to seeing Apple Store employees use iPod Touches as point of sale devices, and even a few other retail outlets, but this weekend I saw iOS breaking into a new service industry — restaurants. We were out at a local brewery/restaurant, Triumph, and the waitress had an iPod Touch to take orders on, in place of the traditional pad and paper. Unfortunately, due to the “Snakebite” beer I ordered, I was not in a condition to ask detailed questions about how the iPod ordering system worked. Our waitress said she liked it though, and our food arrived…

Articles by Zek