Editorials | Gear Diary

Editorials, Music Diary, News & Features April 18, 2012

Musical Necrophilia Hits the Rap Era

It was only a matter of time before rap music started resorting to ‘Natalie Cole Syndrome’. Older performers such as the caricature ‘Snoop Doggy Dog’, the has-been Dr. Dre, and the self-parody Eminem who are seeking to show that they are hip and relevant — rather than out of touch middle-aged millionaires without a clue — have taken the EXACT SAME tactics as Cole when she sang ‘Unforgettable’ with her (late) father. I’m sure rap fans will deny it … but that is all just posturing. Sure, in typical rap fashion they inject language that shows their limited intellect and…

Editorials April 18, 2012

Whirlpool Sticks Me with the Dirty Laundry, but Lowe’s Picks up the Tab

Image courtesy of automaticwasher.org Is it really that hard to get good customer service anymore? Is the fine art of quality customer service a thing of the past? Looking through some past rants we’ve had here on Gear Diary, it’s evident that some companies just don’t care about anything dealing with “after the sale.” Even dealing with major brand names on larger ticket items clearly doesn’t mean you’ll have quality support after the sale is complete. Having worked retail for about 7 years, I understand how important good customer service is, even if it means going out on a limb…

Editorials, News & Features April 17, 2012

New iPad Giving You ‘Could Not Activate Cellular Network’ Error? You’re Not Alone!

I’ve had the new iPad since launch day, and until last Monday it was the poster child for perfection – no cosmetic defects, no performance issues or problems with setup or flaky behavior. Just a great screen, excellent battery life, tremendous performance, and solid 3G connectivity (most of my home and work life puts me outside of 4G/LTE connectivity). Well … until yesterday. Since I use WiFi at home I never end up using cellular data at home unless I am out and about shuffling the kids from activity to activity. But I only use the cellular network at work,…

Editorials, News & Features April 16, 2012

Komen Races Feeling Consequences of Planned Parenthood Gaffe

This weekend I signed my family up for the local ‘Race for the Cure’, I’ll be running the 5k and my wife and boys will be walking it. I covered the firestorm related to the Komen Foundation suddenly pulling funding for Planned Parenthood efforts in Cancer screening and health care for needy women a few months ago, so I was obviously aware of THAT dimension … but we decided to participate despite of the political mischief of the Komen leadership. Nevertheless, it definitely played into our willingness to fund-raise for the event (and my reluctance to spread links for the…

eBooks, Editorials April 11, 2012

What’s Next for eBooks after the DoJ Settlement?

Today was a big, big day for eBook fans! The Department of Justice agreed with everyone who has been screaming for three years that the “agency model” was unfair, anti-competitive and anti-consumer. They settled with several publishers, though Apple and Macmillan are still fighting the DoJ in court. So, what did the settlement today do? And how will it impact the future of ebooks? Read on for my thoughts! The Settlement: I am going to defer to Wired here, as they quickly had an excellent breakdown of what the settlement states: Terminate its current contracts with Apple within seven days…

Editorials April 11, 2012

iPhone 4S vs Galaxy Nexus: Which Will I Pick?

Those who have been following me on Gear Diary know that I was an early Android lover. I had the very first Android phone, the G1. While it was not without its foibles, I loved the phone even with it’s Jay Leno chin and chunkiness. About 18 months ago, I replaced my beloved G1 with a Droid 2 and switched from T-Mobile to Verizon. Early on, I was extremely satisfied with my Droid 2. It was easily faster than my G1 ever was. I was able to run applications my G1 would choke on and I never had an issue…

Editorials April 10, 2012

Developers, Please Finish Your Apps Prior to Release!

Last week, Nokia ran an ad campaign that welcomed people to the end of smartphone Beta-testing thanks to the release of the Nokia Lumia 900. I criticized them for the initial ad, which tried to focus solely on the iPhone and some of its limitations and bumps encountered along the way, pointing out that there are better ways to make your case than to attack other products. This is especially so when the product you are attacking continues to gain momentum, adoption and favorable user-reviews. The final ad was more general and focused on the whole smartphone experience, labeling the…

Editorials, News & Features April 10, 2012

Nokia Lumia 900 Has Botched Retail Launch, Yet Still Hits #1 on Amazon!

This past Sunday, my brother was visiting; he and my wife and I went for a long bike ride, taking a path around the local mall along the way … and noting that everything was closed. Because it was Easter. It just also happened to be the launch day of the Nokia Lumia 900, the de facto flagship phone of the entire Windows Phone line-up. There have been articles questioning the wisdom of an Easter launch, but none more pointed than the one from the New York Times: AT&T said last month that when Nokia’s new Lumia 900 phone went…

Editorials April 10, 2012

Need Proof Optical Media is Dead? Look at My Wife.

If ever you wondered if optical media (CDs and DVDs) is dead and gone this brief interaction from last night should make the point with utter clarity. A bit of background before the “blow by blow” Elana is not a techie. She’s not anti-technology either. As she often puts it, “I think this stuff is amazing and I appreciate what it can do but that is where it ends for me. I just can’t get excited about it the way you do.” But when it comes to the 11″ MacBook air she has been using for the past year and…

Editorials April 9, 2012

Ashley Judd Eviscerates the Gossip Industry

Gossip can be a very cruel phenomenon. There is reality, and then there is the truth according to viral videos, Facebook, Us Weekly, and the E! Network. Just this past weekend Sarah and I were in the grocery store, and she commented that the headlines screaming from the checkout magazines were just out of control and invasive. Did it really matter whether Kim Kardashian cheated on her (soon to be ex) husband? Do we really need to know the second Prince William and his wife get pregnant? So it makes me very happy to see a different kind of article…

Editorials April 7, 2012

How the Helicopter Parents Stole Easter

Even though it has been 7 years, I remember it as if it was yesterday. My wife and I were Cub Scout den leaders for each of our kids, and we thought that a cool spring event would be an Easter Egg hunt. We had cleared it with all parents, and all of the kids were excited about the event. We allowed siblings to be involved, and my wife and I stayed up late packing eggs with candy so there would be about 12 or so eggs per child. We informed the kids and parents that each child should get…

eBooks, Editorials April 7, 2012

Using Tech for My Bible Study

I never really thought about it much, but I do something that for some who practice my faith, might be alien. Much like my friend Dan, I use either apps or eBooks to do most of my Bible studies. Why It’s Better The app that I use the most when doing my Bible reading on my Android devices is Youversion.com; it’s also available for iOS. I took to using it because I like to read from different translations. Sometimes I will read the same verse in three different versions of the Bible, and I can do this within seconds using a…

Editorials April 5, 2012

Teething Troubles for Tablet Adoption in the Workplace

It’s always tempting to impute Unlikely virtues to the cute. – Ogden Nash The tech world is abuzz with them, many of us own our own and several of us use them at work. They have transformed the personal computing landscape and become a standard in their own right, sized from the neighborhood of 10″ down to 7″. I am speaking, of course, of tablets. Whether the Apple iPad, the varying Android builds, HP Touchpad or even the BlackBerry PlayBook, tablets have become very popular mobile devices and increasingly showing up in the business world. Before you start gallivanting off…

Editorials April 3, 2012

Does iOS Need a User Interface Overhaul?

I posed a question to my fellow staff at Gear Diary, asking all iPhone users why Apple hasn’t really changed their UI since 2007. As a non iPhone user, my questions stemmed from a post that Carly had put up about her finding her original iPhone, when she posted a side by side of the home screens. Original iPhone (left) iPhone 4S (right) As an Android user, I enjoy changing up my home screen or theme on a weekly basis. That might seem a little excessive to some, but with so many cool launcher options, icons, and tweaks, I feel like…

Editorials April 2, 2012

Adventures in Stupid Advertising Plays, Nokia Lumia 900 Edition

Nokia has just rolled out a new campaign for its Lumia 900. I am personally a bit disappointed in the company. Here’s why – The Lumia 900 is a fantastic phone. It looks and feels great in the hand, the screen is beautiful, it is sleek and attractive, and it’s running an operating system that is fantastic. Seriously, Windows phone operating system is pretty terrific. Nokia could have rolled out a series of advertisements focusing on all of those aspects of the phone. They could even have stressed the Carl Zeiss optics on the camera. Seriously, this is an amazing…

Editorials, Gear Bits April 1, 2012

Google, This Is Why You FAIL

This morning I got excited, at first. I saw on my phone and my tablet that Temple Run has had an update. The game has been less than stable on all of my devices so I was anxious to get the update to see if it was fixed. So I go to the Google Play Store to download it and get an error 927. Tried multiple times and got both error 927 and 941. Cleared data on the Google Play store, force stopped the app, rebooted and tried multiple things and was still unable to download the game. I am…

Editorials March 28, 2012

Is Pottermore Going to Change the eBook Market?

As Michael told you the other day, the new Harry Potter official site Pottermore has been launched with much fanfare. Your source for all things related to the Potter universe, including (finally!) electronic versions of all the books. (And your faithful Gear Diary team has discussed that a bit in other posts as well.) Now, this is a big deal, of course, because the Potter books are insanely popular and Rowling’s going to make a ton of money from the site. But Matt Yglesias, a man who is almost always thoughtful when it comes to politics, decided to throw his…

Editorials March 28, 2012

Open Letter to Google: Fix Android Now

Dear Google, I love Android. Ever since Judie gave me my G1 I was in love. You had an OS that was pretty good then, even better now and getting better all the time. So I don’t have too many problems with your OS. However, the problems that remain are ones that are bad enough to want me to consider buying an iPhone. Yes they are that bad. First my complaints about the OS. I know it’s not entirely your fault, but the current state of updates on different devices is crazy. Here we are almost 4 months into the new year and…

Editorials March 28, 2012

Not into the iPad? Here Are Some Smaller, Cheaper Alternatives

After a week of record busting sales if you were uncertain before then you should be now. The iPad is indeed the ruler of the roost on all things tablet. Everyone at Gear Diary was thrilled by this model’s updates, and it’s clear that the new HD display, 4G/LTE, 5MP camera graphics upgrade was enough to put sales through the roof and beyond. Reports were 3 million units moved the first weekend and probably double that count since then. This honestly comes to no surprise as the consumer support behind Apple is evident by its sheer volume of sales…

eBooks, Editorials March 27, 2012

Hey Amazon, Can You PLEASE Let Me Change the Paragraph Justification in Your Apps?

Image courtesy of (believe it or not!) furnitureconsignment.com So as you’ve probably heard–Michael posted about it, for example–J.K. Rowling’s latest cash cow, the Pottermore web site, finally went live today (a mere 6-9 months after it was originally promised, but that’s a whole different ranty post). For me what this meant was that, finally, I would be able to actually buy the eBook version of the Potter books. Yay! There was a catch, though: the books aren’t available via iBooks, but only through the Pottermore web site for Kindle, Nook, or straight ePub format. Which is okay, I guess…

Editorials March 26, 2012

Apparently Some Critics Want to Call Her ‘Fat’niss

My household has been abuzz after all of us finally saw The Hunger Games this weekend – my wife and I and older son went together on Friday, and younger son went to a birthday party featuring heading to the movie on Saturday. There were a load of highlights – and of course a number of ‘that’s not how they did it in the book’ nitpicks – but overall we loved the movie and thought the casting was key to the artistic success of bringing the first book in the series to the screen. We knew Josh Hutcherson from ‘Zathura’…