Editorials | Gear Diary

Editorials December 30, 2011

Planet Fitness Has Way to Keep You Coming Back

Our five year old washing machine died two weeks ago and had to be replaced. We were told, at the time, that five years is about the lifespan for this type of appliance these days. That’s not so surprising considering the fact that the 25-year-old dishwasher at our lake cabin is still going strong. Yes, companies want to keep you coming back as a repeat customer and the lifespan of many things is growing shorter and shorter in order to help ensure it. It seems Planet Fitness has found a way to keep their customers coming back time and again…

Editorials, Game Diary December 30, 2011

Sony PS Vita Sales Drop 78% in Week Two!

Sony’s Playstation Vita launched in Japan two weeks ago to what was described as success, selling ~325,000 units and over 300,000 games (yes, that is fewer games than game systems … I’ll let you figure THAT one out). By comparison, the Nintendo 3DS launch last March sold ~375,000 at the initial $249 pricing. So in theory that was a pretty decent start … perhaps it meant that earlier predictions of it being ‘DOA’ were unfounded? Turns out … no. First off think about timing – a March release compared to a mid-December release. One is at a low point in…

Editorials December 29, 2011

Quiscence Music Reminds Us of the Value and Cost of $1

I Have written about the various Humble Bundles that not only do something good by bringing attention to deserving Indie developers, they also donate a portion of their proceeds to charity, making it an all-around great deal. But as was brought to my attention after the first one was announced, copies of those games were quickly found on file sharing sites! Imagine that – something you could get for $1 … but you STILL have to steal it! Quiescence Music offered up all of their existing lessons and tutorials and other resources as a $1 one-week trial. More recently Quiescence…

Editorials, Game Diary, News & Features December 24, 2011

GameLoft Abruptly Changes Hero of Sparta 2 to ‘Free to Play’, Angering Current Owners

Earlier this week in my list of iTunes App Store deals, I mentioned that Hero of Sparta 2 was ‘free for a limited time’. Turns out I was wrong – the update switched the game to a ‘free to play’ model full-up with ads! Those who had actually paid for the game were angered by the sudden appearance of an egregious amount of intrusive ads (I had to check it out myself … it was awful)! Fortunately after a couple of days of uproar, GameLoft has retreated. According to GameLoft’s Facebook page: “Gameloft wishes to apologize to the fans of…

Editorials, Gear Bits December 24, 2011

Do You Really Need to Missspel Your Product Name to Get Attention??

The other day Carly wrote a post about the lack of professionalism when using Text-spelling for business communication. It is a good post and one worth reading. (Find it here.) Here’s a related pet-peeve… companies intentionally misspelling words in order to be unique, cool or grab attention. Seriously, there are ways to spell things and… …there are ways not to spell things. I just finished a review of the Joy Factory’s Klick Desk Stand. It is a nice product but my spellcheck is pretty much hating the company right now. GAH!!!!!

Editorials December 23, 2011

Remember that iTunes in the Cloud Doesn’t Cover Movies Yet!

Not too long ago, when you downloaded anything from the iTunes Store you were responsible for managing those files – if you lost your hard drive to a crash you were out of luck. When the iTunes App Store arrived, you were finally able to re-download apps you had already bought. iTunes in the Cloud changed things for music – suddenly you could just re-download anything you had purchased from the iTunes Music Store and Book Store as well as Apps. Most recently iTunes Match allows you to add ANYTHING to your music library to download anywhere. Back in August…

Editorials December 23, 2011

SugarSync Update Helps Add to Android App Market Confusion

Yesterday I got a message from SugarSync, one of my favorite Cloud Storage companies. They were announcing, amongst other things, that: Kindle Fire – SugarSync is now available for the Kindle Fire, so you can access all your files from the SugarSync Cloud. That was great – I clicked on the link in the email, checked out the blog post, then clicked the link in the article to grab the new version and … landed at the Android Market as shown in the image below. Now don’t get me wrong – this is an excellent update to a great app….

Editorials, Game Diary December 22, 2011

Direct2Drive Being Absorbed Into GameFly … Prepare to Lose Some Games!

What is the first thing you do when someone tells you not to worry? That’s right – you start worrying! Earlier this year I posted about how IGN had sold Direct2Drive to GameFly. GameFly is a console game rental subscription service, and had wanted to branch into PC game distribution and potentially rentals and saw Direct2Drive as a possible way to do that. I had basically forgotten about the deal for a few reasons: first, we haven’t heard anything in 7 months; second, because Direct2Drive has been much quieter in general, leaving the big sales for Steam and GamersGate; and…

Editorials December 22, 2011

Amazon Reminds Google … ‘Um, We OWN This Whole Mega-Deal Thing’ …

I should have known better than to rush into buying music on Google. As I say repeatedly, they have the absolute worst music service bar none. Yet that old siren song of ‘great music, low prices’ lulled me into not checking Amazon. BIG MISTAKE. On Google I got the music, can play it on my PC or Android phone, and download it one … track … at … a … time. And THEN manually import it into iTunes. And THEN fix the FUBAR MP3 info and tags, because Google can’t even manage that 2002 level of technology. Had I gone…

Editorials December 20, 2011

R U Professional? A GearChat on Text Messaging

I received a text message from a professional person yesterday that set my teeth on edge. The content was fine, but it was presented in a very unfortunate way. See, any place “you’re”, “you”, or “are” should have been used, she replaced it with “UR”, “U”, and “R”. Unless she’s on a special texting plan where she pays by the letter (unlikely), there’s no excuse for those abbreviations in a professional setting. Sadly, this has been a trend I am encountering more and more, even with adults in a corporate setting. Text-speak is bad enough with personal messages, but at…

Editorials December 18, 2011

Where’s my “Made for Android?”

My eldest son had a birthday recently, receiving numerous presents. This in and of itself is not unusual, but there was an aspect to one of those presents that triggered a revelation of sorts for me. Before I delve into that, let me preface it with a disclaimer: I currently own no Apple products. Zip. Nada. Zero. In the realm of cell phones, I’m partial to Android. I love the customizability of it, the screen widgets, and how I can choose to integrate it with my PCs. My son, not yet a cell phone user, owns an iPod. Consequently, towards…

Editorials December 15, 2011

Lowes Learns About Viral Marketing (and Not Being Bigoted) the Hard Way!

Sarah and I have been watching “All-American Muslim” on TLC. It’s a glimpse into what it’s like to be both Muslim and American in Dearborn, Michigan. And while admittedly it’s slow at times, we’ve really enjoyed seeing how different people approach their religion and learning more about the different ways people practice, even within their own families. So we were very surprised when the hardware store Lowe’s pulled their ad support after the “Florida Family Association” complained about the show. What Lowe’s didn’t realize, but should have, is that controversial decisions in 2011 don’t fade quietly away. People were angry…

Editorials December 13, 2011

Evernote, There is a Better Way to Add Functionality than Releasing crApps

This post had a different working title of “‘Evernote Food’ Not So Tasty but We Can Spice it Up” but I settled on the more descriptive “Evernote, There is a Better Way to Add Functionality than Releasing crApps”. Regardless, here’s what led to the post and what I want to suggest to remedy the company’s current trend of releasing all-but-useless-apps.

eBooks, Editorials December 12, 2011

U Wood Thikn Aft3r 50 Yaers They Cuold W0rk Out Teh Typoz!?!

I just finished reading the classic Ray Bradbury novel Fahrenheit 451, which I noted had just been released for the first time in ebook form a couple of weeks ago. It was far from my first reading, and was actually the fourth time I had bought the book over the last 30 years. Three have been paperbacks – one that simply died with use, a second one that is still in great shape, and a third from when I was traveling, and now the ebook version is on my Kindle Fire. No spoilers here, but the book is as awesome…

Editorials, News & Features December 12, 2011

Reaction to Duggar’s Miscarriage Shows Our Cruel, Anonymous Society at Work

I have never seen the show ’19 Kids and Counting’ featuring Jim and Michelle Duggars and their large family, and have no interest whatsoever. It is ‘Reality TV’, which already lands me at 0% interest, then add on my general disinterest in everything they and the show are about, and you have a formula for a show that I actively avoid. I don’t share their religious views nor do I have an larger-than-average family, so my daily life is nothing like theirs – yet this week I feel a certain kinship with the Duggars. You see, I have two wonderful…

Editorials December 12, 2011

Watch What You Post on Facebook!

It’s December. It’s time for snow, family, shopping…and of course, holiday parties and New Year’s celebrations. Plus, if you’re a senior in high school you probably sent off your college applications. Just remember…what goes on Facebook is never really private, so please, from your friends at Gear Diary, think before you post, especially as you celebrate the holiday season! If you’ve just applied to college, your next step after that application goes in the mail is simple: lock down your Facebook page. According to the Huffington Post, admissions officers often check Facebook to find out more about potential students. So…

Editorials December 8, 2011

Evernote Hello? Uhm, No.

I’m a big fan of Evernote and use it all the time to save information, images, notes and other data that I want to keep safe,secure and easily accessible. The company has expanded their base of users in a huge way since coming out of beta and was profitable until they began a hiring and development phase six months ago. In addition to continually building upon its main apps, Evernote is platform agnostic so there is an Evernote app for just about very platform. They have also begun releasing their own apps that use Evernote as the “engine” to keep…

eBooks, Editorials December 7, 2011

Kindle Fire Usability Study Speaks to the Entire 7″ Android Tablet Market

The web is abuzz today with the ‘Kindle Fire Usability study from UseIt.com, which can be summed as stating that “Amazon.com’s new Kindle Fire offers a disappointingly poor user experience.” Here are a few points of note: Fat-Finger Problem Makes Mobile Sites Superior The most striking observation from testing the Fire is that everything is much too small on the screen, leading to frequent tap errors and accidental activation. You haven’t seen the fat-finger problem in its full glory until you’ve watched users struggle to touch things on the Fire. One poor guy spent several minutes trying to log in…

Editorials, Gear Bits December 6, 2011

Latest Android OS Distribution Numbers Showing Gingerbread Taking Over

Have you ever heard me complain about Android fragmentation as a major issue? Yeah, you probably have. But there is actually some good news on the fragmentation front – more than half of all Android phones are running the latest operating system Android 2.3.x aka ‘Gingerbread’. Add to that the 35.3% running the previous version Froyo (2.2), and you have more than 85% on a ‘fairly unified’ platform.

Editorials, Game Diary December 6, 2011

EA Brings the Grim Hammer of Reality to the PopCap Merger

Earlier we got a message from frequent commented DBMurray regarding a message he received about what is happening to customer data as part of the EA/Popcap merger I wrote about here. As we were conversing, I got the same message which is shown at top. Although the message says ‘good news’, neither DBMurray nor I find the news all that great. Why? Well, as my earlier article indicated, PopCap is a pretty cool company with great games. EA is a terrible company with a tendency to treat customers poorly, lock people out of their games for vague and inconsistent reasons,…

Editorials December 6, 2011

The Power of Viral Marketing: Companies Need to Account for It!

Recently there’s been several stories across the net about people in the real world that have underestimated the viral nature of the internet with regards to business promotions. Sometimes it comes from official channels like GroupOn. However, sometimes this can come from places that the store simply cannot account for. The picture above is the toy aisle at my local Kroger. No they are not going out of business but it sure looks like it in the picture above. The above picture is the result of a promotion that has gone horribly wrong. The promotion? Well, from October through the…