Editorials | Gear Diary

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…

Editorials December 5, 2011

TV or Not TV? That is the Question

Okay, I admit it, the title of this post is stupid. Then again the working title, “I Haven’t Turned on My TV Since September but I’m Enjoying the Fall Television Season Anyway” was no bargain either. So let me just get to the post. This past September I got an offer on the TiVo Premier that I couldn’t pass up. The company had recently released their iPad app and the only way to access the full set of features was by upgrading my TiVo. The offer made it easy and, a few days later the box arrived. Little did I…

Editorials December 5, 2011

And the TOADY for ‘Worst Toy of 2011’ Goes To … The Vinci ‘Tablet for Babies’

The Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood (CCFC) is an organization whose purpose involves understanding and limiting the impact of commercial culture on children. Here is their mission statement: CCFC’s mission is to reclaim childhood from corporate marketers. A marketing-driven media culture sells children on behaviors and values driven by the need to promote profit rather than the public good. The commercialization of childhood is the link between many of the most serious problems facing children, and society, today. Childhood obesity, eating disorders, youth violence, sexualization, family stress, underage alcohol and tobacco use, rampant materialism, and the erosion of children’s creative…

Editorials, Game Diary December 5, 2011

Why Does Sony Make it So Hard for Me to Say Nice Things? Memory Card Edition

You might not think so from my posts, but I am really cheering for Sony with the Playstation Vita. I canceled my pre-order of the system, but that was more about the fact that there were no bonus offers … and Amazon tends to be great with those so I figured I would just wait until the new year to see. The system looks great hardware wise, seems to offer tons of gameplay possibilities, and ultimately I think that more gaming options means better competition means better games for all of us! But this weekend I have discovered yet another…

Editorials December 5, 2011

I Would Rather Do it on the iPad

During my four hour flight down to Aruba I spent some time beginning to edit a number of pictures I took right before we left. I figured that, so long as I had the pictures with me I could do the reviews and news posts without having to actually carry many of the items down with me. So there I was, listening to music, sitting in a seat that was designed for someone just 5′ 3″ tall (or is it short), my knees firmly pressed into the seat back in front of me and gaining an ever-better understanding of what…

Editorials, Game Diary December 4, 2011

Would YOU Pay $30 a Year for TETRIS?

Doug wrote about the new ‘reimaginged’ Tetris app, which includes the following: · The fan-favorite Marathon Mode. · A brand new level-based Galaxy Mode, where players can use game-changing power ups to dig down and shatter their scores. · Innovative Marathon One Touch Mode, a simple and easy-to-use control scheme for Marathon mode that is specially designed for touch screen gameplay. · New gameplay challenges delivered via the never-before-seen Tetris Log system. · Tetris Rank functionality that tracks players’ lifetime “lines cleared” to assign an overall rank. · Ability to subscribe to the T-Club, the only Tetris fan club to…

Editorials, Game Diary November 30, 2011

Gamer Banned for Using ‘Inappropriate Language’ in Forum Tamer Than What Is in the Actual Game!

Early this year I wrote about two separate incidents of gamers being banned from playing games based on comments made in separately housed gaming forums – the first was about someone banned for upsetting a forum moderator by asking “Have you (Bioware) sold your souls to the EA devil?”. At the time EA claimed it was an ‘error’: “Unfortunately, there was an error in the system that accidentally suspended a user’s entire account,” he told Ars. “Immediately upon learning of the glitch, EA took steps to restore the user’s macro account and apologized for the inconvenience.” My speculation that the…

Editorials November 30, 2011

A Reminder That Our Only Freedoms Are the Ones We Fight For

I doubt that anyone would seriously debate that we have lost significant freedoms in this country over the last decade, though it is generally presented with a caveat that what has changed was needed for enhanced security. Sometimes this is true, other times it is for the appearance of greater security, and other times it is simply an authoritarian power grab. Which is why this story is so awesome! Last week I heard about the high school girl had gone to a ‘Youth in Government’ program event and had tweeted: Just made mean comments at gov brownback and told him…

Editorials November 25, 2011

Ten Lessons Learned from Steve Jobs’ Biography: An Entrepreneur’s Take

My friend Peter K is a speaker, author, health and success coach, nutritionist and physical therapist. (His website Peter K Fitness tells his story, introduces his method and explains how his approach has helped countless people lead a healthier lifestyle. Some impressive testimonials are there too!) Peter is Elana’s health coach and played a huge role in her becoming as fit as she now is. (It also turns out that I had the privilege of officiating at his wedding more than a decade ago. A connection we did not make until Elana met him for her first training session.) Peter…

Editorials November 23, 2011

Why I’m Not Shopping on Thanksgiving

I heard on the radio this morning that Old Navy will be open on Thanksgiving. Target and Walmart are also planning special hours on Thursday. Personally, I will be avoiding all these stores, but it is not an anti-consumption stance. I just feel terrible for all those employees forced to work on Thanksgiving. I’ve been there. When I worked at Borders I worked July 4th, Presidents Day, Martin Luther King Day, Easter, Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, New Years Day, Labor Day, Memorial Day, and pretty much any holiday I forgot to list. The sacred days, the two where no…

Editorials November 22, 2011

A Look at Our Growing Police State from Four Angles

Image courtesy HuffPo I grew up in a time when you respected authorities but didn’t place blind trust in them. The government was still reeling from Watergate and Vietnam, which instantly led many to question anything said by those in power. The downside was that soldiers returning from Vietnam who were themselves victims of a draft were lumped in and treated poorly (my kids have a hard time connecting with Rambo’s treatment, but I remember it all too well from people in my town growing up). When Ronald Reagan took office, a new wave of pride and positivity in being…

Editorials, News & Features November 19, 2011

Android Rules Smartphone Roost … But Holiday ‘Wish Lists’ Show Vulnerability

Guess who wants an Android Tablet for Christmas/Hanukkah? (Hint: no one). But we’ll return to that in a moment. This week we got news that put the Android OS at more than 50% market share for smartphone operating systems. This is based on numbers from Gartner, which means that they willingly and knowingly count Samsung’s % estimates’ the same as other people’s ‘shipments’ the same as other people’s actual SALES. In other words, their numbers are a crapshoot. But make no mistake – Android is BY FAR the dominant mobile OS. If you look at the trends in the graph above,…

eBooks, Editorials November 18, 2011

Were More NOOKcolors Rooted Than We Thought?

The new NOOK Tablet is out, and slowly but surely more details about how it is different from its NOOKcolor predecessor are being released. For most users, the Tablet is a great upgrade; better screen, more memory, more multimedia options…it’s a win all around. But what about the people who loved their NOOKcolors for their supreme hackability? According to The Digital Reader, it appears that B&N has locked the bootloader on the NOOKTablet. In English, this means they’ve added an additional level of security, making rooting (and installing the Android marketplace, etc) a far more difficult proposition. It’s hardly the…

eBooks, Editorials November 16, 2011

Kindle Fire Shows Android Cross-Market Problem; Nook Tablet Limits Revealed

I wrote about the Android app TouchDown by NitroDesk as an ‘App I Can’t Live Without’, so naturally when I got my Kindle Fire, one of the first things I did was load up TouchDown from the Amazon Appstore for Android to configure my work email account. The problem came when I went to switch from a ‘trial’ to licensed mode. On any other Android device I would simply download the TouchDown License from my ‘purchased apps’ on the Android Market. But, since there is no access to the Android Market, I couldn’t do that on the Fire. Further, when…

Editorials November 16, 2011

Apple, You May Have a Problem. We Have the Solution.

Apple may have a bit of a problem on its hands if a new report from Goldman Sachs (Via www.bgr.com)is accurate. According to a new report, sales of the iPad 2 are slowing even as we come into the holiday shopping season. There are, of course, many possible reasons for this. Among them might be the fact that people are waiting until the holiday season is closer (read Black Friday) to make a purchase and yesterday’s release of the Amazon Kindle fire which is just $199 as opposed to the $499 buy in to get the least expensive iPad. Still,…

Editorials, Game Diary November 12, 2011

Choose Your Digital Download Vendor Carefully (and Avoid Aspyr’s GameAgent No Matter What)!

Earlier this week I wrote about the great 50% off sale on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the Mac App Store. The deal is still going on, by the way! Anyway, it put me in the mood to replay the game, so I checked Steam to see if they ever opened up Steam Play – they hadn’t. Fortunately I had reviewed the game back in the summer of 2008 for the Mac, with a game gotten through Aspyr’s GameAgent. This meant I had a full game at some point. UN-fortunately, the install file was >4GB, and the Iomega 250GB…

Editorials November 9, 2011

Tales of Apple Product Obselescence: iPod Touch First Generation

I have been highly critical of the impact of Android ‘fragmentation’, which is something I am acutely aware of as a hardcore gamer who loves playing games on smartphones and tablets but has constantly been thwarted in spite of having a dual-core Tegra 2 device. That criticism has led some to think I ‘have it in’ for Android. Not true, not true – I have it in for EVERYONE! Look at the way I have taken Apple to task repeatedly, and Sony has also been a frequent target. Today, I have yet another axe to grind with Apple, which is…

Editorials November 7, 2011

I’m Sticking with Zinio

One of the features that iOS 5.0 brought to the table was their new Newsstand application. Newsstand is to magazines and newspapers what iBooks is to books. It collects your magazine and newspaper subscriptions purchased through the iTunes App Store and puts them into one simple place where all are accessible. It has a nice feature in that most of the periodicals can be set to automatically download when a new addition becomes available. That means that, for example, each day my New York Times is ready and waiting for me as soon as I open my iPad’s cover…

Editorials November 4, 2011

Dear B&N,Your Strategy Needs Some Work …

Dear B&N, I want you to succeed. Really, I do. I know it’s hard to believe, being the former Borders’ girl that I am. And sure, my personal library is pretty heavily Amazon-focused. But I like the competition. And I like bookstores. And you bring both. But come on, you need to step up your game, and it seems like you’re falling behind at exactly the wrong time. Let’s look at your main competition, Amazon. They have the Kindle Fire tablet coming out, and the “special sauce” is their ecosystem. Point for point they offer more value to a new…

Editorials November 1, 2011

Lies, Damn Lies, and Android Tablet Numbers

Image courtesy of Retrevo I have been on the hunt for over a year for an Android tablet that meets my needs: I have abandoned hope for now that will be anything appealing in the 10″ space, since Android is currently inferior and fragmented for gaming and a non-factor in music production software. But in the 7″ space there are some cool options, yet in spite of trying three different tablets (Galaxy Tab, Acer Iconia and HTC Flyer) and finding that the size is perfect … I haven’t managed to find a device with enough positives that I can accept…

Bounty Hunter TK4 Tracker IV metal detector

Outdoors, Editorials October 31, 2011

How a $91 Metal Detector Saved the Day!

On Tuesday last week, my husband, Kevin, texted me to say that he had lost his wedding ring while working at the ranch. He’d been digging post holes to rebuild a section of fence that had been damaged during our April Fool’s Day fire, and while he was on his knees flinging the final few rocks from inside the hole, his platinum wedding band had flown off. The rock he threw hit a tree about 15 feet away, and he figured that the ring had taken a similar trajectory. Kev had already spent two hours searching, part of it on…