Editorials

New Story/Study: iPhone Owning Parents & Social Media

I’m not one of those parents who is totally panicked by the idea of all the kinds of scary things that are made available by new tech like cell phones, social media, and the like. Yes, there are a lot of scary things kids can access or be sucked into via new technology. But as a guy who spent his childhood in the late 60s and 70s, it’s not like it was a non-stop, safe party for us, either. Yup, you can get talked into stuff by strangers over your cell phone, or via Facebook, or Yahoo IM, or…

Editorials

Random Statistic: Married Households No Longer a Majority

I remember when I first heard about the so-called Defense of Marriage Act back in the early 90’s my first thoughts were naively that there was actually an effort being made to help prevent so many misguided kids get married and thereby decrease the divorce rate and number of so-called ‘broken’ homes, or in some other way try to bolster the institution of marriage as the core of the family unit. Nope … it was a buzzword laden title that the neocons really meant ‘we find homosexuality abhorrent, but since we can’t make it illegal we have to at least…

Editorials

My Heart Bleeds as Much as the Screen on My LG G2X; Warranty Phone #1 Is on the Way

LG recently brought all their IPS goodness to Android with the Introduction of the T-Mobile G2X. Before getting this phone I was happily running a HD2 that still holds a spot on my shelf as my number one backup phone. With more dual core superphones launching by the minute, LG really had not dropped a flagship into the Android Community. The specs on the phone are at the top of most lists with a 4″ IPS screen, Dual Core Nvidia Tegra, and TMO AWS bands topping 14.1 Mbps. The phone shipped with a *stock version of Android 2.2 with a…

eBooks, Editorials

eBooks Are Not the Same as Music and Movies

Forbes today had a blog post that made me smack my face in consternation. First of all, it was clearly written by someone who has zero grasp of the publishing world, but more importantly, it ignored several more realistic issues in ebooks that need to be addressed first. What was the author’s argument that had me foaming at the mouth? Read on… Last December, Iwrote about an ebook killer app waiting to be built, and that I wanted for Christmas. I didn’t get it. But, with Apple’s introduction of iTunes Match, there’s a glimmer of hope that Apple (or Amazon or Google) could build my…

Editorials, Game Diary

Gear Games Rant: Avadon for iPad Released – 10 Reasons the PC RPG Zealots are Wrong

This week we get Avadon: The Black Fortress from Spiderweb Software on the iPad in the iTunes App Store. I have already gushed about the Mac and PC versions of the game, and will have my full review (hint: it is also gushing) of the iPad version this week. Almost immediately the forums of traditional computer role-playing games – in theory the biggest supporters of an ‘old school’ developer like Spiderweb – exploded with loads of vitriol. It came from all directions – and it is pretty much all wrong-headed. Rather than celebrating one of the few advocates of traditional…

Editorials

The Thrill of Victory … the Atrocity of Defeat!

As someone who lived in the Boston area for more than 40 years before the economy finally tanked and I landed in western New York, I grew up with that image of Bobby Orr flying through the air after scoring the winning goal in the 1970 Stanley Cup … along with ‘Bird stole the ball’ and Bill Buckner and a bunch of other Boston sports memories. Hockey was never my first love – that would be basketball – but I have kept track of the B’s throughout the years, finding hockey to be a much ‘purer’ sport where the stars…

eBooks, Editorials

How to Spot an eBook Scam, or, How to Avoid MyPadMedia, TheReadingSite, and Their Friends

Around this time last year, the Gear Diary team tussled with the folks at MyPadMedia. They were less than thrilled with us blowing open their scam of $50 for “unlimited” eBooks that turned out to be free eBooks from Feedbooks and other sites. Unfortunately, either MyPadMedia or their cohorts have managed to spawn again, this time with “The Reading Site”, which sounds and looks suspiciously similar. Pay us up front, we promise you unlimited eBooks, and if you’re a website who wants to be an affiliate there’s a super fat paycheck for you. However, without even paying for the site…

Editorials, Game Diary

Is there an Origin/Steam Battle Brewing?

EA was actually relatively early to the digital download game, with their online store serving up games through the evolving EADM since 2007. Even back then EA pushed use of the service, but users balked because initially the EA specified that downloads were held for 6 months, or 2 years if you paid the extra ‘insurance’. Just before E3 last week EA launched their Origin digital download service, clearly aimed to take on market leader Steam. This week EA has made moves that show it is ‘On Like Donkey Kong’ … or, more appropriately, ‘Off Like Crysis 2’! That’s right…

eBooks, Editorials

The Danger of eBook Digital Rights Management

The most common complaints surrounding ebooks are probably digital rights management related. Either books aren’t cross-platform compatible, or there are arguments of fragmentation, and the biggest boogeyman of all fears that someone could flip a switch and deauthorize an entire library. That’s precisely what happened to one unlucky Teleread contributor. Douglas Cootey explains: My iPhone wouldn’t let me authorize any new apps that utilized Adobe’s DRM. I had run out of the allotted authorizations. By March of this year, I began to contact Adobe to fix the situation, but each web case was “withdrawn”, which is to say “dismissed without solving”. I called tech…

eBooks, Editorials

Wired Misses the Point on eBooks

Oh Wired. For a magazine based around technology, they really, really, missed the point in their latest article on ebooks. It’s chock full of ignorant statements and petty complaints, which is pretty disappointing. Not only did they spread misinformation and confusion, there are genuine drawbacks to ebooks that could (and should) have been addressed instead. Read on for Wired’s take, my rebuttal, and my list of eBook drawbacks instead. Wired says: 1) An unfinished e-book isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it. My take: If you need a half-finished book to taunt you to finish it, you’re not reading the…

Editorials, Music Diary

Music Diary Notes: Suddenly the iTunes vs. Amazon Price Difference Matters!

Until this week I wouldn’t have even thought twice – legendary vibes player Gary Burton just released a new album yesterday, so I headed to Amazon.com to grab the MP3 album. But then I stopped and thought – if I buy this on iTunes I know it will be saved and available for any of my devices, will be stored on iCloud without penalty, and so on. But if I go to Amazon’s MP3 store to buy, I *should* be able to use iTunes Match in the fall which will allow the album to be tracked and not incur a…

Editorials

Apple iOS 5.0: Some Thoughts on Why It Won’t Kill Zinio

I spent a good bit of time this week thinking about Apple’s announcements this past Monday. Much of what will be coming in version 5.0 of iOS is impressive. There are a number of areas where Apple clearly took plays from Android’s playbook (Notifications anyone?) as well as from numerous independent developers. I’m not surprised and, as an end-user, I’m quite pleased. I’m running iOS 5.0 Beta on a few devices, but am going to respect the beta-user agreement and NOT go into any detail. I will say, however, that the new notification system is fantastic and does a great…

Editorials

The Dangers of Rewriting History

This past week Sarah Palin was in Boston, and she was asked to recount the midnight ride of Paul Revere. When I initially saw the video two things came to my mind: first how much of history has ‘changed’ since I learned it as a kid, and second how obviously caught off-guard she was by what looked like a ‘gotcha’ question in spite of being at the Old North Church … one of the key sites in the tale of Paul Revere. I would have dismissed this as yet another instance of Palin demonstrating how she lacks substantive knowledge of…

Editorials

Adventures in Customer Service: Barnes and Noble

It’s been quite a while since Barnes and Noble made me happy, I’ll admit. My bias is simple: shortly after they bought out eReader and deployed their own version of the eReader app–basically just a slight modification of the existing eReader app, with a few quite-nice enhancements (progress bar with chapter markers; in-app access to wikipedia)–I was a happy camper. Not only could I easily side-load my existing library of eReader PDB books, but it was a sweet app with a familiar interface that I liked quite a bit more than the Kindle app. (iBooks didn’t exist as yet.) Then…

Editorials, Music Diary

Music Diary Notes: Quick Look at iTunes Match & iCloud In Context

At the WWDC Keynote, Apple talked quite a bit about Mac OS X Lion, iOS 5, and iCloud. Of the three, iCloud was the least known and newest reveal. Here is a bit about iCloud: iCloud is so much more than a hard drive in the sky. It’s the effortless way to access just about everything on all your devices. iCloud stores your content so it’s always accessible from your iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, or PC.* It gives you instant access to your music, apps, latest photos, and more. And it keeps your email, contacts, and calendars up to…

Editorials, Gear Bits

“The iPod touch Effect”, or Why RIM Could Have Been a Contender… but Isn’t: Part 2

Last week I wrote a post entitled “The iPod touch Effect”, or Why RIM Could Have Been a Contender… but Isn’t. In it I argued that even it Apple does not currently own the market they are positioned well for the long-term thanks to a little device known as the iPod touch. The Touch, I said, is now used by a huge number of kids who do not yet have a cell phone. Their love of the Touch, not to mention their having invested in apps and ringing up game scores, makes it more likely that they will go for…

Editorials, Game Diary

Next Call of Duty to Charge Monthly Fee for Multiplayer

C’mon … you KNEW it was coming. First there was the price increase to $60 for this generation of games. That is easy enough to justify and accept based on the cost to product the graphics assets. Next we started with DLC, which very quickly spawned the whole ‘Horse Armor’ DLC nonsense. DLC is paid ‘downloadable content’, and the ‘nonsense’ is that companies quickly realized that gamers would buy $2 – $5 DLC on impulse for games they like – and that it was possible to ‘hold back’ content or at least create it in parallel with the main game,…

Editorials

Web Site Giveaway Adventures in Customer Service

One thing is clear – gadget-heads love their stuff. We love getting it, playing with all the features, and then moving on to the next new shiny thing. I am certainly no exception, and as a result I have loads of tech sites I track on a regular basis – and loads of giveaways I enter all the time. The overwhelming majority of times I lose – but every now and then I win! Just over a month ago a giveaway appeared over at GottaBeMobile, one of the sites I track via RSS on a daily basis. They had reviewed…

Editorials

Yo, Apple: Time for a UI Redesign!

“Where is the Bluetooth menu, again?” Really, you all can blame Thomas for this. He tweeted: Apple – Please move the Bluetooth toggle from Settings > General to Settings (w/ Wifi, Personal Hotspot & Airplane Mode) where it belongs. I usually don’t kvetch–publicly, anyway!–about the choices that user interface (UI) and operating system (OS) software designers and engineers make in these areas, because it tends to be pretty subjected. Just because I want my Bluetooth toggle on top doesn’t mean everyone does, right? Just because the way Apple has laid out its Settings choices in iOS bugs the crap out…

eBooks, Editorials

Is Barnes & Noble Gearing up to Completely Kill eReader and Fictionwise?

If you have a big eReader or Fictionwise library, I strongly encourage you to do two things. One, download any books in your library and archive them on a hard drive or SD card, and two, download and store the appropriate software to read them on your smartphone or computer. Here’s the eReader download page if you need to track down their reading software. So why am I sounding the alarm? According to Teleread, the new NOOK Simple Touch Reader does not support PDB, the eBook file format used by eReader and Fictionwise. But both of those stores are owned…

Editorials

Tablets Galore: A Quick Look at The iPad 2, HTC Flyer and Asus EEE Pad Transformer

I’ve been checking out a number of different tablets and, for a brief period, had more than usual at home at one time. Here’s a brief, biased look at three current offerings: one awesome, one quite impressive and one that did not impress at all. (Spoiler Alert/Disclaimer: the EEE Pad Transformer had not been updated to the Honeycomb 3.1 update that will be available tomorrow. It MAY improve some of the performance issues. No update, however, can fix the cheap plastic feel, the single microphone’s bad speech recognition performance and the tinny speakers.)

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