Editorials

How much is that MP3 Download Worth? How about $80,000?!?

Editorials, Music Diary

How much is that MP3 Download Worth? How about $80,000?!?

I am a staunch anti-piracy fighter: I engage in forum discussions about it on a regular basis, and also being a hardcore PC gamer I see the direct impact of piracy on that hobby. I see how it has impacted where developers target their games, how many top-level PC games are released, and the increasingly draconian DRM schemes used to try to thwart piracy … most of which simply punish honest customers. I constantly rail against piracy and try to stop folks from doing it when I can. That said, I have absolutely no love for the RIAA , the…

Pro's and Cons of Integrated GPS and Cameras

Pro’s and Cons of Integrated GPS and Cameras

It all started innocently enough when Christopher Gavula e-mailed the team about the Mapquest on iPhone article. Wayne responded with an email on how much he liked the Palm Pre’s navigation program and wished standalone GPS makers well because from his point of view the Pre’s included turn-by-turn Telenav software/GPS combination all but put the nail in the standalone automotive GPS coffin. And it all spun off from there. Join us in another behind the scenes look at the Pro’s and Con’s of integrated devices.

5 Years of Free Internet Left?

5 Years of Free Internet Left?

I saw this the other day on ZDNet and wanted to say a couple of things. I promise to make this short and not ramble on too much. I’ve been cooking this response for the past couple of days, and it may still not be fully there yet… At the Advertising 2.0 conference, Barry Diller, Chairman and CEO of the IAC, an interactive services company raking in over $1.5 billion dollars in revenue a year, stated that the free internet would soon be a thing of the past. Picture from ZDNet.

Memory and Perspective

Memory and Perspective

A fish doesn’t know it’s in water… until it is hanging in midair from a hook while being reeled in. Sometimes you are so close to something that you lose all perspective… until something comes along to remind you, that is. Yup, there is suddenly that tap on the shoulder that reminds you where you’ve been, where you are and the amazing journey from one to the other. This afternoon I had just one of those experiences. Let me explain.

Should the FTC have a say over blog content?

Should the FTC have a say over blog content?

If you read Gear Diary, you are probably familiar with product reviews on various blogs. But do you ever consider why your favorite website is reviewing product X? Or whether product X has been overly generous to buy goodwill in the blog world? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) cares. How will this affect you? Read on and find out.

Keyport Key Fob - Product Vaporware

Keyport Key Fob – Product Vaporware

Promises, promises, promises. At one time in my life I worked for a small, start up company. For the entire first year the company existed all we did was market. We had no product to sell, only a few working prototypes. We traveled the world displaying these prototypes at trade shows to very interested customers. We had the prettiest booth and the best brochures but nothing to sell. We even promised release dates. But these quickly came and went and eventually our potential customers became upset. They lost their patience. They wanted the product and they wanted it now. When…

It's The Content... Stupid

It’s The Content… Stupid

We were over my in-laws’ house for Mother’s Day, and I did something rather unusual — I actually read a newspaper… from newsprint! Here’s what happened… I saw these quaint bundles of paper sitting on the counter and inquired as to what they were. My father-in-law said they are called “newspapers” and that, in his day, it was how they got the news. (I know I know… as shocking as it is, I learned that RSS feeds are actually relatively new.) I was surprised to find that the same information I read on my iPhone and Kindle could be found…

Earphone Specifications Explained

Earphone Specifications Explained

Many people buy some sort of portable hearing device. By this I am referring to earbuds (like the iPods have bundled), in-ear earphones (like Apple’s In-Ear), over-the-ear headphones (like Sennheiser’s PX series) or large cans (something like the Sennheiser HD series). For the sake of simplicity, I’ll just refer to these as “earpieces.” When you’re buying a new one, whether you’ve lost your iPod earbuds or you’ve frayed your last pair, you will almost always see, technical specifications. Most of you will gloss over these, ignore them, or — at best — glance at them and shrug your shoulders because…

Windows 7 on the HTC Shift

Editorials, How to Do It Yourself!

Windows 7 on the HTC Shift

There have been two activities that have become the norm across the world of technology blogging in the last couple of years: unboxing, and loading Mac OS X onto netbooks. As a person who is lucky enough to have the opportunity to play with lots of phones, notebooks and other “unboxable” items, I’ve done the former a fair bit, and as an owner of a MacBook Pro for the past few years, I can understand peoples need to load OS X onto any device with an x86 processor. Another trend that’s come up in the last month or so is…

Science projects without tears

Science projects without tears

A few days ago I ranted about my belief that take home School Science Projects should be banned. I’m not altogether against them – it’s just that as a parent of two 9 year olds my experience is that most projects are a test of the parent’s ability to teach their kids how to do a project as opposed to the kids understanding anything at all about what they’re doing. Little did I know there’s actually a company that creates science project kids that help parents understand the science fair process. You might refer to this kit as parent’s “science…

The Amazing Hubble Space Telescope in Action

The Amazing Hubble Space Telescope in Action

According to astronomer Lyman Spitzer’s 1946 paper “Astronomical advantages of an extraterrestrial observatory”, there were two main advantages that a space-based observatory would have over ground-based telescopes. The first advantage was that “the angular resolution (smallest separation at which objects can be clearly distinguished) would be limited only by diffraction, rather than by the turbulence in the atmosphere, which causes stars to twinkle and is known to astronomers as seeing.” The second advantage was that “a space-based telescope could observe infrared and ultraviolet light, which are strongly absorbed by the atmosphere.” The United Kingdom launched the first orbiting solar telescope…

What If Your Town Got Nuked? A Ground Zero Project

What If Your Town Got Nuked? A Ground Zero Project

Fresh from last night’s viewing of Religulous, which ends with a disturbing cacophony of nuclear explosions, I found this in my RSS feed today… CarlosLabs has posted a bit of Javascript which uses Google Maps to show the effects of various catastrophic disasters; manmade and otherwise. According to DVICE’s Charlie White, “The deep red color means total destruction, dark red would be third degree burns, light red signifies second degree burns, and yellow means you’d get a pretty nasty sunburn.” You can get a more specific interpretation of distance related damage represented by the colored rings, here.

Why school projects should be banned [rant]

Why school projects should be banned [rant]

I think my mom is the Queen of Science projects. At my house I’ve been struggling with getting my son’s science fair project completed by next week. I’m probably the least creative person at thinking up new and interesting ways to test how fast a matchbox car can run down a wooden ramp. Leave it to my Mom to an interesting way to complete the project in one emailed suggestion that my son build the cars from the kits he received for Christmas (thanks mom!) and then test each by adding weight. I suddenly realized that my Mom wasn’t born…

Bloggers Photo Guide

Editorials, How to Do It Yourself!

Bloggers Photo Guide

The idea for this post came from a little back and forth amongst the GearDiary team concerning getting better images to go along with our blog entries. Specifically, some were looking for tips to produce better tech gear images with monitor screens, i.e., multimedia devices, smartphones, laptops, video monitors, etc.

Proof that I am Not a Member of Vertu's Target Audiance

Proof that I am Not a Member of Vertu’s Target Audiance

I got my Vertu Constellation in a round about way, and while I have greatly enjoyed owning it there has never been a day when I thought for even a moment that I was in the same financial bracket as the typical Vertu owner. Today I got proof positive of that fact in the form of a repair bill; more on that in a moment… I had noticed soon after getting my nearly new Constellation that the leather on its battery cover was rubbed and might one day start to peel back. This is certainly not uncommon with the model,…

The iPhone 3G as a Business Tool - Part 3

The iPhone 3G as a Business Tool – Part 3

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been looking at the iPhone 3G as a business tool. It’s been an interesting time. I’ve gotten quite a large number of comments on the iPhone OS and its advantages and challenges in the Enterprise and in a business environment. Last week’s comments on Calendaring, also in the Enterprise and in a business environment, created quite the off line discussion among the Gear Diary Team. Some of those comments have required me to go back and readdress some issues in this week’s commentary. If you remember, I said that I was going to tackle…

TuneRanger iTunes Sync from Smithmicro - let the buyer beware

TuneRanger iTunes Sync from Smithmicro – let the buyer beware

I received an email offer about two weeks ago from SmithMicro. They advertise a software product called TuneRanger which promises to “Sync, manage and protect all of your iTunes libraries …with the click of a button”. I have my main iTunes library on an iMac and would like to synchronize all of the iTunes music over to my MacBook Pro so that I’d have an identical copy including playlists and any ratings that I’d created for my songs. SmithMicro was offering over 30% savings if I bought within 10 days of the mailing – which seemed too good to be…

Is 64bit Vista Ready for Prime Time?

Is 64bit Vista Ready for Prime Time?

There’s been a big push by Microsoft to get everyone to cross over to the 64bit version of Vista. Are you and your hardware ready for it? I’ve got a MacBook Pro. I purchased the notebook in December of 2006. It’s the low end unit, with a 2.16 GHz C2D processor, 4GB of RAM (yes, Leopard will see and use all 4GB of RAM, despite what you might think, or are told), and a 120GB hard drive. It’s not a bad unit; and has treated me well in the almost 20 months that I’ve been using it. The biggest problem…

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