Gear Bits | Gear Diary

Gear Bits, Health and Fitness, News & Features

Sweat Machine from UNICEF Turns Perspiration into Drinking Water

I have never had a problem perspiring – and given that I am also a distance runner who doesn’t shy away from the heat and humidity, and you have the recipe for some drenched workout clothes! All of my Dri-Fit stuff is still wet after several hours! Imagine if there was a way to harness all of that perspiration and convert it back to drinking water? Well, there is, and it is called simply the Sweat Machine and it is part of a UNICEF campaign to raise awareness for the 750 million people around the world without access to clean…

HTC One Screen Protector GLAS.tR SLIM Premium Tempered Glass

Gear Bits

Don’t Get the Spigen GLAS.tR for Your AT&T HTC One – Not Yet, Anyway

I have a GLAS.tR screen protector on my iPhone 5, and I absolutely love it. When I purchased an AT&T HTC One, I was very pleased to find out that the same excellent tempered glass screen protection was available for it. I purchased the GLAS.tR, installed it (it looked great, btw), marveled at how clear and responsive my screen was after the installation … and then was ultimately disappointed when I found that the back and home capacitive buttons on my AT&T HTC One no longer worked. I had noticed that the front of the GLAS.tR’s box said this ……

Game Diary, Gear Bits

Titanfall Game Preview Video

The sci-fi, first-person shooter (FPS) game Titanfall is one of several highly anticipated Xbox ONE games releasing next year, and it will mark game developer Respawn Entertainment’s first game release. The studio’s founders,Vincent Zampella and Jason West, previously developed the highly popular Call of Duty game series. Respawn is slowly releasing more details about Titanfall and Electronic Arts will be publishing this game, which will also release on Xbox 360 and PC. The action packed preview video features footsoldiers/pilots and mechs/titans. Titanfall will have single player and multiplayer game modes and include team-based objectives. The impressive physics and action include some…

Gear Bits

SPIbelt Makes Their Kids Pouches Insulin Friendly

I think I enthuse about SPIbelt almost as much as I enthuse about RoadID. SPIbelts are small low-profile waist packs that are ideal for running, hiking, and other activities where you need to keep your phone, a granola bar, or some other small items close to your person. They are an American company that consistently improves and refines their product based on the feedback from users, and their latest refinement shows they pay close attention to how parents and children use SPIbelts! SPIbelts are very popular with kids who have medical needs such as diabetes. It’s much more attractive and…

Gear Bits, Yum Log

Sugar Skulls for Your Coffee – More Meditative Than Macabre

If you take your coffee with a bit of sugar, and you don’t mind a not so subtle reminder of your mortality, then these sugar skulls should be right up your alley. Perfect for celebrating Halloween, Dia de Muertos (Day of the Dead), or for using on crappy days as a reminder of the other alternative. I first spied these on Crnchy, but there was no purchase info. I did manage to find etsy seller Dem Bones, who carries quite a few ready-made sugar skull sugar cubes in their shop — no leg bones, alas. If you are the crafty…

Gear Bits

Join Us In Wishing the Best to Stacey and Perry

Over the past few months, you have likely read posts by our two newest writers, Perry and Stacey. They love their gear and love to share that passion with others. We have been thrilled to welcome them to the site, and we have been enjoying their contributions to the Gear Diary community. Stacey and Perry also happen to be one of the newest married couples in America. That’s right, yesterday afternoon Perry and Stacey were married. The bride looked gorgeous, the groom looked handsome. So please join us in wishing Stacey and Perry the very best as they begin their life…

Gear Bits

Five Reasons Why the Samsung Galaxy S4 Is a Great Android Phone

The Samsung Galaxy S4 is the newest incarnation of the most popular Android phone series in the world; it comes jam-packed with state of the art tricks and tweaks, and it is definitely the phone to choose if you want to experience things that might one day be standard on all mobile phones without waiting for that day to actually arrive. Mitchell recently reviewed the S4, and I have been using the US Verizon version for a little over a month. I have become so well acquainted with the S4 that even though I recently purchased an HTC One, I have found…

Gear Bits

Evernote Turns Five- When Did You Subscribe?

Evernote is five years old and its growth sees no time of slowing any time soon. The company’s iOS app was one of my most important productivity apps early on. And, since then, Evernote’s various apps have become increasingly powerful. (I love capturing handwritten pages with the new Page Camera!) The other day they sent out emails to all Evernote subscribers thanking them for their support and indicating what number subscriber each was. Here’s the text of Mike’s email and his number. Yes, there are 65 million Evernote users and Mike is below 100,000. Not bad! Judie, however has been using…

Gear Bits

The Greatest Use for a Smartphone Camera for New Parents

Sarah and I are adjusting to being new parents, and it is definitely a major change. From the sleepless nights to the diaper duty, we are making a few rookie mistakes and having a good time trying our best. Luckily, our son seems to grasp that we’re all winging it a bit, and we’re hoping to get some sleep sometime in 2014. In the meantime, we’ve come up with a use for our smartphone cameras that make our lives infinitely easier, and it’s not just playing paparazzi every time our baby does something remotely cute. See, often our son prefers…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Tired of Waiting on Hold? Try Get Human’s Call-Back Feature to Have Them Call You Back!

GetHuman.com has always been a favorite website of mine for getting in touch with organizations with annoying telephone menu systems or extremely long hold times. Earlier today, I was trying to contact United Airlines regarding my upcoming honeymoon to Hawaii and was told that I would have to wait 45 minutes for the next available agent. After hanging up the phone in frustration, I decided to check out Get Human and see if there was an alternate number I could call. Unfortunately, there were no alternate numbers to reach an operator faster, however, I noticed for the first time a…

Editorials, Gear Bits

Feedly Is Ready for the ‘Post Google Reader World’

If you log into Google Reader you will get the error message that Google Reader will be unavailable after July 1st. Checking your calendar you might see that date is fast approaching! Since Google announced it was killing off Reader there have been numerous articles about how to replace it with a different RSS feed reader. And in nearly every article there was a major complaint about every single alternative: none managed to replicate the simplicity and minimalism of Reader’s (old) interface while replicating the experience across platforms.

Gear Bits

A Freakishly Prescient True Blood Parody from Sesame Street

Last night, a Facebook friend shared a Sesame Street clip from 2010 that parodied HBO’s “True Blood“, calling it “True Mud”. As you’ll see below, it’s a whole lesson in things that rhyme with mud, and it’s silly and cute. It’s also weirdly psychic, as you’ll see after the break (spoilers through Season 5 below).

Gear Bits

The Atari 800XL, My First Computer

Everyone can recall their first car, a first school, and a first phone, but today I am going to reminisce about how I first got started into computing. In 1986 my brother and I received our first computer as a gift; that computer was the Atari 800XL. Back then there were many players vying for home computing supremacy. IBM may have ruled the office with the IBM PC, and Apple may have ruled some homes and schools with the Apple II, but in most of my friends homes back in the day it was one of two computers: you were…

Gear Bits

It Pays to Chat with Customer Service!

When we moved into our new house, we made a very unfortunate discovery. Our box spring didn’t fit up the stairs. My brother-in-law was kind enough to build us a platform bed frame for our mattress, but it still left us very low to the ground. Sarah finally got fed up last week, and I agreed to look into split box springs. I was about to give up, or buy a crappy build-it-yourself box spring from Amazon, when I happened to get a pop-up while browsing 1-800-Mattress, asking if I wanted to chat with a representative … and I am…

Gear Bits

Can You Remember Your First Ever Order from Amazon?

Do you order items from Amazon? If so, do you remember your very first order ever? I couldn’t have told you on a bet, but the other day I found out that it is possible to look back and see every order that you’ve ever made. If you sign into your account and go to Your Account/Your Orders, you’ll see your orders from the past six months. But if you go into the drop down menu on the upper right corner, you’ll have the option to go back to the very first year you ordered, and once in, you can easily navigate to…

Gear Bits

Spock Squared Makes Everything Funnier

I very, very, very rarely notice car commercials. And they never influence me on what sort of car I’d like to drive. But despite them being way out of our price range, I totally want an Audi after seeing this Young Spock/Old Spock commercial, spotted by our friends at Mighty Mega: Is that not the most awesome, geektastic commercial of all time? I can’t tell what made me laugh harder-the “Wrath of Khan” bit or the part where Leonard Nimoy sang bits of his infamous Bilbo Baggins song. And now a bit of trivia after you’re done laughing: Do you…

Gear Bits, How to Do It Yourself!

Clean Up iTunes with ‘Show EXACT Duplicate Items’ Command

If you are like me, and you have been dumping music into iTunes for over a decade across multiple computers and mobile devices, chances are you have imported the same music more than once. And perhaps you did it once from CD and another time from a backup after altering MP3 tags (I used to love having song numbers preceding the title). However it happened, chances are that you have duplicate music spread out in your iTunes library. In theory iTunes has a ‘Show Duplicate Items’ menu selection under the View menu. I say ‘in theory’ because what gets labelled…

Game Diary, Gear Bits, News & Features

Deus Ex: The Fall Announced, Bringing Classic Franchise to iOS Devices!

The history of the Deus Ex goes back to the PC-only release of the 2000 cyberpunk story-based action-RPG shooter hybrid from Warren Spector and ION Storm (a PS2 port came in 2002). To say that the game was groundbreaking doesn’t begin to cover it … the combination of elements from various genres were each done extremely well – so shooter fans loved it, RPG fans loved it, adventure-story fans loved it, graphics fans loved it and so on. In fact:

Gear Bits, Music Diary, News & Features

Check Out the New Nine Inch Nails Song ‘Come Back Haunted’

Nine Inch Nails is back! Trent Reznor’s ‘band’ (he is the only official member) has been making industrial rock for 25 years now, and each release has had something of interest. Most reknowned for their work in the 1990s such as ‘Pretty Hate Machine’ and ‘Downward Spiral’, Reznor also created the music and effects for the classic video game Quake, which earned them the honor of having their logo emblazoned on ammo crates in that and later entries of the franchise. Back in 2008 they released Ghosts I–IV and The Slip, both as free downloads before going up for standard…

Gear Bits

Nokia Lumia 928 Windows Phone Music Controls – Little Features Make a Big Difference

I am really loving my new Lumia 928. Now that I am past the initial phase of learning Windows Phone and adjusting to a larger phone, I am starting to notice little ways that Windows Phone 8 makes life easier. The biggest standout for me, above and beyond any other, is how it handles music controls. Every morning and evening I stream Pandora on my way home from work. On the iPhone, it was easy to flip to a different song by just double clicking the home button and pulling up the music controls while the iPhone was locked. I…

Gear Bits

Nokia Lumia 928 First Impressions

Last week I expressed my boredom with my iPhone, and took a leap of faith by ordering a Nokia Lumia 928. It arrived last night (darn holiday weekend got in the way of FedEx delivering my phone faster!); now that I’ve had 24 hours to get the basics of the phone down, I thought I’d share some initial thoughts.