Gear Bits


Random Cool Video: Daft Punk ‘Derezzed’ on Floppy Disks

Image courtesy abduzeedo OK, so making music on floppy drives is now ‘a thing’. Which is actually kind of cool for those of us who remember floppy drive sounds and feeling like there was a certain musical aspect to them. For myself and my family, the best part of the movie Tron: Legacy was the great soundtrack by Daft Punk. And so since Tron: Legacy is very much a machine-based movie inside a computer, it is quite appropriately that the ‘floppy disk’ treatment is applied! Here is Derezzed: Source: Neatorama


Some of the Most Amazing Ukeleles Come from Celentano Woodworks

yes, that’s a ukelele! I don’t play the ukelele, but I do remember a couple of days spent learning how to tune one back in third grade music class; “My dog has feas“, anyone? When I think of the ukelele, this is one of the first images that pops into my head … umbrella drinks, anyone?  via NY Daily News Followed by this one … Oh Myyyyyy!  =P I have no intention of picking up a new hobby, even if Eddie Vedder has deemed the ukelele cool enough to release an entire album full of and entitled Ukelele Songs. And…


Car Gear: Present and Future

I continue to love having a car with tons of tech baked in. I love the keyless entry and ignition, am blown away by the quality of the speakerphone, am enjoying the heck out of streamed music from my iPhone and the nav system… well you can read about it here. When I was a month into driving my new wheels (and still acting like a kid in a candy shop) I commented to Elana that I could not imagine where they would got from here. Seriously, I thought, what else could they possibly do short of actually driving for…


Gympact — Encouraging Health or Just Another Gimmick?

When I first read about Gympact I thought it was a joke. Pledging money if you fail to check-in at your gym for at least a half hour? Really? When I realized it wasn’t, it got me thinking: would I sign up for this? If I wasn’t already physically active, would this have led me to work out more? The answer to both is no, but for different reasons. As of now, I don’t belong to a gym. We had a membership but canceled it after realizing I only run outside, and Sarah prefers to hike and walk the dog…


The Mountain Dew Defense: We’d MELT a Mouse!

I remember hearing about the case of a mouse supposedly showing up in a can of Pepsi, and had assumed that it had all been settled out of court long ago. But a post today at the Consumerist shows that is not the case! The case goes back to 2009, and here are some details: A man who found a dead mouse in a can of Mountain Dew after taking a swig from it is suing Pepsico, a store and its manager. Ronald Ball claims he bought a can of Mountain Dew from a vending machine located at his work…


Yo Dude, You Messed with the Wrong Cartoon … [NSFW-L]

Did you have any bad online shopping experiences this holiday? I did – I had a sweatshirt that we ordered online two months before Christmas for our younger son (a cool Deadmau5 one) that was ‘in stock’. They charged us in full immediately, and we never heard a thing until we finally got a shipping confirmation the day after I threatened to reverse the charge and contact the local BBB – that was mid-December, and we had the shirt in two days, along with a full written apology. Fortunately I had ordered a backup from Amazon (albeit for $10 more)…


foursquare: It’s Not All Fun and Games

I’m a big fan of foursquare and check in often enough that family members will remind me if I don’t do it quickly enough. After months with no mayorships, except a brief period I was major of a tram station in Las Vegas during CES 2010, I have finally become the major at a number of our local favorites. This evening we decided to grab a bite at Chili Willie’s, a family-run mexican restaurant in town. (I’m not yet mayor there.) When we sat down Elana was momentarily ticked at herself. It seems she had a $10 off coupon for…


The Place Where Even Siri Fears to Tread

For Christmas Eve every year, Sarah and I head to her family’s get-together. It’s a good time with her siblings, aunt and uncle, and various cousins and nieces and nephews making an appearance. I got into a conversation with my sister-in-law about Siri and my iPhone, and I did a few demos for her showing how useful Siri was at managing my calendar, creating tasks, transcribing spoken messages, etc. I also showed off the sillier uses for Siri, including the funny questions like “What are you wearing” and “What’s the best smartphone”. At dinner, she encouraged me to show everyone…


Random Cool Video: The Mike is a Mensch Edition

Mensch (Yiddish: ????? mentsh, from German: Mensch “human being”) means “a person of integrity and honor”. The key to being ‘a real mensch’ is nothing less than character, rectitude, dignity, a sense of what is right, responsible, decorous.” You know Mike as the gamer, prolific poster, pot-stirring editor here on Gear Diary. He is all that but, as this news clip that includes Mike and family shows, there’s yet another dimension to him. We hope everyone had a great holiday weekend with family and friends. We also hope you had a chance to do some good in the world. After all, that’s…


Evernote Essentials Extra: Delete Me

If you got a new phone, tablet or computer and you plan on doing anything more than play games on it you are going to want to check out Evernote. Evernote will let you save pictures, documents and other forms of information in a single place and then access them for virtually any and all devices. And if you check out Evernote you are going to want to check out Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote by Brett Kelly. Evernote Essentials is a PDF book with some great tips that will get you up and running with…


Did you get a New iPad for the Holidays? Read This…

Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah! ‘Tis the season of the “Top Apps of 2011” posts. The timing is great considering how many people just got a brand new iPad this morning for Christmas, or over the last few days during Hanukkah. But here’s the thing… The “Top Apps of 2011” list is a FLAWED MODEL. It doesn’t really help people who are new to the iPad figure out what apps they want and need to download. Why? Simple, because it isn’t about top apps in different categories, but rather what apps are most useful on a regular basis. There may…


New Car? It’s All About the Tech

  I needed a car a few weeks ago. That opened the door to my getting some of the neat technology we have seen and reviewed here on the site built into the car. Here was the Gear Diary editors backroom chatter. Judie: Question: What color? Answer: black Question: 2 or 4 door? Answer: 4 door Carly: Question: 2 or all-wheel drive? Answer: all-wheel-drive – between where I live and what I do it is a necessity. Question: hybrid or standard? Answer: Unfortunately standard because hybrid all-wheel drives are rare and the all-wheel-drive kills the gas benefit of the hybrid….


Siri Goes Skynet

I love Siri. She takes care of me when I am too lazy to type, and she manages my calendar far better than I can. But am I too trusting of my patient, robotic assistant? That’s what the twisted minds of Rooster Teeth Productions thought when they designed this trailer, where Siri is sick of our dumb questions and teaches us all who is really in charge, slasher-film style! I might need to sleep with one eye open tonight… Via TiPB


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!!!!!


Random Cool Video: Lyle Mays Makes Rare Appearance

For fans of pianist Lyle Mays, best known as the keyboardist and co-composer with the Pat Metheny Group, ANY sighting or musical release is an event. This isn’t just because his music is wonderful – it is because it so rarely happens! His last album Some video just surfaced from a CalTech series early this year called TEDxCaltech where Mays appeared with a group in January. Here is a bit about the event: What is TEDx? In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TED has created a program called TEDx. TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring…


At Least NOW We Know Who the TRUE Enemies of Freedom Are!

Image courtesy WTOP We interrupt my seemingly weekly rant on our ever-encroaching police state to remind you that there are plenty of normal everyday people lurking around looking to circumscribe public discourse and force their bizarre conspiratorial views on others. Those people live on this crazy place called ‘Facebook’ … and here is the latest example of just how crazy they are! Apparently Pepsi in the Middle East and Africa has recently come out with a new design, and a soldier leaving Iraq saw the can and made some wild paranoid conspiratorial leap that Pepsi was ‘celebrating’ the 9/11 attacks….



The Year in Review with LEGO!

William & Kate’s first post-wedding kiss The Guardian UK’s Flickr stream has a gallery of curated photos commemorating the events of 2011 through vignettes made of LEGO blocks. Some of them are quite imaginative, and I suspect that you might enjoy them as much as I did …


The Voices of JAMBOX…

I love the JawBone Jambox that I purchased a few weeks ago. It came on vacation with me and was quite handy to have around. I like it even more now that I discovered Jawbone’s MyTalk portal. It let me set up the button on the device to activate Siri, and it also let me change the voice used for notifications on the device. Here’s a look at some of the options …


Why You NEED a Front-Facing Smartphone Camera

I discovered this week the ultimate reason for a front-facing camera. No, it wasn’t for a Skype call, or Facetime, or to take a profile picture for a website. See, I was sitting at my desk, eating an everything bagel for lunch, when I had a business associate drop in unexpectedly. Great, except I’d just been eating a bagel full of seeds, and I didn’t want to embarrass myself with a big old poppy seed in my teeth. And the bathrooms in my office are in the hallway past the lobby, so I couldn’t escape to check. My solution? I…