Gear Bits | Gear Diary

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…

Gear Bits

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)…

Gear Bits, Yum Log

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…

Gear Bits

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…

Gear Bits

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…

Gear Bits

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…

Gear Bits

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…

Gear Bits

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….

Gear Bits

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

Editorials, Gear Bits

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!!!!!

Gear Bits, Music Diary

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…

Gear Bits

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….

Gear Bits

Things That Make You Go “HMMMMM” Apple Store App Edition

Apple’s iOS app for the Apple Store is pretty neat. It loads quickly, it lets you browse and order some of the best gear around. It even lets you check your order status and find stores. It is a rich app but it leaves me with a question …

Gear Bits

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 …

Gear Bits

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 …

Gear Bits

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…

Gear Bits

Meet the Mutewatch

Are you someone who is not ready to give up your wristwatch in favor of simply checking the time on your mobile phone? I don’t blame you if you aren’t; I’m not either. As a result I’m always looking at watches, considering ones I might wear and balancing function and geek factor against the watch’s looks. The Mutewatch is a design I recently found that looks cool, is simple enough to operate, and adds the function of timers and alarms. The use of “swiping” is cool to see on a watch, and for $259, it’s not too outrageous. via Meet…

Gear Bits

The Trikke Is Cooler Than a Segway

I admit I am totally fascinated by the trend of mashing up bikes with unrelated exercise equipment. I thought the Elliptigo was cool (and the only one I could see someone using in public) until I learned about the Trikke. What’s the Trikke, you ask? It is an electric vehicle that looks sort of like skis on wheels with handlebars. Like a tricycle meets the ski team. According to the company, it is foldable, lightweight, and offers a “full body workout”. It looks incredibly fun, and the company even sells accessories like cargo nets to make running errands on the…

Gear Bits

eReader Critical Mass and Other Vacation Tech Tidbits

During my week away I noticed that eReaders seem to have hit critical mass. Yes, this year, more than any other, saw Kindle’s, nook’s and iPads in use on the beach and at the pool. (Interestingly, I did not see a single Kindle fire!) I have seen an uptick in the use of devices over the past few years but this year seemed to show a huge jump in their presence. In fact, a cursory look this past Saturday saw MORE electronic devices than dead-tree reading material at the pool. But that was only a small part of the tech…

eBooks, Gear Bits

Adventures in Customer Service: DianeDuane.com

During this busy Holiday season with so many great deals, it is easy to make an error as you check out – especially on pages with multi-select options. For example, you can choose the correct size of a shirt and then mess up as you look at a variety of colors and don’t re-check the size before your sale is complete. Ultimately what happens after the mistake depends on how you handle it and the customer service of the company – but it is always important to remember that YOU made the mistake and bear the responsibility. Over the Thanksgiving…

Gear Bits

Watch the Final ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ 8 Minute Trailer

Have you read the ‘Girl With the Dragon Tattoo’ trilogy by Stieg Larsson? If not, you really should as they are wonderful books – a bit on the disturbing side at times and not intended for a younger audience. But these wonderful books were made into Swedish movies over the last several years, leading to the obvious question – why do we need a Hollywood version? Technically we don’t, at least of the first book: the Swedish version was quite well done. The other two were rather lacking, to be honest. But there were definite areas for improvement, and I…