News & Features

Believe it or Not, MTV STILL Has the VMAs, but Nobody Is Watching Anymore

The other night we stumbled across the VMAs while flipping channels, and while we barely slowed before continuing to change channels, we got to talking about it for a while that night and the next day. The basic conversation went like this: – I love the VMA’s. – Why? – Like to see who won – When was the last time you watched a video on MTV? – … And that pretty much sums it up. The ‘Music Television: Video Music Awards’ are about music on television and about music videos in name only – the real reason people watch…

Health and Fitness, News & Features, Travel

Make Your Next Trip as Healthy as You Want

Ask any business traveler, the toughest thing is maintaining your exercise and eating regime while on the road. I remember when I was traveling heavily many years ago, it made keeping a routine very difficult – but gaining weight easy. I don’t have to travel very much for work anymore, but when I was planning my trip to Utah to check out the new Hyundai Santa Fe, I wanted to be sure that my marathon training and associated eating habits were not severely impacted. The first thing is exercise – this can be the hardest thing to do, as you…

Health and Fitness, News & Features

Grocery Shopping Across Generations

Last year, my mom was complaining about the quality of her local grocery store. She still liked their produce, but their meat offerings had been dropping in quality. There was a newer grocery store that opened equidistant to her house, and she just switched completely to the other store. I asked her why she didn’t shop at both stores, since each offered foods she liked, and she explained it was just too much work. In contrast, Sarah and I shop at three to four grocery stores. There’s a farmer’s market down the street and the big box grocery store up…

News & Features

Check Out the New Kindle Commercials

Amazon took a huge step forward in their hardware offerings with new a new Kindle and multiple new Kindle Fires. Do you think these are worth upgrades? Do they excite you enough to order or are you waiting to see what the iPad mini has to offer? Let us know in the comments.

News & Features

Monster and Viacom Announce Monster DNA Audio

As we have discussed numerous time recently, headphones have become fashion statements as much as they are audio. But that is the point- for headphones to stand out they need to have both the sound and the style. Too often it seems style becomes the focus and thee audio is almost an afterthought. That surely won’t be the case with the new headphones coming out of a joint venture between Monster, “the world’s leading manufacturer of high-performance headphones and electronic accessories”, and Viacom, “home to the world’s premier entertainment brands”. Yes, these headphones promise to offer great audio quality on…

Music Diary, News & Features

iRig Stomp Now Available Everywhere!

When I reviewed the iRig Stomp last month, I said: It is easy to look at iRig Stomp and think ‘that’s it’? That is because ‘all’ it does is switch the signal path between using the iOS device or NOT using it. But in reality there is much more – it has to stand up to the rigors of BEING a stomp box, it has to have a clean signal path, and it needs to provide reliable functionality with all of the little extras IK Multimedia customers have come to expect. And iRig Stomp delivers admirably on all of those…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Motorola Adds Three New Razr Smartphones on Verizon!

Yesterday was a smartphone lovers delight, to be sure. Piling on earlier announcements from other companies, Motorola had an event where they announced three cool looking new smartphones to add to their wildly popular Razr line-up. They updated the Droid Razr with Here are the basics: • DROID RAZR M: An impossibly compact smartphone that puts the world in the palm of your hand. A 4.3 inch edge-to-edge Super AMOLED Advanced offers 40 percent more screen space then the leading competitor. • DROID RAZR HD: This ultra-thin device shows you everything in stunning HD detail that beats the competition. Movies,…

News & Features, Reviews

I-Mego Throne Gold Headphones Review

For anyone who reads any of my posts, you know I love me some headphones. Music and podcasts play a huge part in my life and I usually do not like to burden others with what I am listening to. I am probably not an audiophile, but I prefer my audio to be high quality. I have bought and reviewed many earbuds in the past few years and loved many of them, but for some reason I have never owned a pair of over the ear headphones. Many of my athletes have gone to this style of headphones in the…

Gear Bits, News & Features

Amazon Deal with Epix Brings Thor, Iron Man 2 and More to Prime Instant Videos!

As a member of Amazon Prime, I absolutely love the Prime Instant Video collection, finding it has a great selection that just keeps growing and growing in terms of the depth and breadth of movie and TV offerings. But there is always room for more – so I was thrilled this morning to hit the Amazon home page and see not one but TWO new deals: a movie deal with Epix and a TV deal with NBC Universal. From the Amazon home page, here is what they say about Epix: Great news for Amazon Prime members—we’ve just signed two big…

News & Features

CVS Mobile App Update Brings Same-Day Photo Printing

Since last year when Walgreens (the pharmacy closest to my house) and my company’s health insurance provider failed to reach an agreement on prescription medication prices, I’ve found myself in a CVS pharmacy a lot more frequently. And you know, they’re pretty good places. I haven’t used them for much other than pharmacy purposes and picking up the odd item or two, but given the improvements they’ve just made to their mobile app, I may just start using them for photo printing. CVS’ updated mobile app will allow customers to print photos directly from their smartphone camera or their CVSphoto.com…

eBooks, News & Features

Audiobooks.com Gets Download Friendly

Sarah swears by audiobooks as a way to get through her daily commute, but I mainly use them when we are on long road trips. We have flirted with the idea of an audible.com membership, but the library gives us plenty of access for free, and Audible has never struck me as such a great deal. Audiobooks.com, however, has a new service that has me somewhat intrigued. According to Techhive, Audiobooks.com has expanded from streaming only to download as well: Audiobooks.com made its debut earlier this year as a sort of Netflix for bibliophiles who prefer to listen to a…

News & Features

Introducing Freedom Sprint Premium Bluetooth Buds

I have recently resumed my morning workouts, which has not been easy. Due to a surgery, my workout habits have pretty much been non-existent for a while. One thing I must have when I run is headphones and either some podcasts or playlist. Not sure why, but I must have some audio or I can never get the workout done. My next issue is what headphones to wear. They must fit perfect and stay put even during the movement of running. One solution is to use bluetooth headsets, but they rarely are conducive to exercise. Jay bird has introduced the…

News & Features, Outdoors

Esoterism Presents the Moat-4 Aroused Comrade Urban Camo iPhone 4S Case

Most of our readers know I am an avid outdoorsman and hunter, but you all should also know I am a huge fan of our military. As a history teacher and patriot, anything that shows support for our troops is OK by me. I have many ex-students/athletes that have defended our nation bravely. One of my athletes gave the ultimate price, and my best friend took multiple rounds during the Battle of Fallujah and lived to tell about it. I also have a recent graduate who has become an Army Ranger. With all of that said, I naturally like all…

News & Features

Help Combat the Spread of West Nile Virus Mosquito Vectors with Acase’s InaTrap

When my wife and I were married, 13 years ago today, we had plenty of birds flocking to our feeders, including blue jays and an occasional crow or two. A few years later I began to notice significantly fewer of these members of the Corvidae bird family, a harbinger of the West Nile virus insidiously creeping westward. These birds are a reservoir species for the West Nile virus, and are quickly killed off by the virus. The nasty little critters that are the primary vectors of the virus are mosquitoes, and when a human is bitten by a mosquito infected…

Health and Fitness, News & Features

Garmin Introduces the Entry-Level Forerunner 10 GPS Watch for Runners

When Carly and I went for our run at GearFest in July, something that came with each of us was our GPS watch. We compared and contrasted the features and results in a video here, but the bottom line is this: we both firmly believe that using a GPS watch has made us better runners. Two of the problems with GPS watches are that they are bulky and expensive. More recently watches have dropped below $200, which is the range both of our watches cost. But the bulky part has only somewhat diminished from the Garmin 305 days to current…

News & Features

Before There Was Google Latitude, Foursquare or Facebook, There Was APRS

Hello! W3RAZ again here on Gear Diary, for some more amateur radio goodness. Today I am writing about APRS. APRS? What’s that? We’ll it’s in many ways the precursor to Google Latitude and all of these apps on phones that have you checking into places, but it was invented 20 years ago by WB4APR, Bob Bruninga. It uses one of the most commonly used digital modes in Amateur Radio, Packet. APRS or Automatic Position Reporting System is a system for using a GPS, where a Terminal Node Controller (similar to a modem) and a radio are used to report your…

Gear Bits, News & Features

George Lucas and Seth Green Debut New “Star Wars” Cartoon

Through the Star Wars movies and Clone Wars cartoons, we got to know the main and side characters through their major exploits across the galaxy. But what about “what the daily life is like in a galaxy far, far away”? Well, now producers George Lucas and Seth Green are going to let us see that, in the form of a new cartoon series called ‘Star Wars Detours’. Here is what their YouTube description for the trailer had to say: Star Wars Detours™ is an animated comedy that explores what daily life is like in a galaxy far, far away. There…

News & Features

Apple’s Big Patent Win, and What It Means for Smartphones

The Apple/Samsung patent trial’s jury shocked everyone by returning a verdict extremely quickly on Friday afternoon. Once we had the full details, I asked the team here at Gear Diary what they thought. Was this a game changer for Android and smartphones in general, or just another chapter in “lawyers gone wild”? Bryan: Yeah but remember, some of us don’t want to hear it: 😉 (Sorry, couldn’t help myself! :)) Dan: Agreed. Not surprised but I do think people will debate the issue for a long time. After all, as we learn in the Jobs bio, much of what Apple did initially…

News & Features

Evernote Page Camera Turns Your Smartphone into a Scanner

Evernote has long let you snap a picture of a page of handwritten text and save it to your Evernote account. That has always been my fallback position when I was taking notes but had left my Livescribe smartpen at home. In addition, when I was in Washington last week I didn’t bring my Livescribe pen. Instead, I typed out notes during the sessions using my iPad and Apple keyboard while the voice note recorder in Evernote was also active. It worked great and I didn’t really miss the Livescribe pen. Last week Evernote went one better and, in the process,…

Gear Bits, News & Features

‘Hands Off Crazy’ Is a Tribute to This Week’s Political Wingnuts

Image courtesy CoochWatch There are plenty of crazies on both sides of the political aisle, but as a scientist what REALLY bugs me is total misinformation and the perpetuation of blatantly incorrect information. Again, there are plenty of examples on both sides, but the amazing thing recently is the extent to which anti-abortion legislators will resort to misinformation and lies to push their agenda rather than simply standing on their values and principles. By now most folks have heard about Todd Akin, who said: First of all, from what I understand from doctors, [pregnancy from rape] is really rare… If…

News & Features

Tell Time with the Help of a Nuclear Watch and Watch Tritium Decay in Action

Imagine a college party with around 100 quadrillion (a one hundred with fifteen zeroes behind it) students binge drinking, with all exceedingly inebriated. Ignoring the noise and mayhem for a moment, imagine a quarter billion of them getting sick every second for the next 25 years or so. However, instead of the usual stomach material, the students, all members of the Tritium fraternity, are emitting beta particles that hit the windows of their apartment and cause the windows to glow green. The formerly stick students settle down and feel much more stable afterwards, with no apparent hangover (but are no…

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