News & Features | Gear Diary

Twilight Versus Star Wars, Feminist Style

I’ll admit, I saw “The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn”. Mainly it was so I could laugh at how campy it was, but I think years of watching “Buffy The Vampire Slayer” have given me a soft spot for vampire tales as a whole. And yes, I’m 99% sure my women’s studies degree dug itself out of the box in my parents’ basement and ran in circles screaming in horror that I paid to watch a movie that revolves around a love triangle between a boy-crazy girl and two controlling, super-strong men. But New York Magazine has written an article that…

News & Features

It’s Time – A Celebration of the Natural Cycles of Adult Life

As adults we see so many different good and bad things in our lives; some we would change and others we wouldn’t change even if we could. As we grow we have friends and family who experience joys and tragedies and are reminded that life is just too short and can end in a moment without warning. This Thanksgiving I had my brother in my house – not his family, just him … because after nearly 25 years of marriage he is facing divorce. Which comes on the heels of my sister whose divorce finalized the day before her 20th…

News & Features

The Latest Cool Steve Jobs Video – NeXT Computer ‘Entrepreneurs’ Feature

For most people, Steve Jobs is the iconic black-turtleneck & jeans wearing icon who led Apple from near bankruptcy to become the most valuable public company in the world before he passed away recently. But there are more and more historical views of him popping up all over the place – and this is one of the coolest I have seen. It is from a PBS series called ‘Entrepreneurs’, with an episode from late 1986 looking at NeXT Computer when it was merely 11 computers and a long road ahead before shipping their first computer. It is great to see…

News & Features

Bedol Water-Powered Clock Review

Alarm clocks are a pretty straightforward gadget. They tell the time, they wake you up when you’d rather be sleeping, and they’re slowly being replaced with cell phones. But while regular alarm clocks have become a bit boring, there’s a whole subset of funky/interesting variations (remember potato clocks when you were a kid?) Bedol has a really neat, eco-friendly twist on the regular alarm clock with their Water-Powered Clock. Is it a cool new twist on the basic wake-up call, or a gimmick of form over function? Read on to find out! The main gimmick of the Bedol Water Clock…

News & Features

Localscope For iOS 50% Off For 5 Days

Even though I rarely shop, I am an admitted Black Friday participant. I usually have a playoff football game that Friday night but I almost always wake up early in the morning and head out. Why not hit a store or two, find a possible deal and watch people be crazy? The entertainment value alone is worth the loss of sleep. An area often overlooked on these big shopping days are deals in the iTunes App Store. Here’s a good one. One of my favorite location based applications, Localscope will be on sale for half price from Black Friday until Cyber Monday….

News & Features

Eskuché 33i and Control-i headphone Headphones Look Great and Won’t Break the Bank

Is it more important to have headphones that look good, sound good or are priced right? eskuché doesn’t think it needs to be a choice and their $69 33i and Control-i headphones are here to make the point. Here’s a quick look at both and what the company has to say about them. We’re hoping to have some in hand for review shortly. First up are the eskuché 33i headphones. As the company explains, The 33i looks to one of our first headphones, the 33 1/3, for its chassis, and merges it with the improved structural components of the 45….

News & Features

Garmin StreetPilot App Helps Avoid Gridlock with Real-Time Traffic Photos

Just in time for the huge travel weekend that is Thanksgiving, Garmin has released an update for its StreetPilot Onboard iPhone navigation app. The new version of the app includes the ability to show real-time photos from traffic cameras. As the Garmin release explains, This functionality can help holiday travelers get to their destination faster by giving them the ability to literally see traffic conditions ahead of time. The update also includes live weather information, the option to share points of interest via Facebook and SMS as well as other improvements. The update is a free download to current app…

News & Features

Killing webOS Cost HP HOW MUCH?!? Also, HP Nabs #2 Tablet Spot for 2011!

Two interesting pieces of contrasting TouchPad news: one about failure and the other success. From AllThingsD, we get a snip from the recent HP earnings report specific to Palm, webOS and the impact of folding up that business on their results. Here is their quote from the earnings report: Non-GAAP earnings and operating profit information excludes after-tax costs of $3.3 billion, or $1.56 per diluted share, related to the wind down of HP’s webOS device business, impairment of goodwill and purchased intangible assets, amortization of purchased intangible assets, restructuring charges and acquisition-related charges.

News & Features

Battle of the Annoying Black Friday Commercials: Kohl’s vs. Target

Image courtesy Zap2It Everything is turned up to 11 as we frantically approach Black Friday and the traditional start to the holiday shopping season. If you watch network television, you have likely seen and heard two amazingly annoying ads: Kohl’s ‘Rebecca Black Friday’ commercial and Target’s ads featuring the simpering presumed cokehead who hasn’t slept in days. Have you seen these? Well, here they are! [poll id=”9″] Are there other annoying ads you want to share? Link them in the comments! Also, what are your plans for Black Friday?

News & Features

William Shatner Helps You Cope with Being Un-Friended

With the new Facebook Timeline it is possible to discover who has unfriended you, which might cause some distress in general. Add to that last week’s ‘National Unfriend Day’ on Jimmy Kimmel’s show and you add to the possibility of being unfriended. But on a holiday weekend there is even more cause for concern: I got a notice that my high school graduating class is having an informal mini-reunion, and my brother is going to his 30th high school reunion, meaning there are more opportunities than ever to come face to face with someone who has unfriended you. Source: Buzzfeed

Music Diary, News & Features

Music Diary Deal: Coldplay Live in Madrid EP FREE on Google Music

If there is something Google knows, it is how to do ‘free’ – never before has a company made so much by charging so little. So as they simultaneously try to crank up their niche Google + ‘social network’ and also their late entry also-ran music ‘service’, the immediate tool they pull from their bag is ‘free’. In this case what is free is a live EP of Coldplay. Here is the description: This EP was recorded in a Spanish bullring during an American Express Unstaged event that saw nearly 20 million live streams on YouTube, and it pretty much…

News & Features

February Will Bring the Launch of an All New 2013 Lexus GS

Some of you will recall our ‘Guess what I am and Win’ contest series which offered a prize package consisting of: 2 one-year Pandora One premium subscriptions 4 movie tickets a month for a year from MovieTickets.com A $250 OpenTable dining card The clues were: My screen width is wider than an iPad I can help you plan your dinner-and-a-movie night out. and I can read your SMS texts for you…and even respond, if you like. The answer, as EdifyHimDaily soon guessed, was the 2013 Lexus GS. Some of you might have wondered what the prize package had to do…

News & Features

NOOKTablet Rooted, but There’s a Big, Honking Catch

Last week I asked if the NOOKcolor had more hacks than apps…and the comments seem to indicate the hackability were a big part of what attracted many buyers to it. At the time, the NOOKTablet was not yet rooted, but it looks like there’s finally been some success on the rooting front. Unfortunately, it’s not nearly as easy as the NOOKcolor’s. First of all, the hack is still very rough around the edges. It involves using the Android SDK, which isn’t hard to install, but it is a pain to use if you aren’t terribly computer savvy. If you read…

Music Diary, News & Features

Music Diary Notes: Billboard Revamps Rules in Attempt to Stop Lady Gaga-esque ‘Gaming’ of Charts

Earlier this year Lady Gaga released an album that sold over a million copies in the first week, then plummeted by a historic 84% in the second week before fading into nowheresville. As I noted, nearly HALF of her first week sales were generated by the ‘giveaway’ at Amazon (99 cent full album) and other freebie pack-in deals that were counted as sales. It was a rather obvious ploy set up to falsely generate an impression of a larger event than happened – and considering how terrible the album is, perhaps that was the ONLY way to get people to…

Editorials, News & Features

Android Rules Smartphone Roost … But Holiday ‘Wish Lists’ Show Vulnerability

Guess who wants an Android Tablet for Christmas/Hanukkah? (Hint: no one). But we’ll return to that in a moment. This week we got news that put the Android OS at more than 50% market share for smartphone operating systems. This is based on numbers from Gartner, which means that they willingly and knowingly count Samsung’s % estimates’ the same as other people’s ‘shipments’ the same as other people’s actual SALES. In other words, their numbers are a crapshoot. But make no mistake – Android is BY FAR the dominant mobile OS. If you look at the trends in the graph above,…

News & Features

Rolling Through the Bay is Scott Weaver’s Toothpick Masterpiece

Scott Weaver used 1000,000 toothpicks, about 30,000 hours and Elmer’s Glue to create a visually stunning 9′ tall masterpiece with five different “ping-pong tours” through the various San Francisco landmarks. I have used different brands of toothpicks depending on what I am building. I also have many friends and family members that collect toothpicks in their travels for me. For example, some of the trees in Golden Gate Park are made from toothpicks from Kenya, Morocco, Spain, West Germany and Italy. The heart inside the Palace of Fine Arts is made out of toothpicks people threw at our wedding. This…

News & Features

Random Cool Video: Mambo #5 Meets The Matrix

If you just say the phrase ‘that one scene from The Matrix’, almost everyone immediately thinks of the lobby gunfight scene. Well, after watching this video of the scene synced up to Lou Bega’s Mambo #5 you might never think of it the same way. Check it out: And as an interesting aside, my first exposure to this song was through a Radio Disney CD our kids had, so I really had no clue what was going on when I heard the actual song! Source: Neatorama

News & Features

Samsung Hits Another Advertising Home Run with Google Nexus Commercial

I had already written about just how great the Samsung Galaxy S II commercial was a couple of months ago, but at the time Apple and Samsung were in the midst of the ‘copy me, copy you’ spectacle and so I wrapped it around a tongue-in-cheek accusation of copying. Certainly Samsung has learned that the macho specmanship approach of Motorola has a very narrow appeal, which shows very well in this new ad as well. The upcoming Nexus has gotten some very positive early looks, and should be a big success for Samsung and give a great look at the…

News & Features

Look Like a Tool with the Ear Shaped Case for iPhone

Friends, Romans, Countrymen; len me your … If you can’t stand being in a room without having all eyes on you — for any reason — then this may be the case for you. Latest Buy is accepting pre-orders for this silicon rubber iPhone 4 case, and if you get one the puns and bad jokes are almost guaranteed to follow. $21.95, and it’s yours. Latest Buy’s Ear Shaped iPhone Case

News & Features

TruConnect Brings Cheap & Easy 3G to Your Kindle Fire or Nook Tablet!

Last month I reviewed the TruConnect ‘pay as you go’ mobile broadband solution, saying: TruConnect absolutely delivers on their claims of a simple device, easy setup and configuration, and clear pricing of as little as $4.99 per month. Beyond that, every person needs to make their own value judgement in terms of the data fees. For light or occasional use, you can get 250MB for less than $15 a month, but once you break 1GB of monthly data you might be better off with a full access plan. The good news is that you have no contract and no termination…

Music Diary, News & Features

Music Diary Notes: Sting Releases ’25’ iPad App for FREE – But it Cost More Than $1 Million to Make!

If you look at the legendary figures in pop and rock music in the post-Beatle era, The Police and their frontman Sting have to be on your shortlist. After an amazing but short career with The Police, Sting struck out on his own with an ensemble populated by young jazz musicians playing a new kind of jazz-tinged pop-rock. Through the 25 years since, Sting has had some amazing highs and lows, but always worked to put his best music out to the people. Now we get a new app from the music legend – ‘Sting 25’ is the companion to…