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News & Features August 28, 2011

iPad 2 Case Review: Aranez iPad 2 Notebook Kangaroo Leather Case

The other day we brought word of a new folio-style case for the iPad 2 that is made of kangaroo leather. It looked great and carried a premium price north of $100. Then again, the case is made from kangaroo leather and that stuff ain’t cheap. (Or so we hear.) Well, the Aranez iPad 2 Notebook Kangaroo Leather Case arrived right after the news post went live and we’ve run it through its paces. Is it worth the price? Does the kangaroo leather really make a difference? You decide. Fortunately, while the case comes in a nice box it didn’t…

News & Features August 28, 2011

New Sony Reader Leaks — How Badly Do They WANT to Fail???

Big news if you’re a Sony fan! A Dutch site has leaked pictures and specifications of the new Sony Readers. (The same ones Sony has been denying were coming) They look…well, let’s check out the specs and then I’ll give my opinion. Translated from Google: Description The Sony PRS-T1 watching his brother looks on Mobile, the Xperia, with its curves and high quality chrome finish. Thin and light, so easy to take. The Sony PRS-T1 weighs only 168 grams. The screen is of the highest quality and provides optimal reading conditions. And while the battery will not suffer it. The Sony PRS-T1 read it one…

News & Features August 26, 2011

Gear Games News: EA Launches ‘The Sims Social’ on Facebook!

Are you one of the millions of fans of The Sims franchise? Do you like Facebook games? If so … rejoice, because The Sims Social has arrived! The game will be immediately familiar to anyone who has ever played a Sims game: you set up your character, then start doing some basic tasks, and slowly built a life for your Sim including interactions with others. The image below shows the basic starting point for a character. As with the other games in the franchise you have extensive tools to alter your appearance to your liking – or just to match…

News & Features August 26, 2011

The KAMMOK Kometh

Over the past year I have helped fund a number of Kickstarter projects. I backed the Vere Sandal Company, with an iPad stand, and with a watchband for the iPod nano. If you are not familiar with Kickstarter, it is an online threshold pledge system for funding creative projects. Kickstarter has funded a diverse array of endeavors,ranging from indie film and music to journalism and food-related projects. One of a new set of fundraising platforms dubbed “crowdfunding”, Kickstarter facilitates gathering monetary resources from the general public, a model which circumvents many traditional avenues of investment. Project owners choose a deadline and a target…

News & Features August 26, 2011

Food Sanitation Just Got a Lot Easier with the CleanCut Touchless Automatic Towel Dispenser

A few years ago Elana trained as a chef at the Natural Gourmet Cooking School. One of the most important lessons she learned had to do with food sanitation. (She’s a nut about it which is a good thing. She also once commented that “If you knew what went on in some restaurant kitchens you would never eat out again.”) It is important to keep kitchen surfaces as clean as possible and that means, in part, using paper towels to ensure that all surfaces touched by raw food are sprayed and cleaned on a regular basis. To ensure this happen,…

News & Features August 25, 2011

SanDisk Brings Out the Sansa Clip Zip

While I do like iPods, I still love other MP3 players as well. One of my favorites is the Sansa Fuze+ after the latest firmware update. Sandisk also has made many other Sansas, and one of the Linux community’s favorite ones has been the Sansa Clip. Just when I didn’t think the Clip could get any better, Sandisk brings out the Clip Zip, which adds some nice things to the Clip’s form factor. Stylish, Feature-Rich Player Delivers Affordable On-The-Go Music Experience · Packed with features, including a larger color screen, compatibility with all major music formats, a stopwatch, an…

News & Features August 25, 2011

G’Day to the Aranez iPad 2 Notebook Kangaroo Leather Case

We’ve seen iPad 2 cases made from a variety of different leathers. We’ve seen a gorgeous example of one made from crocodile thanks to Orbino. But this is a new one for us. Aranez has released an iPad 2 case made from Kangaroo leather. We’ll skip all the sill puns and jokes and just hop over to the company’s description of it. (Oops, sorry that just kinda slipped out by accident.) Presenting the world’s first iPad 2 Kangaroo Leather Case crafted by Aranez. This stylish case features genuine high-grade Australian kangaroo leather which is known to be the best performance…

News & Features August 23, 2011

Israel’s Iron Dome Missile Defense System Active for the First Time

It’s not the Star Wars Missile Defense System but it is real, it is here now, and it works. Yes, Israel’s new Iron Dome missile defense system was used in the field for the first time and … it worked. Over the past few days the Israeli cities of Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod have seen a barrage of rockets sent over from Gaza (this started right after the attacks on tourist buses on the Egyptian border). While many of the rockets that were aimed toward civilian populations actually landed in fields when fired, enough of them hit their mark and…

News & Features August 23, 2011

What Book Is That Movie Based On? Check ‘Based on the Book’ to See!

How many times have you read a great book, only to watch it get destroyed by a sub-par movie? Plenty of times, I am sure. But how about things going in the other direction? How many times have you thoroughly enjoyed a movie or a television series, and yet you finished the show feeling like something was missing — maybe you simply wished you’d had a little more back-story on the characters? One of the best examples of a great series that has been adapted from a book to a show is Dexter, a long-running Showtime series (season 6 starts October…

Gear Bits, News & Features August 22, 2011

Plant Buddies Let You Keep Your Plant With You AND Save an Endangered Species

The Plant Buddies caught my eye when Ali over on ChipChick posted on them last night. The Plant Buddies are selection of endangered cacti that you can carry with you, nurture for a time and then release back into the “wild” to help them repopulate and become less endangered. Each “kit” includes a starter plant (Stone Rose – Genus “Anacampseros”, Golden Marble – Genus “Opuntia Monachantha”, Eve’s Needle – Genus “Astrocylindropuntia Subulata”), soil, a plastic dome housing, and a keychain attachment. You can carry your little friend with you and, so long as you water it every 30 days,…

News & Features August 21, 2011

One of the Many Differences Between Donald Trump and the Rest of Us

While the rest of us are flying Coach and griping about baggage fees, Donald Trump is flying primo-class in his own custom “luxurious” 757 Jet, which he purchased from Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen for $100 million.

News & Features August 19, 2011

Big News From Evernote: Purchases Skitch, New Apps and More…

Evernote is in the midst of their “first-ever Evernote Trunk Conference” and had some big news to share. Skitch As the above “Skitched” image indicates Evernote bought the image app/service Skitch and is making the app completely free. As they explain We love Skitch so much that we decided to buy the company. Skitch is an amazing Mac application that’s changed the way people capture, annotate and share images. Chief Skitchers, Cris Pearson and Keith Lang are moving from Australia and joining Evernote to lead a significantly expanded Skitch team focused on supercharging the product. Evernote goes on to explain:…

News & Features August 18, 2011

John Hodgman on Bookstores

There are almost no words to describe the hysterical segment of “The Daily Show” where John Hodgman explains his view of bookstores to Jon Stewart. It’s a must watch. As much as Hodgman is aiming for humor, he hits a few serious points as well. Now, humorous or not, he actually noted a few things that are ridiculous, yet true: 1) Borders actually piloted a program of downloading music at in-store kiosks. They worked out about as well as you’d expect. 2) We actually did host a night where authors wrote, but it was a poetry seminar. 3) Yes, bookstore…

News & Features August 18, 2011

Gear Diary PSA: 10 Ways to Reduce Your Dependance on Foreign Oil

In a summer where ‘double dip’ refers to the economy as much as to an ice cream treat, and with gas prices at the pump only one of dozens of higher costs associated with increasing oil prices, the need to lessen our dependance on foreign oil is acute. To that end, the environmental group Environment America has launched a campaign called Get Off Oil, and has a Facebook and Twitter presence dedicated to the cause. The focus, according to their Twitter feed, is: Why get off oil? Cleaner environment, less vulnerable to instability in the Middle East, save $$, increased…

Editorials, News & Features August 17, 2011

Yet Another Reason Why It Seems Android Users Love to Relive Their Windows Suffering

I have been an Android user since 2009, and have no intent on switching. But let’s be honest – in many ways the OS mirrors DOS and Windows. For example, on my original Droid, the split between the internal storage and SD card was absurd – I would have 14GB of memory on my SD card, but get ‘low memory’ warnings trying to install a 2MB app because nothing would let itself be installed in ‘HIMEM.SYS’. Another Windows-like behavior? The Add/Remove Control Panel – or, the ‘Manage Applications’ system item. This is the place you go to move apps to…

News & Features August 17, 2011

Cobra Tag Helps You Find Anything Including Your Phone

Are you the type that misplaces things like keys, your car remote or your purse? Then the Cobra Tag may be for you. Cobra Tag is a Bluetooth device that works in conjunction with your phone. Once set up, if you walk away from the item your phone will alert you that you forgot your keys. What if that item is your phone? Cobra Tag has that covered too. If you walk away from your phone AND have the tag, then the tag itself will alert you that you left your phone behind. The app works on Blackberry and Android devices. No…

News & Features August 17, 2011

Proof Psychedelia Is Alive and Well: Llamas with Hats

If you have kids in the tween to teen years, you likely experience the ‘world according to YouTube’. It has been shown before that YouTube is a leader in how kids see and interpret the world – they listen to music on YouTube, watch movies through clips, get comedy and trends there, and experience new content before it hits anywhere else. Anyway, one of big things that kids love on YouTube are micro-episodes – shorts that are a couple of minutes long and generally a bit off-kilter in terms of content. A couple of classic and well-known examples are Charlie…

News & Features August 17, 2011

In a Sea of Generic Chains, One Local Pizza Shop Inspires a 1400 Mile Trek!

It is always interesting to see a ‘local flavor’ story, a positive human interest story with no downside. These stories remind us that there is good in the world, that in spite of recession and war and political strife and violence and natural disasters, there remains the possibility for the small and simpler pleasures often though to be the purview of forgotten times. And when one of those stories touches close to home, all the better. Such is the case in a story being featured on CNN, Good Morning America and other places – the story of a man who…

News & Features August 17, 2011

RIP Microsoft Reader

If you used a Pocket PC/Windows Mobile device, you probably were somewhat familiar with Microsoft Reader. It was Microsoft’s answer to the niche ebook market, though it was left behind as Mobipocket was purchased by Amazon, eReader by Fictionwise (and the combined entity by B&N) and of course the rise of dedicated ebook readers like the Kindle and NOOK. Still, it was one of the early ebook pioneers, and now Microsoft is putting it out of its misery. Before you wail and gnash your teeth, though, Microsoft is doing this in a very orderly fashion. They’re giving almost a full-year…

Game Diary, News & Features, Reviews August 16, 2011

Gear Games News: Star Wars Jedi Knight II Comes to the Mac App Store

It has been just about a year and a half since I did a retrospective review on Star Wars Jedi Knight II: Jedi Outcast, concluding: Jedi Knight II has aged very well. The graphics scale nicely on new systems, but it also performs as you would expect an 8 year old game to run – flawlessly. The gameplay is missing some of the new mechanics such as sprinting that have become commonplace, but otherwise retains a tight and modern feel. The melee combat feeling Raven software developed has yet to be surpassed in any game in any genre since. For…

News & Features August 15, 2011

Putting Android Tablet Sales In (Humorous) Perspective

The iPad is not yet 1.5 years old, and Android tablets are approaching their first anniversary. But while one product is mature and selling well, the other is still struggling to find success, and with some good reasons – the fragmentation that plagues Android smartphones is worse on tablete; app compatibility restrictions are often nonsensical; and the core design choices made are often counter-intuitive. Marco Arment, the creator of InstaPaper and Marco.org has put together an amusing look at how the sales of all Android tablets compare to sales of some obscure video game console ‘failures’. HP hasn’t released any…