News & Features

Apple, Competition, and Silly Statistics

The Wall Street Journal this morning reported Apple has 95% of the tablet market. Amazing, in the face of virtually no competition! Also, Apple has 99.9% of the “electronics starting with i” market. But they aren’t the only ones with big marketshares in questionably competitive areas… -Toyota has 85% of the market for “sudden, unexpected, OH CRAP, 0 to 60” cars. -Snapple has 100% of the “greatest stuff on earth” market (tm Dan) -Gear Diary has 100% of the market for blogs named Gear Diary! -Coca Cola has 100% of the “secret formula cola” market. -Google has 93% of the…

News & Features

Speck Introduces Two New Bags for Netbooks and iPad

Speck has introduced two new bags for taking your netbook (up to 10″) or iPad on the go. The CorePack-10 and the PortPack-10 both feature Speck’s excellent design and high quality construction. Each has an MSRP of $49.95 and are available now. Here’s a quick first look at both. We have review units of each and will have a thorough Gear Diary look in the next few days. CorePack for Netbooks and iPad Open up CorePack FLY 10’s butterfly design and it instantly becomes a portable work surface. The butterfly feature is also airport security checkpoint friendly, allowing you to…

News & Features

The “i-hotake” Makes Holding & Taking Your iPad Easy

Here’s an intriguing new way to protect and carry your iPad; the “i-hotake” (a play on “hold & take”) appears to be a pretty-thick protective plastic bumper case with handles on each end. Made for kids? Made for klutzy adults? We’re not exactly sure and they aren’t telling. Cutouts for syncing, speakers and other ports are in their proper places, so if nothing else — when your iPad is in this you can use it a mini breakfast in bed tray. 😉 i-hotake site (MSRP $39.99)

News & Features

Election Day Reminder – Find Your Polling Place Easily With Google

Across the United States today hopefully millions of folks will be out voting for their local, state and federal representatives. There are tons of important issues and races at stake, as well as the balance of power in Congress. I’m sure there are local issues in your areas as well. Google is making things easy – simply type vote into your search bar / web page and you are brought to this page. From there you simply enter your home address and you will get a Google Map page showing the directions to your polling place, and on the left…

eBooks, News & Features

Like Mysteries? Check out MobileRead’s Newest Contest!

(Image courtesy Sherlock Holmes Museum) If you think of yourself as an amateur Sherlock, MobileRead has a great contest for you! They’re giving away an ebook reader of your choice (as long as your choice is a Nook, Kindle, Nook Color, Sony Touch or Pocket Edition)! And if you don’t win the ebook reader, there are 10 runner-up vouchers for $30 worth of ebooks! Sounds great, right? Well, to win, you’re going to need your wits around… From MobileRead: How it works You will have the chance to solve a new murder mystery that inexplicably takes place inside the secluded…

News & Features

Random Cool Halloween Video: Michael Jackson’s Thriller

Is there any music video that screams Halloween more than Michael Jackson’s groundbreaking Thriller? Do you remember how huge of an event it was on TV when it launched? Heck, I was listening to Anthony Braxton and eschewing pop culture wherever possible and I watched the premier! So … without any more chatter, let’s get right to the video! Happy Halloween!

News & Features

Halloween Chats Get Spookier with a Surprise IM+ Theme

Starting on October 30, you can enjoy a spooky pumpkin theme behind all of your IM+ Lite or IM+ Pro chats. Beyond the cute new wallpaper, IM+ is a solid instant messaging client which not only handles your MSN, GTalk, Yahoo, AIM, Jabber and ICQ chats, it also takes care of Twitter, Facebook Chat and MySpace. You’re push-notified anytime someone tries to contact you, and getting set up couldn’t be more simple. It’s so funny, because up until just a year or two ago, I thought of SMS as something you did on your phone only, while instant messaging was…

News & Features

Random Cool Video: Daft Punk’s ‘Derezzed’ from Tron: Legacy

I have made no attempt to cover my fanboy enthusiasm about the upcoming Tron: Legacy, noting both the trailer and doing a Netbook Gamer review of Tron 2.0. We are less than 2 months away from the release of the new film, and have just gotten a new treat! The video below is a sort of ‘music video meets trailer’, a 2+ minute vignette featuring some all-new scenes from the movie, voice-over from Jeff Bridges, and of course the featured song ‘Derezzed’ from Daft Punk. The song is a sort of techno that at once hearkens back to the amazing…

News & Features

New In The iTunes App Store- DEVONthink To Go- Take All Your Documents With You!

The iPad took yet another step forward as an amazing productivity device this evening when DEVONthink To Go finally made its appearance in the App Store. DEVONthink is a Mac OS X database program that makes collecting, organizing and manipulating all sorts of files easy. As Devontechnologies explains- Meet DEVONthink — designed to manage and keep in order all those disparate pieces of information so important to your work or studies. As you become more experienced with DEVONthink and its easy, intuitive interface you will quickly find more exciting ways of using your data. DEVONthink stores your documents, scanned papers, email…

eBooks, News & Features

Kindle Books Getting ’14-Day Loaner’ … Expect nook-Like Limitations

When we bought my wife a nook, and then her sister and niece got nooks of their own, a great thought was ‘hey, this LendMe feature will be GREAT’. Sadly, the three have them have yet to exchange a SINGLE BOOK, despite all being voracious readers! Here is the promise from Barnes & Noble: Share favorite eBooks with your friends or family. Most eBooks can be lent for up to 14 days at a time. Just choose the eBook you want to share and send it to your friend’s NOOK, computer, or handheld device enabled with our NOOK software. In…

News & Features

Alex Anderson, Creator of Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dead at 90

I don’t know about anyone else, but one staple of my childhood cartoon viewing was the Rocky & Bullwinkle show. The high-pitched squirrel and block-headed moose, along with the not-so-well-disguised Russian spies Boris & Natasha, My. Peabody & Sherman, Dudley Do-Right, and so on wove a wonderful set of memories that have lasted through the decades. Today we learn that the creator of those shows, Alex Anderson, has died at the age of 90 after suffering for years with Alzheimer’s disease. For many years it was assumed that Jay Ward, the producer of the shows, was sole creator. That is…

News & Features

IsoToner’s smartTouch Gloves Review

It has been getting cold here in the northeast. This morning was quite chilly and it’s only going to get worse. That means jackets, hats and – of course – gloves. And that is a problem if you’re one of the growing number of people who use the touchscreen device. You see, capacitive touch screens need some sort of resistance to register taps, slides and other kinds of input. Fingertips work great… gloves do not. .Yes, sadly gloves and iPhones don’t mix well. There are a number of solutions were just out there. You can opt to use a stylus…

News & Features

TOM BIHN Introduces Cache sleeve for 11″ Apple MacBook Air

TOM BIHN is ready for the new MacBook Air notebooks with their Cache sleeve. There is one for the new 11″ MacBook Air that is available for pre-order and one for the 13″ that is already shipping. Here’s how the company describes their sleeve: A padded sleeve for your laptop, the Cache is designed to protect your laptop against scrapes and scratches. Its 1/4″ (6mm) thick foam padding laminated with an exterior of four-ply Taslan and an interior of brushed tricot cradles your laptop. No noisy Velcro® or zipper, the Cache closes by simply tucking a generous flap into the…

News & Features, Travel

Skooba Gear Introduces Their New Ultralight Bag Collection, Techlife

Get ready for something special from Skooba Design! They are in the process of rolling out Techlife, a collection of sporty, casual, and Ultra-super-seriously-lightweight bags. Shown above is the Techlife Digital Daypack, which will retail for $99.95. According to Michael Hess, this collection includes … Updated versions of our iPad/Netbook bag and neo-skin, a slick new backpack in 2 sizes, a compact laptop messenger (for MacBook 13 and similar), a slim laptop case, and my personal favorite “big story,” which is… drum roll… The Weekend Warrior Duffel [$119.95] — nothing else like it on the market. A solution for “single-bag,…

News & Features

Random News: Woman Who Put Cat in Trash Pleads Guilty to Animal Cruelty

Do you remember the story from a couple of months ago about a woman in Coventry UK being caught on a security camera tossing a cat into a trash bin? Well, take a look to refresh your memory: Well, after tons of international outrage and attention, the woman was charged with animal cruelty and was fined 250 British pounds. The reason for a fine compared to a more severe charge: District judge Caroline Goulborn said the potential for harm to the cat had been “substantial” but the reality was she had not been hurt. “The media interest in this case…

News & Features

Disc No More! Wii and PS3 Now Have Netflix Streaming Channels!

See that image … that is the disc you would need to load and run in order to stream ‘Watch Instant’ movies on Netflix if you had a PS3 or Wii.. Yes, you needed a disc to watch disc-free movies. Strange, I know. A few weeks ago when Netflix introduced streaming content to Canada we got a hint that a change was coming, since the PS3 didn’t need a disc to stream content there. Now we have the official announcements – neither the Wii nor the PS3 need a disc to stream Netflix anymore. For the PS3, the change comes…

News & Features

Relive Your First Love with a Classic Car Shelf

My first car, the one that I actually picked out and paid for on my own, was NOT a 1969 Corvette. It was a 1981 Toyota Celica Supra, back when they were still Celica Supras. It had a sunroof which leaked when it rained, and it was the most god-awful maroon. It didn’t matter; I loved that car. Evidently the Celica Supra wasn’t a cool enough (or American enough) car to be made available as one of the Classic Car Shelf Collection from Gadgets & Gear, but I suppose I’m not really surprised. Because the others that have been replicated…

News & Features

iPhone App Quick Look: Haunted Face

Whenever I see my friend Meni, he always has a neat app or two to show me. This time the app was just in time for Halloween. There isn’t much to say about Haunted Face. For $.99 is lets you either take a new picture or choose one from your photo library, crop it, process it and… well you’ll see in a second. The processing happens on external servers so you need an Internet connection. In addition, while you can email an image from the video it creates you cannot email the actual moving image. Still, for $.99 is is…

News & Features

Random Cool Image: Assembly Instructions ala M.C. Escher

I have long been a fan of the work of artist M. C. Escher. I love his realistic-looking structures that seem utterly plausible … until you look closer and see the impossibility. Well, what if he had designed assembly instructions? That is what an image adafruit suggests, as it shows some Mobius-strip inspired figured attempting to join into a single seemingly simple mechanism. The actual author isn’t specified … but it is a fun drawing in the style of Escher. Checking into it I found other versions floating around, including one with Dutch ‘assembly instructions’, and this one which was…

News & Features

Stop. Think. Connect: Reminding Kids to Stay Safe While Online

Parents with kids who are growing up in this internet age have undoubtedly got more to worry about than parents even five years ago. It is imperative that our younglings understand that anything posted on the internet (even if only briefly) can come back to haunt the poster (or the postee) forever. Vicious gossip, bullying, hurtful photos … these are things that can be magnified to unbearable proportions when posted online. I found this cute video today; it may see simplistic at first, but it’s message is right on. This video was created by EMC Corporation and RSA, its Security…

eBooks, News & Features

eBook Price Comparison Site – Leatherbound.me

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about ebook pricing insanity, citing the high prices of new release books using the newly released Gauntlgrym: Neverwinter Book I by R. A. Salvatore. At the same time I noted how the move to price ebooks at greater than $10 has slowed down my buying: I have definitely balked at buying books I would have bought without thought at $9.99. For example, Bob Woodward’s ‘Obamas Wars’ looked interesting, but the ebook cost $14.99 – basically the same as the $15.00 hardcover. Similarly Company Town, looking at industries that have become wrapped around a…

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