News & Features | Gear Diary

Homemade iPad Case from a Gear Diary Reader!

One of our loyal Gear Diary readers dropped me an email today sharing the homemade iPad cases she’s selling on Etsy. Sure, you can hit up one of the big case makers for a slipcover, but if you’re looking to support a fellow geek, this could be a fun option! As Dan pointed out, iPad cases come in all styles, from leather to metal to plastic snap ons and thin vinyl skins. And now with sites like Etsy, you can even get something homemade and custom designed just for you! Yasemin’s Etsy page can be found here, the iPad case…

News & Features

This Sports Illustrated and HTC Contest Is Sure to Raise Eyebrows and Elicit Smiles

If you are an active social networker with accounts on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, etc, and if you have a following that would appreciate seeing your complete coverage of everything that goes on at the 2011 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Photo Shoot, then you’ll want to pay attention to the following: HTC and Sports Illustrated have teamed up to sponsor the Behind the Tan Lines contest, where one (very) lucky individual will have the opportunity to cover the 2011 SI Swimsuit Photo Shoot. The winner will get to share their own unique interpretation of what goes on behind the tan lines by stepping into…

News & Features

TwelveSouth’s BookBook Adds Some Unique Leathery Goodness to Your Apple iPad

Perhaps you’d like the iPad to blend in with your collection of fine vintage books, or maybe you just miss the feel of a solid leather hardback binding when reading the classics; either way TwelveSouth has an intriguing new iPad case which should satisfy your leather-lust. Introducing the new BookBook, a handmade leather case available in one of two hardback colors: brown with a black spine (Black) or vibrant brown with a red spine (Red). No two covers are alike, and the cover can even function as a stand for landscape-oriented viewing. The hardback cover and spine provide impact protection,…

Editorials, Music Diary, News & Features

Getting Married in Seattle? Contact This Guy!

By now it is pretty clear that I am quite fond of the Jason Parker Quartet, their music is wonderful, their business model exemplary, and Jason’s insights on his website and approach to music really shine a path for all other struggling artists to follow in this modern era. Way back in high school my rock and fusion groups had some paying gigs at clubs and colleges and events, and each sort of performance had different requirements and expectations on our part and the part of the audience. Fast forward several years to my own wedding, and my wife and…

News & Features

Google Voice Actions Adds Yet Another Competitor to the Rapidly Emerging Field of Voice as Interface

Last week Microsoft made a huge deal about the voice control that will be part of WindowsPhone 7. I watched the demo video and wasn’t impressed at all. As I posted last weekend, I am still perplexed as to why Microsoft wouldn’t just turn to Nuance and license their time-proven and excellent technology in order to ensure a level of voice control, and voice-to-text transcription that will work perfectly from the start. Now Google has jumped into the ring as well. Their new Voice Action feature is part of a new version of the Voice Search application for Android phones….

Music Diary, News & Features

My Family Now Has a Scientific Reason to Hate My Music: Their Brains!

If you have read any of my music reviews here, you know I am strongly drawn to arrhythmic and atonal music in the jazz and classical genres. Needless to say this sort of music isn’t very popular. There are certain artists that I love that most people I know, even those who like some amount of modern jazz, just cannot fathom. Here is a great example, with a very young Frank Zappa appearing on the Steve Allen show to play … the bicycle … Next we have Pierre Schaeffer, who is credited with the origins of ‘musique concrete’ movement of…

News & Features

Nuance Healthcare to Launch Dragon Medical Mobile Search

Nuance, the company behind Dragon Dictation and Dragon NaturallySpeaking has done it again. This time they are going after the medical market with an app that anyone in a healing profession will likely find quite useful. Nuance Healthcare, their medical division, is launching the first of their four iPhone apps for clinicians. Dragon Medical Mobile Search brings speech recognition specifically designed for doctors, PAs and nurses to the smartphone. The Dragon Medical Mobile Search app will give clinicians a smarter way to search for medical information… The voice-enabled medical search app for iPhone is a tool for clinicians to dictate…

News & Features

eWallet for Mac OS X Now Available

I am a huge fan of Ilium software’s eWallet for the iPhone and iPad. It is a great way to keep information on my handheld devices in a manner that is safe and secure but also quickly accessible. The only problem I have had with it is that the desktop version of eWallet was only in Beta and the sync functionality was highly limited. Since I use multiple devices that was a bit of an issue for me. Thankfully that is no longer the case. Ilium has just gone live with the news that eWallet for Mac OS X is…

News & Features

Fake ‘Girl Quits Job’ Story Hits a Nerve We All Secretly Fantasize About!

How many emails / texts / whatever did you get yesterday linking to the ‘Girl Quits Job Via Whiteboard’ article at The Chive? Not too surprisingly, the whole thing was a hoax produced by the creators of The Chive, and acted by a young woman (and aspiring actress) named Elyse Porterfield. TechCrunch has the details of the hoax. If you were like me, you enjoyed it and really didn’t apply your critical thinking skills to the now rather obvious likelihood that it was a fabrication. Why? Well … why is it that Office Space remains such a popular movie? Certainly…

News & Features

Scosche Releases reVIVE II Dual USB Car and Home Chargers for iPad

Sosche reVIVE II Dual USB car and home chargers let you charge two devices at the same time from a single power source. There’s one for home and one for the car and both are available now. The company notes that According to the Pew Research Center adults between 18 and 29 own four gadgets on average and those between 30 and 64 average just under three, making the need for a dual USB charger even more important. (Statistics for tech-bloggers weren’t offered since personal experience indicates it would totally skew the stats.) The chargers have both a 2.1 Amp…

News & Features

Green Diary: Making You Feel Better About All That Energy Your Gadgets Are Sucking

It’s an interesting dilemma: the readers of this site tend to love their gadgets, but at the same time want to be respectful of the environment. All of our electronic tools, toys – whatever you want to call them – use resources in their manufacturing, may contain toxic materials that are harmful if not disposed of properly, and require energy to operate. If you’re like me, you mitigate some of your less environmentally friendly hobbies by making up for them in other ways (I use an electric lawnmower, for crying out loud). With an eye toward balancing our interest in…

News & Features

The Augen Tablet Does Even More Damage to Android’s Brand

This has been a sore spot with me for some time. We keep hearing about these potentially wonderful Android tablets, and what ends up appearing is something underpowered, with a poor resolution screen and underwhelming built-in software. Augen’s tablet was the darling of the internet world for a few weeks, since it was cheap, being sold at KMart, and promised Google Marketplace! Of course, like all things that sound too good to be true, the Augen tablet didn’t live up to the hype. It was slow, the resistive screen was unimpressive, and Google Marketplace didn’t work. Augen kept promising it…

eBooks, News & Features

Google Has Quantified the Number of Books in the World

I pity whoever had to sit down and do all the work, but the Google Books project has calculated there’s something in the range of 129,864,880 books. They must be fairly certain if they felt comfortable nailing it down (as opposed to just rounding and saying 129,000,000+, since I for one am not quibbling over a few thousand). It’s sort of an awe-inspiring number! Personally, this means I really need to get cracking if I want to read as many as possible. Sadly, unless I find the fountain of youth, it’s unlikely I’ll get through them all. At a book…

News & Features

iPhone Accessory Review- Sena Argyle for iPhone 4

The Sena cases I have used over the years have come in either black or… no actually that’s it, all of the Sena cases I have bought over the years have been made from black leather. The reason? Leather protects delicate electronics beautifully and a black case for a phone or similar device always looks appropriate whether at work or at play. (That and the fact that I tend to be drawn to the simpler (read “boring” styles in cloths and cases.) Maybe that’s why I was initially drawn to Sena since their early cases were fairly conservative in style….

News & Features

Philo Social Network Launches “Save Teresa” Campaign

Who says social networking doesn’t do anything good for the world? Philo, a social network designed around sharing your television addiction habits, has launched a “Save Teresa” campaign. Don’t know who Teresa is? Read on… Teresa Guidice is one of the “stars” of the Real Housewives of New Jersey. While I try to avoid tv trash, it’s a train wreck of a show I can’t stop watching. I keep justifying it as keeping up with the various ways people can make fun of me for being from New Jersey, even if I can shamefully explain the “plot” of each episode….

News & Features

iPad Accessory Review- The JustMobile UpStand

The iPad is incredibly versatile. Much of the time when you use it you want to hold it in your hands but there are times when you want to put it down but have it stay at a particular angle. This is especially the case if you are watching a movie or using it to type when connected to Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard. That’s why cases with built-in stands such as the Case-Mate Venture and Sena Folio are so incredibly useful. There are times, however, when you want the iPad sans case but still held in a particular position. That’s why…

News & Features, Reviews, Vehicles & Gear

Toyota Tacoma now calling Texas home

Big news for Texas and Toyota yesterday. OK, the news actually came out a while back that the automaker would shift midsize pickup production to their full-size truck plant in San Antonio but it was guns blazing Friday as Governor Rick Perry helped kick off the official celebration.

News & Features

Random Cool Video: Every Star Wars Lightsaber On/Off!

I remember reading something several years ago about the reasoning behind the different sounds made by various lightsabers in the original Star Wars movies. It seemed pretty cool that Luke had Anakin’s old lightsaber and based on crystals and power sources it was blue and made one sound, whereas when he constructed his own it was a different color and made a different sound. Of course, back then there was no YouTube (or DVD), and for the majority of years the movies were not available outside of theaters or TV re-runs … so you rarely got to dig into such…

Game Diary, News & Features

Fable III PC Version Delayed, Silly Open Cinematic Released!

Fable III is the upcoming entry in the action-RPG series by Lionhead Studios (part of Microsoft Game Studios), headed up by Peter Molyneux, the designer who is famous for spouting off pie-in-the-sky features about his next ‘best game ever’ that are eventually cut way back … only to repeat the process for the next game! The original Fable was released in 2004 for XBOX360 first, followed up by an extended version for PC called ‘Fable: The Lost Chapters’. The game was originally going to be the ‘all-RPG’, taking you from birth to death in a ever-growing world in which you…

News & Features

Graffiti for Android Gets Updated but Has a Bug

I sang the praises of Graffiti for Android when it first came out. It was solid and easy for quick text entry. Now Access has released an updated with the following improvements: Autocorrect Auto-capitalization Word prediction Input word learning Japanese input Effectively it goes from being a simple text entry system to a very full-featured one. It works great…except for one bug. Most text entry programs recognize if your device has a hard keyboard, and they don’t “pop up” if the keyboard is engaged. Graffiti, unfortunately, does appear even if the keyboard is extended. It makes for a difficult typing…

eBooks, News & Features

Rolling Stone and Zinio Launch Interactive New Issue and Subscription Bundle Deal

Thanks to the iPad I have moved further than ever away from using paper. When I want a new book I buy it to read with my Kindle app. When I want to take notes in a meeting I use one of a few different iPad apps. When I am doing serious writing I use the app Notebooks and then sync it to my MobileMe account so that it is available everywhere. When I need to create a voice note I do it in Evernote. That way it is available to me everywhere and, thanks to new integration with the…