Events | Gear Diary

Music Diary Notes: Spotify Gives Up US Launch for 2010 … Will Anyone Care When it DOES Arrive?

In case you haven’t heard of it, Spotify is a free-or-paid subscription music service that works differently than something like Slacker or Pandora in a few ways. First off, you can immediately stream whatever song you want from their massive library of publisher material. Next, the service integrates with your existing music to form an extended library available for immediate listening online even when you’re away from your home PC. But one of the biggest things about the service is the social aspect – sharing playlists of stuff you love with others is a form of music discovery that has…

Events

How ETS-Lindgren Makes the Products You Use Every Day Even Better

Along with a very small group of bloggers, earlier this month I had the opportunity to visit ETS-Lindgren in Cedar Park, Texas. If you are as uninformed as I was before this trip, that name will mean absolutely nothing to you. However, I can promise you that by the time you finish this trip report you will understand why you should be familiar with this company, and how they have most definitely had an effect on you. My initial introduction to the company was a link to their site and a slightly cryptic email from a contact saying that “they…

Events

Ohio Linuxfest 2010: Here’s to the Hall Track

Another Ohio LinuxFest has come and gone. The friends of the penguin gathered at the Greater Columbus Convention Center for yet another year of great sessions, networking and lots of fun and merriment as friends meet to discuss what is new and interesting in Free and Open Source Software. This is my second year working the booth with fellow members of the Linux Link Tech Show, and this year was a special one as we celebrated the relaunch of our website and the recording of Episode 366 which marks the start of season two. In this show, we talked to…

Events, Game Diary

Penny Arcade Sums Up E3 In Three Panels

Image Courtesy of TechShowNetwork I didn’t lead with the comic itself as it contains some language and phraseology that might offend some … so click on in to see the comic itself – or head to Penny-Arcade to check it out! I have written at some length about the Microsoft, Nintendo and Sony presentations, but in their most recent comic Penny-Arcade sums up the whole thing much more efficiently than I have seen anywhere: Um … yeah. What they said. Source: Penny-Arcade

Events

Southeast Linuxfest 2010: Building Strong and Lasting Connections

Friends gathered once again in South Carolina to learn about Linux and check out what is new in the Linux community. It is a time of learning as well as time of camaraderie and a over all great time if you are a fan of Linux and Open Source technologies. My trip to SELF started on Thursday as my new found friend, Ed Liddle and I headed down to my Mom’s house for a pitstop. Mom and Dad put together a great dinner of Smoked Pork Roast and Chicken and all the fixens and we rested up for the rest of the…

Events

Preview: Southeast LinuxFest 2010

Up until this year, I had only attended the Ohio LinuxFest being lucky enough to live in its host city of Columbus, Ohio. The Ohio LinuxFest is an awesome community driven event that amazes me every year it’s run. However, in 2010, I will be attending both the Ohio LinuxFest and the second year of the Southeast LinuxFest. I am totally excited to see what the committee behind the show is planning for this coming weekend. Southeast LinuxFest is in a new location this year in the Marriot at Renaissance Park in Spartanburg, SC. The previous location at Clemson was not available so they…

Events, Vehicles & Gear

Chevrolet celebrates diamond anniversary of Suburban

I attended an event today at the General Motors Assembly Plant in Arlington, Texas, that gave me cause for deeper reflection. Chevy is celebrating the 75th year of the Suburban model. A single product with three-quarters of a century lineage – now that is something. It got me to wondering: In this modern era of “here today, gone tomorrow” and disposable lifestyles what new products would be able to survive 75 years. Sure, brands can live long lives, and of course basic concepts, but what about the individual nameplate, the singular moniker. Probably few things within our reach at this…

Events, Vehicles & Gear

Chevy launches social media vehicles at SXSW

Austin, Texas, home to the “Keep Austin Weird” campaign, is preparing for one of the hottest gatherings around – the annual South By Southwest Film, Interactive and Music festival – March 12-21. The breakdown is such: Interactive: March 12-16 Film: March 12-20 Music: March 17-21 Corporate sponsors have jumped on board and this year that includes Chevrolet, who seeks to showcase the automaker’s embracing of the social media world.

Events, News & Features

HTC Introduces The HD Mini Windows Phone

click to enlarge HTC is introducing a new Windows Phone this morning — the HD Mini. Specifications on the first press release that I received were pretty sparse, as it only said the HD Mini would be “sleek, well-crafted and easy to use,” that it would have a capacitive touchscreen, and that it would offer personal WiFi for your computer or other devices. Because HTC was being stingy with the specs (up until almost midnight last night), I consulted my Magic 8 ball to answer the questions not covered by the vague initial press release, and these were its replies:…

Events, News & Features

HTC Introduces the Legend and Desire Android Phones

the HTC Legend (click to enlarge) This morning HTC is introducing two new Android handsets, the Legend and Desire. Both sport “an enhanced HTC Sense experience that will … take Android to the next level.” Both will also have “broad improvements to applications including the browser, email client and others.” The Legend includes a 3.2″ AMOLED HVGA display. HTC has replaced the trackball with an optical joystick, “surrounded by a narrow button to improve usability without interrupting its unique design.” I won’t know how well it works until I give it a try, but the optical joystick looks pretty quirky….

Events, News & Features

The Inbrics M1 Android Mobile Internet Device

Mobile World Congress will be kicking off in about a week, and the new device frenzy has already started. One of the items shown will be the Inbrics M1, an Android-based mobile internet device (MID) with a “3 screen plus” media convergence platform”. We’ve been hearing about the M1 since late last year, and it also made a CES debut. Now what some have called “possibly the ultimate Android device” may be that much closer to actually being available for purchase. The M1 has everything you could want in an MID, including Wi-Fi 802.11, an AMOLED touch screen that slides…

Events

New Video on the HP Slate Demoed at CES 2010

At CES 2010, Steve Ballmer was showing off a variety of computers, including an HP Slate device. All that was said at the time was it would be available in 2010, and that it was an actual product. Read on for more information on the video.

Events

Evernote- My Discussion With CEO Phil Libin

Call me an Evernote evangelist if you like. It’s actually rather accurate. Evernote is probably the single most important productivity tool that I use. Looking back over my “relationship” with the service I realized that I’ve been involved with Evernote from early on. I joined the beta program within days of that initially rolling out. And I became one of their premium users every day it became available. There isn’t a single day that goes by that I don’t actually use Evernote numerous times and I never miss an opportunity to tell others about service and to encourage them to…

eBooks, Editorials, Events

CES eBooks News and Analysis

Welcome to the special CES Edition of State of the eBook! As everyone has reported, there was a huge onslaught of eBook reading devices this year, from dedicated e-ink devices to tablets! What does this mean for the eBook market? Let’s find out!

Events

Plantronics .Audio 476 DSP Headset- A Gear Diary First Look

As I’ve written numerous times here on the site, I am a huge user of voice recognition software. I’m blown away by Dragon Dictation on the iPhone, use Dragon NaturallySpeaking on my Windows 7 machine, and I have MacSpeech Dictate on both my iMac and my MacBook Pro. When I upgraded to the current version of MacSpeech Dictate I discovered that it isn’t configured to allow you to use the built-in microphone for dictation. Turns out there is a reason for this for as good as the microphone is, it isn’t ideal for voice recording. Without a proper headset, there…

eBooks, Events

Skiff Reader Announced; Magazine Publishers Want to Own the World

Yet another new player hit the eBook market this week, but this one is a bit different than the “e-ink, 6in screen, supports x, y, z file types” lather rinse repeat. Skiff has announced a monstrous 11.5in screen reader, designed for reading magazines and newspapers. Not only does it have a huge screen, but it also plays back audio. This is NOT just another eBook reader!

Events, News & Features

MSI Demos 3 Concept PC’s at CES

MSI demoed three interesting concept PC’s at CES this week.

Events

ioSafe SSD Demo, fun in the desert unless you’re a hard drive

Gear Diary is no stranger to the ioSafe hard drive. We tested the fire proof and water proof, original ioSafe drive by burning it up in the back of a car and then dousing it with several thousand gallons of water straight from a fire hose. While at CES 2010 ioSafe took the Gear Diary team to a special, top secret location, deep in the desert (okay, it was really three miles south of the strip) where they demoed their newest release, the all new ioSafe SSD drive. The new drive is not only water and fire proof like its…

Events, News & Features

PriceGrabber.com: Now In A Convenient App for iPhone

I admit it – I can be cheap sometimes. As such, I’ve used pricegrabber.com for years to compare prices on things – especially technology-based products. Now it seems that it’s made its way directly to the iPhone in the form of the PriceGrabber App for iPhone. The folks at PriceGrabber recognized that many people now use their cell phone as a resource to access the web, researching pricing and other information about products they may be interested in. So now with this new application you have access to the information on PriceGrabber.com with a nice application front-end. You can see pricing…

Events

Personal Time with the Plastic Logic QUE

All photos by Kevin In the Central Hall of CES they’ve set up an eReader Zone, and many eReaders and old and new are represented. One of the ones that I’ve been eager to spend some hands-on time with is the Plastic Logic QUE, and for about 30 minutes, that’s exactly what I did. Carly posted some of the quick iPhone snaps that I took along with the latest press release; here are some better pictures along with a bit of video from Plastic Logic …

Events

Alex Dual Screen Android-Based eReader Gets More Real

Spring Design’s Alex Dual screen eReader is finally coming closer to a release. This is probably the first eReader with a fully functional web browser with the exception of Flash since Android doesn’t have it yet. Alex™ features a 6″ E-Ink EPD display and 3.5″ color LCD display, earphones and speakers. A removable SD card will free up library space on the device while letting users archive content for future reference. The enhanced Android OS is optimized to support integration between the color and monochrome displays while preserving battery life. Users can capture and cache web content from their online…