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Genius G-Pen M609X Multimedia Tablet Review

I’ve always wanted to try a graphics tablet and was appreciative when Genius was willing to send me a G-Pen M609X to review and then continue using. When I opened the box I was immediately impressed. The tablet looks good, is well designed and, while light, feels quite sturdy. I’ve been using it for a while now and have to say it is rather impressive. Costing just under $110 at Walmart, it is priced far more competitively than many of the Wacom tablets (the small Bamboo pen tablet is currently $230 at Amazon while offering excellent and versatile functionality. Let’s…


eBook News Avalanche!

Welcome to another round of State of the eBook! There’s been an avalanche of eBook news and releases, so let’s dive right in! Barnes and Noble releases the nook upon the world B&N’s nook came out swinging, with a dual screen design and an Android foundation. Check out Gear Diary’s coverage of the nook’s release here, and commentary on a B&N conference call that answered some questions and raised new ones here. In related B&N news, Plastic Logic has announced that their Que reader will be not only using the Barnes and Noble eBook store but will also be sold…


Hexplore (1998, RPG) Review

There are many games from the history of computer role-playing games that deserve the attention of a full retrospective, looking back in-depth at what made the game great and putting it into a modern context. However, for every ‘Ultima IV’ or ‘Arcanum’ there are a hundred games like Hexplore – minor releases that added something at the time but were not significant enough to merit much attention even a year after they came out. Certainly, I had never heard about it until recently when it was mentioned in a thread on a PC RPG forum. As part of my love…


Dissidia Final Fantasy for PSP Review

There are few franchises that have cast a larger shadow over the history of console gaming than Final Fantasy, and the core series of role-playing games has been constantly tweaked and upgraded through the years to stay current. There have certainly been games that have strayed from the usual jRPG format – the classic strategy game series Final Fantasy Tactics, and more recently the RTS-like Final Fantasy XII Revenant Wings for the Nintendo DS. But one of the most anticipated entries in the series is the fighting game called Dissidia Final Fantasy. Square Enix released a demo on the PSN…


Powermat Wireless Charging System – Review

Why should the Palm Pre have all the fun when it comes to cordless charging? Well now, thanks to Powermat USA, just about any device can charge without being directly plugged into a power socket. And if you have an iPhone, iPod touch or Blackberry device, all you have to do to charge them is… well nothing, you just put them on the table. Here’s a look at this innovative system…


Review: Wolfenstein for PC, XBOX360 & PS3

As I’ve tossed out before while talking about the Wolfenstein iPhone releases, my history with Wolfenstein is nearly 30 years old. I’m not sure how I initially found out about it – it could have been an impulse buy at the local computer center – but from the moment I started playing Castle Wolfenstein on my Apple ][+ I was hooked. Locks that told you they would take 75 seconds to pick – and that was *real time*! During which you were vulnerable to the ever-roaming guard patrols. By the time Wolfenstein 3D came out in 1992 the gaming press…


Review: MySims Agents for Wii

The Sims franchise has been a major powerhouse of sales and popularity on the PC for years, but has never really translated into success on consoles and handhelds, managing only modest sales and average reviews. As the franchise moved to the Wii in 2007 it was transformed into MySims, which removed all of the teen and adult-focused content and targeted a younger audience. The MySims franchise has been focused on the Nintendo platforms (aside from a single PC entry), and while it has been better than the dismal Nintendo DS entries, the response has still been mixed reviews and unspectacular…


Tenqa SP-99 Wireless Stereo Bluetooth Speaker – Review

I am not one of those guys who thinks that everything goes better with Bluetooth. At the same time, I do see the usefulness of Bluetooth in a variety of items. I like using Bluetooth headset, have had some positive experiences with Bluetooth stereo headphones, and I swear by the Bluetooth speakerphone in the car. I had not, however, ever tried a Bluetooth portable speaker before taking a look at the TENQA SP-99 Bluetooth speaker. Am I sold on this Bluetooth gadget? Let’s take a look…


Impressions on Windows Mobile 6.5 and the AT&T Pure Windows Phone

This is a joint review between Wayne and me. Wayne is primarily a Blackberry and iPhone user, and he has also dabbled in Android, Palm, Windows Mobile and WebOS. I am primarily an iPhone and Nokia / Vertu user, with an extensive background in Palm and Windows Mobile. We were recently sent the new HTC Pure Windows Phone to review, because it is one of the first of several new Windows Phones to use the new Windows Mobile 6.5 operating system. Wayne’s comments will be the ones in black; mine will be in blue italics. Microsoft unleashed an upgrade to…


The Dark Side of eBook Popularity?

Welcome to another “State of the eBook”. We’ve got some quick news to review, and then a discussion of something that keeps publishers up at night; piracy in ebook-land. Is it an epidemic of music proportions or is it the straw-man argument that publishers use to justify high prices, digital rights management, and slow ebook adoption?


Nintendo DSi After a While Review

I had grand plans to do a review of the Nintendo DSi right after I bought it on release day back in April – I was going to take a quick look at the new cameras, SD slot, MP3 player, and the DSiWare store. But at the time I was in the middle of playing one of the better games the DS has seen – Grand Theft Auto Chinatown Wars, in my opinion the best game in the GTA series – and then I immediately started playing Broken Sword and Black Sigil and … well, time sort of got away,…


Altec Lansing Orbit USB iML237 Speaker Review

Last year Judie reviewed the Altec Lansing Orbit speaker.  It was an interesting speaker that can be used with any device sporting a normal 3.5 mm headphone jack.  The downside to using such a speaker with a laptop is that the internal sound card in most laptops can be a bit noisy. Altec Lansing recently sent me a sample of their  Orbit USB iML237 speaker. It solves the sound card issue perfectly.  


Review: Gran Turismo for PSP

The Gran Turismo series of racing games first arrived on the Sony Playstation in 1997, and have sold over 50 million copies over the last 12 years. The games focus on stunning graphics, tons of licensed vehicles, richness of driving simulation and ability to tune the vehicles. For PSP owners it feels like this new version has been in development for nearly that long! In reality the game has been in development since before the launch of the original PSP, leaving gamers to wonder – was it worth the wait? Read on and find out!


Teaching an Old Dog New Tricks: Week Four into the Rosetta Stone TOTALe Program

¡Hola Amigos! Even though I had the new Dan Brown book, The Missing Symbol, delivered wirelessly to my Kindle DX this week, and even though I have spent every spare moment I could trying to sneak in a few chapters, I still managed to get a good chunk of my TOTALe lesson done. Yay me! Now I can tell you that “Me llamo Judie,” which will probably not sound as elegant as Julia when pronounced properly, since the J’s in Spanish are essentially H’s. Hoolia verses Hoodie…guess which one wins? 😉


iBlink Earbuds Review

Back when I was much younger headphones were headphones – of sure there was a wide range of quality, but in general you were getting two padded speakers that clapped over your ears. Later, when the Sony Walkman and other portable products arrived around 1980, much smaller on-ear headphones arrived to support those products. The 1990’s brought us earbuds and other varieties of on-ear, around-ear, and in-ear products. Ear-canal audio products are the most recent, offering the portability of earbuds with a better frequency response range and noise isolation. There are so many products of each type that a trip…


Plantronics Voyager 855 Review Redux – Still Awesome

I read a post on jkontherun the other day about the trend away from Bluetooth headsets. As luck would have it, I had recently come across the Plantronics Voyager 855 I reviewed for Just Another Mobile Monday last summer and had started using them again. The experience was/is… well… awesome. The headset is comfortable, sounds great and offers a degree of flexibility that is all too rare. Even though I reviewed them a year ago the Voyager 855 remain in Plantronics’ catalog. There is, however, a major difference now… Amazon has the $150 headset for under $35. That makes it a…


Black Sigil: Blade of the Exile for Nintendo DS Review

There is a fine line somewhere between homage and outright copying, and also a line between recreating the best elements of a classic in a modern setting and bringing something that was shackled by its’ time into the future warts and all. Black Sigil is a game that captures much of the magic from the 16-bit era of jRPG’s such as Chrono Trigger, Vay (recently released for the iPhone), the Lunar series and so on, but it also brings along a load of things many gamers might have hoped would have stayed back in the 1990’s. If you can’t tell…


Olympus E-P1 Digital Pen Review (Part 1)

This is the Olympus E-P1 , the digital camera that set a million tongues wagging when it was announced. The first Olympus camera to be based on the Micro Four-Thirds standard co-developed with Panasonic, the E-P1 is supposed to be able to capture close to professional DSLR (digital SLR) quality photographs, in a form-factor barely larger than a compact point and shoot camera. The E-P1 is also one of the smallest digital cameras with interchangeable lenses. I’m not a professional photographer, and my experience with digital cameras has thus far been limited to point and shoots, so bear in mind…


Review: HP Mediasmart LX195

The single biggest problem my wife and other family members have is making sure that their data is backed up.  The HP Mediasmart LX195 will help you make sure that data is safe and a while lot more. This server is based on Microsoft’s Windows Home Server.  It’s not my normal operating system of choice, but I think that Microsoft and HP have done a good thing here.  They have done something that is difficult with Linux.  They have made it extremely easy to setup a media server and a backup server all in the same tidy package.  Try as…


Review: Cy-Fi Wireless Sports Speaker Bluetooth

I was searching for a Bluetooth speaker system to use with my T-Mobile G1 and lo and behold  I came across the Cy-Fi Wireless Sport Speaker.  This nifty little speaker can attach  to the handlebar of your bicycle or motorcycle allowing you to rock out as you ride. This spacey looking speaker weighs only 5 ounces and is very slim.  You can slip it one of your pockets and use it indoors as well as on the bike.  It comes with a dock, power supply and 2 different brackets.  Probably the most shocking thing is that it comes with a…


Only read this book if you are interested in your universe!

Ever tried to understand Einstein’s Theory of Relativity?   Or even just wondered if time travel was possible?  How about if the ever wonderful warp speed in Star Trek was feasible? These and many other questions have a serious grounding in the new book Why Does E=MC2? by Brian Cox and Jeff Forshaw