My biggest personal tech find of 2011 has to be the Sonos home audio system. I got a review loaner and bought one within a day. I was that impressed with it and continue to love it. You can read the the initial review here and read the review of the new, smaller PLAY:3 here. During the inaugural Gear Fest last summer I had Carly film a quick walkthrough of setting the Sonos system up. It never made it into a post… until now.
When I first read about Gympact I thought it was a joke. Pledging money if you fail to check-in at your gym for at least a half hour? Really? When I realized it wasn’t, it got me thinking: would I sign up for this? If I wasn’t already physically active, would this have led me to work out more? The answer to both is no, but for different reasons. As of now, I don’t belong to a gym. We had a membership but canceled it after realizing I only run outside, and Sarah prefers to hike and walk the dog…
So you got a new phone, tablet or computer and you are ready to get to work. You will want to check out Evernote. Evernote will let you save pictures, documents and other forms of information in a single place and then access them from virtually any and all devices. And if you are going to use Evernote you are going to want to check out Brett Kelly’s Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote. Evernote Essentials is a PDF book with some great tips that will get you up and running with Evernote in no time. As Brett…
I’m a big fan of foursquare and check in often enough that family members will remind me if I don’t do it quickly enough. After months with no mayorships, except a brief period I was major of a tram station in Las Vegas during CES 2010, I have finally become the major at a number of our local favorites. This evening we decided to grab a bite at Chili Willie’s, a family-run mexican restaurant in town. (I’m not yet mayor there.) When we sat down Elana was momentarily ticked at herself. It seems she had a $10 off coupon for…
If you got a new phone, tablet or computer and you plan on doing anything more than play games on it you are going to want to check out Evernote. Evernote will let you save pictures, documents and other forms of information in a single place and then access them for virtually any and all devices. And if you check out Evernote you are going to want to check out Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote by Brett Kelly. Evernote Essentials is a PDF book with some great tips that will get you up and running with…
I needed a car a few weeks ago. That opened the door to my getting some of the neat technology we have seen and reviewed here on the site built into the car. Here was the Gear Diary editors backroom chatter. Judie: Question: What color? Answer: black Question: 2 or 4 door? Answer: 4 door Carly: Question: 2 or all-wheel drive? Answer: all-wheel-drive – between where I live and what I do it is a necessity. Question: hybrid or standard? Answer: Unfortunately standard because hybrid all-wheel drives are rare and the all-wheel-drive kills the gas benefit of the hybrid….
Many of the people I’ve turned onto Evernote find it invaluable. Others, however, underutilize the service and, as a result, don’t see what the big deal is. That’s where Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote by Brett Kelly comes in. As Brett explains: The amount of information we want and need to keep track of today is, frankly, ridiculous. Not long ago, my desk was covered with piles of financial statements, medical records, automotive service receipts — and that didn’t even include everything dealing with my job. We all struggle to keep our information organized and accessible,…
Apple’s iOS app for the Apple Store is pretty neat. It loads quickly, it lets you browse and order some of the best gear around. It even lets you check your order status and find stores. It is a rich app but it leaves me with a question …
As much as I “harshed” on Evernote last week after they released two ridiculous iPhone apps the service remains a key part of every aspect of my life. I’ve also turned countless people onto Evernote, and many find it invaluable as well. Others however, underutilize the service and, as a result, don’t see what the big deal is. That’s where Evernote Essentials: The Definitive Getting Started Guide for Evernote by Brett Kelly comes in. As Brett explains: The amount of information we want and need to keep track of today is, frankly, ridiculous. Not long ago, my desk was covered with…
Want to see the all-new 2013 Ford Fusion sedan? Ford has an app for that. The automaker has released iOS and Android smartphone and device apps to tease the eventual unveil of the vehicle that will occur in the app simultaneously as it does on stage at two stellar events. The 2013 Ford Fusion (which has been named the official car of CES 2012) will be unveiled at both the North American International Auto Show in Detroit next month as well as the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. These are two of the biggest shows held in the U.S….
Hanukkah, the Jewish Festical of Lights, begins next week. In preparation for this I put together a roundup of Hanukkah apps for our local New Jersey Jewish News. A version of what follows was published today… History of Hanukkah If you are looking for an iPhone app that explains what Hanukkah is and why we celebrate, this is for you. The text itself is drawn from Wikipedia but the app does a nice job of gathering the information, organizing it and adding some nice images as well. I especially appreciate the fact that it is clear about the origins of…
I’ve been a fan of the Roku streaming media set-top box since pretty much the beginning. The company tends to fly a bit under the radar but offers a great series of devices that have only gotten better over time. I have the original device (two actually) and just recently got the current, top of the line, device, the Roku 2 XS. (It not only streams tons of media but it also plays games.) Seriously, the selection of media the Roku brings to your TV is awesome- from Netflix to Amazon Instant Video to Hulu Plus and Pandora… the list goes…
When the iTunes App Store first opened I owned and ran one of, if not the, first iPhone app review sites. It was a fun gig although, I must admit, being here on Gear Diary with Judie and the rest of the crew far surpasses that experience. In December of 2008 I reviewed a number of apps that would be good for Hanukkah. This year I did a similar roundup for a local newspaper. (I’ll be sharing it as soon as the article is published later this week.) One of the apps I reviewed in 2008 was iMenorah, which is a…
This post had a different working title of “‘Evernote Food’ Not So Tasty but We Can Spice it Up” but I settled on the more descriptive “Evernote, There is a Better Way to Add Functionality than Releasing crApps”. Regardless, here’s what led to the post and what I want to suggest to remedy the company’s current trend of releasing all-but-useless-apps.
During my week away I noticed that eReaders seem to have hit critical mass. Yes, this year, more than any other, saw Kindle’s, nook’s and iPads in use on the beach and at the pool. (Interestingly, I did not see a single Kindle fire!) I have seen an uptick in the use of devices over the past few years but this year seemed to show a huge jump in their presence. In fact, a cursory look this past Saturday saw MORE electronic devices than dead-tree reading material at the pool. But that was only a small part of the tech…
My first PDA was a Palm M100. My first smartphone was a Treo 650. I loved Palm OS. But I didn’t hesitate to move on when iOS and Android pushed the envelope in the smartphone world, and personally, I don’t miss any Palm apps. Now, there are plenty of people who did, and Styletap tried to reach them with their Palm OS emulator, which was jailbreak-only on the iPhone. But it’s been YEARS since a Palm OS device was produced, and now WebOS is open source. So does the world REALLY need a way to keep Palm OS apps alive?…
I’m a big fan of Evernote and use it all the time to save information, images, notes and other data that I want to keep safe,secure and easily accessible. The company has expanded their base of users in a huge way since coming out of beta and was profitable until they began a hiring and development phase six months ago. In addition to continually building upon its main apps, Evernote is platform agnostic so there is an Evernote app for just about very platform. They have also begun releasing their own apps that use Evernote as the “engine” to keep…
I love almonds. If we are what we eat, I’m a Hershey’s Kiss and a handful of shredded coconut away from becoming an Almond Joy bar. When we’re grocery shopping, Sarah is always trying to find which nuts are on sale and keep us well-stocked. We do try to compare the labels and make sure we’re not getting nuts with tons of additives, but it isn’t always easy to make the right call when they all sound the same. That’s where Fooducate is an incredibly useful shopping tool! Fooducate scans barcodes and gives you a breakdown of the ingredients and…
The iBooks apps for iOS, that means iPad, iPhone and iPod touch, just made the leap to version 1.5. It is a nice update that includes a new arrangement of annotations, full screen reading mode, new fonts and an awesome new nighttime reading mode. I used the nighttime reading mode last night for a bit and it worked great. It is nice to see iBooks maturing but it also reminded me that, when it comes to something like eBooks, it isn’t the app that ultimately matters but rather the ecosystem one has decided to use. I decided some time back…
I’m always looking for ways to use Siri with new iOS applications to allow me to write on the go. But if I am going to pay for an application I want it to do more than one thing at a time. As I was reading through Dan’s article on using Elements to be able to sync dictated notes I thought I would download Elements. During my search I happened upon the iOS application Knowtilus Pro. Knowtilus is a web browser that has 3 tabs. I usually don’t buy iOS applications that cost more than a few dollars but I…
There are a few schools of thought in fitness when it comes to heart rate monitors. One side says that a heart rate monitor helps you keep your effort in the proper range, while the contrarians think a heart rate monitor is a crutch and you should go with what feels right, not a number on a screen. I’ve never trained with any sort of heart rate monitor, so when Wahoo offered Gear Diary the chance to review it, I jumped at the opportunity. The Wahoo system comes with two parts, a heart rate monitor strap, and an ANT+ receiver….