Adventures in Cloud Computing Brought to Me by WildBlue

image courtesy of toothpaste for dinner Cloud computing. It is here. It is powerful. It is growing. It is a good thing? Had you asked me a week ago my answer would have been a resounding “Yes!” A week later, I’m not sure sure. Read on if you care to join me in my wireless nightmare … For many years, Dial-Up was the only way most people could get online reliably, and the two main sources of internet access seemed to be AOL and to a lesser degree, MSN; because I wanted to be different, I went with MSN, and…

Editorials

Spring Cleaning: If an App Doesn’t Work with Evernote or Dropbox? Buh-Bye!

There are specific iPad applications that are key to my productivity day in and day out, and the “qualities” they need to have if I am to use them has evolved over time. Looking back over the ways in which they have changed in the last year or so, I realized that there is a specific pattern to those applications that have become more central to my work and daily life and those that were once useful but have fallen off the island. Strikingly, these changes have less to do with the applications themselves and more to do with secondary…

Gear Bits, News

DropBox Updated with Cool New Features!

DropBox is a great tool – essentially it is simply an online storage provider, but the excellent Mac, PC, iOS and Android app interfaces make using that space and sharing items an absolute breeze! Yesterday my iPad pinged me that there was an update … and it has a few great new options! First, you can now bulk upload photos rather than doing them one at a time! Generally I wouldn’t worry about this, but I just scanned dozens of old slides from my parents and wanted to have them available in multiple locations in addition to my iPad. DropBox…

Reviews

Ecamm Printopia for Mac Brings AirPrint Capability to iOS Users with Older Printers

When Apple announced AirPrint for iOS devices, I could almost see Steve Jobs’ point about the “post-PC era”. Being able to print from your iPad, iPhone, or iPod Touch (newer devices with iOS 4.2 or later) wirelessly sounded great. Indeed, Google’s Cloud Print functionality for their Chrome browsers works in a similar fashion. But then I found out how limited the supported list of printers was. Heck, even those of us with Apple Airport Extreme wireless routers that have attached printers could not use AirPrint: AirPrint only works with a network connection to an AirPrint-capable printer. A printer connected to…

News

AVG Launches ‘LiveKive’ Onlive Storage System

Like many folks, I make great use of DropBox for non-sensitive storage options for files I need to access from a variety of platforms. The free storage level tends to work fine for me, but I know many folks who take advantage of the reasonably priced upgrades in storage.

Editorials, News

Adventures in Customer Service- Apple and Spilled Crystal Light Edition

I thought of a number of different titles for this post. One was: “No Use Crying Over Spilled Lemonaide”. Another was “MacBook Airs and Crystal Light Do Not Mix”. Another was “Apple, I’m Sorry for all the Nasty Things I Have Said and Thought” Then there was “I’m an Idiot” Eventually I settled on simply using “Adventures in Customer Service- Apple and Spilled Crystal Light Edition”. Here’s my story. I did not have a good morning. I woke up not feeling particularly great and immediately had a number of phone calls with people who are in the midst of challenging…

Reviews

SafeWallet and SafeWallet Desktop (Android) Review

It seems like everything in life has a login,or needs a credit card or an account number. There’s tons of information to track, and you certainly don’t want to leave it open in a memo on your computer or saved casually on your phone. That’s where an app like SafeWallet comes in to help. SafeWallet, from SBSH Software, is probably familiar to anyone who came from Symbian, the iPhone or Blackberry. It’s been around for those platforms for some time, but since I have never tried it this is all new to me. Basically, the app works by creating “wallets”…

Gear Bits

iPhone App Quickie: DropVox Lets You Record Voice Notes and Auto-Save to DropBox

I’m always searching for new ways to use my iPhone to create voice notes and turn them into text. I have found a number of good solutions — primary among them Dragon Dictation. But I’ve always wanted to be able to record a long voice note on the iPhone (Dragon is limited to just 60 seconds at a time) and then 0nce I’m back at my desk, apply the application MacSpeech Scribe to transcribe a long audio recording. The problem I’ve always run into is the fact that many voice note applications don’t record with a quality or a format…

Gear Bits

A Surprise iPad Tutorial Session

The first night Elana and I were here in Cabo we had dinner at one of the sit down restaurants here at the resort. A nice young guy came by and asked if we wanted a picture taken. We politely declined. On the way out we saw him uploading some of the photos using his MacBook Pro and his iPad. Of course I had to strike up a conversation. Turns out Samir is French, and had originally come here for an internship in hospitality management. He had decided to come back and start his photography business with a friend. I…

News

Ilium Software Launches eWallet GO! – Their First App for WP7

Well established mobile software companies are slowly rolling out apps for Windows Phone 7. Ilium Software, a long-standing mobile software company, has just released its first WP7 app, eWallet GO! (the ! is theirs – not [necessarily] an indication of my excitement). eWallet is a secure information manager (password protector, etc.) that has been around for quite a few years, expanding to new platforms as they are introduced. It’s an old favorite of many – I myself have used eWallet on several different platforms in the past. eWallet GO! offers over 30 card templates, ranging from credit cards to website…

News

Gear Diary 2010 Gear of the Year and Predictions for 2011

The past year has seen interesting developments in the gear we all use: the term iOS replaced iPhone OS as the OS that started on iPhone was also on the new iPad when it took the world and Gear Diary writers by storm, Android phones blossomed and became real competitors to the iPhone, and the iPad got its first real competition in the Samsung Galaxy Tab just a few months before 2010 drew to a close. While there’s much more that happened in the past year, I thought let’s ask the following questions of the Gear Diary Team. 1. What was your…

Editorials

As 2010 Comes to an End We Ask: Was it a Good Year in Tech? And We Answer… Nope

As 2010 comes to an end we ask… Was it a good year in tech? And we answer… Nope Nope??? Nope! It was a great year in tech. That’s right. 2010 finally saw some of the key things we have been hoping for come to fruition. iPad Baby!! First and foremost 2010 gave us the iPad. The iPad wasn’t significant just because of what it did for Apple but because it finally showed that a tablet form factor can and will work… And be loved by consumers… if it is done right. Think about it for a minute–the iPad is…

eBooks, Reviews

NOOKColor Morphs from Quiet Little eBook Reader to Killer Little Android Tablet

If you have been following along here at Gear Diary you probably have seen Carly’s review of the NOOKColor. The NOOKColor was noted as Barnes and Noble number one seller for the holiday season and it’s pretty easy to understand why. I am not really an eBook user and don’t often find myself reading too many books, but what I do enjoy is pretty much anything Android and the hardware that it runs on. So far you’ve seen what the $250 devices gets you, a full featured, beautiful color screen eBook reader powered by Android 2.1. It was not days…

News

Dropbox Out of Beta… Adds Key Features

This year saw a number of key changes with regard to how I work on a computer and accomplish the many tasks that face me each day. Of course the iPad was central to the changes in my work style since, most days, I carry it instead of a laptop but I don’t think I would call the iPad “My Most Significant Change in 2010. No, I suspect that that title would go to… Dropbox. Thomas turned me on to Dropbox toward the beginning of the year and I have grown increasingly reliant upon it. At first I used their…

News

How ‘Just a Big iPod’ Changed Our Computing Lives!

For the second time in two days I was giving a technical talk: one at night in a public setting, the other to a project team at work. In both cases I needed to note some questions, discussions, take contact info and jot down some ‘to do’ tasks and follow ups. It was only when someone said something in each case that I even realized – all I brought with me was my iPad. It has been nearly 8 months since the release of the iPad, and I cannot imagine going anywhere without it. Through numerous discussions I know that…

News

iPad and iPhone App Update- Dropbox-Powered Elements 1.1

I’m using DropBox more and more these days, thanks to a recommendation from Thomas a number of months ago. One of the key apps on my iPad that makes Dropbox even more powerful is Elements. The universal app lets you use Dropbox as a note-taking application on any iOS device; it is a great way to take notes on the go and ALWAYS know exactly where to find them. When Larry first recommended the app to me, it was good… but extremely limited. You could make notes and do some minimal formatting, but that was it. Now Elements has been…

News

Apple Updates Keynote, Numbers, and Pages for iPad – Definitely Worth Getting!

If you ask anyone what their biggest complaint was about the iWork apps on the iPad (Keynote, Numbers, and Pages), for many it would be the lack of a simple way to interact with Microsoft Office files and a limited ability to get files on and off the iPad. With a new update to all three applications, those issues are fixed – as are many more! MacRumors has a run-down of the features: Keynote – Export presentations to Microsoft PowerPoint (.PPT) format. – Copy presentations between Keynote and your MobileMe iDisk or a WebDAV service. – Support for audio in…

Editorials

Larry and Dan Serve Up Gear Chat #15

In Gear Chat #15 Larry and Dan talk about their experience with the Magic Trackpad (one kept it, one sent it back), chat about the current Apple hardware rumors and more… Elements app for Dropbox ($4.99) Get it HERE. Fastever ($1.99) Get it HERE. TextExpander Touch ($4.99) Get it HERE. Train Conductor 2 ($.99) Get it HERE. Intro Music- Lean On Me- Sounds From the Ground Solarstone’s Chill Out Remix… (http://itunes.apple.com/us/album/chillout-a-nettwerk-escape/id258464413)

Editorials

I Reviewed It and Still Use It, the Dan-Edition

We were having a conversation among the site’s editors last week with regard to items that we reviewed. It’s one thing to use an item for a few days or a week or two (which is the average) and quite another thing to use it for a month or two or three. There are times when an item looks great in the initial review but then there are some issues that arise with it down the line. Of course, if there’s any radical change in our perception of an item after using it for a while we will update the…

Reviews

The Alphasmart NEO Review: The Ultimate Draft Writing Tool

Alphasmart NEO Portable Electronic Keyboard It has a full-size keyboard so it is definitely not pocketable and a sports a 5.75″ x 1.5″ Mono Liquid Crystal display which shows a “generous” 2 to 6 lines of type. It has a whopping 512K memory. It runs on 3 AA batteries. It has no ability to connect to the internet. Finally, to get “all this,” you’ll have to pay a little more than half the price of a bargain Netbook. No, you haven’t just accidentally stumbled on a review from the Gear Diary Archives. This amazing little piece of retro tech is…

Editorials

Apple iPad Sales Top 3 Million Units- Surprised? Not!

Apple just announced that it has sold over 3 million units in just 80 days. That is… remarkable. (It is almost as remarkable as Apple getting over 600,000 pre-orders for the iPhone 4. And, no doubt, that number would be even higher if Apple hadn’t run out of the first run.) As Sir Stevo notes- People are loving iPad as it becomes a part of their daily lives. We’re working hard to get this magical product into the hands of even more people around the world, including those in nine more countries next month. So why is the iPad such…