[It seems like ages ago that the internet was first abuzz with news of the upcoming i-mate Ultimates, and one of the high points of CES 2008 was getting to take a first look at the line. This week I finally received two of four that I'll be reviewing.]

Meet the Ultimate 6150. As you may recall, this was the device that I felt was the most “old-school PDA-like” back in January when I first saw it, because it didn’t have a built-in keyboard or an extended numeric pad. Instead, the 6150 has a relatively clean front panel. But as usual, I am getting ahead of myself; let’s start with the unboxing…

All pictures are thumbnails, you can click on them to enlarge; a gallery with even more photos is at the end.

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Looks like Sprint intends to keep the lid on pricing for their upcoming iPhone wannabe – aka the Sprint Instinct – until some time after the 3G iPhone launches. An article Thursday in Computerworld quotes Sprint director of product commercialization David Owens as denying that the Sprint Instinct is an iPhone copycat because…

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I finally received an XO! The laptop designed to be a medium for education in developing countries. I will take some time with the little guy before offering my impressions or even a review. I’m late to the party and great reviews are already out there. The XO took five months to find me but I’m happy to finally be able to have a look at it. When the Fedex guy arrived at my house with that small box, I thought OLPC had shipped me a battery pack. The laptop is much smaller than I expected but heavier than I thought it would be.

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For some reason I was oddly fascinated by reports that someone had captured footage of an alien peering in a window. At a news conference on Friday in Denver Jeff Peckman unveiled a videotape taken on July 17, 2003 in Nebraska by Stan Romanek which claims to show an alien looking into a windows. I’m not sure about you but for a little while this looks a lot like a cat walking backwards toward a window. Then I see a guy in an alien mask. Check it out for yourself. Note: This video just came up on YouTube. Though several other sites posted it as authentic, I am not so sure. There are other still shots circulating which I’ve posted on the next page. Truth be told — I just wanted to be the first to post an alien video to Geardiary. UPDATE: I posted another picture that looks different but is reportedly from the video – check it on the next page.

Link: Denver Post: Purported alien video confab concludes

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It’s been about six months since I purchased my T-Mobile Blackberry Curve 8320. As anyone who reads Geardiary knows, I recently abandoned it for my iPhone. I was browsing Howardforums and found an interesting forum post that anyone considering purchasing a Blackberry Curve should read. It concerns a problem that has existed on every new model of Blackberry that I’ve used.

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The Musicovery streaming radio service is not new. They’ve been around a couple years, however I just received an email to check them out and for someone like me whose musical catalog revolves around basic musical tastes like U2, Hall & Oates and Lynyrd Skynyrd – it seems like a cool way to expand my horizons and discover new musical artists and songs. Let’s take a look.

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I still remember when I started seriously playing the guitar.  I was in seventh grade.  At that time, we were given a choice of band, chorus, or guitar.  But you had to pick one.  Well, by then I had already determined that I was done with the clarinet, so I would not be joining the band.  And I had no illusions about my ability to sing  (I was always the kid in my fourth grade concert who stood in the back lip syncing).  So, it was off to guitar for me, and I was pretty excited about it.  I mean, what seventh grader didn’t have visions of Eddie Van Halen dancing in front of his fingers…The second fortuitous event that happened was Dr. Jones, who taught guitar to my seventh (and eighth) grade class.  I only had him for two years, but he really instilled a lasting love of the instrument in me.  I have played the guitar off and on ever since (sometimes much more off than on).  But every time I pick it up again, I wonder why I ever stopped.  It is a great way to relax, and impress your friends.   The problem is that every time I pick it up, I also realize how much I have forgotten.  I have to relearn chords, remember how to tune it, and even think about which string is which.  I can’t afford the time or money involved with private lessons, which means teaching myself from books and sheet music, which can be difficult.  Learning guitar is much easier when you can mimic a more experienced player, and see how their fingers move across the strings.  That is pretty tough to do with a book.  Well, now there is another way…and potentially a better way, ivideosongs.com.  This new website offers your own private lessons of your favorite songs, right there on your computer screen.  Let’s take a closer look.

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As you may recall, last October Chris Leckness was one of the attendees as the LA press event for Sandisk’s launch of the 8GB MicroSD card. One of the fab bits of SWAG attendees received was the Nokia N95, which he used for a bit and then basically relegated to the used gadget pile all of us reviewers have. He even tried getting his wife to use it, but no dice – she likes her CrackBerry better. It’s okay, though, because this story has a happy ending…

Last night, I was cleaning up around my office and I came across the box for the N95 and thought that it was a shame that such an expensive, powerful phone was just sitting in the graveyard waiting for a photo op. So, I decided to give it to one of you!

There are three things you have to do to qualify to win, and none of them are overly complicated. Get over to Chris’ site, give it your best shot, and tell him we sent you. If you win, come back and let us know. Because as you know, I love happy endings…

Link: Win a Nokia N95 from Mobility Site

If you’re thinking of getting a cell phone for your kids, but they’re not quite trustworthy enough for a regular cell plan, here’s a great idea. Buy them a prepaid phone. These are also great plans for your elderly parents who may not use the phone often but still want the protection of having one at the ready. You can purchase the phones dirt cheap. Best of all there’s no early termination or lengthy contract or bloated carrier fees. You pay only for the minutes you use! These plans have gotten a LOT better with most carriers giving you a full year to use the minutes provided you buy at least $100 in advance. I have my step-father on T-Mobile To Go and the total cost per year for his sparse usage is $100 – about $8 per month. Those with teens take special note of the Sidekick plan that gives unlimited text messaging, instant messaging, web browsing, email and picture mail for $1 per day.

Link: T-Mobile To Go Prepaid Cellular Plans
Link: AT&T GoPhone (Similar deals without the nights/weekends)

This came in today from Robert Oschler, our very own robotic mad scientist…

Hey Judie,

Here’s brand new detailed coverage on WowWee’s upcoming Tri-Bot robot, which we created after playing with him solid for several days:

We just released an In-depth video review that covers the important features and capabilities of the latest successor in WowWee’s Robosapien line of robots, the Tri-Bot. When you combine Tri-Bot’s ability to be driven merely by tilting his remote control along with his unique three wheel base, the net result is a simple to own and easy to love robot with amazing mobility not seen before in consumer robots. This YouTube video will show you these cool features, several of his fun and useful behavior modes, and tell you about the games Tri-Bot can play with you:

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Until recently I had never listened to AOL Online Radio. On Tuesday my friend Mark emailed and twittered that XM Radio channels were finally gone from AOL radio. Then he went on about how AOL Radio was the greatest online streaming service ever. So I decided to take a look.

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Here is a heads-up: Julie, our lovely contact at Ilium Software, has written to give us early notice that their 11th anniversary party is in the works; of course this means that we’ll get a chance to score some party favors…

We’re planning a week-long celebration, with a contest each day. We’ll be giving away Amazon gift cards, as well as copies of our software. The contests will be run on our blog, at http://blog.iliumsoft.com, from Monday, June 2nd, through Friday, June 6th.

And, since no anniversary party would be complete without a big sale, we’re having one of those too! For five days, we’ll be offering a 55% discount off the regular price of all of our software. The link to the anniversary sale page will be: http://www.iliumsoft.com/elevenyears (The page isn’t live yet but it will be there on Monday!)

More info coming soon, but until then – keep your eye on the Ilium Blog.

Link: June 2nd is Ilium Software’s 11th Anniversary

So what is intuitivity anyway? There’s a lot of talking about intuitive interfaces, menus, etc. Mac users are always bragging about it anyway. When you think about it, intuitivity is a vague concept that we often use in the IT world. You know it has become a buzz word when it is used in the same sentence as Windows… Mobile or otherwise.

Microsoft demonstrated the “Touch Windows” this week and buzz words were flying all over the place: multi-touch, changing dramatically how you will interact with the system, touch-enabled, blah, bleh, blah. On this matter, I completely agree with James Kendrick who offered his thoughts on JKontherun. My laptop “Vista-Enabled” which I bought with tablet PC, sorry, “ink and pen gestures enabled with sideshow features, blah, blah, buzz, buzz” has not seen the outside of my bag in months. I wasted so much time trying to get friendly with Vista and the relationship failed so miserably that I swore to change platform. I just need more time and money (don’t we all, huh?).

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If you’re a Mac user, and there are a growing number of us these days, then you probably know that Apple shipped Security Update 2008-003 (Mac OS X 10.5.3) yesterday with fixes for a wide range of serious vulnerabilities (it includes 41 fixes) that could put users at risk of information disclosure, denial-of-service and remote code execution attacks.

This one is important, folks, so if you haven’t installed it already, then you either need to click the link above and download it, or run Software Update from the Apple menu and run the Software Update tool manually.

I’m not going to bore everyone with all of the gory details on what this thing contains (I actually don’t have the time, as I am at work and need to get back to it; BUT thought this important enough to let everyone know…), because I just don’t have the time.  However, if you have a Mac, and don’t have it installed, you best get to clickin’.

In what certainly must be the “mother of all marketing tie ins”, a joint Disney / NASA press release this morning announces that Toy Story character Buzz Lightyear will be flying into space with the Space Shuttle Discovery on mission STS-124 when it lifts off from Kennedy Space Center at 5:02 pm on May 31, 2008. Apparently Buzz will spend several months at the International Space Station testing the limits of zero gravity. According to NASA his mission will include a space walk. No comment from NASA on whether Buzz’s tiny shape will aid them in checking the Shuttle for damaged tiles or if he’s purely a last minute selection due to his ability to never need to use the bathroom. More links and a short video follow.

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