As General Motors celebrates its next 100 years, they are offering a new online public service that tackles automotive issues. The first surrounds debunking myths concerning E-85 ethanol fuels. It can be found by clicking the image below and then selecting the “Fermenting in the Fields” video. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

MagMyPic has been around since October 2007. They allow you to upload your own photo and create a fake magazine cover. Over 15 million people have created personalized magazine covers since the site launched. They’ve just added the ability to obtain high resolution prints of your fake covers starting at $9.95. These would make cool gifts for someone that’s hard to buy for and wouldn’t recognize that you bought them a cover because you were out of gift ideas. Picture sizes range from 8×10 to poster sized 16×20. If prints aren’t your thing, you can also buy mouse-pads and t-shirts with the fake magazine cover. MagMyPic Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Just spotted that the Gottabemobile forums now accept ink (aka handwriting) as another way to leave or reply to messages on their forum. The use of ink on tablet computers is a key benefit of the devices and some swear by it as a faster way to take notes. I quickly tried the GBM forums and the ink ability is cool save for two things (a) People write sloppy making some messages tough to read and (B) I don’t think I was able to search through the inked notes – a KEY benefit of having a forum. Looks like a great start. This will make participation in the forum much easier for those committed to tables and ink as their primary data… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here’s something parents with young kids can use. If you’re like me, on the weekends your young children take great joy in leaping out of bed on the same (way too early) weekday schedule. So while you try to sleep the TV is blaring the latest Cartoon Network shows. Or even worse the kids come bounding into your room at 5 am demanding breakfast. The Teach Me Time alarm clock has a solution. You set the alarm to change to a glowing green color when it is time for the kids to wake. You no longer have to explain to younger children (who may not fully grasp the concept of time) that they should only get out of the bed when “the little hand is on the 7″. The Teach Me Time! will glow green indicating that it’s ok to get up. In addition the kids can use the clock as a nightlight and learn time from the clock by using the talking time-teaching feature .… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Facebook users everywhere (especially my Mom) can rejoice – it looks like the popular FaceBook application Scrabulous has been reborn as Wordscraper. Hasbro, owner of the Scrabble game upon which Scrabulous was based, forced that application to be removed from Facebook earlier this week. The removal impacted 500,000 daily users who no longer were able to access their favorite Scrabble-like game online. It doesn’t look like high scores will carry over to WordScraper and some of the rules seem to have changed. Hasbro introduced their own Scrabble Facebook application which has had some widely reported stability issues. WordScraper on Facebook via CNET News and Mashable Continue reading on Gear Diary …

According to web site TmoNews, starting August 6 you will be able to enroll in various post paid cell phone plans at T-Mobile without any one or two year contract. Simply pay full price for the phone and pick any of the available plans. It sounds like MyFaves plans (where you receive unlimited calling to and from 5 of your favorite numbers) will be included. T-Mobile has offered a similar plan under their FlexPay prepaid service which required the fees to be paid in advance and would stop your service if you went over your monthly minutes. No word on whether data plans (and devices) will be offered under this fee schedule. Here’s hoping other carriers follow T-Mobile’s lead. TmoNews Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’ve noticed quite a common theme between Nokia’s cameraphones: they all undersaturate. Take this image I took with my Nokia E71, which has a 3.2MP autofocus camera (alas no 5MP Carl Zeiss, oh well). It’s quite sharp but is decidedly undersaturated and washy. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My good friend and fellow Mobile Devices nut, Jack Cook, experienced a nasty SPAM intrusion on his site, Experience Mobility.  As such, Jack had to take the old site down and rebuild/move it to a new home. You can see the new site, here. If you’re the RSS readin’ type, you can also see Jack’s RSS feed here. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

UPDATED: Words added after the walkaround! Grinding Gears editor, David Goodspeed, with this week’s Wednesday Walkaround of the 2009 Mercedes-Benz SL550. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This working sandwich phone might just be the quirky gift that you’ve been searching for. Sandwiched between a slice of bread, this working corded phone has only one flaw. It requires one of those old fashioned landlines that people used to use before the invention of wireless. Can a cellular version be that far behind? This is a one of a kind design, if interested head to the link below and make an inquiry. Sandwich Phone via ShinyShiny Continue reading on Gear Diary …

T-Mobile’s prepaid Quad Band Motorola V195 is again on sale for the bargain price of $29.95. This price which includes an introductory 10 minutes of airtime plus bonus $ 25 initial prepaid air card. This phone bundled with prepaid T-Mobile airtime is inexpensive enough to be an ideal Kids phone. If they drop it in water or lose it – buy another for $29! You can enroll in a T-Mobile Pay By The Day prepaid plan at T-Mobile which will provide for unlimited mobile to mobile calling and free calls after 7pm for only $1 per day that it is used. Motorola V195 at T-Mobile to Go Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here’s a late night bit of robotic goodness for you from the master himself, the incomparable Robert Oschler. He’s back with the “first detailed review ever of WowWee’s first female robot”… Hello Judie, Here’s my latest. The first detailed review ever of WowWee’s first female robot ever is now online, posted just minutes ago. In-depth review and companion video gives solid coverage of Femisapien’s revolutionary new touch based interface and shows several of her many truly unique and entertaining behaviors. Most importantly, the video shows that she is the first truly capable dancing robot in the consumer price range. The review page contains critical tips for buyers and would-be owners of WowWee’s new robot. Femisapien is scheduled for release this month and is already shipping in the Hong Kong and some Asian markets. Her estimated U.S. price is $99 USD. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Mark Twain once said “The reports of my death are greatly exaggerated” and he may well have been singing Palm’s tune. Today Palm Inc. announced that they had sold their 2 millionth Centro. It may not be selling as well as that “other” smartphone but the Centro is clearly a hit and is doing a great job of keeping Palm in the game. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In part one of my review of Celio’s REDFLY, I covered the REDFLY’s physical attributes. For part two I will cover the functionality of the device. First, it is important to remember that the REDFLY will only work with Windows Mobile 5.0 or 6 Professional (PocketPC) and Standard (Smartphone) devices and currently only a small subset of the total number of devices available. For a complete list of what devices are supported visit http://www.celiocorp.com/smartphone. Having said that, I did test the REDFLY with a number of devices including several that were not on the Celio website. All of them worked just fine although older O2devices did tend to have a little graphics trouble. All of the HTC devices I tested – The AT&T Tilt, the T-Mobile Wing, and HTC Advantage – worked fantastically well. The same is true for current MWg devices – Atom Life and Zinc II – although I did not test it with the new Atom V. More devices are being added as Celio does more testing but if you use a device not listed on their site, they will not provide technical support for that device and the REDFLY.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

1Password, a password manager and automatic form filler for the Mac has just appeared in the iTunes App Store. This version promises an iPhone native application to manage all your passwords and sync with your Mac. Unfortunately it seems the release of the iPhone application is a little ahead of the desktop capabilities because I have not been able to activate the feature which will synchronize my Mac version to the iPhone. I noted others reporting this on the Agile Web Solutions forum as well. Still, this is an excellent first step. We are all forced to chose so many passwords (sometimes of varying lengths) that having a centralize place to store them all is absolutely critical. The one application… Continue reading on Gear Diary …