courtesy of onemandbandwith.org Today is Earth Day, and that means it is a great day to start your “green resolutions.” You already recycle (when you remember and there’s a recycling bin handy), you walk instead of drive as much as possible (does walking to the car count? YES!), and you’ve tamed your electronics so they don’t draw as much power as the Death Star (uh…busted.). Don’t worry, there are many opportunities to improve your treatment of the earth AND indulge your geekiness! Continue reading on Gear Diary …

SPB Mobile Shell 3 for Windows Mobile versions 5 and higher is now available for purchase. Interesting new features include a fresh design for Windows Mobile, thumb optimization icons along the bottom for quick access, support for gesture/swiping, integration to Facebook for importing goofy friend photos to contacts, and kinetic scrolling (aka flick scroll or rubber band man).More goodies include: Widgets Facebook integration 3D carousel Widget-based photo contacts Ringtone management Wireless manager Finger friendly agenda view Improved task manager Now works as a true home screen featuring Professional Home and Lifestyle Home SPB Mobile Shell 3 and FAQ Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have two business trips that are coming up this month. Until I discovered TripIt, my standard way to track itineraries was to search through my email reservations 12 hours before departure. TripIt keeps your schedule organized by reading email travel confirmations that you forward to a special TripIt email address. These show flight and hotel information which TripIt extracts. Then it creates an itinerary organized by trip. You can (optionally) share trips with others so you’ll know which friends are traveling to the same location at the same time as you. The iPhone application is free and automatically synchronizes all of your trip information. No more carrying spare pieces of paper with hotel, airline and rental car confirmation numbers! TripIt Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Update: This giveaway is now closed, and the winners are nosmohtac, Peter and Ken. Thank you for entering, and watch for more giveaways from Gear Diary soon! PPCTechs, the company which attained huge internet acclaim for their PDA RAM memory upgrades, also offers accessories and services for just about every Windows Mobile and Palm smartphone known to man. They also happen to be sponsoring a giveaway here on Gear Diary for two of their most popular accessories: the WriteSHIELD 2-pak kit (my personal favorite) and a Lil’Sync cable. With this kit you’ll have the best screen protection available for your device, as well as a portable syncing and charging solution… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

After what seems like forever, and half a dozen leaked versions, Facebook version 1.5 for BlackBerry is finally making a return appearance to the App store where version 1.5.0.31 should soon be available. If you can’t wait, head over to mobile.blackberry.com and download a copy from RIM’s mobile site. Improvements include synchronization of your BlackBerry contacts to Facebook (including pictures) and fuller integration of BlackBerry messages to your inbox. It’s a marginal improvement at best, but something is better than nothing. Facebook 1.5 for BlackBerry via BlackBerry News Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Dave Matthews Band have a new album due out June 2 titled Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King. Amazon has a .99 sale on the first single from the album titled Funny The Way It Is. But an even better deal for the true Dave fan is to head to their official site and download it free. UPDATE: April 22, 2009 – As several people have pointed out – this free download offer appears to have expired just as we went live with the story. Dave Matthews Band Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My iPhone is my phone, calendar, email device, iPod, video player, gaming machine, GPS … and the list goes on and on. As it stands now, carrying my iPhone already means there are numerous times when I no longer bring my notebook with me. Unless I have heavy writing or other serious work to do, the iPhone serves me just fine. It is, on many levels, the best converged device I have ever used. It would seem however, that the iPhone may be poised to replace numerous other gadgets, as well. This time, in fact, it could be some of Apple’s own products. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If choosing a gift can be a problem, for sure choosing one for your mother can be a demanding task: you would like something useful, but it should be also feminine, maybe original and possibly not too expensive. Stop thinking, why not giving her something simply… natural? Why not giving her the sun? Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’ve been testing this universal external battery from Amstron for the last month or two. When I venture into New York City for the day I’m often away from any source of electrical power. There’s nothing worse than having your device power down on you 1/3 of the way through the day. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you own an iPhone, you’ve probably discovered the incredible number of games available on the app store. Some of the best are the sort you can fire up, play for a few minutes, stop and pretend you are working when your boss walks by, then keep playing when the coast is clear. I had the opportunity to review one of these games, Amoebas by SDGames …is it worth playing or will it get lost in the deluge of options? Continue reading on Gear Diary …

That sweet 47″ HDTV you’ve saved up for is lookin’ pretty nice.  Great picture, surround sound.  Hooked-up to the max with your Wii, XBox,  TiVo, the whole nine yards.   Life is good.  What could possibly go wrong… Well, the folks over at TestFreaks.com are putting the TV Screen Protector through it’s paces to protect their home entertainment investment.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today Belkin introduced the Dual Auto Charger and Micro Auto Charger which feature quick-charging capabilities for your iPhone, iPod , Blackberry or other USB charging device on the go.  More details and pricing on the next page…… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you’ve ever tried to make a call from atop Mt Everest you know what a drag it can be. Until now the cell phone contact has been all satellite which is both heavy and expensive. Now the service will switch to cellular with the installation of both GSM and CDMA booster antennas installed around the Mt Everest Region. Nepal Telecom says the new antenna system can handle 3,000 simultaneous calls. No word yet on what the roaming rate will be. Republica via The Raw Feed and MobileCrunch Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Fellow gadget enthusiast and former MS Mobile Devices MVP, Jenneth Orantia has a cool new site, Gadget Monkeys!  In one of her latest set of articles, Jenneth chases after mobile e-mail.  Says Sister Orantia in the kick-off of this totally awesome series – A couple of days ago, I posted about how much I prefer the experience of accessing my email on a BlackBerry compared to any other smartphone platform. I thought I’d take that train of thought a step further today by going through the email delivery system on four smartphone operating systems. I’ve gone with the main ones: BlackBerry, Windows Mobiles, Series 60 and iPhone, using the BlackBerry Curve 8900, Palm Treo Pro, Nokia E63 and iPhone 3G as test devices. Jenneth… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If there’s one thing that ANYONE at Gear Diary can attest to, its the need for some kind of backup solution.The site has had at least 1 catastrophic failure, where a great deal of data was lost.  I personally have had my PC’s go south at least twice in 13 years where a backup either wasn’t available or was corrupted.  Now, I’ve got multiple backups on my MyBook World Edition NAS as well as on a USB 2.0 2.5" hard drive…but neither of these are always the best solution. Sometimes, you need a bit more. OWC recently announced a desktop RAID solution that holds anywhere from 2.0 to 8.0TB (yes, that’s EIGHT terabytes) of data in either RAID 0,1,5 or 10 arrays.  The nice thing about this particular solution is that it appears to be pretty much plug and play, allowing you to connect your PC to it with either FireWire 400/800, USB 2.0 or eSATA cables. I’m in the process of arranging for a review unit to be sent, and we’ll be taking a closer look at this device to see if its something that anyone and everyone can use to help make their data more secure.  The complete [...]