Twelve years ago this month (give or take a week or two) I started The Gadgeteer as a goofy little review site on the then free webpage hosting service Geocities. People seemed to like my reviews, so I registered the domain name four months later, moved to a real hosting site – and the rest is history! As many of you know, I had the distinct pleasure of working with Julie Strietelmeier at The Gadgeteer for six years, so this milestone is one that I hold near and dear. For her site’s 12th birthday, Julie has rounded up some fab sponsors and excellent gifts – including an HP dv4 laptop and other major goodies for the first place winner!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

OpenTable has just launched their free BlackBerry application.  Like the Palm Pre and iPhone versions, the BlackBerry app will allow users to locate restaurants and book dining reservations on the go.  Search restaurants by cuisine, price, or availability — and email directions or restaurant invitations to your friends. The application also gives you the benefit of earning and using Dining Points (redeemable for Dining Cheques good at any OpenTable restaurant).  The OpenTable application can be downloaded wirelessly from BlackBerry App World.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image Courtesy of ThinkGeek Stargate is back again as Stargate Universe or SGU.  A new trailer was released at Comic-Con and it actually looks OK.  Quite a bit of Battlestar Galactica seems to have rubbed off on it.  Due out this fall, the franchise is obviously now in what I like to call a ‘Star Trek Voyager’ phase.  This is not necessarily a bad thing; Captain Janeway had that strict sexy school ma’am thing down pat.  This time around, a new set of intrepid gate travellers are marooned on an Ancient ship lost on the other side of the Universe. Throw in some of that unreliable Ancient technology, some new bad guys, and it’s bound to have one close call after another. Rodney is not in this one; from a survivability point of view I think we’d all agree that’s probably a wise move.  Don’t worry though, there is a new slide rule sheriff in town. David Blue plays Rodney’s alter ego, Eli Wallace, a mathematical genius who is also a total slacker – who knew the two went together?  The theme music has also had an update to the 21st Century – very Linkin Park.  All up, I feel [...]

If you take advantage of Gmail’s option to send messages within Gmail using one of your other email addresses in the “from” line, you may be aware that your email is depicted in some email software as being from your Gmail address “on behalf of” your other email address. In the Gmail blog last week, Google announced a new option that eliminates the need to show your Gmail address and the “on behalf of” text. The option is available if your other email provider supports POP or IMAP access.  To take advantage of this new option, go to the Accounts page under Settings, and click “edit info” from the “Send mail as” section. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Back in June at the E3 gaming convention, Nintendo indicated that they would be adding the ability for users to integrate their DSi handhelds with Facebook. They indicated that this would include and pretty much be limited to uploading pictures from the dual cameras on the device. Since then there was no firm date given for the integration, but since the functionality was made available in Japan last week, ithere was an assumption that it would arrive in North America fairly soon. Now we have a date – August 3rd at 5PM PST.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’m not a huge workout fan. The best I do is take a walk on a nice day, get on the stationary bike or play something physical on my Wii. My wife, on the other hand, is a work-out fanatic. For the last few years it was either water aerobics or her friend Peter K’s “5 Minutes of Fitness+” workout. Recently she added swimming laps into her routine.  When the opportunity to review the SwiMP3 waterproof headset came along she agree to review it for the site. Let’s take a closer look at the device and Elana’s thoughts on it. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s no big secret that keeping your hands on the wheel (and eyes on the road) is paramount to safety while driving.  Your safety, the safety of your loved ones, and other drivers.  Some drivers choose to use Bluetooth earpieces which, while good, may still require the driver to hold their mobile phone to initiate or dial a call. Merconnet has come out with a bluetooth-enabled Car Steering Wheel Adapter that takes a very different approach from other bluetooth spearkerphones and FM modulators on the market.  Since the Merconnet adapter is mounted *on* the steering wheel, the driver is able to answer the phone (and play music on their phone) right from the steering wheel.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We last spotlighted this Lenovo S12 Netbook back in June at the price of $449 shipped. Just today GearSponsor Logicbuy forwarded us an offer that reduces the price another $50 making the net price $399 with free shipping. The S12 features a full sized keyboard, LED-backlit WXGA screen and black/white system color (I think this means you can get it in any color you want so long as it’s black or white). Power is supplied by an Atom N270 1.6 GHZ with 1GB DDR2, 12.1″ WXGA, 160GB hard drive. If that doesn’t have you excited – there’s also Wi-Fi, XP Home and a 6-cell battery. Logibuy Continue reading on Gear Diary …

So, you have a Google Voice account and an iPhone, but don’t have any of the native applications (GV Mobile, VoiceCentral) because Apple pulled them from the App Store before you downloaded them? While there are other options out there, such as running GV Mobile on a jailbroken iPhone, there is another option that may work if you have a few contacts that you want to frequently call via Google Voice.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There are so many iPhone Apps to chose from that you could go broke trying them all. Certainly many have free versions that you can test first but others are priced so low that they become an impulse purchase for many. Ten or twenty iPhone Apps later and those .99 purchases start to add up. The App Store contains reviews from buyers but I’m always hesitant to believe any application with fewer than 25 reviews and most new Apps take a while to accumulate that many. That’s where review sites like 148apps.com take over. PC Magazine has just recognized this iPhone App review site as one of the top 100 sites for 2009 — and one of the top 50 undiscovered. 148Apps Continue reading on Gear Diary …

No surprise here, but Apple just announced that Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, is resigning from Apple’s Board. This is a major turn around from back when Schmidt said he had no intention of resigning. Then again, a good deal has happened since May that seems to be putting the two companies at odds with one another. The latest, Apple’s handling of the Google Voice apps, may have been too much. We’ll see how this one unfolds. Ooooh the drama. Read Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A lucky Walmart shopper scored an early BlackBerry 8520 which is slated for an official release on August 5. The main benefit to this new BlackBerry is the removal of the grease trap — aka trackball — in exchange for the first ever BlackBerry trackpad. Don’t be fooled by the looks on this device – you’ll be stepping down to a 2 MP camera which is great if blurry photography is your hobby. That low resolutoin simply seems quaint in this day of 3.2 MP camera. Watch for this to become a freebie extremely quickly. BlackBerry 8520 via Engadget Mobile Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Letstalk.com has the Palm Pre available with an extra $100 rebate bringing your net price to $99. This pricing comes on the heels of the Best Buy pricing “mistake” that had the phone widely available for $99 last week until the retailer suggested the pricing was a mistake and returned the cost to $199. The Palm Pre has also appeared in the Amazon cellular store at the $199 price (shipping in 4 to 6 weeks). My best guess is that this will hit $99 PDQ and free within another 3 months. Letstalk.com Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Recently released iPhone 3.0.1 firmware protects against receiving malicious SMS messages (no, not from your mother).  These messages can take over your iPhone, as demonstrated by security researchers Charlie Miller and Collin Mulliner at Black Hat.  There are no mentions of any other fixes or updates in the Release Notes.  Also this update will not affect your ability to Jailbreak your phone.  Having tested the new update extensively I can say that I have not received one malicious text since updating and only one slightly snippy one. Update your iPhone by connecting to iTunes and checking for updates. Via Gizmodo Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Mixed in with Apple’s egregious pulling of all Google Voice apps this past week we saw some excellent app updates. Here are some that have caught our eye… Continue reading on Gear Diary …