Hot off the LogicBuy deal site – take $280 off this Dell Vostro 220 through 9/7/09. This rig includes a ViewSonic VT2430 1080p LCD HDTV (add it to your cart and instant savings will be applied at checkout). Also included is Windows Vista Business, SP1, 1GB RAM, 16x DVD-ROM, 250 GB 7200 RPM HDD. Add another GB or two of RAM ($32 or $72 for the boost) and you’ll have a nice little business workstation. Dell Vostro 220 Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I saw the press release on this title proclaim that the game “deserves critics attention”, I got myself all ready to dislike this game automatically. Yeah, it’s not fair, but when someone insists that I must like something I’m immediately put into a negative mood. Well now I have spent a bit of time with this game and I may have to change my original ideas. What did I find? Let’s have a look.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

You may remember that airline carrier Jet Blue announced earlier this month a new “All You Can Jet” pass. This limited time offer (which is now sold out) cost only $599. For the fare you could ride Jet Blue as much as you like from September 8 through October 8. Surely you knew there would be a person or two with a lot of time on their hands to take Jet Blue up on their offer. Here’s Brendan Ross. Wired Magazine purchased a ticket for Brendan and sent him off to blog about his experiences living 30 days on a jet. During that time he won’t leave the airport or check any bags. Naturally you can follow him on Twitter… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We started the weekend with Adrian’s excellent post on what’s wrong and right in college football. Yeah, we’re a site dedicated to gear, but as Judie and I were discussing this morning -  there are other things to life than gadgets… at least sometimes. Adrian’s was a good piece, but it was missing one thing that is not only good but excellent in high school football. Gear Diary Contributor Travis (AKA “Coach”) is a coach for the Falls City High School Battlin’ Beavers. Two games into the season, and Coach and his team are 2 and 0, with the first game won 40-7 and second game won 28-12. Travis is what we call “right” with High School Football. Here he is in… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Photo courtesy of iphone-freakz There’s satire, there’s reality, and there is the point where they collide… BBSpot.com, purveyor of awesome geek humor, ran this story: TSA Bans Exploding iPhones on Airplanes. Funny and timely, given the rash of European iPhones ‘sploding lately. Apparently the TSA didn’t find it quite as funny; they sent BBSpot an email basically clarifying that everyone knew it was a satire. They even put a posting up on the TSA Blog clarifying that iPhones were okay for travel. So what’s funnier: Homeland Security getting concerned about people not understanding a satire website, or the fact that some people really are stupid enough that the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Slider cases have always been my favorite type of case for the iPhone. Silder cases are generally made up of two pieces. The phone slides into the two and they connect at some point, usually near the bottom. This allows the bottom piece to be easily removed so that your device can still be used with an accessory item requiring access to the dock connector, such as a cradle or external speaker. Case-Mate is not new to the iPhone accessory market. They’re already established themselves as one of the leaders. Their version of the slider case, the Smooth, is one of their newest offerings. Let’s take a look.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Let me tell you about Elana’s radio. (Yup, that’s it in the clip.) Elana cooks… a lot! and when she does she listens to the radio. Sometimes she listens to music, but often she chooses talk radio. And she listens to it on an old-style Sony radio. The thing hasn’t changed since I was a kid. It has one speaker and sounds… well… it sounds horrible. I have asked Elana if she wanted me to set it up so her MacBook could drive speakers in the kitchen, but she didn’t want the hassle or expense. So for YEARS I have heard this static-filled, terrible sounding radio on a daily basis. Fortunately the good folks at MYINE were kind enough to send me an IRA Internet Radio to review. And Elana was finally willing to consider coming into the new century. Let’s take a look.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It never fails.  The power goes out in the middle of the night and your flash light is out of batteries.  Now that we are getting to the heart of the hurricane season, before the next storm hits maybe you should  get your family a Life+Gear 6IN1DC. The 6IN1DC is touted as a quad power device. The device can run on 3 AAA Batteries,  a DC Adapter (not included), an AC Adapter (also not included) and backup power.  … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Scientists at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota Florida have lost a swimming robot and are asking boaters along the Florida coast to keep a lookout. The robot, nicknamed Waldo, was swimming offshore sending back satellite imagery when the signal suddenly stopped transmitting on August 31. If you’re boating this holiday weekend in the Florida area and spot Waldo – haul him aboard and you’ll earn a $500 reward. Where’s Waldo Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Remember how you would inevitably waste hours as you watched those old Pop-Up Videos on VH1?  Well this week Fox tried to rope in viewers by overlaying twitter onto a rerun of the series Fringe.   The result?  Those not-so-subtle twitter feeds took up half the screen. Dave Zatz captured the image above while viewing Fox’s “experiment” and was not impressed.  Instead of setting it up to where the Twitter banter may engage the viewer, Fox successfully blocked viewers from actually seeing anything happening on the episode.   File under “how not to integrate Twitter onto Television.” Fox may want to take a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In celebration of the long weekend our GearSponsor Logicbuy has uncovered this high-def screened HP laptop for half off the normal list price. Includes Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2 GHZ processor, 4GB RAM upgrade, 1080p high-def monitor, blu-ray drive, 320 gb 7200 rpm HDD, free HP Deskjet D2680 printer, Vista Home Premium operating system, fingerprint reader. Expires 9/5/09. HP HDX16t – $799 via Logicbuy Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My one-year old daughter appears to take after her mother in almost all ways, which is a really good thing.  The only thing she seems to have inherited from me is that she doesn’t need a lot of sleep.  She sleeps well at night, but once she’s up, she’s up, and that’s the end of it.  She’s not much of a napper.  Getting her to sleep during the day takes a pretty fair amount of effort: reading to her, singing to her, giving her warm bottles, ensuring the house is quiet, and… well, lots of rocking her to sleep. So why didn’t someone show me this trick before now??? Check out the Ubuntu baby rocker script in the video above.  This guy is a genius.  He’s… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Next year the Rubix Cube turns 30, so the fact that I was working part-time in a retail department store to support school / books / music / games / friends/ etc when it came out means a couple of things. First it means that there is a certain nostalgia attached to the Cube. OK, so it also says I’m old! Anyway, when I had the opportunity to try out the SphereXYZ, a challenging puzzle that invokes the spirit of the classic Cube, I jumped! So let’s find out of the game lives up to the classic and if it is ready to inspire a new generation of puzzlers!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Apple has a tendency to use a remarkably effective method where-by they sit back and watch for some time before making their move. When they DO make their move, however, it is bold, it is effective and… most of the time… it wins the day. And so, for example, they didn’t jump right into the MP3 player waters until the time was right and they had their plan in place. And it worked. They own the market. Similarly, they waited a good long while before jumping into the cellphone/smartphone market but when they did… WOW! They transformed it and took a nice – and still growing – piece of it in the process. The same thing has happened with regard to responding the the “PC Hunter ads”. They did almost nothing when the ads calling their computers overpriced, underpowered eye-candy were released. The ads were effective, and yet Apple did very little to respond.  Sure they cut prices and then shortly thereafter placed a call to Microsoft asking for the ads to be changed in response. But THAT’S not really an Apple-esque response. This is!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While this is not a sports site, nor one that normally writes about this kind of stuff, I had to make an exception. As a father, former college athlete, and fan I have to say that the beginning of the college football season has not given me that warm fuzzy feeling. Last years Oregon vs. Boise State game ended with much animosity, which led to Oregon RB LeGarrette Blount’s pre-game statement saying they must keep their emotions in check…..heh. Well that didn’t turn out very well!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …