All day I have been perking up at the sound of trucks on the street, each time hoping it would be the UPS truck delivering my much-anticipated Christmas present from my wonderful husband–the brand new Barnes & Noble nook eBook reader. My husband pre-ordered my nook on the very first day, so I knew I would get it before December 9.  I did a little dance of joy yesterday to learn that he had gotten the tracking number for the shipment and that the nook was winging its way to me overnight!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Struggling for the perfect gift for that special someone?  How about something for yourself?  Well, if you are a frequent reader of Gear Diary, then you already know the entire team loves their ScotteVests.   If you’re still not familiar with Scott Jordan’s line of technology clothing, ScotteVest makes a variety of jackets, vests, shirts, and pants that will hold just about all of your gadgets.  Each item is great for travel and daily wear.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As smartphones continue to be used in business, the challenge companies most often face is how to ensure security policies are implemented on employee mobile devices — and that they work with Microsoft Exchange to deliver your corporate email.  Sure, not every single business out there uses Exchange for their enterprise mail delivery — but most large companies do.  The fact that your email is delivered to your BlackBerry, Windows Mobile device, or iPhone wirelessly via BES or ActiveSync is often taken for granted.  New devices hit the market, and everyone rushes out to get the latest and coolest device for their specific needs. Then they bring it into work and expect — rightfully so — that it will be able to work on the corporate infrastructure. Such is the current situation.  In my own workplace we are actively supporting a wide variety of devices (and testing others to ensure they meet security policies for encrypting email).  It’s always a difficult situation to explain to executives why the device they ran out and picked up on the first day of it’s release isn’t working or supported.  Let’s take the hugely popular DROID.  Android OS 2.0 has continued to make the [...]

Updated In the main, I’m not much of an early adopter.  I like someone else to pay the high prices, get the buggy hardware and software, shake out all the problems.  I like to sail in at, oh, revision 3 or so.  If I’m really hot for something, revision 2.  Because let’s face it:  early adopters bang into some weird problems. Well, it was my turn to chuck my knee on software, I guess.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A few reports have surfaced over the last few months about Palm’s WebOS “backup” being a bit less than stellar. Stories of people losing contacts, calendar data, etc have been pretty common, especially tied in with OS updates and hardware swaps. The gist of the suit appears to be that Palm not only offered an unreliable web backup, it also did not offer any simple way to make a hard, offline backup of any data in case the web version failed. Sounds vaguely reminiscent of the Sidekick debacle, though this seems to be one-off cases, rather than an issue across the whole… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

TUNEWEAR announced today that it is now shipping a new slim case series called the PRIE Ambassador SMART for iPhone 3GS/3G. The Ambassador SMART cases are made from high quality leather and are available in Black with Red stitch, Black with White stitch and White with Pink stitch. The case includes a wrist strap which lets you hang on to your iPhone. The strap matches both the color and stitching of the case and attaches to the loop located on the bottom of the case. The case allows for complete access to all iPhone ports… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If the nook, Sony Readers and Kindle are too rich for your blood, and you aren’t terribly interested in being tied to a major bookstore, there’s a new eBook reader in town that might pique your interest. It’s the Aluratek Libre, an eBook reader that sports the usual specs: DRM’d ePub (available at eBooks.com, the Sony Reader store as of Friday, December 11th, many local libraries), plus DRM-Free support for Mobi, RTF, TXT, PDF, etc., an MP3 player, and expandable SD storage. It does not use the typical e-ink screen, instead using an LCD screen that Aluratek describes as “epaper”. Aluratek is generous enough to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Is your skin starting to look like this? Uh oh! The knock on nerds is that we don’t care about our appearance:  our clothes, our hair, our face, whether our socks match, if our pants actually reach our shoetops, and so on.  Speaking as an almost life-long nerd, I have to say that I usually don’t give my skin a single thought (I let my wife Sami help me with the clothing issue–no, really!).  I don’t like dry hands, I don’t want to get skin cancer, and I would like to look as young as possible, sure; but I’m a nerd, you know?  Skin care?  I’m busy reviewing a new iPhone case–who has the time for hand cream?  And what about getting all the greasy kid’s stuff on my keyboard?  Ick! Well, the Skin MD Natural folks think they can help, and without the greasy-keyboard issue.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Another day, another Direct2Drive Holiday Deal! Now in time for Christmas they are back – they are featuring a game a day for now until Christmas! Days #1-7 have featured excellent deals, and it just keeps rolling today! Game #8 is the over-the-top sequel Mercenaries 2: World in Flames. Here is the announcement Tweet: D2D’s 24 Days of Christmas Day 6 deal is here! Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim is 81% OFF – now just $7.50! http://bit.ly/5w5ISJ This special includes the original game released earlier this year for a excellent 50% off – $4.95 rather than $9.95! The game is not tremendous … but at $5 the amount of destructive fun is *well* worth… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My Tuxdroid keeps me company every Wednesday night as I do the Tech Show, and now Tuxdroid has a brand new buddycalled My Desk Friend.  His real name is Pingo, and he will read your mail to you, update you on your friends’ Facebook status, dance around your desktop, as well as read RSS feeds.  Pingo is much smaller than Tuxdroid.  Little Pingo can fit in the palm of your hand, and Pingo has 2 wheels, a Microphone, a speaker, 2 multicolored eyes and sensors to prevent him from rolling off the table. The only problem I have with Pingo is that he only works with Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Mac OS X (10.5 or 10.6).  There is no Linux… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

be.ez: LA robe Netbook has announced a new collection of protective New sleeves. Made from shock absorbing memory foam the sleeves both protect and add “flair” to netbooks. The sleeves come in three different sizes and an assortment of colors. Priced at $19.99 they are available at online retailers such as Amazom.com. For more information visit the be-ez website.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have tried at least 2 different iPod recording solutions since the invention of the dock connector.  The first one was the Belkin Tune Talk.  I loved it and it allowed me to record a podcast away from my computer.  Well it met an untimely demise in a toilet.  Yeah it got flushed accidently.  That’s all I will say about that.   The next one was the Griffin iTalk Pro.  Griffin no longer makes this, but I loved using it as well.  However, a great new challenger has come to challenge Belkin for iPod/iPhone recording microphone superiority.  It is from Blue and is called the Mikey.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

And just when you thought you’d have to wait until January 2010, Google decides to give another Christmas present to us all by releasing Chrome for Mac (beta), Chrome for Linux (beta) and extensions for Chrome for Windows and Linux.  What a nice surprise! According to the Official Google  Mac Blog: 73,804 lines of Mac-specific code and 29 developer builds later, we’re excited to finally release Google Chrome for Mac in beta. We took a hefty dose of goodness from the Windows version to build a fast, polished browser for Mac — with features such as the Omnibox (where you can both search and type in addresses), themes from artists, and most importantly, speed. Try  Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A recent trend in games has been altering the naming structure to try to either dissociate with older games or mask how many games have preceded the release. Recent examples include the indeterminate ‘Wolfenstein’, the third Red Faction game being called Guerrilla, and the removal of he ‘Call of Duty’ from much of the ‘Modern Warfare 2′ advertising. Now we have Risen. Risen is the fourth entry by developer Pyranha Bytes in the classic Gothic game franchise that … what? Huh? Really … are you sure? Hmmm … well apparently Risen is NOT part of the Gothic series. I just wish someone had told me this before I wrote my entire review on the basis of Risen being the fourth Gothic game. Fortunately the issues around naming haven’t done anything to diminish the developers from once again creating an amazing living game world.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We have an official date for the Sony move to ePub… this Friday, December 11th. Going forwards, ALL Sony eBooks will be available only as ePubs, and the proprietary BBeB format will be removed. If you did not opt into the PRS-500 upgrade/trade-in program, be sure to back up your library! Also on Friday, the Sony Reader software is coming to Macs and PCs, so presumably you can read your Sony content on your laptop if e-ink drives you nuts! Finally, Sony is renaming their eBook store the “Reader Store”, to better tie in with their Sony Reader line. What does this mean for eBooks, especially the “Big 3″ –… Continue reading on Gear Diary …