Judie: As you may recall, I received my Camangi WebStation yesterday afternoon. Other than downloading some of my eReader library to it, I wasn’t able to spend as much time with the tablet as I might have liked before previously made plans drew me away. This morning I was greeted with tweets and links pointing to Michael Smith’s review, where he calls the Camangi a “total fail” because (among other reasons) it isn’t as fast as his first gen iPhone and because it doesn’t browse the internet as quickly as the Hackintosh he likes to couch surf from. Michael has a legitimate point when he says that “the product is called the WEB station, and therefore should be optimized at surfing the web.” And for doing this, the Camangi is okay — with the main caveat being that it is slower than I might like and it is not using a fully powered browser that can “see” embedded flash items such as the radar images on the noaa.gov site, You Tube videos, or the CES slideshow we’ve embedded on Gear Diary in anticipation of Dan’s, Larry’s and my trip next week. It’s an okay browser, but it will never be [...]

One of the first things that people install on their Android phones is some sort of application to kill background applications. In fact, as Carly noted today, Verizon employees suggested she install “Advanced Task Killer” to help stop applications running in the background. Why not use the functionality that’s already built-in to Android for this?… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Several of the Smartphone Experts sites are having an end-of-year sale! All accessories are 10% off at each of their respective stores, with the right site-specific code.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy Mark/Space) Users of Windows Mobile, Blackberry and Palm OS on Macs are probably already familiar with The Missing Sync; it is an essential tool that steps up syncing from the lackluster job iSync and Palm Desktop used to offer, or the nonexistent support if you used Windows Mobile (and Blackberry until recently). A few months ago Mark/Space branched out and started offering The Missing Sync for Android on Macs and PCs, and now they’ve updated it to include support for the Droid and other Android 2.0 devices. Why would you want The Missing Sync, when Android does a great job of cloud based syncing? A few possibilities: -You need to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A few months ago I reviewed Arcade Hockey for the iPhone, and found it well done but with some basic flaws that made it hard to recommend. Since then a couple of things have happened. First off, my kids had a go at two-player mode, and more recently the developers came out with a new version that makes use of the new ‘freemium’ in-game purchase capabilities as well as other things. Since BrainJuice had been kind enough to provide the review code for the original, I went ahead and ‘updated’ to the new version to take a look.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Photo courtesy of Engadget AT&T has been under a barrage of attacks lately from Verizon’s coverage map commercials. They finally fired back with some lawyer action and some commercials of their own. Gizmodo did some field testing to find out who owns the crown for 3G data speeds in the US. Maybe not the best coverage, but in these 12 major cities AT&T is the champ. This isnt enough to make me switch, but hopefully enough to get other carriers to speed things up a bit. The download tests show 6 major cities still run faster on AT&T than anyone else, and all 12 were considerably faster in uploads. The same test were ran from the same hardware numerous times at each site to prove the tests were valid. Hopefully they run more tests throughout the year after all the upgrades on the various networks are complete.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We are all feeling the financial pinch!  Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99. In my weekly search for the next Blue Plate Special, I search through the iTunes rankings and search newly released apps.  I try several apps before deciding on one that is worthy of the Blue Plate tag.  This week, my wife, (who never pays much attention to my weekly search) told me she had an app for me for the Blue Plate Special.  It seems that Totemo has caught the attention of every free moment of her time.  For a week or so she has been fiddling with her iPhone while she stands in the kitchen, while I was shopping for boots, just before closing her eyes in bed for the night.  She told me the game has her hooked!  In fact, she has worked her way to level 76. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the most frequently used applications on my BlackBerry is BerryWeather.  I use it to check the local weather forecast for the entire week, view animated radar  and to check the forecasts of anywhere I’ll be traveling so that I’m always prepared.  The application is usually  $9.95, but you can get it for 50% off ($4.97) now through January 1st. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Got a New Year’s party planned?  Still need supplies?  Maybe along the way, you have one or two gifts to exchange (or, cough, return).  Make it easy on yourself and use a location-based service application like Poynt to pull up the businesses closest to where you are right now — and take care of it in one trip. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Another Christmas has come and gone.  It’s always “too quick.”  By the time you decorate the tree, it’s already time to take it down.  You spend months searching for the “right” gifts and within minutes the wrapping paper is strewn all over the floor and those gifts are sitting piled up in the corner.  Even though it’s now time to start thinking of the new year ahead, it’s nice to try and hold onto the Christmas spirit just a little longer. If you have a smartphone you can use Slacker Radio to do just that. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image Credits: Photo of Miles Davis & John Coltrane by Don Hunstein. (Source: Jazz.com) I have been a lover / student of music for decades and have learned any things, including: music refuses to be confined to didactic ‘genres’ that people want to use as labels, and music also refuses to align itself conveniently to the calendar – making things like the ‘Top 100 Songs of the Decade’ completely useless. Yet for some wonderful reason, we can still point to years that have major significance in music history – we see the birth of bebop coinciding with the pinnacle of the big band era; the mid-50′s had loads of classics in multiple genres; 1964 is famous for the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and John Coltrane among others; 1969 was the zeitgeist of that generation and swept in both the popular and jazz genres, and there are so many more since then. But 50 years ago, in 1959, we saw the release of 5 recordings in the Jazz music genre that have torn through all of recorded music in one way or another since. So as 2009 comes to a close, let’s take a moment to celebrate the Golden Anniversary of these [...]

image courtesy of goodfinancialcents.com We hope that you enjoyed the Christmas holiday surrounded by family, friends and loved ones.  Maybe you gave some new toys or received some new gear for yourself?  Even if you’ve been just a bit too busy preparing for the holiday to check in and see what we’ve been up to, we have you covered. Perhaps you didn’t spot many of last week’s big contest winners.  One of the great features of Gear Diary has been the frequent products and applications that readers can win just by commenting and actively participating in the site.  Some readers will have a big head start Getting Organized for 2010 with the help of Evernote, WebIS’ Pocket Informant and Appigo’s ToDo and Toodledo.  Others won the Monthly Software Giveaway for Windows Mobile, iPhone and BlackBerry.  One lucky reader — thehotrod — won a ton of goodies the day after Christmas from the Holiday Giveaway.  Don’t think just because the year’s ending that you won’t have more chances to win yourself So, as we begin to inch closer towards the end of 2009 just sit back, relax and let’s take a quick look back at just a few more highlights from [...]

Dan and I have both told you about Auto Stitch on a few occasions.  It’s one of our favorite photography applications for the iPhone OS. Cloud Burst Research, the developers of Auto Stitch, recently announced the release of version 2.0 of their super-cool panoramic making application. The new version of Auto Stitch allows a user to choose their desired resolution for stitching and the final maximum image size. On the iPhone 3GS, the user can select a maximum final image size of up to 20 mega-pixels, which will be achieved when stitching 10 or more overlapping images. Due to internal memory restrictions, the maximum resolution on the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I wasn’t going to write a post about my experience with shipper DHL yesterday. Yes, although they told me on the phone twice that my Camangi WebStation was on the way it never came. Yes, I had to look on while Judie unboxed hers. I had to listen to her “ooh and ahhh”, all the time thinking that mine was on the way any second when, in fact, it wasn’t. Yes, my exchanges with their customer reps left much to be desired. But still, I had no plans to write a post about my experience. Elana just got off the phone with DHL… and now…. now I’m writing this post. Seriously, I think I’m living in the twilight zone. Here’s the timetable. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Photo courtesy of myadbox News from Berlin reports that 28-year-old Encryption expert Karsten Nohl was able to decipher the 21-year-old GSM algorithm that encrypts about 3.5 billion cell phones. The effects about 299 million customers alone in the US. Nohl presented his case at the Chaos Communication Congress to educate the community and raise security awareness. Some say his exploits are dangerous and illegal while others in the community feel it was well warranted. The current algorithm is called A5/1 and is using a 64-bit key. Nohl and about 24 other people worked to generate the correct random combinations to produce a 2TB code… Continue reading on Gear Diary …