I have to say, I’m absolutely stonkered  by the amount of iPad paraphernalia that’s out there already, and the iPad hasn’t even shipped yet.  Quite a contrast with the iPhone which, when it first came out, hardly seemed to have any cases available.  But I guess no one wants to be caught short this time. So into the mix is added Proporta, which is offering an Aluminum-lined leather case, a leather style protective case, a silicone sole, and other items to use to protect your coveted iPad.  For full info, surf on over to the Proporta site and check them out. Additions to our iPad line up – coming soon Yesterday Proporta released some information Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The 2010 Grammy Awards are in progress right now.  The annual awards recognize the best in the music industry. Steven Colbert, the host and executive producer of the Emmy and Peabody Award-winning series on Comedy Central, “The Colbert Report.” just opened the show and handed out the night’s first award. Instead of the typical award show envelope used to read the nominees and winners Colbert relied on something different. Check out the video below. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s been a problem since the first winter post-iPhone release: How do you use your smartphone with a capacitive screen during freezing cold weather? There’s always your nose, or a quick “yank glove, interact with phone, throw gloves back on, pray there’s no frostbite.” Etre believes they have a different solution with their Etre Touchy Gloves. I’ve been using them for a few days: do they solve the glove dilemma? Read on to find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Red alert, red alert.  Now hear this, now hear this….. The Apple online store is down!  Yes, Apple’s web store is currently down for maintenance.  Now we’ve seen this happen on Sunday before and it has turned out to be nothing more than behind the scenes work.  But with the recent announcement of the iPad perhaps this time it’s something more. Sunday maintenance, iPad pre-order prep. or something else entirely? Stay tuned….. UPDATE: 5:30 PM EST – it’s back up and so far nothing new noticed.  Sigh… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This is an interesting week, as we are once again seeing mixture of high profile releases and the usual January dearth of new games. The big release of the week is the highly anticipated new MMO (massively multiplayer online) game Star Trek Online.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy The Hogshead) Well, it’s time for another State of the eBook. Of course, this week was under the iPad shadow, but-gasp!-there’s other news out there too! Plus, with Apple landing smack in the ebook game, plus the final “Google Books” settlement, it has led to some interesting discussion about the nature of ebook digital rights management and how we, as consumers, can either accept or challenge the status quo. Not to mention the argument between Amazon and Macmillan books! All of these really touch upon many of the issues surrounding ebooks; as their popularity increases, questions about how they should be treated versus their paper siblings become more apparent, and the answers become more controversial. Let’s start with some quick news: -Acer, not to be outdone by Asus, has also announced plans to release an ebook reader this year. -Amazon sold 3 million Kindles so far. -Read an eBook Week is coming this March! -Asus’s DR-950 posed for some glamor shots. -Apple became a bookstore!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Worried about AT&T’s connectivity after the iPad starts gobbling up its already strained network? Yeah, me too… Thanks to my friend, graphic artist Rich Awad for taking the kernel of an idea and putting it into this visual… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Since debuting in 2005, ZAGG’s “invisibleSHIELD” has been a very popular protective skin for the wide range of devices for which it is made.  The invisibleSHIELD’s military grade film offers good protection from scrapes, dings, and scratches without adding a lot of bulk to the device on which it’s used. Building on the success of the invisibleSHIELD, ZAGG recently introduced customizable ZAGGskins.  The ZAGGskin line is a range of wrap-around adhesive skins featuring decorative designs.  The skins are only 0.3 mm thick, but strong.  While there is a range of pre-made designs, including some newly released designs for upcoming Valentine’s Day, we wanted to try ZAGG’s new customizable service, which allows you to upload your own images and to create personal designs by combining pre-made backgrounds and shapes.  When ZAGG offered Gear Diary the chance to test out their new customized ZAGGskins, we sent them a couple of images to use for a ZAGGskin design.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

With Resco updating their latest Resco Explorer version 8.0, it now supports New features in Explorer 2010: Image Upload to Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, Picasa, MySpace and Photobucket — the program is now able to upload image files to the most popular social networks including the largest web image database — Flickr. Thumbnails View Mode — The new view mode displays previews of images. It becomes handy (improves the navigation) while seeking in folders with many image files. Interaction with Resco Photo Manager — The new Explorer can utilize tools and strengths of Resco Photo Manager. If users have both of these programs installed on a device, they will sense that the thumbnail loading Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When we heard that the Nexus One Desktop Dock was finally available, I knew that I would have to order one for home and the office. Read on for some thoughts on the dock’s unique features, as well as comparisons to the BlackBerry 9700 and iPhone docks.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the devices that I most enjoyed seeing demonstrated at CES was the Nokia N900. This pocket computer’s impressive specifications, its solid build, its multitasking capabilities, a web browser that looked like it could take on the iPhone’s, and yes, I’ll admit it — the cool little widgets on its personalized desktops had me intrigued. But what I really wanted was to spend a bit of time getting to know one on my own. My contact at Nokia promised that she would send a review unit, and two days ago “mine” arrived. There was a bit of a FedEx snafu — the N900 was left inside a plastic bag (to protect it from the freezing rain that was falling) and tied to our front gate overnight — but fortunately the contents inside the box were undamaged. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There was a brief glimmer of hope that the iPad might actually have Flash running on it. Now all hope is gone. Initial ads for the iPad showed it appearing to run Flash in the browser. This raised a host of questions. Were the ads merely mockups? Can the iPad actually run Flash (despite the missing Flash plugins when Jobs demoed the device last week)? Is there something else going on here? Well it turns out… There’s no Flash on the iPad and Media Arts Lab, Apple’s advertising agency, is scrambling to tweak the images so they don’t make false advertising claims. That’s a bummer. Unsurprising… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It didn’t come as a surprise to me when, just hours after Steve Jobs announced the iPad, the good folks over at Evernote announced plans to modify the current iPhone and iPod touch app so that it becomes one killer iPad App. In their own words… Evernote is going to support the Apple iPad. Oh Yeah. We’re gonna support the hell out of it. We’re glad to see that the current Evernote iPhone app will run on the iPad without modification, but we’ll be modifying it anyway to optimize the experience on the larger device. Oh how we’ll be modifying it! Expect rapid improvements to our iPhone app which will benefit all of our iPhone, iPod Touch and, now, iPad users in the near future. The blog post goes on to mention support for other tablets as the “Year of the Tablet” unfolds… Ok, so we’re excited by the iPad itself, and by the HP Slate, and the Sony VAIO L series, and the Nvidia Tegra, and by the added light that these and other devices will shine on touch computing in general. I’m looking at some happy engineers right now. But wait, there’s more Evernote news… Continue reading on Gear [...]

(photo courtesy lifehacker) If you’re like me, you probably set up the Mail application on your Mac at first. And it’s a perfectly fine email program, if you want your mail stored locally. I set mine up when I bought my iBook (the last of the G3 models…what a great little computer!), using my comcast email address. Then GMail came along and changed everything. I had always hated web based email, preferring to use Outlook on my PCs and Mail on my Mac. But the GMail interface was so much better than what the desktop options offered, I immediately jumped ship to the web based site and never looked back. Except, of… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The iPad is making a unprecedented change, and instead of using a standard SIM like the iPhone does, they are using a 3FF or MicroSIM card.  This card is half the length of the normal SIM card, and it pretty much guarantees that you won’t be able to grab any old SIM and stick it in your iPad for some 3G goodness. Adam Turner from Hydrapinion says that this is Apple’s and AT&T’s way to keep the iPad under their control when it comes to getting broadband on the go.  Also, you should consider that the frequencies the iPad deals with manage to exclude T-Mobile as well.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …