Image courtesy MyShopify Sure, Conan O’Brien has made a few jokes here and there about the “Tonight Show” controversy. And certainly NBC haven’t managed to keep their mouths shut about their perspective on the whole thing. But nothing beats Conan’s listing on Craigslist…proving (in addition to his amazing press release) that nothing can be funnier or more pointed than the written word. image courtesy TechCrunch Apparently he’s holding out for Coldplay tickets or best offer. I think he might be better off waiting for American Idol tickets… And if you want an “I’m with Coco” T-Shirt, head here to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

You might want to sit down for this one! An eagle eyed poster at the Brighthand Forums noticed a news item at Tam’s Blog that was fairly unusual. Aceeca, a company that makes barcode scanners, announced a few new devices for 2010…including two Palm OS based ones. Most shocking of all, they’re promising one will be a plain Palm OS Garnet PDA! For reference, the last non-smartphones released with Palm OS 5.0 were the Palm TX and Z22 in October 2005. And if the terminology is confusing you, remember that upon acquiring Palm OS, Access renamed it Garnet OS.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I currently have 100 Farmville requests sitting in my Facebook. Am I playing the game? Sort of, because I joined to help out a friend who needed another neighbor. But then all of my other friends who are playing realized I was on there and started sending me invites. It’s an avalanche of wannabee Farmers! I’ll admit to playing FarmTown (a similar game) on Facebook for about a month — but then I burned out and swore never to do it again. And I haven’t. That’s why I laughed so hard when I saw this video today … Are you playing Farmville? If so, why? And… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Flickr Video I’m getting married in October. While I’m excited, I didn’t really think through all the details, including things like flower arrangements. Yet we have a meeting on Monday with two florists to decide what kinds of flowers, colors, etc. I’m thrilled. [In case the internet didn't make it really clear, that was sarcasm.] But when I saw this story on Engadget, I immediately emailed my fiancee and begged for us to include this in our wedding. (FYI, I was told very firmly, “Absolutely not. I would kill you, then your mother would kill you.”)… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Anyone remember the old Crazy Eddie commercials?  He was the guy slashing prices that were “insane”? Well, it looks like AT&T and Verizon Wireless are becoming “crazy” too.  They just announced that both services will be slashing their voice and data plans, to compete more effectively in today’s market. Verizon Wireless announced that starting Monday, they would charge $70/month for an unlimited monthly calling plan.  Yep, only $70 down from the $100 they have been charging.  This brings down the combo voice/data plan that smartphones like the Droid require down from $130 to $100.  Not too shabby. But, not to be outdone, AT&T announced the same deal.  $70/month for unlimited monthly calling and $100 for… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy of Candy Direct) This week I’ve seen two different articles covering similar scammy behavior; the repackaging of written works as though they were written/created by someone else. First, Engadget reported on “apps” in the App Store that are just wrappers for RSS feeds.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It was an interesting choice for Bioware to abandon the Dungeons and Dragons license and create their own rule system for Dragon Age, but now they are turning the tables and have licensed their gaming system to Green Ronin to develop a tabletop game. The game system follows typical standards by having a low level adventure coming first, followed later by further adventures eventually taking the player to level 20. DAGR was developed around Green Ronin’s in-house system, AGE (Adventure Gaming Engine). Yet, while DAGR fortunately holds true to the Dragon Age setting, it has avoided the obvious pit-trap of following Dragon Age the computer game too closely. There are similarities in some spells and abilities, but you Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s funny, but it was just the other day that I was thinking to myself, “Self, I wonder if anyone has put out a solar-powered iPhone charger?”  This wasn’t some West Coast, hippy-groovy, let’s eat tofu and wear hemp-cloth shirts, green world kind of thought.  No, this was a selfish, “How the heck do I recharge this damn thing when there ain’t no plugs around?” kind of thought. Well, obviously some folks at USBfever have been thinking along the same lines, because they have indeed come up with a solar power pack for the iPhone.  According to the folks at USBfever, “This portable charger can recharge your iPhone to 100% about one and half times when the this powerpack is fully charged!”  For a gadget that contains no batteries, recharges by sunbathing, and doesn’t look to be a whole lot bulkier than battery-powered rechargers, it seems like a decent buy at the MSRP of $54.99. So if you’re a selfish technogypsy like me, or if you’re a hippy-groovy tree-hugging environmentalist who nontheless needs his or her gear recharged on the go, or even if you don’t care either way but are just sick of dealing with double-A Duracels, surf over [...]

Photo courtesy of cufflinks.com Whether your a CEO for a fortune 500 company, a Secret Agent, or just an employee at the Buy More, nothing says classy like a pair of custom cufflinks. Cufflinks.com has almost any custom cufflink you can imagine. They have pretty sweet Tech category with some great styles for the tech nerd business guy in your household. There is a huge offering for the die hard Star Trek fan in the house along with some other gadget related models. Today we got word that Monday they will be releasing a new PDA cufflink design that will surely let everyone know where your loyalty lies. If you look really close, you can almost see… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(Photo courtesy Teleread) Earlier in the week I ranted about my frustration with the lack of commercial ebookstores on Android. Chief among my frustrations was a lack of ePUB readers that could handle DRM, the one complaint that overlapped with the otherwise better stocked iPhone. Now the iPhone has gone and beaten Android on all ebook fronts, as txtr’s new app reads ePUBs with Adobe Digital Rights Management. Why does ePUB matter, specifically the kind linked to an AdobeID? Because it is fast becoming the dominant format for any non-Kindle ebooks. Barnes and Noble quietly switched to ePUB about a month ago (though they are using a more advanced form of ePUB DRM, currently… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Technology is awesome… when it works. When it doesn’t it is nothing short of infuriating. That’s where my/our friend Patrick over at Just Another iPhone Blog is dealing with right now. Patrick relies on one of the larger data centers to host his site. He also has years of experience on the technology side of things. Despite this even he isn’t immune from site issues and at the mercy of others during the long journey to reestablishing full service when issues arise. And so it is that Patrick e-mailed Judie and me a short time ago asking us to let all of you know that his site is undergoing a series of outages. Word from the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

SwitchEasy has quickly become my favorite manufacturers of cases for the iPhone 3G/3GS. They’re super stylish designs fit the phone as well as any case on the market and always come with that little box of goodies that switch easy includes in every case. The SwitchEasy Neo, for iPhone, was one of the first cases I ever reviewed on my YouTube channel. Admittedly I wasn’t a huge fan of it but since then I’ve learned from my mistakes and now consider Switch Easy one of the premier case companies. The Torrent case is one of SwitchEasy’s newest offerings. Born from the same lines as the original Neo, the Torrent features a hybrid design that not only feels great in the hand but protects the phone as well. While at CES 2010 SwitchEasy presented me with a few review samples of the torrent to review read on to hear my thoughts on this case.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While at CES, Dan and I had an opportunity to meet with Kensington for a look at some of their new products. A few of the items launched may seem pretty basic at first glance, but all are intended bring a level of convenience that might otherwise be missing. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I am going to wrap a pair of vehicles into this Grinding Gears entry. As we head down the 2010 highway I need to do a bit of housekeeping left over from the last decade. This time around I offer a coupe from across the Atlantic and a hybrid from across the Pacific.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Photo illustration: Jeff Mangiat, photos, Getty Images (2), Associated Press (cheerleader), NFL (replay) Have you ever watched a football game and felt like there was a whole lot of everything else but not much actual, y’know … football? Well, you were not wrong. According to an article at the Wall Street Journal, the average football game broadcast lasts 3 hours yet contains only 11 minutes of actual live football action. The study involved a frame-by-frame tear-down of several broadcast games and showed that even replays got more time than live action.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …