Photo courtesy of unwired The worst part about getting new technology is the wait for it to be released. Well our friends at Qualcomm wanted to rain in your Nexus One parade by letting us know that a new single core 1.3GHz, a dual core 1GHz , and a dual 1.5GHz CPU versions were in the works. The best part is that the next version (1.3GHz) may be in devices by the end of this year. Luis Peneda dropped this information down to the Twitter community yesterday. The current Snapdragon processor is a mobile beast powering HTC’s Nexus One, HD2, Acer’s Liquid and the Toshiba TG01 smart or “super” phones. There are some other… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There are already some cool music apps on the iTunes App Store, and now finally we get a way to use them in a more musical way courtesy of USB accessory maker Ion, according to an article at The Register.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My wife loves to grab SmartOnes meals to bring for lunch at work, and that choice is at least partially motivated by the desire to have a portion controlled meal with well known amounts of calories and fat. Likewise, AppleBee’s Weight Watchers meals and the ‘healthy choice’ meals at many restaurants are favored by those looking to control their caloric input since they typically provide full nutritional information. A new study, however, suggests that many of those numbers are inaccurate – and some by a considerable amount.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As the automotive industry prepares for the 2010 North American International Auto Show I thought I would lead my ‘teen’ reviews with the vehicle that garnered truck of the year honors, the 2010 Ram Heavy Duty. Notice I did not say “Dodge Ram” as the vehicle brand. Chrysler has chosen to spin its truck division apart from the Dodge world and simply call it “Ram.”… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Gear Diary is no stranger to the ioSafe hard drive.  We tested the fire proof and water proof, original ioSafe drive by burning it up in the back of a car and then dousing it with several thousand gallons of water straight from a fire hose. While at CES 2010 ioSafe took the Gear Diary team to a special, top secret location, deep in the desert (okay, it was really three miles south of the strip) where they demoed their newest release, the all new ioSafe SSD drive. The new drive is not only water and fire proof like its little brother, but now it’s even crush proof. Check out the video below to see how the drive stacked up against everything ioSafe… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

[image from CNN via 3M] 3M is showing off their 22-inch, HD and multi-touch enabled LCD display at CES this week.  The M2256PW is getting a lot of attention, and is already being proclaimed one of 2010′s top 10 coolest gadgets by CNNMoney.  The device will be able to utilize all ten fingers for touch manipulation and may further push the adoption of touch interface technology into new markets. The M2256PW is aimed at higher end design and interactive applications like engineering and medicine…But considering how much data this screen can handle, and how hot touch computing will be in 2010, and with the coming Apple tablet computer, consumers will see more and more Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Vitamin Water is known for its amusing label descriptions and drink titles, but this taking it to a whole new level. Vitamin Water has announced “Connect” water branded with Facebook logos! Now you can do more than just share your life with your friends, you can share drinks too! This could be quite the moneymaker, with a whole line around social networking. I have a few more suggestions for the Vitamin Water crew:… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I admit it – I can be cheap sometimes. As such, I’ve used pricegrabber.com for years to compare prices on things – especially technology-based products.  Now it seems that it’s made its way directly to the iPhone in the form of the PriceGrabber App for iPhone. The folks at PriceGrabber recognized that many people now use their cell phone as a resource to access the web, researching pricing and other information about products they may be interested in. So now with this new application you have access to the information on PriceGrabber.com with a nice application front-end.   You can see pricing comparisons, reviews, and even click through to purchase products from online retailer’s sites. PriceGrabber.com has… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Since 2006 environmental activist organization Greenpeace has ranked electronics makers based on the use of harmful chemicals and dangerous emissions. Back when the review started Apple scored a 2.7 out of 10, but this year scores a 5.1, which is the 5th highest score. However, because Apple works across so many electronics product types it was ranked highest overall. Greenpeace noted that Apple “is leading the way on eliminating toxic PVC and BFRs from all it’s new products with the new iMac and MacBook being the first PC’s completely free of PVC and BFR.” Read on for more information.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have seen a lot of new and exciting things during my time at CES 2010 so far but no company has impressed me more with their 2010 line up of new products than Case-Mate. The accessory maker has hit some serious home runs with their new product line up and Andrew from Case-Mate was kind enough to walk me through some of them at the Case-Mate booth right on the CES 2010 show floor. It looks like others agree too as I’ve just learned that iLounge has awarded the new Case-Mate “Make My Case” program with their Best of Show. Watch the video below to see what’s coming and head to the Case-Mate web site to learn more… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Photo courtesy of Slashgear Motorola brings a whole new lineup to CES with some new phones and accessories. Their biggest announcement comes to us as the Motorola Backflip with MOTOBLUR. This new Multimedia powerhouse brings all the latest features in an Android smartphone with the addition of the MOTOBLUR content delivery service. MOTOBLUR organizes all your favorite friends, feeds and messages and streams them to live widgets for immediate reply, so you can focus more on the information thats coming rather than who is sending it. It only takes a few simple clicks to update your status on your favorite social media site right from “happenings” widget on your homescreen. More after the break.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Readdle has now released version 2.0 of ReaddleDocs.  At it’s core, ReaddleDocs is basically a file manager, document reader, and an attachment viewer for the iPhone.   Readdle says this new version offers more than 100 new features. The new PDF viewer in version 2.,0 offers text reflows and embedded links (and supports password protected PDF files) and allows for large PDF files. ReaddleDocs 2.0 allows you to read password protected PDF files and even ZIP archives. ReaddleDocs continues to support features like iDisk connectivity (and WebDAV in general), reading MS Word/Excel/PowerPoint files.   It also reads TxT, FB2, RTF, and HTML files. ReaddleDocs 2.0 is available from the AppStore for $4.99… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

PhoneArena has gotten a hold of what certainly appears to be part of Sprint’s 2010 device roadmap.  While completely unofficial, the lineup looks to bring an HTC WiMAX phone currently listed under the code A9292, the BlackBerry 9650 Tour2 and quite a few LG phones — including at least one running Android.  There’s also a few Samsung and Sanyos thrown into the mix. Besides this HTC WiMAX device, the most interesting finds are a new Palm device showing up in Sprint’s inventory under a C40 listing (could this be an upgraded Pre, Pixi or a brand new edition to the webOS family?), and a Motorola device.  Since Moto has indicated they won’t be Continue reading on Gear Diary …

[image courtesy of PhillyShipping] This morning I got an email regarding travel changes for any flights from Canada into the U.S. stating that “Transport Canada, a department of the Canadian Government, has implemented a ban on carry-on baggage.”  What-the-WHAAAAAT? Transport Canada said Monday that passengers may only carry medical devices, small purses, cameras, laptop computers, canes, walkers, diaper bags, musical instruments and bags containing ”life-sustaining items.” Evidently, I totally missed that December 28th announcement that popped up on those really obscure non-tech related sites that some folks read, like the NY Times .  No official word on whether your BlackBerry… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Otterbox, makers of tough as nails type case for various wireless devices announced their latest case last night during one of the CES 2010 events. The new case, called the Tandem series, will initially launch for the Palm Pre device with other models to follow. The two piece case features polycarbonate pieces that have been reinforced to provide shock and impact protection.  The Palm Pre version slides open and closed effortlessly allowing you to use the keyboard without removing the case. So how does the Tandem Series work? The first shell attaches to the front of the smartphone and the second shell attaches Continue reading on Gear Diary …