There’s a saying in the restaurant business that goes something like, “if you lose one customer you’ve actually lost ten.”  You see, if just one of your guests has a bad experience at your establishment chances are they’re going straight home to tell ten of their friends about their experience and the result being the ten friends avoiding your restaurant too. Any chef or restaurateur knows the restaurant business in not a touchy-feely, one.  It’s cut-throat, frenetic and often times downright stressful. It seems the power of social media having a greater impact on the restaurant scene in New York City, now more than ever before. It all started last week during the blizzard which pounded the East Coast.  It seems the chef owner of a restaurant in the East Village, Joe Dobias, tweeted that his deliveries from upstate purveyors had arrived, but not fish from a local supplier.  This wasn’t Chef Dobia’s first use of Twitter either.  He’s known for voicing his complaints over the internet. The chef didn’t post the supplier’s name, but the next morning, Robert DeMasco of Pierless Fish — who also delivers to restaurants like Daniel and Esca — called Mr. Dobias to tell him [...]

A while back I told you about the Headblade, which is a razor that assists those of use who choose to keep our heads completely clean of hair either by choice or not. The Rolling Razor is another celebrity endorsed razor, but this one’s meant for both men and women and is meant to be used anywhere on your body, not just the head.  The sleek-looking razor slips over your finger tips and has two blades allowing you to move it in any direction while shaving. The razor features an “innovative handle and unique Dual Rounded Cartridge System, for the closest and fastest possible multi-directional shave.  Access even… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today on the MSDN Blog Microsoft announced that they have added the ability to integrate your LinkedIn connections and networks with your Outlook setup, whether it is corporate or personal. In theory this will allow you to streamline how you interact with both systems … but what about in practice?… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I had an unusual experience yesterday. A friend and colleague IMed me using Google Talk. His wife׳s computer was on the fritz (I told him to get her a Mac!). We trouble-shot the issue for a while. So what was so unusual about this? Until recently he would have picked up the phone and called me but instead, he IMed. Moreover, we never actually talked. The entire “conversation” was through chat. Sure picking up the phone and speaking would be more personal but this was far more.. convenient. For better or for worse IM has replaced voices calls in so many aspects of my work and my life. When Elana and I want to leave messages for one another we either email or IM. No more voicemail tag for us. And now that she has a BlackBerry she and her best friend tend to IM throughout the day. When my assistant wants to get a message to me she rarely tries to “reach out and touch someone” anymore. Nope. Email or IM works better because she can get the message to me clearly regardless of whether or not I can speak at that moment. And I’m not alone. On so [...]

Lenovo has certainly broken free from its strictly business-looking designs. The IdeaPad S10-3t is one example of their new direction. A 10″ Multi-touch capacitive tablet, this netbook comes in either “Cosmic White” or “Cosmic Black”. It is a nice-looking design that takes netbooks to a new level. The “net-tablet” sports either an Intel Atom N450, 160GB Hard Drive, Windows 7, 802.11n WiFi and 1GB of RAM. Lenovo also offers a beefed up model that has a 1.83GHz Atom N470 CPU, 2GB memory, 250GB Hard Drive and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. The Lenovo IdeaPad S10-3t has an MSRP of $599.00 but our GearSponsor found it for… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Our February 2010 Monthly Software Giveaway has recently ended. I would like to thank all our Gear Diary readers out there for participating. Don’t be disappointed if you didn’t win this round because there are more goodies to come every month! Here are the winners for each category: Windows Mobile – lamjv, uzziah0, melvynadam iPhone/iPod Touch – andreasr2d2, breley, ryanwelch Winners will be receiving a copy of Pocket Informant courtesy of WebIS. Congratulations to our winners! P/S: Winners have been notified through email. Please check your spam mails if you have not received anything. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad, he also mentioned that iBooks would be using ePUB. There was a brief ray of hope among the eBook world…maybe, just maybe, the majority of ebooksellers would rally around a single format. Unfortunately, it looks like that was a false hope. Teleread is reporting via the LA Times that Apple will be using their Fairplay DRM for iBooks. This will be the 3rd variant of ePUB DRM: Adobe, Fairplay, and Barnes and Noble. And of course, Amazon has their own DRM and ebook format. So what does this mean for eBook fans? We’re seeing a shattered landscape, one where there is no inter-compatibility, and no easy way to transport your library from device to device.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Flickr MWC is in full swing and all the big companies are pulling out the stops on the new phones. None of this is really any surprise until I saw the assortment on “mini” phones starting to stack up. I first though to myself who wants a mini phone? Super huge capacitive screens are what we are screaming for. I have lots of questions still about why these are even being made but from what we see so far, maybe bigger isn’t always better. Of course some are not really mini at all.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Four or five years ago my kids got my wife and I involved watching American Idol from the very beginning of the season, since it was something they discussed with their friends. In various articles I’ve been pretty clear that my musical tastes range pretty far from the popular realm, but family time trumps all for me. On a now defunct site I started writing a series called ‘Idol Thoughts’, where I would blog weekly about the show, later carrying it on to my own personal blog and GamerDad’s blog where it was popular with many other parents who were watching the show with their kids. But as we are now six weeks into the season, and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

[ image courtesy of Slacker Radio ] The time has come for a few lucky folks to claim their prize.  To celebrate Valentine’s Day we ran a Giveaway for some Slacker Plus Radio subscriptions.  If you commented on the post by 11:59pm CST last night, you were eligible to be randomly selected to win.   We had two 12-month subscriptions, and three 3-month subscriptions up for grabs. Without further adieu, here are the winners… 12-Month Slacker Radio Plus Subscription: horizons lekss21 Three-Month Mark Vlastelica Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the big disappointments when I first made the move to Mac, was the fact that Nuance’s Dragon NaturallySpeaking was not available unless I ran a virtual Windows PC on it. There was a voice recognition solution available, MacSpeech iListen, but it was rather poor substitute. A short time later MacSpeech released a new product, MacSpeech Dictate. It used the same voice to text engine as Dragon and as a result was far more accurate. A year later they released version 1.5, and it was even better; I no longer missed using Dragon. Then last week I posted a first look at MacSpeech Scribe. It too used Nuance’s voice-to-text engine in order to work its magic. In fact, it seems like Nuance’s technology is everywhere. Then they released Dragon Dictation for iPhone, powered the new iPhone app Siri, and recently bought Jott and SpinVox. It is for all thes reasons that I wasn’t surprised to hear that…… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you are familiar with the PC RPG genre and think of games from Eastern European developers from early in the last decade, you will likely come up with thoughts of bug-ridden releases with loads of patches, poor translations, terrible dialogue, and overall sloppy games. Things have come a long way to the point of excellent games such as The Witcher and Drakensang and Divinity II, but it is still worth playing many of the earlier games because what they lack in polish they often make up for in original ideas and gameplay. Of course, sometimes they are junk. So which path will lead us to Evil Islands? Read on and find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Are you a fan of high-speed online racing games? If so, consider signing up at GameHi and trying to get in on the upcoming closed beta of their TransPee ‘Extreme Online Racing Game’. GameHi is a Korean developer with a load of successful online multiplayer games such as Sudden Attack and Metal Rage in their catalog, and are now ready to enter the racing genre! How do you get a spot in the beta? Read on and find out!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We live in a rather unusual house architecturally speaking. Built using post-and-beam construction, it may not look like a barn but it is built in the same manner. This means there are no joists or other type of space between one level and the next. The ceiling of the downstairs rooms is the floor of the upstairs rooms. Between one floor and another are just 6 inch thick boards. And every 8 feet there is a solid beam spanning the depth of the house. We love the house and its unusual look and feel. But during renovation it has posed numerous challenges. You see, you cannot drill through the beams lest you undermine the very structure of the house. And there is no crawlspace between the floors for running wires and pipes. As a result, when we wanted to redo the master bathroom and move the shower to a different side of the room there was nowhere to run the pipes. (If the house were built using standard practices the pipes would simply be run in a crawl space between the floors but that isn’t an option.) The result was that we created a false floor to the bathroom that [...]

A number of weeks ago I wrote about Judie’s and my ongoing frustration with Google Checkout. To make a long story short, we had purchased Nexus One Google phones while we were in Las Vegas back in January. Due to a delay in shipping, the phones were to arrive after we had already departed. We made arrangements with FedEx to have the phones rejected and sent directly back to Google and we ask for a credit immediately. Weeks went by and no refund was in the offing. In the meantime, when I got home from my travels I ordered a Nexus One again and had it delivered to my home. I used it for two weeks and ultimately decided to return to my iPhone for time. I paid the reboxing fee and sent it back. Weeks went by and we did not hear about any of the returns. The company was quick to charge our credit cards was rather slow in responding the money for the phones that had been returned. Numerous e-mails back and forth took place. Each time we sent e-mails directly and then, days later got form letters back. All of them were signed “Google Team”. The [...]