Simplify Music was one of the best apps back when iPhone 2.0 launched and permitted 3rd Party apps. It allowed you to access the music on your home computer from your iPhone from anywhere so long as you had an active data connection. Better still, it allowed you to grant permission to up to 30 friends so that THEY could access YOUR music and YOU could access THEIRS. That mean my 70GB of music suddenly became well over 150GB once I added Wayne, Larry, Travis and more to my account. Unlimited music thanks to sharing with friends and it was all LEGAL. Well those days are gone. A quick visit over to the Simplify Media Web site displayed a post entitled An Important Announcement. “Uh Oh” I thought… and… Uh Oh was right. Simplify is no more… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If there’s one thing every smartphone user needs, it’s a way to easily manage the flood of constantly changing appointments, to-do’s, reminders and notes.  These days it’s a juggling act just to try and remember what to do when, much less try and quickly add or change all of those moving target tasks you’ve got to keep up with on a regular basis. That’s where Electric Pocket’s BugMe! application comes in.  Adrian’s original review of BugMe! showed just how useful it was to have one app that let you set alarms to notes, categorize them as ‘urgent’ or ‘done’ and quickly find exactly what you’re looking for using keywords. Now the company has enhanced BugMe! with new features that include even more reminder alerts (so you can stay on top of your tasks even if you need to quickly ‘snooze’ them if you can’t get to it that very second), a handy daily email summary of what you need to do, and an auto-backup of all your notes to your memory card! But wait, there’s more!  Read on to see if BugMe! is what you need to get all of those to-do’s checked off to done.… Continue reading on Gear Diary [...]

Mobile travel applications let you select and track flights, book hotels and effortlessly manage all of those last-minute changes that will inevitably occur your trip.   The Gear Diary team are huge fans of travel apps like TripIt, but that’s not the only game in town. If you are using a Symbian smartphone, you may prefer Psiloc’s World Traveler that features the  “HotelZon” plugin that lets you search and book hotel rooms in real time from a selection of more than 90,000 hotels worldwide.  That’s in addition to their free currency converters, world clocks for managing multiple timezones, weather and premium plugins for additional flight assistance.  Best of all, World Traveler is optimized specifically for your Symbian phone.   Read on to see even more features.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While Judie, Larry and I were ordering our iPads earlier today, Carly was watching Amazon.com. She was curious what, if anything, Amazon might do in response to the iPad’s pre-order going live. This was especially the case since it turns out the iPad does something awesome for eBooks. Turn it from portrait to landscape and… bam… you get two facing pages- just like the “dead tree edition”. Carly’s comment, “I sure hope this puts a fire under Amazon for the next Kindle.” Well that got me thinking. I did some research and… discovered that Amazon.com got an order shortly after the iPad went online from none other than the big guy himself. For a peek into what might be going on at Amazon.com’s head office check out this exclusive picture… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The iTunes App Store is filled with GPS applications.  Destinator 9 from Intrinsyc is the latest addition to the category. Destinator has been running on a variety of other mobile devices and GPS units for a while now and it’s achieved a large following. The iPhone version of the application brings a rich, featured filled GPS client complete with real time traffic updates, on-board maps, voice guided directions, extended POIs and more. I recently downloaded the free trial of Destinator 9 from the App Store and took it out on the road for a drive. Here are my thoughts. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Update: This giveaway is now closed and timtim is the winner. Thank you for entering, and please keep an eye out for future Gear Diary giveaways! I was sent a Toshiba 640GB Portable Hard Drive in “Rocket Red” to review, but since this one will also be given away, I was hesitant to use and abuse it like I might a memory device I would be keeping. Therefore, in return for this micro-review, you get a chance to win a pocket-size time capsule just waiting to be filled with your important documents and digital memories.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome to this week’s “State of the ebook”. As usual, we’re diving in with news, then looking at a few major stories that have been floating around the ebook world. Apparently the eInk/Android mashup is becoming very attractive these days, as on the heels of the Entourage Edge and the Alex Reader we have yet ANOTHER similar device. This one is the 1Cross Tech MIDHybrid, and it has an LCD screen with Android and a QWERTY on one side, and an eInk on the other. Sort of like the cousin of the Entourage Edge. There’s no info on pricing, but it’s so darn cute!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy engadget) Samsung has announced their E60 ebook reader, a basic 6 inch eInk device with a touchscreen and wifi…and it will be tied into the Barnes and Noble ecosystem. Honestly, I don’t entirely understand how this is a win for B&N or Samsung. The E60 is stuck living in the shadow of the nook, and Barnes and Noble ends up confusing their brand further. In my opinion, Samsung would have benefited more from tying in with a store like Kobo Books. Kobo has made it their philosophy that they do not want to tie down to one reader, but be a content provider to all kinds of devices. Partnering with B&N means playing second fiddle to the nook constantly. Talk Barnes and Noble and ebooks, and everyone knows nook first and foremost. While it’s great to get the content boost from a large store, there are other dance partners out there. Plus, B&N says they’ll be opening their DRM up to all Adobe-compatible devices, so eventually that compatibility is not going to be anything special. And the pricing is a bit high for what you get. For $299, you get a touchscreen enabled reader with wifi, so you [...]

The first iPad commercial aired during the Academy Awards. My guess is that reactions were pretty predictable. For those of us who are excited about the device the ad only made us want to push the clock forward a few weeks. Those who are less excited about the device saw a fairly typical Apple commercial- sleek, well done but, at the end of the day, not all that interesting. We all know the Apple iPad went on sale this morning. We know that the WiFi only model will be available on April 3rd and the 3G model will come about a month later. We know that the device starts at a pretty… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today is, of course, Apple iPad day. Orders are in and now we wait. In the meantime we have some additional information available about the data plan and how it will work. The information is such that it will change my decision on which plan to get when the iPad 3G ships, at least initially. You see, I always assumed that I would sign up for the unlimited plan but the flexibility of the setup, and the ability to easily monitor my data usage, has me rethinking things.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We all talk about how great it is to carry an electronic book reader. It saves space in bags, gives you new books at your fingertips, and tends to be lighter and more ergonomic than a regular book. I can’t think of a group who need to pack light and have new content to entertain themselves more than soldiers stationed overseas, and now you can help outfit soldiers with Kindles! Len Edgerly is spearheading a donation campaign he calls “Kindles for Kandahar”; he wants to raise funds via PayPal to outfit as many soldiers as possible with Kindle 2s. It started after M-Edge outfitted a soldier with a K2 and accessories; the hope is that M-Edge will donate accessories for each Kindle purchased for soldiers. From Len Edgerly’s site:… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here’s an accessory whose timing is just right. With spring on the way the days will be longer and the sun will be stronger. It’s the perfect time to start charging your iPhone or iPod touch with the power of the sun and that’s just what Novothink’s Solar Surge will do. The Solar Surge is World’s only Apple-certified solar charger carrying case doubles battery life using cutting-edge solar panel technology to power up directly from the sun. (It) combines a powerful, state-of-the art solar panel with a lithium ion battery into a comfortable, soft touch, non-slip finish case to provide energy conscious consumers with the ultimate protective battery backup solution for every day use. The Surge provides 30 minutes of talk time on a 3G network or 60 minutes on 2G after 2 hours of sunlight. The Novothink Solar Surge is available now in Black and White from Novothink.com at an MSRP of $79.95 for iPhone 3G/3G S and $69.95 for iPod Touch(2nd Gen). The full press release follows.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Our GearSponsor has had some awesome deals on Lenovo computers lately and today they are kicking it up a notch. Instead of offering just one Lenovo deal they have a bunch and many will save you up to 15% thanks to a special eCoupon Code. Which Lenovo products can you save on? Well you can get 15% off select ThinkPad laptops, 15% off most IdeaPad laptops and G-series laptops and 15% off ThinkPad X200 Tablet/W700. The savings are a bit less on other items but you’ll still get 5% off most ThinkPads (including X100e/Edge) and 10% off ThinkPad SL-Series. To get this deal visit… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you bought a Moto Backflip, you probably noticed the odd use of Yahoo Search over Google, and the incredible amount of AT&T bloatware included on the device. Unfortunately, short of rooting it there’s not much you can do about either of those, but AT&T did something far worse to the Backflip that you WILL want to change. Every other Android phone offers an option to install apps from outside the marketplace. Sometimes it is a beta (like the Swype keyboard beta), other times it is things like PDANet, a tethering utility, that isn’t sold through the marketplace. If you own a Backflip, AT&T completely removed this option. Many sites have belabored the “Android is supposed to be OPEN” sentiment, and I won’t continue it here. But I will share this tip, care of Android Central.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of V-MODA There’s some old saying the goes along the lines of “you’re only as good as the people around you.”  I feel the same way towards the relationship between my iPod or my iPhone and the headphones I use with each.  I may have the largest, most comprehensive music collection on the planet loaded on each of them but unless I’ve chosen a pair of headphones that allow me to listen to the music in decent quality what good is it? I’ve carried a pair of V-MODA Vibe Duo headphones religiously for the past year or so.  They have a regular place in my left pant pocket not matter what I’m doing.  I find their feel and sound quality to be excellent and Dan agreed when I lent them to him during CES this year. When Judie was contacted by V-MODA and subsequently reached out to the Gear Diary team to see if anyone was interested in reviewing their newest offering, the Remix, I jumped at the chance. The Remix combines super quality audio performance along with the one thing that’s missing from my daily drivers (the Vibe Duo.)  A three-button remote, which allows users hands-free access [...]