(underlying image courtesy Haunted Ventures) Ever since the Droid landed at Verizon, everyone has wondered when AT&T would embrace the cuddly green robot phones. When it was announced that the Motorola Backflip, a rather unusual cousin to the Cliq, would be the first Android phone to hit the Deathstar AT&T, it sounded intriguing. It certainly would catch people’s eyes with it’s funky keyboard placement; no one is mistaking it for an iPhone wannabe! But there’s something different about the Backflip beyond the keyboard…it won’t be using Google for search. Nope. AT&T took a long, hard look at Android, at the obvious Google connections, and opted to use the logical choice in search providers: Yahoo! Well, it makes sense if you are AT&T and use insane troll logic! What could AT&T have been thinking? I polled some of the flies on the wall that were present during the brainstorming session with Darth Vader AT&T executives, and here’s the scoop.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have a question for all you Gmail users. I’m hoping you can give me a little advice. I am a disorganized e-mail user and… I… need… HELP! Let me explain. The other day I look at my inbox and was horrified to discover that I had over 2400 e-mails sitting there. You read that right — 2400 e-mails were there in my Inbox. Larry asked me a reasonable question — “How did things get this far.” It’s a good question and I actually have an answer. I need help. For the longest time I would receive e-mails, read them and then leave them in my inbox because I figured I needed to respond to them or get a piece of information from them at a later date. I did this once, twice, and before I knew it I had built up a tremendous number of e-mails in my inbox. In addition when junky e-mails would come in I would look at them, decide to ignore them, but not remove them. Between the two approaches it wasn’t long before yes, 2400 e-mails in my inbox. The other day I decided to change all that.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Photo  courtesy of Mary Huang By trade, I’m a technical writer.  A lot of technical writers are interested in the arcana and history of writing.  Some folks are fascinated by books–their history, how they’re made, how their distributed, and on and on.  Some people go more for the technical side–what kind of eBook readers are there out there?  How many different web-creation tools are available?  You get the idea. One thing–something so small a lot of people rarely notice it–is a common area of interest for writers:  type faces and fonts. Fonts have been under development since the first movable type printing press was created in China back in the 11th Century (out of porcelain!).  Gutenberg, of course, independently invented movable lead-based type.  And we’ve been torquing it ever since.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Like many other case manufacturers Booq is prepping a series of new ways to protect the upcoming iPad. Today they are announcing the new Boa skin XS. The new case is Designed specifically for the iPad, Boa skin XS gives today’s creative professional stylish options to protect their new gear. The Boa skin is a soft neoprene skin with a rigid base for impact protection from drops or mishaps. The boa Skin is sized specifically for the iPad and comes in five colors (turquoise, yellow, violet, sand, and black). Features include- Durable Twylon provides a well padded base for impact protection Soft non-scratch interior for added display protection Neoprene expands to accommodate additional accessories, power cords, batteries, etc. Provides protection for iPad while inside another bag Available in 5 stylish colors: turquoise, yellow, violet, sand, and black Fits iPad: 9.6” x 7.48” x 0.5” Exterior:10.7” x 8.66” x 0.7” Weight: 0.41 lb The Boa skin will retail for $29.95 and will be available directly from booq and various retailers. The full press release follows…… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A friend of mine called last night and said he needed a new Windows machine… fast. I asked how much he wanted to spend. He said under a grand. I said, “Let me look on LogicBUY to see if you can get a bit more bang for your buck through one of our GearDeals.” I’m sending the link to this post to him as soon as it is live. This might just be the thing he is looking for… The Lenovo ThinkPad T410 is a 14.1″ laptop with ether a Core i5 or Core i7 processor. It can handle up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, runs Windows 7 Professional and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Winter is still hanging on, and dry skin is definitely an issue for many of us … well, it would be more of an issue for me, but I am still using Skin MD Natural Shielding Lotion, and it is helping! They’ve contacted us with a 20% code that will be good for one month, so if you are suffering from dry flaky skin, you’ll want to take advantage. You can read Jessica, Amy, Carly’s and my review of it here, but I would like to point out one of the major reasons that I recommend it — if you are on a keyboard much of the day, you will appreciate that it isn’t greasy… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

SKTools, a popular system maintenance suite for Windows Mobile, has been updated to version 4.5.1.4. This update brings a new tool to SKTools, File Explorer. The newly implemented tool brings lots of functionality features such as Copy, Move, Rename and Delete as file operations, preview for certain file types, change attributes, create shortcuts, etc. Here’s the list of the latest changes: TuneUP!: added tweak “Enable/Disable Call Record menu item” (WM6.5+) “File Explorer”: set/clear file attributes for current item extendent tweaks definitions file format 4.4 -> 4.5 compatibility fixes I have been using SKTools for as long as I could remember, and dare I say, it is one of the best system… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Look! It’s LEGO brick … but not! In a perfect world, you would be able to snap USB Fever’s cheerful 4-port USB 2.0 Hub right on top of the LEGO PC case mod you’d just completed, or at least snap two of them together to make a hub-brick, but alas … the bottoms of these “special” Legos are flat. At only $11.99 each from USBfever, placing one of these in your office would be the perfect way to declare your love for the legendary building brick. USBfever Lego 4-Port USB Hub Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There is no other hard drive that I would trust to live through the ordeals I have seen the ioSafe survive. When we were in Vegas, we watched an ioSafe get torched, drowned, and then driven over by a heavy piece of construction equipment – and through it all, the ioSafe’s hard drive contents were kept perfectly intact. And all of this was after Larry had spent some one-on-one time with an ioSafe hard drive, and had already determined it to be exactly as described. How often does that happen? If you’ve been putting off the type of protection that will keep your irreplaceable documents, photos and financial information safe – even through a modern day apocalypse, then you… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It was big news when the iPad was announced with no plans to have flash implemented on it. Once again Steve Jobs was quite specific — he doesn’t believe Flash is appropriate for mobile devices and for an assortment of reasons won’t use it. Instead, he’s backing HTML 5, a new standard which will allow for embedded video without the need for plug-ins … or the crashes, or the system slowdowns so common when using flash. Things became more complicated when the iPad promos appeared and seemed to show the New York Times front page running video with ease. The only problem is, the New York Times front page runs video in — you guessed it — flash. Apple was quick to change the ads so that they no longer showed a video running on the front page. Not so fast. Parts of the Times are already using HTML 5, and it’s quite possible that prior to the launch of the iPad the front page will also. It’s already known that the Times Skimmer, an innovative way of accessing the New York Times’s content on the web, uses HTML 5 extensively. No wonder it works as smoothly as it does! [...]

If you’re like me, you use your wireless phone for everything.  My iPhone never leaves my grasp, and even at home I find myself using it read e-mail on the sofa, or browse the TV guide.  While this is good for my information consumption it’s very bad for my iPhone’s battery life, and as a result I find myself constantly having to recharge my phone. Thanks to Motorola, I’ll soon be able to leave my iPhone alone — yet still stay in hand’s reach of my telephone calls. The DSP Group, Inc. a leading global provider of wireless chip set solutions for converged communications at home and Binatone, a Motorola Official Licensee… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A few years back, I was a big fan of OnCourse Navigator version 5 running on Windows Mobile PDAs. The interesting things here is that OCN5 was really just the name for the North American release of Navigon MobileNavigator. And although OCN 5 wasn’t terribly stable, it was one of the best-looking navigators out there at the time. So then they disappeared from the North American market. OCN 6 was actually a rebadged iGo 6, not a Navigon product anymore. So now, on the heels of a successful iPhone product, Navigon have reentered the market with MobileNavigator for Windows Phones.  So where did they go?   What happened?  More important, however, how does the new version of MobileNavigator stack up?… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

An ongoing problem these days is simply how to keep up with everything and everyone? You’ve got email, Twitter, Facebook, Instant Messaging (or IM’ing as the kids simply abbreviate it these days).   Don’t forget SMS texting.  Unless you’re out on Mount Kilimanjaro you better get used to the expectation of being connected — and reachable — by at least ten different communication methods.   And they’ll all be used before you even get a phone call. With this onslaught of communication overload, how are you going to manage?  Are you going to ball up in the fetal position and cry yourself to sleep at the mere thought of all of the apps you’re going to need to purchase and learn how to use (much less check to be sure you’re on top of it all)?  Aw, heck no!   That’s where we have you covered.   See, Shape Services recently released a very special version of their popular IM+ application. What makes it so special you ask?  For starters, this single application will connect you to just about every single instant messenger out there (Google Talk, Yahoo, MSN, etc.) as well as Facebook and Twitter.  All from one app and one screen.  If [...]

The iPhone and the iPod touch have the potential to be among the greatest innovations in the educational process ever. As more and more educational apps are developed that take advantage of the computing power and the touchscreen of the iPhone and the iPod touch are released they are reaching a critical mass as a tool for learning. They’re great for secular education but they can also be a huge addition to religious education as well. I carry two different versions of the Bible on my iPhone and enjoy having the ability to reference them with ease. I have an application that will “chant” various Torah portions. And more and more apps… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I kicked off my “LCD vs eInk vs paper” smackdown, one of our readers emailed me asking about PDFs on the Camangi Webstation. I was slightly ashamed to admit that I hadn’t actually tried them yet! Reading ebooks on it had been such a great experience that I hadn’t branched out to PDFs yet, but that email gave me the impetus to try a few different options. Unfortunately, the Camangi does not come with access to the official Android Marketplace, so this limited my options slightly. I was able to download Documents to Go and unlock the PDF to Go option on the Camangi, so I have been using that exclusively to read PDFs. I also have the free, opensource program DroidReader that I have used extensively. On my Motorola Droid, I’ve also given Repligo a shot. I actually have had an unusually high number of PDFs to read lately, so between my personal files and a few suggested to me I’ve been able to really test the Android PDF reading experience.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …