Update: This contest is now closed, and the winner is mattgibstein. Thank you for entering, and please keep an eye out for future Gear Diary contests and giveaways! As we mentioned at the beginning of the month, RingCentral has chosen Gear Diary and 24 other blogs to host their Ultimate Small Business Start-up Package Giveaway. Each of these 25 sites will give away one (1) account for 12 months’ free service of RingCentral Mobile ($300 value) to the winner of each of our individual contests. From those 25 winners, five grand prize winners will also be selected for the Ultimate Small Business Start-up Package (additional $862 value, for a total… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

[ image courtesy of TheDroidGeek.com ] If you’re a Gear Diary reader and you still haven’t tried out Slacker Radio for your iPhone / iPod touch, BlackBerry, Palm webOS or Android smartphone, you’re missing out.   We still get responses from people who’ve read Dan’s “Rediscovering The Music of My Youth” feature from February, and have jumped on the Slacker Radio bandwagon. If you are enjoying the app — or if you’d just like to see what all the fuss is about — we’ve got some great news for you.  We have Three 3-month and Two 1-year Slacker Radio Plus subscriptions to give away.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A couple of weeks ago when Apple introduced iPhone OS 4 something struck me, but I had forgotten it until someone on a forum was asking me about the amount of games on the PSP … then it came back to me. Do you remember when Apple announced the new iPod lineup in September of 2009? At the time I wrote about the iPod Touch questioning the quantity to quality ratio, and led with this image: Image Source: Engadget Back then I thought that the PSP number was perhaps a bit low, given that I had reviewed more than 200 PSP games personally and didn’t think I’d tested out 1/3 of the offerings for the platform!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here’s a great deal from bag maker Skooba Design, but one you’ve got to act on fast! To kick off the week Skooba is offering 30% off their Check Through Brief and they’ll ship the bag to you overnight. Just use code ‘HOLYCOW‘ at checkout and be one of the first 100 people to order and you’ll grab the deal. The Check Through Brief is a check point friendly bag which means you don’t have to remove your computer while going through security.  It features 20 pockets and is designed to hold 15 & 16 inch laptops (it’ll work with some 17″… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In Gear Chat #8 Larry and Dan do their best NOT to talk about the  iPad. In fact they make a bet and place a dollar amount on each slip. How do they do? Listen and find out. So what DO they talk about if they are going to stop obsessing about the iPad for a bit? Why the iPhone of course.  iPhone OS 4.0, rumors about new hardware, some recommended apps and more get covered in this week’s podcast. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

According to iPhone Replacement Parts this might just be the glass assembly for the leaked Apple 4G iPhone.  The company who repairs iPhones reached out to me on Twitter with some interesting pictures of what appears to be a glass assembly that fits with the leaked pictures of the 4G iPhone floating around. Sure enough the glass assembly they have has the cutout for a front facing camera and  a black edge along the sides of the screens.  The camera lens cut out looks to be in the exact place that it appears in the Gizmodo pictures that were released earlier today. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

OK, I wasn’t overly kind in my review of the Windows version of WinX DVD Ripper … but now they are offering the Mac version of their software – for FREE! According to the web site: WinX DVD Ripper for Mac is an all-in-one DVD ripper designed to make perfect 1:1 DVD copy to hard drive and rip your DVD movies on Mac OS to iTunes, MOV, MP4, FLV, etc that playable on iPad, iPod, iPhone, Apple-TV, PSP and much more. It also supports extracting music from the DVD files and saving as MP3 format. With this Mac DVD ripper. Most important, it enables users to rip DVDs of new generation copy protections with Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Way back in late 2007 (early 2008 on PC), Bioware released a game that was unique and interesting in several ways: it was their second game featuring all-new intellectual property (Jade Empire was first), a game designed from the start (or so we were told) as a trilogy, and the gameplay mechanic was a third-person squad-based shooter similar in some ways to Gears of War. The game was a tremendous commercial and critical success, thereby ensuring that the remainder of the trilogy would be produced, but there were some significant criticisms (even in the early 10/10 ‘bestest gaem EVAR’ reviews): the driving sequences were tiresome, the inventory system was abysmal, and there were numerous issues… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The promise of the Kindle DX, the iPad and other devices has been to lighten the load of college students everywhere. Digital textbooks, lower costs, the ability to adjust content in real time are all part of the allure of ebook readers and tablets in higher education. But not everyone is on board. The Wall Street Journal is reporting that a number of schools are claiming the iPad causes connectivity issues, and they will not be supporting them or allowing them on their networks at this time. Sorry to any new iPad owners heading to George Washington, Princeton, and Cornell, among other schools! The Wall Street Journal article also touches on the failure of the Kindle… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I interact with people all day, day in and day out. So many people that it sometimes becomes difficult to keep it all straight. Over the years I have tried a number of different CRM (Contact Relationship Management) programs but they were either too expensive or the interface wasn’t intuitive enough for me to really use. So you can imagine how pleased I was to see an iPad version of the iPhone app Contacts Journal. The Developer of the app describes the app in this way. Your day is full of meetings, phone calls and emails with so many people – clients, colleagues, customers. How do you remember who you Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There are a number of different ways to get PDF documents onto the iPad and then view them wherever you are. One of the best is ReaddleDocs. The developer describe the application adds, “a revolutionary PDF reader, file manager, and attachment savor for iPad. Let’s take a look. From the company, This is a revolutionary document viewer, file manager and attachment saver for the iPad. You can catch documents from any source you can imagine: PC or Mac computers, websites, e-mail, attachments, iDisk, Dropbox and any other online file storages, even iPhones. All files are saved to your iPad locally so you can enjoy reading them anywhere! Wen you… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here’s a new one. Take an old 1968 movie that no longer generates any revenue, package it as an app for the iPad, and sell it for $1.99 (right now it is on sale for $.99). Even if only 1/3 of the iPad owners buy it the movie will generate close to a quarter of a million dollars instead of the usual zilch. BRILLIANT! But who is going to buy the original 1968 version of Night of the Living Dead? Seriously… who?? Well actually me.. for some reason I’ve got a thing for Zombie movies. The app is available now for $.99. You can get it here. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of my favorite podcasts is “Phedippidations” by Steve Walker. It’s a very entertaining show about running, lots of humor and great stories. I was listening to Steve’s latest, about the Boston Marathon, and he mentioned that if you’re curious to track him as he runs, you can catch a semi-live GPS feed on his site. The best part? It’s powered by his Droid phone. He’s using Instamapper to track his progress. While yes, it’s available for the iPhone, based on their website they are far more excited about Android: Android phones are fully supported. We are very excited about this platform — Android is very open and allows us to do Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This one practically comes from my backyard.  Well, McHenry County isn’t exactly in Chicago’s backyard, but Woodstock is a neat town and it’s cool that someone in the greater Chicago region is directly involved in making iPad accessories. Newer Technology, from Woodstock, Illinois, has just released the iFolio case for the iPad.  Available in black or red Brazilian leather and featuring a zippered enclosure, the iFolio can be carried by either the attached leather handle or a removable leather shoulder strap. Inside the iFolio, the left side of the case includes pockets for documents, passports, and business cards.  The right side includes four elastic straps for securing the iPad while allowing access to all… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

At CES I had a chance to spend some time with some of the executives from Ooma. Ooma …lets you make free U.S. calls over the Internet with outstanding voice quality. No PC or headset required, just use your existing phone. The award-winning Ooma system offers 911 service, free U.S. calls, voicemail, caller-ID, call-waiting and low cost international rates. You buy the device once and then you pay nothing except applicable taxes and fees for the life of the unit. I bought an original Ooma last year after reading Wayne’s post on it. It was on sale for $187 at the time and I jumped on it. I got it. I unboxed it. I liked… Continue reading on Gear Diary …