I was wondering what iPad case would be first to arrive for review. That honor goes to… Speck’s PixelShield. Obviously I can’t actually “review” it since my iPad does not arrive until tomorrow night, but I can show you a few shots of the PixelShield which looks like a good way to carry your iPad and know that it is fairly well protected. The material feels nice. It is soft and a bit “smooshy” (a technical blogger term) in order to protect the iPad from impacts. The red is BRIGHT so this case in this color is definitely for someone who wants others… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There has been much discussion about HTML5 versus Flash recently, so it was very interesting to see this: Some engineers at Google have taken some of their ‘play time’ and tried to see how well a non-plug-in based video game would play in native HTML5 with WebGL support. They chose Quake II, the groundbreaking 1996 first-person shooter, which is now open source and already has a Java port. As noted on the Google Web Toolkit Blog: We started with the existing Jake2 Java port of the Quake II engine, then used the Google Web Toolkit (along with WebGL, WebSockets, and a lot of refactoring) to cross-compile it into Javascript Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(underlying image courtesy Amazon) The agency model is slowly kicking in, and it’s causing some disruption across the ebook world. Unfortunately, there’s really no way to dodge it; if you want to buy ebooks, you are at the mercy of the publishers. Even worse, the retailers who sell ebooks are also in the same position, and in the span of less than three months they have been attempting to completely overhaul their method of doing business. So what kind of changes should we be expecting? We already know that Kobo and Fictionwise have been forced to give up their incentive discount programs. Fictionwise also pulled books yesterday ahead of the price changes, and they are slowly… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Good Old Games.com is one of my favorite places to buy games, as they take classics and get them running on modern operating systems. So I was thrilled to learn that from now until next Tuesday April 6th they are having a huge sale on some of their best selling games, up to 50% off! Here is the image of the sale from the email I got: Another cool thing about Good Old Games.com is that they track your account info live when you are logged in, so when I click on my email (or the link at the end… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

App developer Warelex is making the move into iPad app and have a few nice looking ones in the pipeline.We don’t know pricing yet but will share it with you are soon as we hear. In the meantime let’s take a quick look at their first few offerings. Alice in Wonderland: Hidden Objects This app is- A must have for all Hidden Objects games genre fans! Alice in Wonderland: Hidden Objects is a fascinating game by the bestselling novel of Lewis Carroll that tells about Alice’s adventures in Wonderland. It’s a story about a girl who gets in a wonderful world  full of the fantastic creatures. She travels through this strange world with the help of amazing and eccentric characters she meets along the way. STATUS- COMING SOON Sky Racer Created by a stunt pilot, Sky Racer offers “unique realistic take off, landing and flight parameters”. 3D graphics add to the realism. STATUS- COMING SOON Stunt Chopper The game was designed to recreate the experience of flying a real helicopter. Every helicopter in Stunt Chopper “comes with its unique realistic take off, landing and flight parameters”. Mix in realistic 3D graphics and a wide selection of routes filled with crazy [...]

The Colbert Report Mon – Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c Stephen Gets a Free iPad www.colbertnation.com Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Reform Who says you can’t make calls with an iPad? Seriously, sure it doesn’t have a phone in a traditional sense But it does make… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

So your Droid is now rocking 2.1, and you need a way to protect it! Or you snapped up a Nexus One, and now you want to make sure it looks pristine. And maybe you stuck with a Blackberry and bought yourself a Storm 2. No matter what you have, Proporta has new cases for it! Check out the descriptions below, and if anything catches your eye, use the promo code BUNNIES for 15% off, from April 2nd to April 5th! Perfect Proporta protection for the iPhone killers – Introducing cases for Droid, Milestone, Nexus One and Storm 2 The iPhone and its horde of devotees may Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Intel announced their “AppUp” app store back in January during CES. The store was available for only US and Canada consumers but now has expanded to 27 European countries and now supports Moblin, WinXP, and Windows 7 starter addition. The requirements state that the apps are only designed for Netbooks running on Intel’s Atom processor. The store is still in beta, but has a few hundred paid and free apps already available for download. I decided to take a quick look at the store on my Dell Mini 1012. After a quick client install, you can easily browse the store through… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Honestly I did a double-take when I saw this deal from our Gear Sponsor. Seriously, a 40″ 1080p HDTV for under $800 is pretty amazing. A 40″ 1080p HDTV from Sharp for under $800 is… WOW! The AQUOS LC-40LE700UN is a 40″ screen, 1080p, 120 Hz LED HDTV. It has 4 HDMI inputs, a 4ms response time and 10-bit processing. It has an MSRP of $1399 but this Gear Deal will grab it for you for just $799.99. It will even ship for free!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the most important applications on my iPhone these days is the mobile application from Nuance called Dragon Dictation. As I have pointed out previously, I make significant use of voice recognition. This is the case because I do a good bit of writing and also because I struggle with a rheumatic arthritis. The result of that arthritis was a fusing of my right wrist last year and a recent process of deterioration in my left and (dominant) wrist as well. Being able to write with my voice rather than have to type out with my hands saves me a good bit of wear and tear on damaged joints, while helping to avoid increasing the pain I feel at any… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last week I had a chance to speak with two of the top people over at Zinio.com, CMO Jeanniey Mullen and Rich Maggiotto, Zinio’s President & CEO. During the interviews I got a good sense of what the company has accomplished over the past ten years, what their current business approach was and… a tiny bit of insight into what we might be seeing on the iPad come April 3rd. Well now the news is out and it is pretty exciting. First off, perhaps the most important news is that, as I hoped, “The Zinio App for iPad is available for free from the App Store on iPad or at Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Just in time for Saturday’s iPad onslaught iLuv has announced the availability of their first iPad accessories. As they put it these accessories- Add style to your new iPad with colorful protective cases and water-resistant neoprene sleeves by iLuv Ranging in price form $14.99 for a protective screen film to $39.99 for a leather portfolio there is something for everyone. Details and images of each follow.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Have you ever actually looked at how many USB devices you own or use?  I recently had this realization while moving my desktop computer set up around.  My mid-2007 Mac Mini does not have near enough ports to connect all of my gear so I have a standard USB hub which is full and only leaves me with one hard to reach port for a drive or other item.  That also led me to realize that my MacBook Pro only has two ports.  Of course, this is not usually a problem except when you need to attach two items and one of the plugs is too wide.  I tried plugging in my computer at… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I just got my first big surprise with regard to the iPad. The iPad App Store went live and I started shopping. I bought Pages and Keynote. I bought the Scrabble app. Then I saw something odd. In my iTunes account it suddenly showed a bunch of updates that weren’t there a few minutes before. I went to look and saw the following I checked a few more apps and saw the same thing. The app was updated for the iPad and was available for download. But it looked the same. Then I noticed the small Toggle button above the screen shots… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The above image says it all. Apple just turned on the iPad portion of the App Store. Time to spend some money… Continue reading on Gear Diary …