I can’t speak for every geek in the world, of course, but I would bet if you polled nerds over the age of, say, 40, you would find that a lot of them have a sneaking admiration for Erno Rubik, inventor of the eponymous cube (as well as a number of other things–I enjoy the Rubik’s Snake quite a bit, myself).  An introverted professor who invented a puzzle game that turned into a worldwide phenomenon?  Geekly dreams are made of such stuff. Well now, on Prof. Rubik’s 66th birthday, everyone–everyone with an iPhone 4, anyway–can see what the fuss was all about.  Prof. Rubik’s creation is available now for you iPhone 4, using its gyroscope… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

From now until the end of day on July 26th, you can grab the Mac or PC version of iSkySoft’s iPhone Video Converter for FREE! Just sign up here and enter your email address and you’ll get sent a keycode. Easily convert videos, movies, and TV shows for your iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS, or iPhone 4 for convenient entertainment on-the-go. * Suport almost any video formats like WMV, AVI, MKV, FLV, etc. * Capture video clips or merge several videos into one continuous video. Here are some details of the giveaway: Note: Giveaway for two weeks, expired on July 26th, 2010. You can get iSkysoft iPhone Video Converter for Mac for free. Enter your Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Washington Post (CES 2010) It’s been over 3 months since the iPad launched, and despite promises from nearly every vendor at every trade show, when it comes to tablets running a non-Apple OS we really have yet to see anything except disappointed. A few tablet devices have since launched and failed, and a few others have either become vaporware or have had their release dates pushed back. Occasionally we see some quick snippet of information about a product touting to be some sort of iPad killer, or the end-all-be-all slate that will knock Apple down from its position as reigning champion. So far, not only has nothing even come close, but there really… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

photo credit: PDXdj New national survey data gives an interesting, and at times frightening, picture of the driving habits of the genders. On the good side of things, 89% of women and 83% of men report having a clean driving record for the past two years. On a more neutral front while 25% of women report not trusting their sense of direction only 9% of men do. Interestingly less women use GPS to find their way (58% of men vs 48% of women). Then there is the truly frightening statistic. While… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I love shopping on Amazon. Their prices tend to be good and their customer service has, in my experience, always been first-rate (well… with the exception of that little Kindle-Gate thing last year). Yup, I love shopping on Amazon. I also like getting my stuff quickly. (I’m about five years old in that regard.) As a result I got a subscription to Amazon Prime. For $79 a year I get unlimited two-day shipping for free and the option to upgrade to one-day shipping for just $3.99. If I were a student with a valid .edu email address however I could get a year of Amazon Prime for even less. How much less? $79 less!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of GreenPeace One of the things that Steve Jobs has been mentioning with new Apple product releases is how that particular product–the iPhone 4, for example–is much more “green” than previous Apple products.  Indeed, Apple has clearly made a major commitment to moving in the green direction, causing GreenPeace to wonder, “Yo, what about other computer companies?” The folks at GreenPeace have put together some good information about how green various companies are, and how far along those companies are compared to their promises.  With oil gushing into the gulf and the ozone continuing to have problems and all the other environmental nonsense Mama Earth is dealing… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A friend of mine was a iPhone user until about a week ago.  He had upgraded his iPhone 3G to a iPhone 4. He didn’t suffer from the iPhone 4 death grip, but was unable to make calls from his house or from his desk at work. This actually happened on his 3G as well but continued with his iPhone 4. He talked to AT&T and was able to return the phone and terminate the contract with out it costing him a lot. Still, he needed a phone. While on vacation, he picked up a Evo 4G on Sprint. it worked fine. But when he got home his house seemed to be in a dead zone… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Okay, now these are some good-looking iPad cases and we can’t wait to get our hands on them! monCarbone’s just announced HoverCoat is a carbon fiber case for the iPad so named “from its paper‐thin design and near weightless attributes”. Made from 100% real carbon fiber, the Hover Coat is just .6mm thick (less than .03″) and weighs less than 42 grams (less than 1.5 oz). It fits snugly around the iPad while allowing access to all controls and ports and because it is made of real carbon fiber, which means it is STRONG. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The other day we brought word that Case-Mate was rolling out a new case/stand for the iPad. The $89.99 case looks to combine real protection, style and function. The case was just announced last Friday but is already shipping. We now have one in hand so let’s take a look… From Case-Mate: Introducing the Venture case, where form meets function. The beautiful Venture case comes with stand built into it. Simply unsnap the cover and it folds back under itself to create a stand that will prop your iPad up. So you no longer have to awkwardly try to Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you have significant other and you sleep in the same bed chances are it’s happened to you at least once. It’s nearing bedtime but one of you just isn’t ready to go to sleep yet. Do you like to read in bed? A lot of us do, it’s probably where I do most of my reading. But does your partner get frustrated when your bedtime reading because it means leaving lights on so you can see? Enter the RadTech I-Sight. When I do early morning running in the winter/fall it’s sometimes still dark outside. What do I do to make sure not only I can see where I’m going but that others can see… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While the numbers displayed are staggering, that map only tells part of the story: – It is only about adults. – It displays obesity, not % overweight. CalorieLab has been tracking obesity in states for several years, and has been tweaking their methods over time, now depending on a three-year rolling average to smooth out spikes and look at long-term issues. Somewhat disturbing is that they have had to change their scales (pun intended) because the obesity trends just keep getting worse: because of the overall increase in obesity, CalorieLab this year again shifted the color coding used in its map one percentage point higher to maintain an approximately equal number of states per color Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Dan: The drama surrounding iPhone 4 reception issues moved up a few notches yesterday when Consumer Reports announced that they were reversing position and announced that they could not recommend the iPhone 4 due to a design flaw in their external antenna. Bear in mind that they seem to love every other aspect of the phone and give it a score of 76 out of 100 with the next highest ranked phones, the iPhone 3GS and the HTC Sprint Evo each getting a 74, but the particular antenna issue is, for them, a deal breaker. As the day went on… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In case I haven’t bored you enough by mentioning it, I do a lot of travel.  Three-four times per month, I fly between my family in Austin, and my job in Sunnyvale in the San Francisco Bay Area.  I’m not complaining–at least I’ve got a job!–but it does leave me with a lot of time on my own waiting.  Waiting for planes to board, planes to get where they’re going, trains to arrive, trains to get where they’re going, etc.  And so I spend a lot of time watching movies and TV shows on my iPhone and laptop. Which is fine–despite what James Cameron says about it–but does leave you with the problem of conversion.  You buy… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

They were one of the very first iPhone case manufacturers to enter the market. I’ve owned several Incase cases for the various iPhones, and I am please to see that the company is readying its iPhone 4 offerings. Available at month’s end will be a selection of what the company considers their top cases — the Slider Case, Snap Case and Protective Cover with additional styles, including the Perforated Snap Case, to follow soon after. No word on exactly which colors will be offered in each design, but the renderings below may offer some hint… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Barnes and Noble is the undisputed ruler of the textbook market in the USA. They control it mainly because they own over 600 college bookstores, making them an easy default choice for classroom materials. Yes, there may be textbook swap sites or cheaper books available on craigslist or amazon marketplace, but it’s far easier to swing by your local student center, grab a latte and that economics textbook you should have bought two weeks ago but kept forgetting about. Now it looks like B&N is hoping that same goodwill and name recognition that brought them success in ebooks will work for e-textbooks, a much harder market to crack. They’re rolling out a program called NOOKstudy that offers digital… Continue reading on Gear Diary …