When I was away on vacation LogicBUY had a great deal on a large LCD monitor. The deal was so good that I immediately ordered one. It was waiting for me when I got home and I am now using it as an extension of my iMac. I love it! Well today’s Gear Deal is on another large high-definition monitor, the HP 2310m. The 2310m is a 23″, 1080p display with a 3ms response time, 40000:1 Dynamic Contrast Ratio, BrightView technology and an integrated speaker.For connectivity it offers VGA, DVI-D (with HDCP), and HDMI. The 2310m has an MSRP of $269.99 but with $55 in instant savings and an additional coupon code available from… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last Friday night my family went to a nice downtown Corning pub, and noticed printed signs all around stating that a new policy would permit only one free soda refill, after which guests would have to pay for another full-priced drink. I really didn’t think anything of it until I saw this post on Consumerist: According to the article: This dire message at a Tucson Italian beef joint claims the restaurant’s dissolution of its free refill policy has to do with outside forces conspiring to make soda syrup too pricey. Have you seen anything like this in your town Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I fly Southwest most of the time these days, and one of the things I use a lot when I travel is Southwest’s iPhone app, which can give me flight times, delay notices, allow me to book tickets, and so on. Well, now American has seen Southwest and raised by Sudoku. The full details of the new American Airlines app are below, but you can do all the things you would hope to do online through the app, without the bother of having to go on the web.  Plus you can play Sudoku.  You can even display your boarding pass with the durn thing (as above).  (Now I, personally, don’t know how you’re going… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Just today I was chatting with a friend at work about how useless card-keys are at work sites when folks just leave purses, wallets, laptops, and other valuables sitting out.  At a previous company an industrious group of thieves once “tailgated” into a building behind some real employees, and then moseyed through the building stealing laptops, wallets and purses.  Needless to say, management wasn’t pleased, and ordered employees to lock their laptops in at all times. Lock them down with say…  one of these new Kensington products.  Kensington is now offering a pair of laptop locking stations (MSRP of $79.99 and $29.99) to help secure your precious gear.  Because with sneak thieves everywhere these days, taking extra… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Every year I take one of my daughters on a weekend trip to NYC.  This past weekend on our annual excursion we stumbled across ECOWRIST at a street fair in the Soho section of Manhattan.  ECOWRIST was founded by husband and wife team David Gandy and MarQuerite Hamden in 2008 and the pair hand-makes watches from recycling, the use of natural materials, and minimal wastes to ensure as little effect on the environment as possible. From the ECOWRIST web site……….. The primary components of the watches are bamboo, tagua nuts, acheera seeds, coconut, wood, cow’s leather and canaflecha (reed in English).  The leather Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When you look at the classic genre-defining franchises in gaming, most have fallen by the wayside. The ‘Gold Box’ RPG’s don’t even evoke a reaction from most modern gamers; Fallout has been transformed into a story-lite console action-shooter romp; Baldur’s Gate has been reimagined into Dragon Age; Doom sort of faded away after the third game failed to live up to the hype; Marathon became Halo, and so on. Then there is Starcraft. While Total Annihilation was the first 3D RTS (Real Time Strategy) game, and actually beat out Starcraft in GameSpy’s 2004 ranking of ‘best all-time RTS games’, Total Annihilation has also faded into the dark shadows of history. It has been replaced… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Solar power has been a promise since I was my son’s age.  In the future. we were all supposed to have roofs covered in solar cells and not having to use ugly power lines to power our lives.  We were barely able to get to the point of powering calculators.  Fast forward 20 years and while there have been advances, we still don’t drive solar cars and we still have to have power lines run to our homes.  Thankfully, there are more things run by solar cells than back when I was 11 and some of them are fun too.  That’s where EFO’s solar toys come in. The first 2 EFO sent me are solar powered bugs… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Cardstar is a popular application that Gear Diary has covered before. Simply put, the application lets you ditch the wallet-busting customer loyalty cards by letting put them all right on your smartphone.   Chances are that Cardstar has you covered whether it’s grocery, gas, pet supplies or anything in between.    I’ve personally been using the application on iPhone, BlackBerry and Android phone and it’s kept me from rummaging through my wallet many times. A few things seemed to be missing, though.  Like a good way to backup and restore your loyalty card information any time you changed or upgraded your phone.   And wouldn’t it be great to be able to actually integrate Cardstar with a location-based check in service like Foursquare?    While you’re taking advantage of a great deal at your local retailer, go ahead and let others know.   Well, today Cardstar now features both of those additions.   But that’s not all.   Keep reading to see some more features Cardstar users can look forward to using.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I loved Icon’s Rogue 2 Flashlight.  It was the most durable flashlight I have ever had the opportunity to use. It was bright and well designed and will last many years. Paul Kim, the designer of the Icon line of flashlights is a genius at designing flashlights that are not only very good-looking, but very functional. That’s why I jumped at the chance to review flashlights of another shape and size. Icon sent me a Link and a Solo LED Flashlight and they are the smallest lights that Icon makes. First up is the rugged and handy Link. The Link is made… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Urbanears’ Plattan Headphones are a “medium-size fashionable, functional, and stylish” headphones. As the company explains… We designed Plattan to be the perfect classic headphone, utilizing innovative functions and performance with today’s technology. It is a full size headphone allowing for rich, secluded sound. You can fold it down to the size of your fist for maximum mobility. Plattan also comes with a “zound plug” on the earcap, allowing for a friend to plug in and enjoy your music. The headphones feature a custom microphone and is remote compatible with the iPhone and Nokia, HTC and Blackberry phones. It comes with two extra cable extensions which make the headphones compatible with a majority… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The folks here at Gear Diary are in lots of different industries:  financial, tech, rabbinical, teaching . . . me, I’m a technical writer.  I write books and “topics” about technical topics for a living.  Computer manuals, network system reference pages, instructions on how to install everything from giant Cisco routers to that teeny 2Wire modem some of you may be using in your houses.  That’s my trade; it’s how I make my living. As such, I am a believer in copyright, and the rights of content creators to a reasonable and fair return on their work.  These folks (and me, to a much lesser extent) are bringing something new into the world, bringing it… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Well what do we have here? I’ve been buried in meetings all day so I haven’t gotten a chance to keep up on the news but one of my students just emailed me an article from today’s NYTimes (thanks Zack!) that has some great news for iPhone owners. Yup, new government rules have just made jailbreaking your iPhone in the US completely and totally legal. As is often the case with rulings such as this, the new decision was not made as a result of a specific case regarding the iPhone but as one of a number of new exemptions from the 1998 federal law that prohibits bypassing, as… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Back in the day, when voice circuits were first introduced in cars, it could scare the pants off you.  ”Bing, bong!  The door . . . is open!  Bing bong!  The door . . . is open!”  But then we all kind of got used to voicemail response software, music on a tiny chip in birthday cards, and for all I know these days a diaper that says, “Junior’s diaper . . . is wet.” Just when you thought these things were everywhere, Source Square proves me wrong by introducing a birthday candle–that’s right, a candle–that sings happy birthday.  The Lotus Flower Music Fireworks Birthday Candle is the whole entertainment packaging, with candles, fireworks… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

At long last Apple has released a standalone trackpad that brings the MacBook Pro controller to your iMac, Mac Mini and Mac Pro but goes one better by almost doubling the size of the trackpad. As the Apple store notes- Magic Trackpad gives you a whole new way to control what’s on your Mac desktop computer. When you perform gestures, you actually interact with what’s on your screen. You feel closer to your content, and moving around feels completely natural. Swiping through pages on screen is just like flipping through pages in a magazine, and inertial scrolling senses the momentum in your fingers as you move up and down a page. It’s made with smooth Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The Moshi is “The first ‘listening clock’ that allows you set the time and alarm by your voice alone”. The clock is activated by user saying “Hello Moshi” so there is no need to push any buttons. The clock responds to 12 voice activated commands: time, set alarm, today’s date, temperature, and more. It features snooze, 3 sounds for alarm and sleep, volume control, and night-light. The Moshi Voice Control Alarm Clock has an MSRP $39.99 and is available at Bed Bath & Beyond, Dillard’s, Brookstone and www.moshilifestyle.com. We had one to give away and that Moshi VC Alarm Clock is going to… Melanie Lopez! Thanks to everyone who entered… Continue reading on Gear Diary …