I don’t know about you but personally I’ve got a lot of social media “friends.”  I use quotes around friends because while many of these people follow me and I follow them I’m not sure it’s fair to call them my friends.  In fact a majority of the people who I follow on Twitter I’ve never even met IRL (in real life.) A new mobile application called face2face seeks to remedy that.  The concept behind the application is simple.  It combines the contacts from your various social media services like Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and automatically alerts both you and them when you’re near each other.  Once an alert from face2face pops up… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I am a huge fan of Ilium software’s eWallet for the iPhone and iPad. It is a great way to keep information on my handheld devices in a manner that is safe and secure but also quickly accessible. The only problem I have had with it is that the desktop version of eWallet was only in Beta and the sync functionality was highly limited. Since I use multiple devices that was a bit of an issue for me. Thankfully that is no longer the case. Ilium has just gone live with the news that eWallet for Mac OS X is now available from their Web site. I’ve been using it for the last day and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Bethesda has been at the forefront of featuring loads of celebrities in their games in recent years. The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion started off with the voice of Patrick Stewart as the Emperor and also features Sean Bean, Jonathon Bryce, Terenec Stamp, Lynda Carter and more. 2008′s Fallout 3 featured Liam Neeson, Malcolm McDowell, and had Ron Perlman as narrator. So perhaps it isn’t surprising that they are bringing out the stars for Fallout: New Vegas … but quite honestly I was surprised by just how many stars they DID bring on for the project! Ron Perlman returns as the narrator, joined by a diverse cast including Matthew Perry, Michael Dorn, and Wayne Newton… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

How many emails / texts / whatever did you get yesterday linking to the ‘Girl Quits Job Via Whiteboard’ article at The Chive? Not too surprisingly, the whole thing was a hoax produced by the creators of The Chive, and acted by a young woman (and aspiring actress) named Elyse Porterfield. TechCrunch has the details of the hoax. If you were like me, you enjoyed it and really didn’t apply your critical thinking skills to the now rather obvious likelihood that it was a fabrication. Why? Well … why is it that Office Space remains such a popular… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It is a common theme – there are so many of “_____” that I simply cannot figure out which one to try! You can fill in the blanks here – free music, online videos, free ebooks, free-to-play-MMOs, casual Flash games, and on and on. Oh, and also add ‘dungeon crawl’ RPGs to that list! Fortunately bloggers love to make lists! But that means we are constantly inundated with lists of the best this or worst that … and STILL have to figure out how to know if the list is worth trusting! Some are easy – a list that simply takes the top 10 scores from Metacritic and adds a sentence to each listing is… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The Tunebug Shake is a pretty amazing way to turn your bike helmet into a speaker. As we wrote in our post last week… The Shake is a portable Bluetooth speaker that connects to your phone or media player via Bluetooth or 3.5mm plug. It is a “surfacesound” speaker which means it turns your bike helmet (or other helmet) into the speaker which eliminates the need for earbuds. That means you can now listen to music safely while you ride. It is made “for any kind of action sport helmet” and comes with two different mounts so it will attach to both helmets with a solid and those that are open such as Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When the Nintendo Wii was introduced, gamers were skeptical – the graphics were not that much better than the GameCube, which already lagged last-generation consoles. Also, Nintendo had gotten worse and worse at getting a solid third-party line-up of games on their systems (although they had gotten better and better at making their own games). And the new motion-control system was so different than anything else that many say it as a gimmick bound to fail – and at that time few games even took advantage of the touch screen on the DS< so skepticism was warranted! Of course, since then Nintendo has come on strong and has dominated this console generation – Microsoft and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

You have to give Kobo credit for being hustlers. While they do not have the brand cache that Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Apple have, they are aggressive about getting their name out there in creative ways. Admittedly, the Kobo Reader for $149 lost some thunder in the wake of eBook Price Wars 2010, but they’ve come up with a creative plan to market their budget ebook reader. Kobo has partnered with both Random House and Fairmont Hotels to provide Kobo Readers to travelers in Fairmont’s loyalty program. This way you can just show up at your destination and “borrow” a fully stocked reader while you’re on vacation. I can see this working extremely well with… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Lenovo’s IdeaPad Z36 0is a 13.3″ notebook that can be configured with either a Core i3 or a Core i5 processor. The Core i3 base unit with 3GB RAM has… the power to handle powerful tasks and multitask while doing so, and there is plenty of space for storage with the 500GB HDD. The Intel HD graphics should be enough to power 720p video on the LED backlit 1366×768 display too. The notebook weighs in at 4.4lbs and has WiMAX built in for portability. This Lenovo IdeaPad Z560 has an MSRP of $849 but our Gear Sponsor has found an instant coupon that brings the price down to just $594.15. It will… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

For a while it felt like Amazon constantly had these 1000 MP3 albums for $5 deals, but it has been pretty quiet lately. Now they have exploded the vault once again with a new list of 1000 MP3 Albums for $5! What really struck me was that they have a great section of 100 classic jazz releases. I don’t know about you, but too often I look through these lists and it is hard to know what is good or bad – we all know that even our favorite artists occasionally released something not really worth $5. As I looked through the jazz listings I was amazed how many true classics were… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s debatable whether you can kill something that never really existed, but Plastic Logic has abandoned the Que Reader. Essentially, the market moved against them in terms of pricing, and so they’re moving on to “second generation” devices. Personally, I think it’s awfully debatable whether you can have a “second generation” device when the first generation one never came to market. Still, a part of me is mourning that the Que never had a shot. At a lower price point, it would have given the Kindle DX a run for the money, and I think there’s a market for readers with screens big enough to comfortably render PDFs and technical documents. Plus, Judie had nothing but positives… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have an Elgato EyeTV Hybrid that records my favorite shows and then helps me get them on to my iPad for later viewing. Larry uses EyeTV also, as does my recently converted-to-Mac father who seems to have the TV window open constantly in the corner of his iMac’s screen. The combination of Elgato’s hardware and tv software are awesome on a Mac and I highly recommend them to anyone who wants their Mac to double as a TV or at least let you keep a small window with the news going while working on the computer. Well Elgato is offering a nice Back-to-School promotion through their online store. The deal… with the purchase… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Sosche reVIVE II Dual USB car and home chargers let you charge two devices at the same time from a single power source. There’s one for home and one for the car and both are available now. The company notes that According to the Pew Research Center adults between 18 and 29 own four gadgets on average and those between 30 and 64 average just under three, making the need for a dual USB charger even more important. (Statistics for tech-bloggers weren’t offered since personal experience indicates it would totally skew the stats.) The chargers have both a 2.1 Amp slot for charging an iPad and a 1 Amp slot for charging an… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I am a huge fan of diagramming applications.  As a coach, I spend countless hours diagramming.  X’s and O’s are much more than people think.  Not only do we draw plays and defenses to explain to our athletes, but they are used heavily in planning.  Football is a game of leverage and numbers.  As a defensive coordinator, it is my job to devise a plan to out leverage the offense and get at least one unblocked defender to the point of attack according to the tendencies I have.  The way these theories are tested is through diagramming.  I spend hours every week drawing opponent formations and marking their favorite run holes and passing zones… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have way too many devices that need to be charged on a regular basis. There’s my iPhone, my iPod touch, my LiveScribe Echo smartpen, an assortment of Bluetooth headsets, the Motorola headset I use for running and more. The result is a jumble of wall chargers and a tangle of cables that is annoying, collects dust and just looks terrible. That’s why I was excited to check out IDAPT’s latest Universal charger, the IDAPT i4. The i4 looks similar to the i3 but with one significant, and useful change, it now has a USB port on the side that makes it possible to also use the unit to charge your iPad (or other devices with… Continue reading on Gear Diary …