We are all feeling the financial pinch!    Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99. It seems that my weekly trip through the app store looking for cheap gems has brought yet another addicting game.  I mean, even I need a short break from Angry Birds!  Apple’s latest event stated that the iPod Touch is the number one portable gaming device.  The numbers are not in front of me, but I will argue that my iPhone has become a wonderful gaming option.  My sons play on my… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Atlus is THE best PSP publisher, bar none! They were the ones who celebrated the launch of the PSP Go with a *massive* PSN sale featuring 50% off savings on all of their stuff including new releases at the time! They have also been excellent at making sure everything they release is available day-and-date on both UMD and PSN. Also, they have released some really excellent games, including overlooked classics from the end of the GBA’s life such as Yggdra Union and Riviera as nicely updated PSP versions. Now they are out-doing even themselves! If you pre-order Knights in the Nightmare for the PSP on UMD or buy it right at launch on PSN, you… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s probably leaked through in some of my posts, I’m sure, but I’m not much of a Windows fan.  I started in the UNIX world, and only moved to Windows because, well, I didn’t have any choice. Of the many things about Windows that irks me–and believe me, you don’t want to get me started; just ask Dan or Judie or poor Francis–one constant annoyance is the silly desktop calendar/clock. It only does a few things, and honestly, it doesn’t do them all that well. It’s always felt to me like a piece of software Paul Allen whipped up in 1989, and it hasn’t been much modified since. Well, the folks at Posibolt Software… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today’s Gear Deal brings us a Dell Studio XPS 16 Laptop featuring the new 2010 Intel Core i5-450M CPU. Even the base configuration is impressive; it comes with 4GB DDR3 memory, a 320GB 7200RPM Hard Drive, 1GB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5730 discrete graphics, 802.11n WiFi, a 6-cell battery and a Slot-load DVD+/-RW. Of course it ships with Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit OS. The laptop has an MSRP of $999.99, but our Gear Sponsor found a deal that will get it to you for $949.99 with FREE shipping. If you want an even better deal, configure it so the price is over $1,199 and you will get an extra $90 off. Dell Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Gadgets and Gear’s Spyra Glowing LED Bar Table looks like it would be right at home in an Austin Powers’ movie, and I mean that in the best possible way!  At 42″ tall with a 23″ round top, the Spyra will hold your drinks and give you some pretty groovy mood lighting. The multi-colored LEDs hidden in the table phase between red, blue and green, giving the table its one-of-a-kind glowing edges. The table is made of clear acrylic with visible etching when off or in the daylight. At this price you could get a few to scatter around your basement gameroom / bar … and if you really wanted to get… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We’ve revealed quite a few Speck cases here at Gear Diary, with a sometimes-heavy tilt towards iPhones and iPads. But that doesn’t mean that Speck is neglecting the other areas of the market, and they have just announced cases for the Sharp FX and Samsung cell phones. Available both online as well at your friendly neighborhood AT&T store, the cases go for either $29.99 or $34.99 (depending on the case). Drop by AT&T, or surf on over to the Speck site and check them out. Full information below. Speck has expanded the ever-popular CandyShell case line to bring the highly coveted soft-meets-hard shell protection to a pair of new smartphones the Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Even for those not alive in the late 70′s, the phrase ‘jump the shark’ has an immediate contextual meaning: the moment you can look upon as when an otherwise enjoyable and/or high quality show started a downward spiral into oblivion. Every writer / actor / director would love the thought of having a great show and going out on top, leaving everyone with high quality episodes that simply have you wanting more. But the networks want to ride their high-rating shows as long as possible, and end up throwing more and more money at the show to keep people on-board. The result? Rehashed ideas and increasingly desperately obvious grabs for ratings, like last year’s girl-on-girl Continue reading on Gear Diary …

After watching Steve Jobs last week on the live stream of their media event, I was all ready to start a scathing post about their use of numbers … and I wouldn’t be alone in doing so. I had done a similar thing last year, calling out Apple’s touting of their massive numbers of entertainment titles in the App Store. But quickly I realized that while the statistician in me might be affronted by Jobs’ penchant for bad math and claims that lack any sort of ‘truthiness’, the larger picture in Apple’s portable gaming dominance claims were more important to explore. But I do have to start off with a look at the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As I have written previously, I have been reading eMags for a number of years thanks to Zinio. I first used the service on my computer but found it to be truly useful when I began using Tablet PCs. Later, during my UMPC stage I found it even more ugreat since, due to the light weight and small size of the UMPC, I was able to carry it with me pretty much everywhere. I share this bit of personal tech history because, for me, Zinio is a well-known brand. I see their name or logo and I automatically think “eMags”. It is for that reason that I immediately downloaded Zinio to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Being from suburban Boston, I was surprised when I went to school in upstate NY and befriended some kids from outside of Pittsburgh PA and found that not everyone wanted a ‘soda’ … some wanted a ‘pop’. Later on, when traveling to the deep south for my first job I was asked if I wanted a ‘coke’ (or sweet tea, of course), to which I asked if they had Diet Coke. I was told they had all sorts of coke, including Pepsi, Orange, Root Beer … you get the picture. Fact is, where you are from will determine what generic name you give to soft drinks … and conversely hearing someone refer to soft drinks can… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here’s a quick tip to all of you who are going to be getting a new iPod touch… if you want to make a Facetime call to someone using an iPhone they need to be running iOS 4.1. What that means right now is that Facetime from a touch to a jailbroken iPhone is… not going to happen. Let’s hope a solution is found… or Larry decides to relock his iPhone and update it to 4.1!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While I might be the main ‘gaming person’ here at Gear Diary, let’s be clear about one thing – Plants vs. Zombies is a shared addiction / love affair / necessity of life for MOST of the staff. Earlier this year I reviewed the iPhone version of the game, and while all of us with iPads also love THAT version there just wasn’t enough new stuff to merit a new look. But now the combined Mac & PC ‘Game of the Year’ version has been released on Steam, and therefore I couldn’t resist playing it some more … let’s see how it works! The Hype: Plants vs. Zombies is a tower defense-style game available… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Kobo has been all over smartphones for some time, but their “desktop” offerings have been browser-based. Kobo has finally released a dedicated desktop application for Macs and PCs, so you don’t have to worry about juggling Firefox tabs to read a book. This puts them on closer footing to Amazon and B&N, who both offer feature-rich desktop programs as companions to their smartphone offerings. I also think this is a fairly major shift for Kobo. Their early offerings were very connection-dependent, and even the smartphone apps required an active connection to read a book. Now, their smartphone apps all download the books, they even offer a non-connected ebook reading device, and they’ve moved their last bastion of web-based… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Most of us know that when it comes to buying cameras and camera accessories there are plenty of good deals to be found on a variety of third party online stores (Amazon, B&H Photo, 42nd St. Photo etc.)  But there are those who still prefer to go straight to the source for their photographic equipment needs and now Nikon fans can. Nikon USA has launched an all-new online store where consumers can go to purchase just about anything in the Nikon portfolio. You’ll find cameras (compact, film and DSLR), lenses, flashes, software, optics, accessories, manuals, logo items and even an outlet. The outlet features refurbished products… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

“Wade, do you still have Ron microchipped?” “Kim, we’ve discussed the ethical implications of . . .” “Waaaaaade.” “Yeah, okay; here are the coordinates.” Yup; you can microchip your pets, your kids, your cell phone, your car, various objects at Wal-Mart . . . for all I know, they’re working on a method to microchip individual water molecules to track flow rate, or some durn thing. But we’re not quite there yet. Almost, though. It’s not on a per-molecule level, but m2end in Association with RBIT Limited and junaio have announced the first-ever “intelligent stamp”. The engineers have embedded readable information in the stamp that, when photographed by your smartphone (Android or iPhone) will… Continue reading on Gear Diary …