I am not sure where you live, but here in South Texas the heat has been brutal lately!  We began football season with 2-a-day workouts on August 2 so I have spent countless hours outside in the scorching sun and heat.  In fact, last Tuesday the temperature was 104 degrees with high humidity at 4:00 when we hit the field for practice.  At this rate, most of us Texans are looking for any way to cool off.  Being a geek means gadgets are always a possibility to alleviate the miserable feeling of being too dang hot.  I recently checked out two products from Arctic Cooling that are a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Summer is over but that doesn’t mean the fun has to stop. Just in time for fall our Gear Sponsor has found some nice savings on the Xbox 360 Halo Reach Slim Console Limited Edition Xbox. Since this is a pre-order item you can purchase it today but it won’t be shipping until the 14th. When it does ship you will get the Xbox 360 250GB slim console, 2 Xbox 360 wireless controllers with custom design, a black headset, a composite A/V cable, one month of Xbox LIVE Gold Membership and a 1 year warranty. Some of the things you should know about this Xbox are that it is newly redesigned to make… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

photo credit: chrismar Whether you celebrate it because it signifies the end of the summer or because it also designates the beginning of the NFL and college football seasons, the first Monday of September is Labor Day in the United States. This is a holiday traditionally spent with friends, cooking out in the back yard while enjoying ice-cold adult beverages. But obviously, there is a deeper history and meaning behind it … If you are in the US and celebrating Labor Day today, we hope you have a fun, safe & enjoyable day off! Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! By the middle of this week all of the kids should be back in schools from preschools to post-docs … which of course means it is a great time to roll out more and more high-profile games. There are several big releases, but my choice for the week is the PSP game Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep, a game that caused me to lambaste Sony again about the lack of a PSN version. Another solid-looking release is the new Spider-Man: Shattered Dimensions franchise entry, as well as the highly anticipated strategy game R.U.S.E. and the sequel to the solid Tom Clancy’s Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Samsung has been making phones for a long time, but until recently fell quite short of a worthy phone to run the Android OS. The Behold II and Moment never really took off in the eyes of the consumer and certainly not with developement. The Moment was not too bad, with some decent specs landing somewhere in between the G1 and Droid. Both have since pretty much been abandoned by the community, and for me Samsung was almost written off. With the US launch of the Galaxy S series, Samsung really was pushing hard to gain back some lost followers and pull some of the market away from HTC and Motorola. I decided that I wanted a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I love Slacker Radio and listen to it all the time. The music selection is great, and I love the way they keep adding new aspects to the service such as playing in the background and caching stations along with the recent pairing of Slacker Radio and ABC News. Most recently Slacker’s DJ’s revamped their “Party Hits” station just in time for Labor Day BBQs across the Nation. Sure Slacker Radio has a free service, but at $4.99 a month (or $3.99 if you sign up annually) Slacker Radio Plus is a great deal and, in my opinion, worth every penny. Want an even better deal? We had 5 one-year subscriptions to Slacker Radio… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Larry and Dan serve up Gear Chat 16… In this podcast we talk about Apple’s September 1 announcement hits and misses, the new Kindle, iPhone and iPad apps and a new iPhone case company that understands good customer service… Powered by Podbean.com Intro Music- Lean On Me- Sounds From the Ground Solarstone’s Chill Out Remix…… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One thing I love about the PSP and DS is that they allow me – a long-time PC/Mac laptop gamer who is not a fan of couch-based console gaming – to get a glimpse into the console gaming world on my own terms. By this I mean that since my tendency is towards gaming on the go, handheld systems like the PSP are very much in line with that. The Shin Megami Tensei: Persona series of RPGs are a classic Playstation franchise, making their second entry on the PSP. How does it work? Read on and find out! The Hype: Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 3 Portable is a single player, AI team-based RPG that brings… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The two Benders are right, at least when you’re playing Venan’s “Ninjatown: Trees of Doom” in HD (or rather, “Dooooooooooom!”). The scoop:  Venan has updated their “Trees of Doom!” game to HD, and you can now play it on either your iPad or iPhone.  Not only that, but Venan is offering a back-to-school sale on the scary trees:  only a buck for the iPhone version, and two bucks for the iPad version.  Available right now on iTunes.  So if you’re a fan, or want to see trees of . . . dooooooooom! . . . you should definitely check ‘em out.  (As a committed Plants vs. Zombies fan, I’m going to.) Full… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here in the US, it’s Labor Day weekend.  It’s an odd holiday, I admit; we honor labor by taking the day off and sitting on our butts.  Maybe do some bar-b-que. (Your dad might putter around the house, tightening lose electrical plug covers or something, but odds are good he’s carrying a beer or something.) Driving to see friends and relatives near by and sitting on our butts at their place.  But we sure as heck don’t labor. (Well, I am, but that’s a whole different story.) In any event, if you’re an American, and you are contemplating tooling on over to some friend’s house for butt-sitting, beer drinking, and bar-b-que this weekend plus Monday… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

A few of the iPhone case manufacturers could learn a thing or two from Default Case. Just a few days ago I told you about Default Case. The new iPhone case company has decided rather than spend a ton of money on advertising they’d instead offer up their entire line of cases for both the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3G/3Gs for only a penny (plus a small shipping fee.) I went ahead and ordered one. I mean at only a penny why not? My case arrived today and I couldn’t help but notice the similarity between it and a case I’d picked up at a street fair in… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Alas, this weekend brings the end of Summer for those of us in the U.S.    Like many others, I’m trying to cram in three days of beach fun into this Labor Day weekend.   Unfortunately, duty still often calls and I still need to be ‘connected’ for work even while trying to grab some relaxation with friends and family.  Unlike last summer’s shenanigans, I made a point to take precautions and bring extra protection. See, last summer a good friend found their phone, iPod touch and digital camera claimed by the angry sea while boating (OK, maybe it was merely the fact that electronics and water still don’t mix or play nice together).   Since my summer… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There are a lot of options when it comes to protective films for the iPad. Wrapsol, Clear Coat, Invisible Shield, Body Guardz, Ghost Armor and more. How do you, the consumer, differentiate between one or the other? What makes one better? What it comes down to is two characteristics. First being ease of installation. With this type of skin you only get one shot at installing it correctly. Mess it up and you’ve wasted money. And second, clarity. How noticeable is the skin on your device once it’s been properly installed? Wrapsol claims to be the “world’s strongest, cleanest and greenest scratch proof protection system for the iPad.” Their film set is meant to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This is a pretty brilliant idea. I don’t have a hamster, and if I did I think my dog would treat it much like he does his stuffed hamsters, so this wouldn’t last long in my house. However, imagine the possibilities…if you had several hamsters, could you power a MacBook? Has anyone checked in with PETA? Most importantly, would you try this with your hamster? Via Teleread Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Each day from Monday through Friday we post a Gear Deal from our GearSponsor LogicBUY. Thing is, LogicBUY has good deals all the time. So today we have a Gear Deal Extra… some goodies for you gamers out there. First up is the Logitech G700 gaming mouse. The Logitech G700 Wireless Gaming Mouse features full-speed wireless USB (1000 reports/sec), Ultimate Gaming Sensor tracking, 13 effective buttons with macros and profiles, Honed shape for gaming comfort, Hyperfast scrolling, Rechargeable via quick connect USB cable, Corded / Wireless data transfer, Leave-in Logitech receiver, and more. The mouse has an… Continue reading on Gear Diary …