(image courtesy Union Memorial Heart) You can use your smartphone in many ways to track your health; to keep an eye on what you eat, how far you run, how often you work out, etc. And now, you can also use your phone camera to track your heart rate! I don’t know much about medicine, but according to the app, it works “similar way [sic] as a medical pulse oximeter but without a dedicated light source.” Now, to paraphrase Dr. McCoy, Dammit I’m a geek, not a doctor…so I consulted my good buddy Wikipedia: A blood-oxygen monitor displays the percentage of arterial hemoglobin in the oxyhemoglobin configuration. Acceptable normal ranges are from 95 to 100 Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last week, PDAir had a number of new cases for the iPhone 4.  This week, maybe because Apple fanboys just get too much attention, they’ve changed their sites to HTC and released a couple of new Aluminum metal cases for the Aria. And if you’re an Oakland Raiders fan, you should be happy, because the two colors the new case comes in are . . . silver and black. Surf on over to their site to check them out: Aluminum Metal Case for HTC Aria – Open Screen Design (Silver) Aluminum Metal Case for HTC Aria – Open Screen Design (Black) Continue reading on Gear Diary …

In every medium, every genre, there are transitions from one period to the next, silent to ‘talkies’ to color films, baroque to classical to romantic in classical music, and so on. But seldom is there a singular musical even that forms such a clear demarcation in a genre as Miles Davis 1970 Bitches Brew does for Jazz music. As stated on the Miles-Beyond blog, everything in Jazz comes down to ‘before’ or ‘after’ Bitches Brew. It is interesting to look back and realize that in spite of being one of the clear stars of jazz from the 1940′s until his death in 1992, by the late 60′s Miles and his quintet were playing to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last night, my wife and I went to Best Buy to get her a new computer.  Her netbook had had it, and she needed something that would be capable of working well or her longer than a year or so.  While perusing the laptops, another customer and I both noticed and commented upon several machines that the techs had “tweaked”.  What they had done, I am not sure, but I suspect that if you want the least amount of hassle, you should pick a machine that doesn’t say it was prepared by the Geek Squad.  Odds are, there will be extra crapware and other things to remove on those machines. We chose a nicely equipped… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of my favorite things about Google is that they like to pay respects to all sorts of things … holidays, historical events and even scientific discoveries like the Buckyball.  A Buckyball, or a Buckminster fullerene is an atom that is completely made from carbon. The first fullerene was discovered in 1985 by Harold Kroto, James Heath, Sean O’Brien, Robert Curl and Richard Smalley at Rice University.  The name comes from famed architect Richard Buckminster Fuller who was known for his geodesic domes, which look similar to the Buckminster fullerene! Google’s second O looks like a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There are a variety of methods for protecting your iPhone 4 and minimizing the issue of “death grip”. For the first months with my current iPhone I used a Clear-Coat film on the front, back and sides. Like other similar products, Clear-Coat is a semi-permanent film that goes on wet and then, when dried all but disappears. It is still what I am using to protect my iPad’s screen. All of the semi-permanent films have one big downside for me, they feel the tiniest bit tacky when sliding your finger across the screen. It isn’t bad but it is something you will notice if you go that route. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Soon after I started writing for Gear Diary the game DemiGod, developed by Gas Powered Games and published by Stardock Software, was released. I had started to write a sprawling article about it – not so much as a review (which I did here) but as a rant at how the launch of a solid multiplayer-focused game was messed up because retailers don’t care about respecting the ‘street date’ for a small publisher like Stardock. I ended up rolling bits of it into the review: GameStop started selling the weekend before the game was supposed to be released, which quickly led to pirated versions quickly becoming available (due to the lack of DRM ). This Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Is your loved one’s final resting place not looking up to snuff? Sure you could clean it up with any old bottle of all purpose cleaner but why not use something specifically designed for the task. Klean Logik’s Headstone Cleaner takes just 60 seconds to restore your beloved’s headstone to its original beauty.  The specially formulated spray deep cleans, renews luster and easily lifts dirt, moss, mold and grime away leaving behind a protective Teflon finish that helps preserve and maintain both the headstone itself and the inscription. Headstone Cleaner works on granite, marble, concrete and natural stone and contains no harsh or harmful chemicals. Pick up a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We have arrived at the finale of the EA Games Summer Sale – Week #8 is pretty simple – 40% off ALL PC Download Games! There are loads of great deals, but while the image above is from my email, the one on the website is a little more specific: That is pretty clear in excluding ‘pre-orders and select new titles’. Of course it is disappointing … but not really surprising. There are still loads of great deals to find! So …. after 8 weeks of EA Games sales, what did you buy? Have you been waiting for… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We start with a huge sale on Good Old Games featuring everything from 1C Company, which includes the awesome 2008 strategy-RPG Kings Bounty! You get ALL of the games for $27.94, which is just over 50% off … and if you want to buy them individually they are also 50% off! Great deal! Similarly, OnLive is having a HUGE 50% off sale from the 3rd to the 6th on all ‘full playpasses’ (i.e. full-price games), which also includes re-opening up the sign-ups for the service (which only recently closed!): Don’t work…Just Play! Celebrate this Labor Day by loading up on the hottest games, at an incredible savings of 50% OFF.* From Friday Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As they are preparing for Season 3 of the ‘Clone Wars’ animated series, StarWars.com is hosting what they are describing as an ‘Online Season 2 Marathon’. Here is their description: As we head into our final long weekend of the summer at StarWars.com, we invite you to spend some time with the Zillo Beast and his friends. StarWars.com is winding down the summer with a marathon of five episodes from the second season of Star Wars: The Clone Wars. These cinematic spectacles offer widescreen, epic action worthy of a summer blockbuster: except in small screen, 22-minute format. So while you’re waiting for the September 17th premiere of the third season of The Clone Wars, revisit Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Before I got a car with a built in Bluetooth hands free calling system, I used a Bluetooth headset.  Perhaps the hardest thing about using the headset when driving was finding it when a call came in or when I needed to make a call.  I didn’t like wearing the headset when it wasn’t actually being used, so inevitably it would wind up wedged between the seats or lost somewhere in the center consul. The Blueklip is a solution for such problems.  It attaches to any cell phone, case, car dash, virtually anywhere and creates a simple and accessible place to store your Bluetooth headset when it’s… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Before we jump into today’s Gear Deal I want to offer just a quick public service announcement. See the picture of the Dell Latitude above? Looks great, right? A nice cup of coffee, the laptop and a pad for jotting down quick notes all make for a nice work set-up, right? Yes, it is awesome… until you accidentally knock the coffee in the direction of your computer… then… it is anyone’s guess. Trust me… did it two weeks ago. Keep your coffee AWAY from the computer! And now today’s Gear Deal… The base specs on Dell’s Latitude E6510 15.6″ laptop include a Core i3-370M 2.4GHz processor, GMA HD graphics, 1GB DDR3 RAM and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Do I really need the Xtand so my iPhone looks like a micro-iMac? Nope. Now that I have been using the Xtand from JustMobile for a few weeks to I see a purpose for it? You bet! Would I recommend it to others? Indeed I would. Let me explain why… From IntoMobile: The iconic iPhone stand: Just Mobile Xtand™ is the elegant way to show off your iPhone 4 and 3GS. Crafted from high-grade aluminium, the Xtand desktop stand allows you to effortlessly switch between landscape mode and portrait mode for video viewing or caressing your Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s cute, it’s tiny … it’s the LaCie MosKeyto, one of the most compact USB flash drives I’ve ever seen!  Available in 4, 8 and 16GB (the one capacity which isn’t showing on the site quite yet), the MosKeyto is an inexpensive backup flash drive that you can stick in a laptop’s USB port and forget about. I like that they stuck the keyring on the side with the memory, not the side which serves as a cap. The stealthy MosKeyto becomes nearly invisible when plugged into your computer, and can even travel with the computer in Continue reading on Gear Diary …