If you’re anything like me, you have enough loose gear bouncing around in your laptop bag to equip 2.5 additional people.  Extra cords, mice, stands, pens, pencils, stylii, cases, batteries, battery packs . . . Lord alone knows what else. Genius wants to make it at least a tiny bit easier.  Their new Navigator 305 mouse has an attachment that allows you to stick it right there onto your laptop for slightly easier portability.  Not to mention decreasing the number of loose things rattling around in your bag.  At an MSRP of $15.99, it’s definitely worth a look. Full information below. Genius (www.geniusnetusa.com), a brand division of KYE Systems Corp., today Continue reading on Gear Diary …

HP wants you to buy one of their sleek, powerful ENVY laptops. Seriously… they REALLY, REALLY want you to buy and use one of their ENVY laptops. They want you to buy one SO badly that they are offering a $400 off coupon on numerous ENVY models. Our Gear Sponsor has a bunch of them listed over on LogicBUY, so let’s run four of the most compelling … HP direct store is offering huge $400 web-use coupon code for HP ENVY 14 14.5-inch Laptop configured over $1,249. You can customize from Intel Core i3 (i3-370M, i3-380M) to Core i5 (i5-450M Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s just a fact of life that, as you get older, your various parts and components start to fail.  In my case, my once-sharp eyes have gone into full-nearsightedness mode.  Which actually isn’t all bad, because it means that I get some interesting mis-reads of things before I look closer at them, like converting “Cavender’s Boot Factory” into “Cadaver’s Boot Factory”.  (Causing me to think, “Man, now there’s a specialized trade!”) Today’s instance was, rather than seeing “Samsung,” reading it as “Samsonite,” and imagining some kind of brand new travel gear that can withstand being banged about by a gorilla, complete with a commercial narrated by Johnny Carson: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B2ZeIoLz8FE But no, it’s… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I don’t love Facebook. I use it but I don’t love it. It is too open for my tastes… even with the privacy features cranked up. I like Twitter and find myself using it more and more. It is open but feels like there is more, or at least different, control you can have on who sees and can respond to what. I love Yammer and use it for communicating with both the Gear Diary team and my temple clergy staff. I love that it is a closed system and only the people we want to have access and see the communications do. But Yammer is, at times, too closed, not flexible enough, and it… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

With this wireless Mp3 Shower Speaker from the Sharper Image you can listen to all that music you’ve got stored on your iPod while you shower.  You plug your Mp3 player into a transmitter, which can be up to 150 feet away, and with the power of 900 MHz PLL circuitry your tunes get sent to the speaker which you place in the shower. The speaker is powered by either AA batteries or an included wall adapter if you simply want to keep it plugged in the bathroom but not in the shower and the transmitter is strong enough to go though walls.  If you’re like me you can keep… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

So I am sitting in my recliner with my 13″ MacBook Pro in my lap.  The laptop is a bit warm and the show I am watching sounds terrible through the stock speakers.  My only choice to fix these problems is to dig out a laptop cooler then find some external speakers.  How about having all of this in one cool product?  Luckily, Philips brings the CushionSpeaker to combine comfort and sound into one device.  Let’s take a look. The Philips CushionSpeaker combines a laptop stand with a USB speaker device to bring a stylish all in one… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I recently purchased a treadmill so that I could continue running once the weather turn icy cold. I shopped around quite a bit and ended up with a rather high-end treadmill with all the bells and whistles. (Well, maybe not ALL but MOST of the bells and whistles.) Among the extra features are a built-in speaker system for your iPod or other media device that can get quite loud and sounds pretty good. It also has a built-in 7″ TV that can accept both cable and composite plugs. I used it yesterday for the first time with my Roku box and it worked rather well. I connected it and then screened the movie via that. I… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last week I reviewed ListMonger for the iPhone, which I found to be a great task manager with a lot of features, but that is still quite easy to use.  The developer, Paul, has been gracious enough to provide Gear Diary with an extra copy of ListMonger to give away.   If you think that you’re in need of better list making tools, here’s what you need to do to be eligible to win:  Just tell us in the comments below how you think ListMonger is going to save you from a desperate state of disorganization.  We’ll pick a random comment and send the winner a code to redeem a copy of ListMonger. There… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have made clear my passion for playing games on netbooks through my Netbook Gamer series or reviews, but for the most part those have involved older games or smaller ‘indie’ games not designed to require heavy hardware. Many times I have heard people ask ‘where are the new games for netbooks’? The Game Creators and Intel have sponsored a contest to create great games capable of running on netbooks, and have just announced the results! Categories included Best Graphics (winner Last Stand is shown above in a screen cap from the YouTube video that doesn’t do it justice), Best Gameplay, Standout Game Element, and Best All-around Netbook Game. Before getting to the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you’re like me, you’ve probably turned to Dictionary.com thousands of times. Maybe you wanted to make sure you had your spelling right, or you weren’t sure how to pronounce something correctly. Or maybe you were worried you used the word “insouciant” incorrectly. No matter what, you’re heading to Dictionary.com. And despite the name, Dictionary.com offers more than just definitions. There’s pronunciation help, sample sentences to provide context, even word history and famous quotes! It has moved beyond just “hey, what does this word mean?” and turned into a full-fledged resource for all things linguistic. I had the privilege to speak with Shravan Goli, the President of Dictionary.com. He outlined a few of the ways Dictionary.com… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

So okay, I live in Austin Texas, so this is not a situation that I have to deal with very often.  But you, who live in a (shall we say) more northerly location, where the climate is such that you tend to freeze your fingers off in the winter, you probably like to wear gloves, right?  (I sure do on my skiing sojourns!).  But this is a touchscreen world, and probably the last thing you want to be doing is struggling with all your gear in a high wind at the ATM machine while you attempt to tug your gloves off to use the touchscreen, right? Well, now that Geeks rule the earth, a company… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My daughter Maggie is currently in High School and, like all High School students for the last 100 or so years, is not really very happy with the reading list.  (I think some of this stuff should be introduced much later, but never mind me; I’m a grumpy, protective Dad.)  Fortunately, the book she’s having to read now, “To Kill a Mockingbird,” is one of Sami’s favorites, and so they’re reading it together.  And believe me, Maggie will know way more about it when she’s done than most of the kids in class because of that. But not everyone has a Sami, and what happens when she hits Shakespeare?  (Well, I’ll take her to Shakespeare… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Traveling back and forth between Austin and San Jose like I do, I’m constantly on the lookout for things to make my life easier.  And with my iPad, I want a stand that is compact, portable, preferably adjustable, lets me stand up my iPad in multiple positions, and doesn’t cause confusion at the X-Ray line.  (Alas, though I love my 12 South Compass stand, it does fall down in this last category.) A new entry into this category is the icanstandit stand.  Specifically designed for portability, it gives you a solid, low-cost (MSRP $19.95) option.  Surf on over to the icanstanit site and give it a look see, should you be in the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have to say that I continue to be amazed at just how varied the market has been for iPad gear.  When the iPhone 2G was released, there was a noticeable dearth; I would be embarrassed to tell you what kind of cases I kept my iPhone in at the time.  (On the other hand, it’s still functional, so it can’t have been all bad!)  It’s like the manufacturers listened too much to Steve Ballmer or something, and figured it was going to be a major flop. Not with the iPad!  Boy, the wealth of gear available in the first 6 months of its life is simply staggering.  And adding itself to the list is… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Like any good admitted fanboy I often find myself looking for Apple products on TV. Lately I’ve been spotting more and more iDevices popping up on many of the shows I watch. So I’ve decided to start a new weekly segment entitled “Apple On TV.” The premiss is simple. Whenever I spot an Apple product in one of the shows I watch (and I watch a lot of TV) I’ll take a screen shot of it and post it here, in a weekly recap, with a short description. But I need your help too! Although I watch a lot of TV I don’t watch everything. So if you come across an Apple product in one of… Continue reading on Gear Diary …