Today’s Gear Deal brings us into the world of smart phones. To be more specifics… It brings us into the world of unlocked smart phones with some nice savings on the Nokia N8. The Nokia N8 is an Unlocked GSM phone that sports 3G, a touchscreen, a 12 MP Camera (yes you read the right) and GPS. It also shoots 720p video, has speedy Wireless-N Wi-Fi, comes with 16 GB internal memory and sports a microSD for expansion. To round out the package it has Bluetooth 3.0, HDMI output and gives up to 5.8 hours of 3G talk time. It is a rather smart smart phone and it normally costs $549. Thanks to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Do you use Google Chrome? How many tabs do you open in a day? Imagine that by simply opening tabs you could donate a charity! From now through December 19th you can do exactly that – simply install the “Chrome for a Cause” extension and open tabs as you normally would, knowing that each time you do a little Here is a snippet from the Chrome blog: Whether it’s bug fixes to the Chromium open source project, dazzling apps and extensions arriving daily in our Web Store, or boundary-pushing Chrome experiments — the Chrome community never fails to inspire us with their awesomeness. This holiday, we wanted to Continue reading on Gear Diary …

OpenMoko’s Wikireader project has let you carry the entire contents of Wikipedia in the palm of your hand for about a year now.  While the device’s design isn’t as awe inspiring as the NookColor or Kindle, it still is an interesting idea.  Thankfully the developers have been hard at work and now have released a great update to the Wikireader that is sure to get some people excited.   This update now let’s you carry Wikipedia and all 33,000 books from Project Gutenberg all in the palm of your hand.  While you’ve been able to read the classics on Project Gutenberg on your Kindle, the Kindle would not have the storage to carry all of them at the same… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today was Kobo’s first birthday! Happy Birthday Kobo! It’s tough to reach a year old in such a competitive ereader environment, so good job! I’ve said it before, but Kobo is a very interesting company. Despite having less marketshare and resources than Amazon or B&N, they’re basically in lockstep as far as features and prices. In addition, Kobo has been very open about the changes we’ve seen in the ebook market, like agency pricing, and have been refreshingly candid in their blog posts and announcements. So it’s no surprise their “first birthday” post is equally honest. Their CEO has laid out Kobo’s accomplishments along with where he thinks the market is headed. Kobo sees a big focus… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The folks at Evernote have been awfully busy over the last few months updating their various platforms clients. We’ve seen significant updates to their Windows application as well as updates to their Android and iPhone applications. Today they went live with the new version of their Mac client. Yes, Evernote 2.0 is live and it is a significant upgrade to an already excellent Macintosh client and brings a number of features that people have been asking requesting for quite a while. I’ve had the opportunity to use the update in its beta version for the past few weeks and have to tell you that I am quite impressed with it. Here’s a quick rundown… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

[Ed. note - If you haven't already, please read part one of this review: First Impressions: NOOKcolor] It’s not often that I start a review with a conclusion, but it’s going to be hard to review the NOOKcolor without stating this up front: It’s an absolutely incredible reading device. I was skeptical that a color, LCD device would be a decent reading experience, and admittedly I still personally prefer eInk, but B&N did a fantastic job making reading front and center on the NOOKcolor. How did they do it, and what could be improved for next time? Read on for my thoughts! As I said in my “first impressions” post, the hardware… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Dan mentioned a little while ago that AUTUM was releasing Straight Jackets for the new MacBook Airs and the iPad, which he soon followed with a review of their iPad Straight Jacket. Because Dan and I are now the owners of new MacBook Airs, we have been sent a couple of AUTUM’s MacBook Air Straight Jackets to review as well; I was sent the 11″ version, and Dan has Both the 11″ and the 13″. The picture above shows all three; the 13″ is on the bottom, the 11″ is in the middle, and the iPad… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

After the protests are over, and the boycotts are all done, what are we left with? A game – that is all Left 4 Dead 2 is, a game. Left 4 Dead 2 (L4D2) was released in late 2009 for the PC, and recently came to the Mac via Steam. My review is based on having played the Mac version and replaying the PC version for comparison. The Hype: Left 4 Dead 2 is the sequel to the best-selling and critically acclaimed co-op multiplayer smash from Valve, creators of the Half-life, Portal, Team Fortress and Counter-Strike game properties. With multiple multiplayer options both on and offline, extensive AI custom functionality, four character options… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This is a Sponsored post written by me on behalf of TiVo. All opinions are 100% mine. Almost everyone is familiar with the name TiVo; after all, they are the company that put the concept of digitally recording television shows so that they could be watched later (and at our convenience) into all of our heads. Their name has become so synonymous with digital video recording (DVR) that even when people aren’t using a TiVo specifically, any type of DVR action gets labeled “TiVo”. But just as a generic one-ply tissue is not the same as a Kleenex, and just as an off-brand digital music… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

No matter where you fall on the opinion scale with regards to WikiLeaks, the various governments and companies involved, or Anonymous and the 4Chan DDoS attacks and everything else related to this wild ride … you have to admit that this comic is ironic if not hilarious … Source: XKCD Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When the iPad was first released there were many who commented that one of the device’s shortcomings, among many, was that it could not be used as a phone. That wasn’t quite accurate. Sure the iPad isn’t a device you would want to hold up to your ear but with apps like Skype or Ooma’s iOS app the iPad makes for an excellent speakerphone. In fact, I use it on a regular basis in this way. Now, however, thanks to a new app and an update to an “old friend” the iPad can truly function as a phone. The first… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Back in the day, Jimi Hendrix did all his fancy tricks with a whammy bar, a wah-wah pedal, hands bigger than Franz Liszt, and utter genius as getting the most out of all those tools.  He produced amazing sounds with such rough tools. Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m sure not a genius–and certainly not when it comes to guitar playing.  (My brother’s pretty durn good, though . . .)  So if you’re just an ordinary lunk like me looking to get Hendrix-like sounds out of your beat-up Strat copy, maybe what you need is AmpKit.  The folks at Peavey, the electronics sound people, have come out with a new app update that… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

While I may not agree with the press release below that “the tablet market is exploding”, there’s no question that we’re in for a big expansion of it.  My guess is, 2011 will be “the year of the tablet.”  (Of course, I’ve been wrong before.) In any event, one of the first competitors in the tablet market space is of course the Samsung Galaxy Tab, running the Android OS.  And iLuv doesn’t want you to scratch or ding or otherwise mess up your new Tab, so they’re offering a new line–”available in late December,” they tell us–to protect the Tab.  So surf on over to the iLuv site and check them out. Full… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Don’t you wish there was some darn tool for your iPad where you could just scribble your notes down and have them appear–hey, whiz, bango!–in text form?  And then maybe had some annotation capability.  The ability to access stuff from dropbox, too, or perhaps transmit stuff to other places across the wifi network? Hey, you have your wish!  PhatPad–aside from having a killer name, in my opinion–lets you do all that and more.  Yup; you can draw, scribble, write stuff in your execrable printing, annotate, dropbox stuff . . . pretty good range of functionality, I’m thinking  Maybe you want to check it out. Full information below. More than another note-taking app, PhatPad turns your Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Every year at the Academy Awards there is a montage of movies released during that year … but at this point they should just cancel whatever contract they have out for that job and license this! Youtube user genrocks compiled this video because, as she says “this year’s movies have legitimately transformed my idea of what is creatively possible”. You can also follow her on Twitter. Here is his description, including all of the music used: This year’s movies have legitimately transformed my idea of what is creatively possible. To commemorate, I’ve remixed 270 of them into one giant ass video. Music: 1. Ratatat – Nostrand – Continue reading on Gear Diary …