Smartphones, tablets, and computers are great for sharing your photos with friends and family.  But what do you do when you want to share the latest photos of the kids with Aunt Sarah — who’s never even heard of Facebook, Flickr or Picassa, much less uses a computer?   Believe it or not, there are still ‘unconnected’ people in the world. If you are  a company like Isabella Products, you bring those features to the masses with products that make it simple to share your photos regardless of whether your family or friends are a bit, ahem, digitally challenged.   Isabella currently makes the Vizit photo-sharing digital photo frame, and even has a kid-friendly tablet in the works for later this year.  What they’re unveiling at CES, however, is the Mini™ — a USB stick that will turn any regular, run-of-the-mill Digital Photo Frame (you know, the one you gave Aunt Sarah last year) into a dynamic photo sharing solution. Don’t have a Digital photo frame?  Don’t worry, the Mini™ will also work with LCDs and those new-fangled TVs with USB ports — for when Aunt Sarah wants to show off those photos on the big screen. When she wants to share her [...]

We spent the last evening having dinner at Nobu with the heads of DTS Digital Entertainment learning about their new, groundbreaking sound technology Neo X. Neo X brings a degree of depth, immersion and realism to the sound experience of music and movies. Here’s a peek into what we learned tonight from a panel moderated by Mel Lambert that included Jon Kirchner, DTS Chairman and CEO, JJ Johnston, DT Chief Scientist and musicians Pat Leonard (think Madonna, Rod Stewart and other luminaries) and Diego Rocco. The technology of Neo X, their new 11.1 technology, allows you to build a sound that is experienced as surrounding you and literally drops you into the center of the experience. … Continue reading on Gear Diary …

OK, every now and then I see a poll that has me not so much looking at the results as thinking ‘what did the OTHER bunch of people think’? Over at MusicMagazineUK there is a new article with poll results to questions posed last week. There were three questions, and all were Yes/No. Here are the results: 86% of people want a price match with Amazon’s services. 71% of people want Apple to reduce the restrictions on variable song and album pricing. 57% of people are unconcerned about easier integration with third party services. Note that the last result was in response to the question “Easier Integration With All… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  we like competition here at Gear Diary.  I like competition.  Just because I’m happy with my iPad and iPhone now doesn’t mean I will be forever and ever amen.  Heck, when I got it two years ago, I loved my Lenovo T61–now it seems like a sluggish, underpowered, inadequate piece of basura.  That’s the way it goes in the tech world. So I’m actually pretty interested to see how AHX Global’s new itablet will do.  Being announced at CES, the itablet sports a 10″ capacitive touchscreen, 1024 x 600 resolution, 32GB of onboard capacity, and running Microsoft Windows 7 Home Premium.  Will it be pure awesomeness (which… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We’ve been hearing about the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 since CES 2010.  Well Lenovo is finally ready to reveal and demo the IdeaPad U1 with LePad slate at CES 2011 at the Venetian.  The U1 is a ultramobile laptop uses a slate running Android 2.2, called LePad as it’s screen. Specs for the tablet include a Snapdragon processor and the laptop portion will be a 1.3 GHz CULV Core i5 chip with 2 Gig of Ram running the 64 bit version of Windows 7 Home Premium. It will be available first in China in the first quarter of 2011 with no word on US availability.  Pricing on slate Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Remarkably, amongst the flood of CES products, releases, announcements, and all the rest comes a non-CES piece of news.  To wit:  the digital audio company Hercules has announced the release of their new New NEW Hercules XPS 101 system (available sometime this month at an MSRP of $249.99).  I’m not enough of an audiophile to tell you if the specs sound awesome to me or not; sorry ’bout that.  But they look impressive (the specs), and they look pretty cool to boot. But why take my word for it?  Surf over and check on ‘em for your own self, and you decide. Full information below. Hercules, the digital audio specialist, expands its Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Naw; those aren’t what the new speakers from Speakal look like; I just thought it was a great splash page, and wanted to share it with y’all. But in all seriousness, here’s the dope:  Speakal, the folks who put out the products above, are releasing a number of new speakers that they are debuting at CES.  If you surf over to the web site, you’ll see a couple of them, and if you wait a couple of days and/or at CES, you can see the full new lineup.  I don’t know what your tastes are, but they have a pretty good variety, so you should look for yourself.  As for me, I thinking… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It looks like Amazon must be getting the same press releases we are about CES, since they’ve gone out of their way to announce a special version of the Kindle app for both Android and Windows tablets. From the press release it isn’t super clear what Amazon is doing differently, but my guess is eye candy and other tablet-y goodies. Hopefully they’ll extend to these apps their magazine and newspaper support as well! Right now this really feels like a “get out in front of the news” release, rather than a substantive one. It’s unclear what the difference will be between “Kindle for Android” and “Kindle for Android tablet”, or “Kindle for PC” versus “Kindle for Tablet… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Amazon Asus is wasting no time unveiling their top contenders for the tablet battle about to commence at CES 2011. The Eee Slate EP121 is proudly posted on their website and gracing the pages of Amazon with some heavy specs on the line. The 12″ slate is nothing short of a mobile powerhouse packed in a slim and nearly bezel free package. The Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of RAM, 32 or 64GB SSD, and full Windows 7 OS  pretty much guarantee you a mobile desktop experience that rivals most low-level laptops and netbooks of today. Quick Specs: 12.1″ HD capacitive display (1280 X 800) Intel Core Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Some of your faithful Gear Diary folks are . . . well, it’s not too far to go to call them “stud muffins.”  They run, they jump, they do impressive athletic things like fighting fires.  They are athleticism on the hoof, you betcha. Then there’s us middle-aged fat guys with high blood pressure. And us middle-aged fat guys with high blood pressure don’t necessarily have time to stop by our local MD’s office for regular blood pressure checks, like they tell us we ought’a.  So Withings has decided that has got to stop, and they’re now offering the first blood pressure cuff (and associated software) that attaches to your iPhone.  Available at an MSRP… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We had a chance this evening to see some of the new items that are going to be available from Dexim, a company that creates some terrific iPhone and iPad accessories. One of the more interesting items that they were showing off was an iPad case with a built-in Bluetooth keyboard. The case and the keyboard are rather interesting in their own right; the combo is thin and light, and the battery life on the keyboard sounds like it will be amazing — it has 100 days of standby time. The keyboard’s keys have minimal play, and it seemed like it would be quite comfortable to use for an extended period of time. Better… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Don’t say we didn’t warn you, but press releases have been flying off the keyboards out of Las Vegas all day. They are related to all things electronic and all electronic roads currently diverge at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas. I scanned through few pages worth and found several related to the automotive environment. Some of the biggest news today came from Toyota and not just about the pending lawsuits. Toyota has announced Entune, their mobile multimedia system designed to compete with the likes of Ford’s MyTouch system (which took a big hit from Consumer Reports in apparent user-unfriendliness) and GMs combination of OnStar/Bose/Navigation that has no complete interface concept. I found a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Turtle Beach Turtle Beach is one of the oldest names in computer audio that I can remember. Back when i needed premium audio for Oregon Trail I knew who I could turn to. Now in 2011 if you want to get serious with console gaming audio, then look no further. Turtle Beach announced three new headsets for PS3, Xbox, and PC that are sure to fit your gaming needs. If you’re an avid First Person Shooter fan then you know as well as anyone that hearing the footsteps of the enemy like he’s right next to you is what it takes to survive. They give you some options that should do nicely with… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I am a big fan of Nuance’s series of mobile voice-to-text apps. It is one of the most used apps on my iPhone and iPad and I can’t wait to see how it develops in the coming months. Nuance isn’t just interested in iOS however and they are proving it as this year’s CES begins. Today they annunced that their Dragon Dictation is at the core of LG’s new Voice-to-text apps for Windows Phone 7. As Michael Thompson, senior vice president and general manager, Nuance Mobile explains: “Consumers worldwide are continuing to demand voice as a primary interface for their mobile devices. It’s simply the most natural and intuitive way to engage the applications… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As you, hopefully, know by now, Larry and I have embarked upon a week-long No Baggage Challenge for Charity. We left the East Coast yesterday morning with just the clothes on our backs and arrived in Las Vegas for CES a few hours later. We are already getting into a routine of determining what we’re going to wear one day while washing the clothes we wore the previous one. It’s a great way to demonstrate how little we actually need while traveling- especially when using SCOTTEVEST clothing, but there is an additional reason why we are doing this. It was a year ago that the devastating earthquake struck Haiti. On January 12 of last… Continue reading on Gear Diary …