A good friend of mine, a technical illustrator as well as a talented cartoonist and animator (Hi, Paul!) once described using a mouse for artwork as “like trying to draw with a bar of soap.”  For a long while now, artists have had access (at a premium most of the time) to much better tools–drawing tablets, pads, and styli that make the “drawing on a computer” process much less onerous. Now Genius has a peripheral that could, just maybe, give you a taste of that, too:  the Pen Mouse.  The Pen Mouse looks a lot like an ink pen, but “functions on almost any surface with the 1200 dpi tracking technology, switchable between 400 and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I usually only get to use my iPad at home when I have a WiFi connection. My first order of business is to check all of my news feeds, from Mac and tech blogs to actual world news. My number one problem with most readers is they are just too messy for me. There are several popular apps that have corrected that problem, but I just cannot get into using them. I have a lot of feeds I check and it just seems overwhelming most days. The developer of The Chalkpad contacted me about Interruption and it looked promising. Let’s see how it made out. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The Bill Evans Trio played five sets at the legendary Village Vanguard jazz club in New York City back in 1961, meaning we have come upon the Golden Anniversary of those sessions. Why should we care? Fair question, since the Village Vanguard has been one of the major jazz havens since the mid-1960s, and pretty much every major jazz musician has played there multiple times through the decades. The reason to care is that those sessions from a single day have spawned not one, but TWO of what are considered some of the top live jazz recordings ever made. Concord Records recently reissued Waltz for Debby, and I am reviewing it for… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! Last week was yet another basically empty week, so as I mentioned before I am going to skip weeks like that! The biggest release was LittleBigPlanet 2, which is excellent. This week we get a few major stragglers from 2010 – Dead Space 2 and Two Worlds 2 . Two Worlds 2 is my personal pick of the week – despite the heavy flaws in the original I found it quite fun and replayed it several times since the 2007 release. And the original Dead Space was an excellent game, so despite hating the advertising campaign I’ll be playing that… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Over the weekend I was visiting the various digital download sites to make sure I hadn’t missed out on any great deals (I had missed a one-day deal at Impulse on Haegemonia, sadly!), and on the front page of Direct2Drive I saw the section above listing Rentals. Wait – WHAT?!?! Digital rentals? Amazingly, it is true – here is the blurb from their blog: One of the many reasons I’m proud to work for D2D is the on-going commitment to better serve our customers and followers. Trust me if you could be a fly on the wall during our many brain-storming sessions you’ll walk away satisfied in knowing we take all your Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of my–and other GD folks–favorite apps is Instapaper, which allows you to download interesting web stories for later reading.  The ability to build one’s own newspaper is pretty powerful, and a timesaver to boot.  (Although there are some sites that don’t translate well, but that’s a minor nit.) Taking that idea one step further in Sobee’s new iPad app, NewsMix, which actually allows you to mix and match social media info and news, let you share articles with your Facebook pals, and build your own durn newspaper/magazine.  Interested?  Take a look at it on iTunes, where it’s being offered for an MSRP of $2.99. (And is anyone else as tired of seeing Jesse… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Okay, now look:  usually when I read a product description that folks send in, I have something to say about it.  ”Cool!”  ”Not my thing, but definitely useful.”  ”Hey, I had a product like that once!”  ”Huh; seems like a logical extension of .”  (Or often, “Of course someone made that into an app!”  Or “Why the heck didn’t I think of that?”)  But every once in a while, something comes in that so, well, surprising that I literally sit there with my jaw hanging and my brain saying, “Wha’ ?” This is one such time.  I’m interested in your all’s reactions, honestly. What is it?  It’s a Tweet-ring.  You can now… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Even in a sea of sea of HD-recording smartphones the Flip line of video cameras still reigns supreme as the easy-to-use, affordable pocket camcorder. The cameras shoot high quality video, make editing easy and, perhaps best of all, let you capture memories without running down your phone’s battery. Over the last few years the Flip line of cameras has added something else: STYLE. You can now get the cameras with a variety of designs… All of which makes them a great gift for the person you love this coming Valentines Day. It gets even better though. You can now give a totally personalized Flip video camcorder by designing the outside of Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy Zoilus) Music is great. It can keep you motivated on a run, or help you maintain a certain speed. Plus having music can help the time go by quickly. But please, please, please, be aware of your surroundings. If you’re running outside, stick to the sidewalks in well-lit areas, or leave the headphones home. This story is really sad, and while yes, most people don’t run on train tracks, it’s just as dangerous running on the side of the road with music blaring. The news is a few days old, but I thought about it on my run today; I try to stick to sidewalks, but all the snow… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We start the week with a Gear Deal on the new HP Pavilion Elite HPE590. This machine is a powerhouse that was designed for gaming and video editing. The Pavilion Elite HPE-590 Six-Core Desktop PC has 9GB of DDR3 RAM, a Wireless-N LAN Card, Blu-ray and more. It also comes standard with two-year warranty and you can get an optional upgrade to a Core i7-990X Extreme Edition (3.46GHz, 1.5MB L2 + 12MB Shared L3 cache) CPU. Our Gear Sponsor has found a deal in which the HP direct store is offering $400 coupon on the computer. It gets better. You will also get a free upgrade to 1.5TB Hard Drive, a free… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Yeah, there are apps out there that let you geo-tag the photos you take with your iPhone.  In fact, there are a bucketload of iPhone-related camera apps–it took me forever to settle on one (and I still have a couple on my iPhone, in case I change my mind.) But what about photos you take with your Canon SureShot?  Or your Nikon ExtremelyWonderousOCam?  Or whatever your digital camera of choice is?  Does it geo-tag it for you?  Or is it one of those post-production things that you have to hope you took notes for, because otherwise you can’t remember–was that Sumatra, or the park down the street?  Durn it, I just can’t remember! Now… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

HanDBase is one of those mobile app titles that anyone who has been around mobile devices for a while will surely recognize. HanDBase, by DDH Software, was introduced for Palm OS initially, eventually migrating to Windows Mobile, BlackBerry, iOS, and now Android. While I don’t use database programs extensively, I have used one program or another for a long while to track media collections or other forms of inventories. If you’re new to HanDBase, it is a relational database program with cross-platform availability, including Mac and PC desktop versions with a sync conduit.  The desktop software has the ability to import either comma separated or tab delimited files, which are then stored as… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I got my iPad last spring I began carrying it with me pretty much everywhere. But I had a problem. Most of the laptop bags I had were just too big for the diminutive tablet. Sure they worked just fine but they were overkill. Moreover, the compartments designed for the laptop were often so big that the iPad often flopped around inside. I was happy to see Tom Bihn release one of their Ristretto bags that was perfectly sized for the iPad and had the pleasure of reviewing it for the site.  I still use the bag constantly when I need to carry my iPad and just a few other… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s time for another State of the eBook! If you’re anywhere in the Northeast/Midwest, you’ve probably holed yourself up with a good book and some blankets, because it is crazy chilly right now! So set aside your guilty pleasure, and jump into some eBook news and tidbits! Software: Sony has finally come through on a long overdue promise of a smartphone app for their ebook store, starting with Android. As many blogs pointed out, it’s only Android 2.2 or better, meaning it’s not compatible with Sony’s OWN Android smartphones. Oops! Still, it’s nice to see Sony stepping up and giving people an option to read their ebooks outside of… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I first began writing for Gear Diary I was “photo-challenged”. No matter what I did my review pictures were BAAAAD! Then a friend gave me a lightly-used Canon G9 and things immediately improved. Canon’s G-Series cameras are sturdy, easy to use and take great pictures. I’ve since upgraded to a G11 and I couldn’t be happier. Which brings us to today’s Gear Deal. The Canon G12 features a 2.8-inch LCD, a 5x optical zoom, shoots 720p video, has optical image stabilization, accepts SD/SDHC and MMC cards, has a mini-HDMI port and much more. And because it is part of the G-Series it is tough! The G12 has an MSRP of $499.99 but our… Continue reading on Gear Diary …