Another great weekend filled with deals you are sure to ‘love’! OK, I’ll stop now! Everyone is getting in on the action with great deals, so let’s get right to them. And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything. So let’s get straight to the deals! Good Old Games: Tex Murphy Games Weekend Sale – 60% off the whole set, or 30% off individually Tex Murphy Games (PC) for $14.36*, Save 60% Expires on Monday Tex Murphy 1+2 (PC) for $4.19*, Save 30% Expires on Monday Tex Murphy: OverSeer (PC) for $6.99*, Save 30% Expires on Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I woke up this morning and had 80 emails. My first thought was that my email had been hacked, because why else would I have 80+ emails over the course of 8 hours??? Then I started reading them, and realized someone at Google “helpfully” opened the floodgates on a Chrome OS beta tester Google Group. The craziest part is that not everyone receiving the emails has a CR-48 netbook. So in addition to 40 emails saying “how do I unsubscribe/why am I getting spammed” and another 20 explaining how to change subscription options in Google Groups, there were a handful of “So am I getting a CR-48?” type emails as well. Maybe 10 of the emails were… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last night I met a lovely woman at a dinner party who demonstrated to me in a simple conversation why the iPad has been so successful. She commented that she was tired from being up past midnight, and someone else asked why she stayed up so late. The woman explained she was reading on her iPad, and playing “Words with Friends” with her daughter in San Diego. She then explained how much she loved reading on her iPad because she could “shop around” at Amazon, Kobo and B&N, plus she could leave the lights off so her husband could sleep. What amazed me was how everyone else at the table was ready to head out and buy… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

These days it is all about the apps. There are apps for iOS. There are apps for Android. There are apps for Windows Phone 7. Now there are apps for Macs, and thanks to Intel, there are apps for netbooks … and a great new way to find what’s out there. Intel’s AppUp is “Your source for netbook apps”. It is a great resource for anyone who has a netbook, and it is worth checking out even if you don’t. AppUp is… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Are you one of those people who sticks your insurance finalization forms in the trash? The kind who tosses bank receipts, deposit slips, paid utility and credit card bills in the bin? Do you make jokes about filing important documents away in “drawer #13″, but you really mean the overflowing bucket under your desk? If so, then you are also the type of person who is simply begging for their identity to be stolen. Yes, really. The solution is to shred those documents as they leave your hand, before they make their way into the garbage. Don’t even let them start to accumulate. Purchasing a shredder can be a bit of a challenge, however… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the more unusual iPad accessories that we saw one meeting with Kensington representatives at CES was the Kensington PowerBack. The PowerBack is described as a “battery case with kickstand and dock”. Effectively, the power back serves as a case with a built-in stand for hands-free viewing when the iPad is in landscape and it contains a battery that adds an additional 50% runtime to the iPad. That translates to being able to use the iPad for about 15 hours without ever having to worry about charging the device. I have been using for about two weeks so let’s take a look… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We are all feeling the financial pinch!  Blue Plate Special is a weekly review of bargain apps for the iPhone and iPod Touch. Nothing over $.99. It has been one of those weeks. While searching for this week’s Blue Plate Special, I had one requirement. The application had to be mindless fun. I needed some entertainment and fun with explosions and guns make it that much better. As luck would have it, a game called Gun Bros turned out to be mindless fun with cool guns and space fighting. Since the game is free, I figured we had… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My father-in-law spent a few hours yesterday in traffic court. Yes, ol’ leadfoot didn’t see the speed trap but the officer sure saw him. All told, he was there for over two hours. This wasn’t because he was in so much trouble, he wasn’t, but because the judge literally held court… In court. Yes, the judge apparently opined about life, liberty and the pursuit of tech. He told the group that was gathered to appear before him about the Kindle he got for Christmas. He loves it! He told them that since he is cheap he is reading some of the books that are available for free; among them a number of tomes… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We’re all Palm fans from way back in the day. So while none of us are currently using WebOS, we were all excited to follow HP’s recent announcements! Of course, big geeks that we are, everyone had their own opinion on the new entries to the smartphone and tablet world … Carly Z: Anyone else following the HPalm stuff? Amazing what HP’s deep pockets can do. Francis Scardino: yeah, works out for us…(greedy consumers) The touchpad looks awesome. Touchstone support is a winner. No cords for you. Carly  Z: All… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’m not a user of Phatpad, but a number of people whose opinions I respect are, and they almost uniformly sing its praises.  And if you’re a user too, you’ll be pleased to find out that PhatWare has released an iPad version.  Frankly, given the iPad’s larger screen, I might actually give this app a whirl myself; being able to share notes and such from docs that I’ve marked up on my iPad with someone else is much more of a draw than it would be for, say, an iPhone. So does this sound like something you might like, or that you’ve been waiting for?  Then you should check it out at the iTunes store… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Thank you for entering the contest!  The first winners of a Buzzband is Rodney St. John who is conflicted as he likes both Star Trek and Star Wars.  The second winner of the last Buzz Band is Neroraptor who knows the ways of the Force as an avid Star Wars fan.  Both of the winners have been notified. Thank you for reading Gear Diary and participating in our giveaways!  Stay tuned for more giveaways coming soon!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Yup, it’s chocolate-and-roses time, gang.  And like everything else in the world these days (I bet someone is developing a “Peaceful Uprising Against Sitting Dictators” app in Egypt right now), chocolate making, yes, has an app. Behold Chocolatier: Decadence by Design, a “chocolate empire building empire” game.  I haven’t played this game yet, but if I’m understanding it correctly, it’s sort of like Civilization, except with chocolate recipes instead of armies.  Which frankly sounds a lot better to me, especially in the (as we say in the tech biz) Valentine’s day time-frame. Available for $6.99 at the iTunes app store.  Buy and drool today! Full information below. PlayFirst® Inc Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’ve been whining to Gear Diary’s own Michael Anderson about the lack of real–as opposed to virtual–gaming controls on the iPhone.  One of the things that I loved about my late, lamented Tapwave Zodiac was that not only was it a PDA, but it also made a pretty cool gaming console with its analog joystick and various buttons.  Why can’t someone make a gadget that you can install the iPhone into and give you that capability? Well, we ain’t there yet, but someone has jumped to the iPad with that in mind with the JoyStick-It.  It’s a simple idea:  an analog joy stick that, well, sticks right there on your iPad, and gives you… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today’s Gear Deal brings us a variety of deals on the 15.6″ Dell Latitude E5510 Business Laptop. The Dell Latitude E5510 sports reinforced hinges, rugged system latches, steel-reinforced cable lock slots, 3-in-1 card reader, 34mm ExpressCard slot, Docking Connector and more. With this deal you can save $320 instantly AND you can configure to your needs/liking AND the laptop will ship for free. The 15.6″ Dell Latitude E5510 Business Laptop is upgradeable to a Core i3/i5/i7 processor, 4GB DDR3 RAM and more. And if you configure a system to over $1,099 our Gear Sponsor has found a 40% off coupon code. Some examples-… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Back in the day, when MicroSoft seemed to be taking over the world, they acquired one of the first Web/HTML-based email services around, HotMail.  HotMail, like GMail these days, offered free web-based email service, which at the time was a pretty radical notion. (“Email for free?  Are they nuts?) Now, even though it seems like Google is taking over the world (or Apple), there are a number of Web-based, free email services.  But HotMail is still around, and they want you to know that they’re getting their Valentine’s Day jones on.  Just because everyone over the age of 11 (seemingly) is sexting and texting and sending photos all the time, there’s still room for good… Continue reading on Gear Diary …