What is going on in Egypt is powerful and scary stuff, and I don’t seek to demean it in any way. Nor do I seek to diminish or trivialize anything that happened or is currently happening in Iraq. However this contrast of images is simply stunning. The image above is a split of top down pictures of supposed ‘democratic revolutions’, one in Egypt right now, the other from 2003 in Iraq. In the upper left of the lower image we see the focus on the toppling of the statue of Saddam Hussein – this was the widely shown image at the time. However, the wider image shows a nearly empty area surrounding… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Here is a bit of info Gear Diary received recently regarding a Scion-related app update. It is not a Scion owner-specific app, rather it’s one that seeks to enhance the lifestyle of the Scion demographic. The City Guide app now offers more than 15 locales in the database, but Dallas/Fort Worth, who is hosting the big game this weekend, is not among them. I did check out the Austin guide as I was visiting the capital city recently, but the place we had dinner and drinks at (The Highball) was not listed. It was a cool restaurant/bar/nightclub/bowling alley complete with retro furnishings, swing-style live band and one packed dance floor filled with jitterbuggers. (I guess… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I first heard that Google wasn’t going to auto-complete searches for Bit-torrents and other file sharing methods I was pleased. But then it became clear that it was less a matter of taking an anti-piracy stance, and more about satisfying the corporate interests of those who feed Google loads of cash. So this image was very telling – and it also shows where the priorities are at Google … if you have the cash, you get to set the moral compass. Source: Techi via Buzzfeed Continue reading on Gear Diary …

For this particular news item, please dive with me deep into software nerdliness.  If you’re already a hacker, you might prefer to skip right over the next paragraph. Quite a while ago, computer programming moved beyond the sort of one-lunged, lone-hacker, single-person model.  Nowadays, it takes hordes of people working on absurdly complicated code, much of which come pre-packaged and compartmentalized so that your poor coders don’t have to (as they say) “re-invent the wheel”.  Like, someone else has almost certainly developed some nice, modular code for, I dunno, calculating the shadows ona 3D object given a point light source defined.  Why write a new package of code to do it when someone’s already done… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The National Guard does not get called to handle problems on the home front, well at least not in Southeast, Pa we don’t. The overhyped ice storm we had yesterday caused some panic and the governor activated us just in case things got a little crazy. Well despite Mother Nature’s efforts we didn’t have much going on this time around and mostly just prepared our trucks and gear for a night out in the ice. While waiting for the order I was talking with some other soldiers in my crew about our mobile devices. One of my troops recently changed over from the iPhone world to Team Android and picked up a Droid X. My section… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Okay, so I get the news item for this new iPad app, right?  It’s a browser.  And I thought, “Geez-o-man, there are a b’zillion browsers out there for the iPad.  Who cares?”  I just so happened to have tested a bunch of them out on my iPad a few weeks ago, trying to find one that would allow me to more easily cut-and-paste text.  Then I checked out the specs.  This isn’t “just a browser”.  Heck, the developers have put it in the iOS “productivity” category, and I can see why.  The app has: • Image Capture – Full-Screen capture – Crop-tool capture – Tap and hold capture of any image • Annotation – Pen Continue reading on Gear Diary …

For a large part of the country, this image pretty much sums things up. It is from the stretch of I-93 on the New Hampshire side – 93 runs from Southern NH straight into downtown Boston and is one of those infamously clogged highways. For more images, check out this page at BuzzFeed!… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Now THIS is an amazing use of technology for good. Did you know that the current method of helping burn victims through skin grafts takes weeks or months to heal but that can be brought down to literally an hour? It’s true and a National Geographic program will focus on the innovation that makes it possible. The “Skin Gun” takes stem cells from a burn victim’s healthy skin (not the controversial kind) and mixes them with a solution that then allows doctors to literally spray new skin on. Apparently it is LITERALLY like spray painting but with a far more impactful result than what you did with your model airplane as a kid. This… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I’m pretty particular when picking out my PC gaming gear. I have been through a pretty good amount of hardware over the years and keep up my life cycle of gaming gear. Arctic sent us out some gear to check out and review a few weeks ago. I had a chance to check it all out and see how it fared on a few solid hours of Call of Duty Black Ops for the PC. I had a chance to check out some gaming oriented hardware including 2 headsets, a mouse, and a standard slim profile keyboard. Arctic offers some pretty great cooling products, but also has a nice line of headsets, headphones as well as some… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There’s a new iPod nano as watch out there today, and this one has a neat trick up its your sleeve. HEX has announced its HEX Sport Watch Band. The Sport Watch Band is the first band that is compatible with NIKE Plus. As the company explains, …the Sport Band features a ‘Pop in, Pop out’ design for easy insertion of the iPod nano®.   The watch band gives full access to all iPod nano® controls via its integrated control buttons.  The fashionable and functional watch band is made of perforated premium silicone for added breathability and comfort during athletic activities. The band will be available in April. The full release follows. HEX Announces Sport Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy Cocoa Heaven) Kindle singles have been available for about a week, and my household has been brave enough to give them a try. Not only did I read one, but I convinced my dear wife and non-ebook fan Sarah to try one as well! I read a non-fiction title (Lifted, by Evan Ratliff), while Sarah read Leaving Home: Short Pieces by Jodi Picoult, who is one of her favorite authors. I enjoyed Lifted immensely. It was quick-paced, interesting, and read like a longer magazine article. What I really enjoyed was that it cut right to the important bits. If Lifted had been a full-size book, it would… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

What do you do when an old whiskey barrel has served it’s purpose and come to the end of life? Why, give it a new life of course. And that’s what the wine barrel chair. Over 99% of the chair comes from recycled/reused wine barrels. In fact, they even use the barrel straps in construction. How cool is that? As the designers explain, a work of art, each piece of the planet rooth barrelly made it line of furnishings is made by hand, by working artisians. every work of art is signed and numbered. Yes, for just $985 this… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Thanks to Apple’s iPad juggernaut, just about everyone is planning on putting out a tablet this year.   While CES confirmed that most will be running Android (3.0/Honeycomb) to battle the current iPad and upcoming iPad2, don’t count out the non-Apple or Google branded tablets.   Today, I received the Tycoon tablet from a Tangent.  The Tycoon runs Windows 7, and is targeted direct at the enterprise business user who wants full office application access in a portable tablet form. I’ll be putting the Tycoon through its paces over the coming days to see how it stacks up against some of the other tablets available — namely the iPad and Samsung Galaxy S.   Interestingly, one of my… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As I get older–and hey, no laughing, we’re all getting older, yo!–I find myself forced to pay attention to stuff that, to be perfectly frank, I couldn’t give a rip about otherwise.  As a small example, I have always had blood pressure that was on the high end of “normal”.  Now, it’s on the mid-range of “take blood pressure meds or keel over dead”, which means I actually have to pay attention to it.  Durn it. Another thing you might need to pay attention to is your heart rate–and not just because you’re getting old, of course; maybe you’re just in training or some such.  In any event, if you’re already carting around an Android… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today’s Gear Deal brings us the Sony PlayStation 3 Slim 160GB Gaming Console. The PS3 Slim is 33% smaller and 36% lighter than before and packs some great features. It has a 160GB HDD, built-in Wi-Fi, doubles as a Blu-ray player, has BRAVIA Sync (HDMI-CEC), and comes with a free PlayStation Network membership. Our Gear Sponsor has found two deals on the PS3 that are of interest. With this deal you can get the PS3 from Amazon along with $50 in Amazon Credit for $299.99. It will even ship for free. You can also get it from Best Buy and also get a $50 Best Buy gift card for $299.99 shipped. If you are… Continue reading on Gear Diary …