Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This week is about Portal 2 … and some other stuff. Perhaps that isn’t fair, but ultimately the top game for the XBOX360, PS3, PS and Mac on Tuesday will have you heading back to Aperture Science. I can’t wait! The PS3 also gets the exclusive SOCOM 4, and there is the multiplatform Mortal Kombat. Also, the PSP gets Final Fantasy IV: The Complete Collection.. And while there isn’t really anything else big getting released, there are a quite a few other releases this week – read on to find out! Continue reading on Gear Diary …

There are very few times that an accessory can be polarizing and generate major debate, yet the FitPac NEO generated quite the discussion when I showed it to some friends. Reactions ranged from “Why would you use this?” to “Oh, I could totally see this being helpful for x, y, z”. You’ll have to read a bit further to see what Sarah had to say about it, but first let’s look at what the FitPac NEO is and why it may be a bit of an acquired taste. The company describes themselves and their products as: FitPac Lifestyle Accessories, a new millennium sports, travel and fashion accessory company, has created an innovative way to carry our cell Continue reading on Gear Diary …

47-inch XVT472SV 1080P LCD LED HDTV Today’s New Gear daily Deal offers some huge savings on this 47″ HDTV from Vizio. As the product page explains, Experience the pleasure of Full High-Definition entertainment with the TruLED™ 47-inch XVT472SV 1080P LCD LED HDTV from Vizio®. This HDTV features REAL 2,000,000:1 contrast ratio for rich, dark scenes delivering an experience that will blow you away. Offering 5 ms response time it delivers sharp and impressive video motion every time. Additionally, this direct type, backlit HDTV is comprised of 640 LEDs divided into 80 control blocks. In addition to that it utilities Smart Dimming™ to control these blocks intelligently, turning them on and completely off based on Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Judie’s birthday is coming up fast and selecting something she will love is not easy. Well, usually it is not easy but this year it was a no brainer and, thanks to Orbino, we are going all out on this year’s gift. Let me explain. A few weeks ago we did some “secret shopping” with Orbino. We had worked with them in the past and were not thrilled with the customer service. We had heard from Orbino’s Michael Ventre and he challenged us to go shopping again. We did and after changing our order a few times we concluded that their customer service was now on par with the gorgeous leather cases… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(Image courtesy Velo Noise) Any debate that monster eBook sales versus paper books were a fluke born out of the holiday season has been put to rest. The Association of American Publishers is reporting that eBook sales not only tripled from last year, they also blew away paper book sales. Uh-oh…maybe B&N should consider going digital faster… I find this fascinating not just because it’s big news, but also because it fits with the conversations I’ve had with random people lately. Around my office, at dinner functions, etc., anytime books come up everyone says the same thing: “I/my friend/my husband/my neighbor just bought a Kindle/Nook/iPad and I don’t know how B&N is going… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Vostro 230s Slim Tower Ever heard the expression “You snooze you lose”? Well, this is the New Gear Daily version. “You snooze, you don’t save!” Yes, we head into the weekend with a last minute sale on the Dell Vostro 230s Slim Tower PC. The savings are big but the time is short to grab it. Here’s what Dell has to say about this slim, but powerful, desktop computer. A space-saving slim tower with 3GB of memory, a high-capacity hard drive and a widescreen monitor From its space-saving design to its ability to integrate with the latest Dell business hardware and services, the Vostro 230s Slim Tower provides a Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The weekend is finally here and once again the digital download sites are featuring some awesome deals! This week I am trying something new – rather than just selecting all sales above 50%, I am choosing no ore than 50 total deals from all sites! Given I usually post that many from GamersGate alone … it will be a challenge! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything. Now let’s get straight to the deals! Good Old Games: Weekend Sale – 30% off select Activision adventure games (yes, at 30% off this is their crappiest weekend deal perhaps ever) King’s Continue reading on Gear Diary …

How is THIS for a bonus – buy one classic game for $5.99 and get the other two games in the series for FREE! Well, that is exactly what Good Old Games is doing for the release of Alone in the Dark. Here is their description: An absolute legend, the grandfather of all survival horrors, and based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft – Alone in the Dark – bundled together with the rest of the original trilogy! Alone in the Dark is a survival horror game released back in 1992, and one of the first games to use 3D models over prerendered backgrounds. This may not sound too Continue reading on Gear Diary …

What are you doing for lunch? How about playing a great dungeon crawl game (aka a ‘rogue-like’)? That is exactly what Desktop Dungeons promises … but can the free game deliver? The Hype: Fight your way through a fantasy dungeon in 10 minutes or less Classic roguelike play re-imagined as a single-screen puzzle game Unlock loads of classes, races and challenge dungeons for awesome replayability Online leaderboard allows you to compare yourself against other players Deep, challenging, randomly-generated gameplay The Reality: When you first start Desktop Dungeons, you are presented with the simple screen below. You can choose your race, your class, and then enter either the tutorial or the main… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We end the week with an awesome Gear Deal on the LG 42LV5500 42″ 1080p LED HDTV. In addition to a huge High-Definition screen, the TV features full HD 1080p Resolution and LED backlighting. This TV is WiFi Ready, has Picture Wizard, is THX Certified and, of course, has HDMI connections. This new 2011 LG 42LV5500 42″ 1080p LED HDTV normally has a price of $1,199.00 but, after all the savings our Gear Sponsor has found the final cost at just $799.00. Better still, it will ship for free and there is no tax in most states. 2011 LG 42LV5500 42″ 1080p LED HDTV via logicbuy Continue reading on Gear Diary …

REMINDER – This giveaway ends today at 5PM EST. Head to the original post to add your comments to enter! When I was a kid in the 70′s, custom t-shirts were just becoming popular, with bands and other brands making a killing selling shirts with silk-screened logos, and kids making shirts of their own with sayings such as ‘I’m With Stupid’ made by ironing letters onto basic t-shirts. Things have come a long way from there, as you can now quickly browse a web site such as Fibers.com which has loads of custom designs, or make your own. Better still – they are affordable, costing not much more than I remember… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last night I was greeted with yet another iOS update when I hooked up my iPod Touch, so as usual I let iTunes go ahead and update. It was also updating some of my apps, so I checked the progress. As usual, the update was > 600MB. Later I hooked up my iPad 2 … same thing – another 600+ MB download. Then this morning I went to sync up my original iPad. That’s right – another 600+ MB download! So now I have downloaded nearly 2GB of data for my three iOS devices – must be some pretty important stuff, right? Well, here are what the release notes tell… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

This past fall a student at Rutgers University here in New Jersey walked up on a bridge and proceeded to jump off. He had been outed as a homosexual by a cruel prank that put his sharing affection with another male student up on the web. He was humiliated. Things were so bad that he could not see a time when things would be better. He was wrong, they would have been, but his field of vision had become so narrow that all he wanted was to stop the pain in that moment. So he jumped off the bridge. That story takes places through our nation, and the world, on a daily basis. The specific facts change, but the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Death and Taxes – oh how we hear that phrase overused, and for my purposes here I plead guilty. Fortunately I am here to talk about the latter and not the former. Our friends over at Verbatim, maker of digital data storage and backup products, want loyal US taxpayers (or at least tax filers) to remember to back up all your data. Recent springtime storms across the center of the country bring that suggestion even more to light as this will be one less thing to worry about when Mother Nature turns nasty and you are faced with putting your life back in order. Uncle Sam (ain’t it cute how we nickname all… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

My family loves to watch the occasional movie, but with all of the stuff we have going on it is often hard to predict when the time will present itself. Sometimes we can stop by a RedBox, sometimes we depend on iTunes or Amazon Video On Demand. But more and more we find that the new releases don’t come to RedBox for nearly a month, and cost $4 each for movies on iTunes or Amazon. A couple of weeks ago, mSpot upped the ante in the cloud-streaming music locker battle by increasing their free storage level to 5GB, with the upgrade to 40GB costing just $3.99 per month (much… Continue reading on Gear Diary …