As our schedules around the house have jumped to ludicrous speed recently I have heard less and less pop music … which as you might guess is fine with me. And what we have been listening to is more focused – my kids used their Best Buy gift cards over spring break so we have new stuff from Kid Cudi, Rise Against, Panic! at the Disco, and DeadMau5 rolling. Until the other day … when my younger son was using up the remnants of an iTunes gift card. He bought some GrooveMaker packs for his iPod Touch, a few DeadMau5 songs and … Friday by Rebecca Black. It is a song I really don’t… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

If you haven’t played Portal 2 yet … you really should. It is one of the best games of the year thus far, a glorious sequel to the surprise 2007 hit, and just an overall awesome experience. It is also getting throttled by angry users on Metacritic for things unrelated to the actual game. Here are a few: The ‘ARG’ countdown related to the indie-game ‘potato sack’ collection. Day-one DLC including silly hats, skins and other non-gameplay fun (and OPTIONAL) stuff $50 for a ’4 hour game’ Message while saving ‘do not turn off the console’. Let me dissect these one at a time… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s becoming a problem for me that HTC keeps releasing some of their higher-end phones on Sprint and Verizon; see, I am an AT&T customer. One of my old excuses for why I wouldn’t switch to Verizon was that they were CDMA and therefore didn’t use a SIM card. Not using SIM cards (which are easily swappable into other phones) is a huge problem for people who like to use more than one phone, or in other words, people like me. That’s why the ThunderBolt, a phone that I have thoroughly enjoyed testing, became a bit of a conundrum. It has a SIM. When did Verizon start using SIM cards? Is this a common thing with them… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I did not choose the Nikon D7000 for its digital still photography features, no, I solely based my purchase on its HD video capabilities. This morning I ran out to shoot a few shots of a couple of vehicles I am reviewing this week and the D7000 had the lens on it that is my new workhorse, the 16-85 VRII. Wow, what a nice still camera.… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy Topatco) Amazon announced today that they’ve partnered with the Overdrive Library System to provide Kindle-formatted books for library lending. It’s a fantastic announcement all by itself, since the competition (NOOK, mainly) can read library books and there’s been quite a bit of complaining that the Kindle wasn’t in on the fun. Amazon being Amazon, they couldn’t just match the competition, though, they had to best them, and they’re leveraging Whispersync to make notes in library books sync-able and retrievable if you borrow the book more than once, or even if you buy from Amazon after checking it out of the library! It really highlights how Amazon uses their best feature, Whispersync, to simultaneously open… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last summer at E3 Paradox announced that they were bringing the PC-based Majesty franchise to DSiWare, iOS devices and Android. (I reviewed Majesty 2 here and the expansions here, here and here) I have been looking forward to the iPad release in particular ever since then, but, based on recent reports, it looks like it will be summer before it arrives. In my daily visit to the Amazon Appstore for Android I was flipping through the “Popular Games for Android” section of the homepage and saw Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim there amongst the various casual toss-away games! So I checked it out, and it looked really well done -… 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. I recently needed to send a copy of some history key words to a friend for his class. I was not near a computer and did not have a copy on my phone or in drop box. I tried taking a picture of the document, which got the point across, but was not exactly a great way to send the copy. I use Evernote all of the time for similar purposes but… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Gaming graphics take another leap forward in this visually stunning Battlefield 3 gameplay preview featuring the new “ANT” character animation technology.

Last week we announced a giveaway sponsored by the great folks at Fibers.com who offered up FIVE vouchers for Gear Diary readers. I spiced things up a bit by asking entrants to choose a favorite design from Fibers.comFibers.com, a post from Gear Diary, and a future topic! Well, the contest has ended and we had exactly five qualifying entries, which means that everyone wins! The winners will be contacted by email, so make sure to keep an eye out. Here is the list of winners: Timothy andreasr2d2 lloydrv jazboy Neroraptor Thanks again to Fibers.com for supporting us… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

For quite some time I collected fountain pens. I gathered, and still have, a nice collection. There were, at the time, two types of pens that were particularly interesting. One was the “Flighter” style pen that was made in shiny silver and the other was the “Demonstrator’ that had a clear, rather than an opaque colored body so that you could see the internal mechanism. Well Livescribe has just announced that they are going old-school with the thoroughly modern Echo smartpen. I’ve been anticipating this release ever since I was told about it back in January and now it has arrived. The Limited Edition CLEAR 8GB Echo costs $199.95 and looks fantastic… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Yamaha YSP-3050 Digital Sound Projector Here is a great deal on some big sound. The Yamaha YSP-3050 is a single bar with 21 drivers and 2 woofers that pumps out over 80 watts of power. The YSP-3050 Digital Sound Projector from Yamaha provides true multi-channel surround sound from a single component. The YSP-3050 delivers sensational multi-channel sound from DVDs, digital broadcasting, satellite broadcasting and other digital sources. With 82W sound dispersed via 21 Drivers and 2 Woofers allows remarkable multi-channel enjoyment. The YSP-3050’s IntelliBeam feature ensures optimum multi-channel sound reproduction with accurate image location. This compact Digital Sound Projector also provides 1080p-compatible HDMI with analog video to HDMI digital video upconversion. Other Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Something has changed with my use of all of my devices. Due to memory issues, I have gone back to using dedicated devices. I listen to music on an iPod rather than my iPhone and have been looking for a better way to show off my photos and videos than the iPad. It is funny how I have gone full circle with the devices back to a day where I kept many things separate. The Cinepal HD Personal Media Player is a product that could solve some of my issue of photos and video. Let’s take a look. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

G5 Entertainment has been busy, busy, busy lately – loads of great iPhone and iPad games, and more recently loads of Mac App Store games (review on those coming soon!). Now they are offering something great for iPhone iPad gamers – super sale prices on great games! From now until April 24th you can get Stand O’Food, Supermarket Mania, Mahjongg Artifacts 2, or Mushroom Age for $0.99 for iPhone or $2.99 for iPad! I reviewed the DSiWare version of Supermarket Mania and the PSP version of Mahjongg Artifacts 2 and thoroughly enjoyed both! Also, you can now grab a trial version of Mystery Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of PDair Since we are big fans of PDair here at Gear Diary we are always happy when they bring new products to market. I have to say that PDair is great when it comes to phone cases especially since they are one of the few companies that offer cases almost immediately after a new phone is released. Android phones clearly don’t have all the protection options that the iPhone gets, but its nice to see companies like PDair giving you some options when you pick up your shiny new scratch free phone. If you’ve looking for an aluminum case option for either the HTC Incredible S or Motorola Atrix, then… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Let’s be honest – my opinion of Sony as a corporate entity based on what I have written is pretty low. But my opinion of Sony’s PSP products based on my hardware and software purchases over the last six years? Pretty high! While my DS languishes, my PSP sees weekly usage. And my PSP of choice? The PSP Go, which I reviewed (but couldn’t recommend for most people) here. Since more or less throwing the PSP Go under the bus to make it look more like an experiment and less like an abysmal failure, Sony seems to have focused on sustaining whatever market share they could with the PSP-3000 while getting ready Continue reading on Gear Diary …