Do you need to locate, acquisition and verify satellite links? Probably not unless you have a military title before your name or you deal in some kind of surveying industry; if that describes you, then this is probably news you’ll welcome: Coolfire Solutions has just introduced SCOUT, a Satellite Communications Operational User Toolkit which has been “engineered to assist in the location, acquisition and verification of satellite links.” The total SCOUT Toolkit consists of The SCOUT Surveyor™ and SCOUT Observer™ mobile applications which run on the iPhone and iPad and are connected to the SCOUT™ hardware. As Coolfire… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Other than cell phones, one of the most common gadgets I see are headphones. Kids and adults alike love to carry their media with them and seem to be listening to it in public more and more. I always check out headphones when someone has them in, since I am a geek and gear head and always see a variety of style and sizes. Headphones and earbuds are one of those things that you can pay as little as a couple of dollars or up to hundreds. I was able to test out a pair of Luxe earbuds from iFrogz. They fall in Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I loved the PC version of SuperMarket Mania 2, and now that it is available for iPhone and iPad I wanted to take another look and see how it would work as a port! Read on and find out how they did! The Hype: Nikki and her friends are back in Supermarket Mania 2! Help her uncle Ross manage and run his chain of grocery stores on the other side of the country. Keep the supermarket shelves stocked up, floors clean and customers coming as you work on improving the stores and increasing profits. It’s not all peachy though, as the evil Assistant Torg and his robotic minions are back causing… 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. This week’s Blue Plate Special was spotted by my son. He was browsing the app store on my wife’s phone and came to ask if he could play frisbee. He said, “Dad! I have to get this frisbee game! It looks so cool and I promise it is free!” He had a point, it did look cool and was in fact free, so I let him download it. When he later told… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I tear up when I am chopping onions, and even though sometimes it’s just a sniffle, there have been times — like when I am on a marathon chopping streak while making multiple freezer lasagnas — when the tears just started to flow. What in the world is happening? According to Mental Floss (a fantastic magazine and blog): 1. When you cut into an onion, its ruptured cells release all sorts of goodies, like allinase enzymes and amino acid sulfoxides. The former breaks the latter down into sulfenic acids. 2. The sulfenic acids, unstable bunch that they are, spontaneously rearrange into thiosulfinates, which produce a pungent odor and at one time Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today’s Gear Deal brings us the 15″ Lenovo IdeaPad Y570 Laptop. The Y570 is powered by Intel 2011 2nd Generation Core i3 and comes with a to of bells and whistles. It weighs just 5.95lbs (2.7kg) and measures .86″ at its thinnest point. It features a smooth metal shell and SRS Premium Sound and JBL speakers.  The base model includes 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M, 4GB RAM, a 500GB Hard Drive, Bluetooth and a DVDRW.  If you want a more powerful machine you can upgrade to the  latest Core i7 Quad-Core processors, 8GB RAM, a 1TB Hard Drive with 64GB RapidDrive for 9.5 second boot time, a USB 3.0 port, a Blu-ray drive and more. In… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As someone who follows music that is often produced by small labels with runs under 1000 copies, I have constantly found myself seeking material that is ‘out of print’. I have always appreciated the Smithsonian Jazz collection, but that only scratches the surface. Fortunately the Library of Congress has a massive archive of historical recordings, and have now partnered with Sony to make it available online through a site they call the ‘National Jukebox’. Here is the basic info from the National Jukebox website: The Library of Congress presents the National Jukebox, which makes historical sound recordings available to the public free of charge. The Jukebox includes recordings from the extraordinary collections of Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Very ominous news from the iOS ebook world today. Teleread has reported that iFlowReader, a small ebook app, announced the 30% cut to Apple was too much for their tight margins and are closing their doors. Now, you might be thinking “I only use Kindle/NOOK/Kobo, why should I care?” Well, if you do any ebook reading at all on an iOS device, you should be extremely angry and concerned. iFlowReader has an open letter on their site explaining the situation, and here’s the most important part: Why Do We Have to Shutdown? The crux of the matter is that Apple is now requiring us, as well as all other ebook sellers, to Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The other day I wrote about the Orthodox Hasidic Jewish newspaper Der Tzitung Photoshopping Hillary Clinton and Audrey Tomason out of the famous ‘Situation Room’ photo. The concern was that the alteration of the photo to meet their “laws of modesty” stepped all over the White House rules of usage and the fundamental rights of the individuals in the photo to … well, exist. Today there is a large apology and clarification from Der Tzitung at the Gothamist, but you can read a relevant chunk here: Publishing a newspaper is a big responsibility, and our policies are guided by a Rabbinical Board. Because of laws of modesty, we are not Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the pleasant surprises I found when I first started checking out the BlackBerry Playbook was the fact that it is a fantastic blogging tool. Unlike the iPad, which continues to fall short in the mobile blogging department, the PlayBook is a complete blogging system that works beautifully. The rear camera is surprisingly good, and the file management allows you to upload images to the web just the way you would from a full traditional computer. Sadly it is one of the only pleasant surprises since, weeks later, there are still little to no useful apps for the PlayBook. The only problem I have run into is the fact that while the on-screen keyboard… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of my favorite Dilbert collections is called ‘Clues for the Clueless‘. In that book Dogbert takes the reader through a wide array of scenarios and shows you proper and improper ways of handling it. Although not specifically addressed, I think Dogbert would NOT recommend addressing lagging sales of your new product like this (emphasis mine): “The value of 3D images without the need for special glasses is hard to be understood through the existing media. However, we have found that people cannot feel it just by trying out a device, rather, some might even misestimate it when experiencing the images in an improper fashion,” Iwata said. He… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Sony is going through tough times, but no company can guarantee the stability of a person’s chosen escape from reality.

The Lincoln MKZ Hybrid is the luxury marque’s first foray into the world of hybrid technology. It goes without saying this technology is borrowed directly from the Ford Fusion Hybrid. What does need said is this is a very good package. Since first driving this hybrid powertrain arrangement in the Fusion a couple of years back I knew the engineers at Ford were on to something. Fuel economy figures (41 mpg city and 36 mpg highway) have continued to impress the automaker and consumers alike, especially in the wake of once-again-higher fuel prices. Wrapping the Fusion in Lincoln luxury was a no-brainer and the MKZ Hybrid package is a winner. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Combat thrills have always driven the Dynasty Warriors game series – the battlefield games where one player chops, blocks, and musous their way through countless foes.

In the history of jazz there have been tons of amazing improvisers, imposing figures who stand out in their field. Some such as Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker and Miles Davis and Pat Metheny have become popular figures, but most avant garde players have remained little known in spite of their acclaim within the jazz world. Rahsaan Roland Kirk is such a figure. Here is how AllMusic describes him: Arguably the most exciting saxophone soloist in jazz history, Kirk was a post-modernist before that term even existed. Kirk played the continuum of jazz tradition as an instrument unto itself; he felt little compunction about mixing and matching elements from the music’s history, and his Continue reading on Gear Diary …