OK, I called it last week – Lady Gaga has been displaced atop the album charts after leading for only two weeks. This week has also seen Spotify gain Universal Music Group contracts and supposedly be very close to closing on Warner Music Group, the final ‘major’ as they prepare for US launch. Finally, the annoying viral YouTube hit ‘Friday’ has gone from free to rental to gone to ‘director’s cut’ … all in one week! Let’s take a look. Lady Gaga The graph at the top shows the sales of Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’ in the three weeks since release. The first week it broke the 1 million… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! This week brings a couple of major releases as well as one very innovative game with a unique pricing scheme. Oh, and a video game tie-in to the sequel to my least favorite Pixar film … something that has bad idea written all over it! The biggest releases are Dungeon Siege III and F.E.A.R. 3. F.E.A.R. 3 is the next entry in the highly rated horror-shooter originally made by Monolith Studios but now in development by Day 1 Studios. The studio brought in some big names to help with the cinematics and scripting, but the game has suffered multiple… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s a cliché these days, but let’s face facts:  Media is evolving at a ridiculous rate.  For the longest time, you had stuff written by hand, or chiseled out of some kind of rock, or painted on walls, or something.  Slow, hard to transport, not easily copied.  Then we got the printing press, and things improved somewhat.  Movable type.  The Telegraph.  Radio.  TV.  But lately it’s just gotten ridiculous, with the internet begetting the Web begetting all kinds of crazy-ass stuff like blogs and RSS feeds and Instapaper and God knows what.  So if someone wants to stay current — like your good friends here at GD! — they have to evolve.  Like Shawn at what used to be… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image courtesy of Bill Mueller So there Sami and I were, laying comfortably in our bed together late one Saturday morning.  Snoozing.  Didn’t have to get up–no work, the kid (we still only had one then) was still asleep, nothing was pushing us.  Ah, peaceful relaxation!  And, then, suddenly, turned up to 11, we got: After about 30 seconds, it switched off just as abruptly as it started.  ”What the heck was that?!” Sami said.  ”Thin Lizzy, I think,” I said She hit me.  That’s the risk when you’re a smart-ass. But that’s how recognizable their licks (not to mention Phil Lynott’s voice) are — a sleep-fuzzed, middle-aged father on… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Now, it’s not that I want to put our site out of work, as we make our bones doing reviews and whatnot, but this is a good deal and we wanted to share it with you. Skooba products, makers of beaucoup bags and other products for your hard-working technogypsy-on-the-go, is having a contest.  It’s pretty simple:  post a review of something that you bought from them, and you’ll be entered in their drawing for a $1000 prize package.  Yup; earn money for doing reviews.  I know, sounds crazy, right? But do me a favor and just post your review to the Skooba site, okay?  Don’t start your own web site; we need the traffic, durn… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have owned Sony products that I bought myself for more than 30 years, starting with the original Walkman, and consisting of audio/video (cassette, CD and DVD), televisions (tube and flat panel), computers, gaming systems, and more. My wife bought a cute Vaio last year with a 13.3″ screen and a Core i5 processor and a really nice pink finish. Point is – in spite of how much I beat up Sony for a variety of reasons, I am a loyal customer for one huge reason – they make great stuff. So when I had the opportunity to evaluate their new S-series laptops as part of the ‘Charged and Ready’ program, I leaped… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Update: This giveaway is now closed, and the winners are — lloydrv (tablet kit), visual360photography (smartphone kit), chinoy885 (smartphone kit), and bamfhacker (tablet kit). All winners have been contacted. Thank you for entering, and keep your eye out for more Gear Diary Giveaways! =) Last year 57% of 5200 people surveyed admitted using their phones in the bathroom, and this year 27% of 500 people surveyed admitted to checking Facebook while ‘otherwise indisposed’. Another survey this year said that 56% of an undisclosed number of people use their mobile device in the bathroom, and of those, 27% of the 56% are playing games, while 70% of that 56% admitted… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The number of iPad 2 cases from which to choose continues to grow and that is a good thing. After all, in the last two weeks alone I’ve seen family and friends continue to adopt the iPad 2 in fairly large numbers and each of these new iPad 2 owners has different tastes and needs when it comes to their device cases. More available cases means more choice and that makes it more likely than ever that each of them will find the case that is just right for their needs. Enter the latest case we have had a chance to check out- Ingear’s Smart Folio 2 for iPad 2. The Smart… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

When I think back to my childhood, it is more my mother than my father whose music I recall – Neil Diamond, Rolling Stones, and Sunday morning Polkas! I know my dad owned a couple of jazz records, as he gave me his Ahmad Jamal Live at the Pershing when they were moving to South Carolina about five years ago … but other than that I really couldn’t cite my dad’s music outside of AM radio back then and NPR now. With my kids … I don’t worry about that. Even last night as I picked up my older son from a party there was some discussion about music going on and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Hard to believe but the Monterey Pop festival – which was the first huge gathering of the psychedelic counter-culture of the late 1960′s and featured artists such as Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix and The Who – happened 44 years ago this weekend! To help celebrate, Wolfgang’s Vault has opened up their great collection of memorabilia! Here is the description: Two years before Woodstock, this three day celebration embodied the themes of the new counter-culture and became the template for all future music festivals. The event gave Jimi Hendrix and the Who their first major US appearances, and the world its first real glimpse of Janis Joplin and Otis Redding, to name a few. Celebrate Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Technology is cool. The National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation in Tokyo has just unveiled a massive 10 million pixel globe that shows you the view of the earth as if you were looking from space. But it gets better – you can interact and learn from touchscreens located all around the globe! Here is some more info: A new, gigantic Japanese globe unveiled in Tokyo features 10,362 OLED panels that show constantly updated satellite images of Earth. The nearly 20-foot-in-diameter globe, called Geo-Cosmos, displays Earth’s current appearance in more than 10 million pixels, an incredibly high resolution that is ten times sharper than the previous model, built with LED panels Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy fork you) I’m a huge fan of the television show “True Blood”. The show is set in a world like ours, except the Japanese have perfected artificial blood, which has prompted vampires to “come out of the coffin”. In real life, though, the Japanese haven’t invented fake blood; they’ve turned poop into food! No, this is not a joke. According to Fox News: Japanese scientist Mitsuyuki Ikeda from the Okayama Laboratory certainly doesn’t believe in human waste. He thinks that’s perfectly good protein you’re sending out to sea, and he’s found a way to extract it, mix it with steak sauce and create a Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Image from Rich Lam/Getty Images I wrote about the awful riots in Vancouver following their team’s loss in the Stanley Cup finals (to my team, Yay!), but at least there is some sort of silver lining in what has become one of the most iconic images from the fracas – the ‘kissing couple’. It was highlighted through Twitter: @buzzfeed You forgot one of the best ones – Vancouverites who know to make love, not war: http://ow.ly/5jf9o That pointed to this image, from Rich Lam of Getty Images. Initially there was some concern that this was TOO perfect, so it must have been… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Father’s Day weekend is finally here, meaning my wife and kids will spoil me all weekend, and also meaning that the digital download sites are featuring some awesome deals! I am highlighting the Impulse Weekend Sale for a couple of reasons – first off because GoG isn’t having a weekend promo, but also because they have the whole Heroes of Might & Magic V bundle for $9.99! Again this week I have abandoned my rule of no more than 50 deals from all sites … there is just way too much great stuff out there at insane prices!! However, I am sticking with the >50% savings rule. We are now seeing more and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Judie likes her loud, statement-making watches. (And she can, of course, pull it off!) There’s the Black Phosphor Appear she recently got. And there is the blinged-out version she reviewed in full. Me, I’m a bit more of a subtle guy (at least in this one regard.) That’s why I was excited to take a look at one of Phosphor’s “simpler” E-ink watches. This E Continue reading on Gear Diary …