When Sony provided a sneak peek last week of the two new tablets it plans to launch later this year, it also offered a glimpse into the unspoken imperative it faces: Because it’s late to the game, trailing Apple by, um, years, and others, like Samsung, by months, its biggest hope to gain a toehold in the ever crowded field of similar devices is to do something different — really different. And different it’s done, as least so far as the second of its tablets is concerned — the one code-named Sony Tablet S2, a dual-screen clamshell device that bears no resemblance whatsoever to a tablet, not to the paper versions that make for the namesake crop… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

One of the features that will arrive with OS X Lion later this week is AirDrop. AirDrop makes it possible to quickly and simply share files with someone on your local network. Personally I didn’t see much of the point… until just now. Judie and I are both working on our Macbook Airs here in NJ. My 13″ has an SD slot while her 11″ Air doesn’t. (And boy oh boy has she been complaining whining about that fact!) She took some pictures for a review and wanted to get them on her computer. At first we were going to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

image courtesy Brighthand When the alien invaders arrive, they’ll no doubt swing by the International Space Station for a quick rest stop before invading Earth. Let’s hope they’re fans of open source software and not iOS fans, since they’ll find Samsung Nexus S phones powering several satellites there. According to Brighthand: SPHERES were created by a group of undergraduate students at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, in conjunction with the Department of Defense and NASA, in 1999. Present on the International Space Station since 2006, SPHERES are individual satellites self-contained with propulsion, power, navigation and computing. Each SPHERE was designed with an “expansion port,” with the idea that additional sensors would be added. The Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to the GearGames weekly video game release feature here at Gear Diary! As we continue to plow through the summer video game doldrums, releases are centered on leftovers from the spring and movie tie-ins. Last week’s Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2
 was a great movie … but a terrible game! Given that as background, what do we REALLY expect from Captain America: Super Soldier
 and The Smurfs Dance Party? Garbage! The console version of Call of Juarez: The Cartel arrives, the follow-up to 2009′s Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood and the 2007 original Call of Juarez. The series has gotten solid but… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy maboot.com) Maybe you’ve heard here on Gear Diary that the NOOKcolor makes an excellent Android tablet. If you’re feeling confined by the stock operating system on the nook, even with its new app offerings, there’s always the option of trying a full Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) installation. However, this requires not only a bit of time and patience, but a level of comfort with creating either a bootable SD card or <gulp> reflashing the internal NOOK memory. If you go with plan B, well, you’re a brave soul who doesn’t need B&N’s NOOK interface at all. But the stock NOOK reader is light-years ahead of the NOOK for Android software, so if… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

With help from Michael Ventre, Orbino’s owner, we ordered a very special Padova case for her iPad 2. Judie’s case is hand-made from crocodile and it is… oh just take a look… You can check out all of Orbino’s cases on the company web site. Prices start at $209, and they go up from there … as you’ll see… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Actress Kaley Cuoco is best known for her role on Big Bang Theory, but has had loads of memorable parts including being ‘the teenage daughter’ on John Ritter’s comedy “8 Simple Rules… for Dating My Teenage Daughter”. Part of her appeal is that her impeccable comic timing and charm allow her to simultaneously be ‘the hot chick’ on the show while also endearing and fitting in with a group of asocial nerds. As such she has a tremendous following and high regard from those who identify with the Big Bang Theory characters. She has now stepped up on behalf of cosplaying, convention-going women everywhere with a Slave Leia PSA. Here is the description: In Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Along with 12 other site owners, I was invited to attend the Intel “Upgrade Your Life” experience in Santa Clara, California on July 13th. I went into this event with no itinerary and no idea of what we were going to see, but I figured it had to be more than “just” processor chips. Sure enough, I was in for an eye-opening day … After a greeting by Intel’s Social Media guru Alison Wesley and an ice-breaking game of ‘guess the tweet’ game, we were on to the first speaker … Suzanne Fallender – Director, Corporate Social Responsibility Strategy and Communications – “Green is the New Black” Suzanne Fallender has more than 15 years of experience Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Over the past couple of weeks I have posted several articles related to products made by Sony – involving gaming, music and computers. I have gotten messages that have alternately called me a corporate shill and a screeching troll. And while I will definitely agree that my passion for gaming, music and technology in general comes through in my posts here, I found it amusing being called both an apologist and basher of THE SAME COMPANY! This week Dan did an unboxing on the new Toshiba Thrive tablet, and was immediately taken to task for bias. On a RPG discussion there was a massive heated discussion about Avadon on the iPad compared to… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We are in the full swing of summer, and in addition to great weekly sales, all of the sites are having massive ongoing sales. Steam’s summer sale is done but Direct2Drive and Good Old Games are each featuring massive deals every day – there is no way I can keep up with those, so I suggest you check out the sites! In capturing just the best of the ongoing sales, I have pretty much totally 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, and you will see… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Every now and then Amazon offers easy credit on their MP3 or Instant Video stores … now it is time for another easy way to get a $5 credit. As noted in the image above, head to Amazon.com and follow the steps noted. By doing so your Amazon.com and Twitter accounts will be connected, you will follow @amazonvideo and @amazon_movies, and a tweet like the following will be sent from your account: And then you will get a $5 credit to use immediately on Amazon Instant Video! Not too bad for so little work… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It seems like quite some time since we we wished Judie happy birthday with the promise of a very special gift — a one of a kind Orbino Padova case for her iPad 2. Thanks to the generosity of Orbino’s owner Michael Ventre, we were able to make arrangements to get Judie a case made of the leather of her choice. Judie’s choice? No surprise … Crocodile! The MSRP on this unique case is $689, and that’s for the “standard” handmade by Italian artists, crocodile skin version. It has been a while since production on the case first began, but Judie’s Padova for iPad 2 is not the standard Orbino case. She… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I was never a big fan of Amy Winehouse, finding that her touted ‘Back to Black’ recording had a backing track that sounded sloppy rather than loose and with a vocal that had a ‘blues sound’ rather than sounding bluesy. In other words I found the entire thing contrived. So when British singer Adele appeared a couple of years ago touted as ‘the next Amy Winehouse’ … I was unimpressed and never gave a listen. Now she has stormed the charts with her new album 21, powered by the mega-hit “Rolling in the Deep”. It is a huge success, and while for many folks it has now become too overplayed to be bearable, anyone… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As I mentioned in my review of Rdio and MOG, both are excellent services and each provides plenty of value for the $10 monthly fee. Yet when it comes down to it, I really only need a single ‘on demand’ service – so I needed to make a choice. As a reminder, both MOG and Rdio offer on-demand listening on millions of songs from all of the major music labels. Each has a web player, as well as apps to run on Android, iPhone, and at least some amount of set-top entertainment devices like Roku, but neither has an iPad app (2x mode for both). Both have high and low quality streaming… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

By 1977 Wayne Shorter was already a jazz legend. He started with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers and quickly became music director, had some commercially and critically successful Blue Note followed by several years with Miles Davis in one of the greatest bands in recorded music history (jazz or otherwise), then went on to form Weather Report with Joe Zawinal – which along with Return to Forever and Mahavishnu Orchestra produced some of the most creative post-Bitches Brew modern jazz/rock fusion music and dominated the 70′s jazz scene. Steely Dan had already released five popular and critically successful albums before recording Aja in 1977, with memorable hit songs such as “Do It Again”… Continue reading on Gear Diary …