SeV Fleece 5.0 20% off! The SeV Fleece is probably one of the most useful, flexible and comfortable jackets I have ever owned. It feels great to wear, is super warm and, thanks to the zip-off sleeves, it becomes a vest in seconds. The SeV Fleece has 24 pockets, zip-off sleeves, and great features like clear touch pockets, a water bottle holder and extendable keyholder and, of course, the patented Personal Area Network (PAN). Best of all, today only it is 20% off!!! Details and ordering can be found here.   Continue reading on Gear Diary …

  We’ve seen iPad 2 cases made from a variety of different leathers. We’ve seen a gorgeous example of one made from crocodile thanks to Orbino. But this is a new one for us. Aranez has released an iPad 2 case made from Kangaroo leather. We’ll skip all the sill puns and jokes and just hop over to the company’s description of it. (Oops, sorry that just kinda slipped out by accident.) Presenting the world’s first iPad 2 Kangaroo Leather Case crafted by Aranez. This stylish case features genuine high-grade Australian kangaroo leather which is known to be the best performance leather in the world – it’s light and Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Well, ‘free’ as in you have to give them your personal information and agree to let them market to you! But still … if you like steak and have an Outback near you – what do you have to lose?!? Here is what you do: Head to the Outback Steakhouse offer page here and enter your zip code. A list of local Outback restaurants appears – choose your preferred one (or in my case, only one!) Fill out your mailing and email information and click ‘submit’. Wait up to four weeks for your voucher to arrive! Outback says the deal will last until… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today’s Gear Deal brings us the XPS 8300 Desktop PC for as little as $699.99. The XPS 8300 features an angled chassis and a sleek black/white design. A black bezel, tilt-back design and top-recessed tray round out the unusual look of this desktop. It sports integrated 7.1 with THX TruStudio PC sound, has a 460W power supply and, of course, runs Windows 7. The least expensive, base Studio XPS 8300 Core i5 deal has a Core i5 “Sandy Bridge” processor with 6GB RAM, a 1TB HDD and a 1GB Radeon HD 6450 for $699.99. It even ships for free. Through our Gear Sponsor the base Studio XPS 8300 with a Core i7 “Sandy Bridge” Continue reading on Gear Diary …

  Image courtesy of Droid-Life What drives me nuts about mobile carriers these days is that I truly believe they are using new technology against us. Maybe you think I’m out of my mind, but it’s really easy to see the common trend happening with 3 of the 4 big carriers in the US. As mobile broadband and equipment evolve, our data plans seem to reverse direction and impose some serious and costly limitations. If I remember correctly in the past before smartphones were big, you could use all the data you wanted. But let’s remember the hardware was not nearly as advanced and you really weren’t streaming anything over a mobile… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today on Google + I saw the following post from Francis: We’re writing to inform you that your order XXX-XXXXXX-XXXXX from onSale has been canceled because the item(s) you purchased were out of stock. Please return and place your order again at a later time. When I returned to my desk I checked my email … and of course I had the same thing waiting. The ‘item’, of course, was the HP TouchPad – recently discontinued and then put on fire sale clearance by HP for $99/$149 for the 16 & 32GB models. These emails are amongst the literally tens of thousands sent by Amazon.com on behalf of onSale, a MacMall affiliate. And… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

We knew the day would come but were hoping that it would not be this soon: the word is that Steve Jobs, the man who has pretty much opened the door to the next phase of personal computing is now stepping down as the CEO of Apple. As the Huffington Post is reporting CUPERTINO, Calif.–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Apple’s Board of Directors today announced that Steve Jobs has resigned as Chief Executive Officer, and the Board has named Tim Cook, previously Apple’s Chief Operating Officer, as the company’s new CEO. Jobs has been elected Chairman of the Board and Cook will join the Board, effective immediately.   Here’s what the NYTimes is reporting:   Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It is amazing to think that it has been well over a year since… 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. Anyone who follows the Blue Plate Special knows I love camera apps. There are so many good apps for the iPhone camera it is difficult to keep up with them; I actually forget about some of mine since they fill three folders. There are several apps I have that make panoramic type photos or that stitch photos together, but I recently found a really cool panoramic app that allows you to share… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

  You change your cloths every day so why be stuck with a laptop that looks the same day in and day out? With Dell’s newest 15.6″ Dell Inspiron 15R-2nd Gen you don’t have to. That’s right, this powerful laptop comes with switchable lids. It is also a rather good laptop whose base configuration includes 4GB DDR3 memory, a 500GB Hard Drive, Intel HD 3000 graphics, a DVD+/-RW, 802.11n, Bluetooth, an HD webcam, 15 months of McAfee virus protection and more. The 2.1GHz Core i3-2310M “Sandy Bridge” Laptop starts at $499.99 a Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have no idea how long this will last, so hop on it now! The Red Hot Chili Peppers have a new album coming out next week (August 30th). A tip from TUAW (via Dan) pointed to iTunes doing something unprecedented for the release – streaming the entire album for free! It is pretty basic – you click play and get the whole thing streaming without ability to choose songs or more back or forth: just play, pause and stop. Regardless, for fans of the Red Hot Chili Peppers this is a great opportunity to check out the new release early, and for everyone else to see if they will… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It’s not the Star Wars Missile Defense System but it is real, it is here now, and it works. Yes, Israel’s new Iron Dome missile defense system was used in the field for the first time and … it worked. Over the past few days the Israeli cities of Beersheba, Ashkelon and Ashdod have seen a barrage of rockets sent over from Gaza (this started right after the attacks on tourist buses on the Egyptian border). While many of the rockets that were aimed toward civilian populations actually landed in fields when fired, enough of them hit their mark and caused deaths and serious injuries. In all, there have been over… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(Editorial note: Try as I might to get useful images of these products for some reason it just wasn’t happening. Therefore you will see mostly stock images in this review but they ARE representative of the actual products.) We’ve been looking at a lot of different earbud and headphone offerings lately. A number of them, like the YurBuds, the Monster Cable iSports, SkullCandy FIX earphones and the AblePlanet SI350 headphones are targeted toward use during active sports and exercise. We learned of two offerings from Burton Technology, Acoustibuds and Acoustigrips, that, while not audio products in and of themselves, seek to enhance the experience of using earbuds during… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

How many times have you read a great book, only to watch it get destroyed by a sub-par movie? Plenty of times, I am sure. But how about things going in the other direction? How many times have you thoroughly enjoyed a movie or a television series, and yet you finished the show feeling like something was missing — maybe you simply wished you’d had a little more back-story on the characters? One of the best examples of a great series that has been adapted from a book to a show is Dexter, a long-running Showtime series (season 6 starts October 2!) that is very loosely based on the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The big news in the pop music world was how yet another of Katy Perry’s mediocre-yet-catchy songs from her ‘Teenage Dream’ 2010 record has bought its way to the top of the pop charts. For some this is a sign that Perry is some ‘queen of pop’, in the same way they bought the way for Lady Gaga to sell a million records in her first week to demonstrate … something. Some are excited about it: Dream’s singles success could prompt a reassessment of Perry’s musical chops, says Joe Levy, chief content officer at Maxim. “This just proves she’s a master pop hitmaker, (getting the) credit she deserves but doesn’t always get due to Continue reading on Gear Diary …