This week the Hollywood Reporter announced that the movies enjoyed a record box office grab this summer: Preliminary tallies indicate that Hollywood succeeded in scoring a record summer, posting domestic revenues of $4.39 billion to $4.4 billion from May 6 through Labor Day to narrowly beat 2009, the previous best ($4.33 billion), for an uptick of just over 1%. Last year, summer revenues came in at $4.21 billlion, putting summer 2011 ahead by more than 4%. Attendance, however, was down a slight 1% from 2010 to 2011. Overseas, revenues are expected to reach a record-breaking $8.2 billion this summer, up dramatically from $5.8 billion in summer 2010–a 41% increase reflecting the enormous Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Late last year I reviewed the iPhone and iPad versions of Virtual City, noting the huge addition of the sandbox mode in the iPad version and the huge playability increase in the larger screen version. Since then there have been updates made to the game, and now it has arrived on Android. Read on to find out what I thought! The Hype: Build the city of your dreams – a residential paradise or an industrial center. Build dwelling houses and industrial buildings. Produce goods and deliver them to the shopping malls. Setup mass-transit system to take your citizens to places like parks, cinemas and stadiums. Make your city a better place… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It is hard to believe that the #2 Tablet in the world was released and cancelled within six weeks … but that is the situation with the HP TouchPad. ‘Soft launched’ in early July and formally launched a couple of weeks later, the webOS tablet was cancelled with the entire webOS product line by mid-August and existing inventory sold off quickly in a ‘fire sale’. In early August Staples had a big sale paired with a ‘weekend coupon’ from HP for $100 off, making the TouchPad a delicious $299! Yet I didn’t buy one, and described why here. I also subsequently discussed the abysmal TouchPad sales and then derided HP as Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Looking for a good book on leadership? How about a way to help prevent malaria in Africa? Today only (September 7th), you can combine them and do both! If you buy a copy of “End Malaria” from Amazon, $20 of the proceeds will benefit “End Malaria Day”. And you get a great business book! Win! Here’s what marketing guru Seth Godin had to say about this promotion: Six weeks ago, at midnight, I found myself awake but wiped out from jet lag. I was in a lumpy bed, in the dark, in an obscure, $20 a night, John-Waters’-esque former country club. I was in Kitale, Kenya, near the Ugandan border. A mosquito Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Want to get the most out of Evernote? The other day we brought word of the downloadable book, Evernote Essentials. It is a good resource for anyone who is new to Evernote or wants to maximize their Evernote usage. You can check it out here. [affiliate link] Evernote has been on a roll lately. They bought Skitch, rolled out new versions of their software and are opening a presence in Texas. Now word comes that Evernote has updated their Android app and included some neat new trick including even tighter integration with Skitch. We’ll let the Evernote blog post explain… Today’s Evernote for Android update (3.2) gets a bunch of really cool new features and capabilities Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Last week I attended Samsung’s rollout party for the US Samsung Galaxy S II. The screen was like nothing I have previously seen on a mobile device! Spec-wise the rest of it was pretty impressive too. The phone features a Dual-core 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos Processor, has dual facing cameras (8MP rear, 2MP front), 802.11n WiFi and 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot Capability for up to 8 devices. The Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen display is 4.52″, it runs Android 2.3 OS (Gingerbread). Of course the phone has Bluetooth and GPS and Samsung claims you can get up to 8.7 hours talk time. Today’s Gear Deal brings is the opportunity to pre-order Sprint’s version of it, the Samsung Epic… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As a general rule we don’t cover rumors here on the site. Every now and then however there is a bit of juicy information that is so deeply rooted in fact that taking the leap toward believing the rumor is pretty easy. This is one of those cases and, truth be told, I have a hard time seeing this NOT come to pass. We’ve all been hearing about ongoing negotiations between Apple and Nuance with regard to incorporating Nuance’s voice-to-text technology deeply in the next version of iOS. We’ve even see screen shots of the keyboard trigger for it. Now word comes that the functionality has been activated and implemented in some of the… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Do you love basketball? I sure do – and as someone who grew up in the suburbs of Boston I have Celtic green running through my veins. So when I saw that image of Bill Russell I was sold – here is a game that is trying to simultaneous improve the core gameplay and also pay fan service across the decades. This focus on art direction was a major mandate for the team: The artists here have taken a lot of time to make our game feel even more life-like than ever before. We took a lot of time to research and find references for all of the greatest players in every era, along Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Back in 2007 Valve release The Orange Box, which collected up the 2004 PC game Half-Life 2 along with the ‘Episode’ expansions for release on the XBOX360 (and later PS3), and added two new games: Team Fortress 2 and Portal. Team Fortress 2 was the big news of the collection … but the little two hour physics FPP (first person puzzler) called Portal was the break-out star. I thoroughly enjoyed it and reviewed the Orange Box back in 2007 and showed my kids, but it was only this past year that my younger son got interested in the game again. And since he was interested enough to use a major chunk of hist birthday… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As I have been reviewing more and more audio equipment one thing has become clear to me: you get what you pay for in the sound department. True, every now and then a lower-end audio product may surprise you but, as a general rule, the more you pay the more features and audio-quality you are going to find. Sure, this holds true in most areas, but I tend to find it is more apparent in the audio department than in other places. That noted, I never imagine I would lust after a pair of headphones that cost just south of $600. Yes, the Sennheiser MM450 headphones have an MSRP of $589.95. Before we get… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Great news for those of us who love their Sonos audio system. (Here’s our review.) The Mac desktop software is finally Lion compatible! Here’s the email that just came in: Update: Sonos is now Lion-friendly Good news: Mac OS X 10.7 Lion works with Sonos®. Even better news: the solution is ready for download. Just select Check for Updates in the Sonos menu on your Sonos Controller for Mac. Now you can play all the music stored on your Mac in every room with Sonos and use Lion. Problem solved. Thank you for your patience as we worked out this incompatibility issue. We’re sorry if this interrupted your music listening Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It has been a while since an iOS photo app caught my attention but SigNote did just that! It is a relatively simple app that lets you add personalization to your photos in just a few simple steps. It takes seconds to learn and can be tons of fun. Let’s take a quick look via a walk-through of editing a picture and then tell you how you can enter to win a free promo code. Here’s what it says about the app in the iTunes Apps Store: Ever thought about turning your photos into a piece of art? Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It is from Lenovo, it runs Android 3.1, it comes with 25 free apps, you can get a digitizer pen, an up-right docking station, and a full keyboard dock with TrackPoint pointing stick AND you can save $50 off the MSRP. The Lenovo ThinkPad is our deal of the day. After much anticipation and a few delays Lenovo has finally released their first Android tablet. I had seen a tablet from Lenovo at CES over a year and a half ago but time and again the company slowed down the release process. I happen to respect that a great deal as it tells me that the company was waiting until they had a product… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I recently did a review on the PC version of Duke Nukem Forever, and had also reported that the game was coming to the Mac in August. So when it arrived, I was absolutely thrilled to learn that it had integrated SteamWorks and was therefore playable on Mac AND PC! That meant that the core game was identical, that all updates would hit both platforms, and left me with two basic questions: how did it play on the Mac, and did the major August update take care of some of the core issues with the game. So what are my thoughts? Read on and find out! And Continue reading on Gear Diary …

It is hard for some to believe, but after Return of the Jedi, the Star Wars franchise faded into the backdrop as other franchises such as Indiana Jones, Back to the Future and Revenge of the Nerds took center stage. When was Star Wars reborn into the massive iconic force that it remains? If you are thinking 1999 with the launch of the Jar Jar Juggernaut, think again! Back in 1991, author Timothy Zahn created a work of popular fiction called ‘Heir to the Empire’. It took us back to the universe just five years after Return of the Jedi, and finds the New Republic still struggling to rebuild… Continue reading on Gear Diary …