We may be done with our Gear Diary at 5 Contest extravaganza but there is another contest just starting. It comes to us from the folks at SCOTTEVEST. They are celebrating 10 Years in business and, in good SeV fashion, they will be sending one SeV Fan on the trip of his or her lifetime. Keep reading for, the official SeV Trip of Your Life video (with a special cameo from someone you know), the description, my entry and the full rules… SCOTTEVEST: FOR THE TRIP OF YOUR LIFE CONTEST Everyone has a dream, and SCOTTEVEST wants to make your travel dream a reality. Whether it is walking the Great Wall Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I was reading through my feeds today and a story on Droid Life cropped up about some pictures appearing on Picasa that were tagged as being taken by a Droid RAZR and the Galaxy Nexus. Both phones are all but confirmed, with tons of evidence throughout the web, but these pics are being labeled as evidence as the phone being out real soon now. They may actually be out, but posting pictures that purportedly came from the devices is hardly evidence. Why do I say that? I will show you. The above picture was taken with my Droid 2.  Yeah it’s a little fuzzy, but bear with me.  Since it was taken with my… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

(image courtesy Android Community) Here’s the dark side of Android fragmentation: if you have an Android device that’s not running 2.2 (or a device that doesn’t have the Android marketplace), you don’t have Netflix app access. So you conjure up some google-fu and find a copy of the Netflix app floating around, or maybe it’s an Android appstore you’ve never used before. Be very, very careful before you download it. Apparently there’s a fake version of Netflix floating around that steals your login data. As you can see from the image, it looks super similar. In fact, it looks EXACTLY like the login for iOS. If you didn’t pay attention, it would be very easy… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Apparently Beyonce’s team who creates the stuff she puts her name on has a pastime – stealing every idea and ‘repurposing’ it into a Beyoncé video. This happened before … and now it has happened again with her latest video. According to Digital Music News: The Beyonce camp isn’t admitting guilt. Instead, they’re admitting ‘inspiration’ from the famous work. “Clearly, the ballet ‘Rosas danst Rosas’ was one of many references for my video ‘Countdown’,” Beyonce offered with a straight face. “It was one of the inspirations used to bring the feel and look of the song to life.” Here is a comparison clip: Here is the video… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Trumpeter Wynton Marsalis has been a touchstone in the ‘what is jazz’ debate for more than three decades now. After growing up in a jazz family – his father is pianist Ellis Marsalis – Wynton came up through the ranks with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers and then did a stint with Herbie Hancock’s VSOP before striking out on his own. Soon Wynton was simultaneously winning Jazz and Classical Grammy Awards, and record labels were signing jazz artists to recording contracts again. He has maintained a high profile – and been very vocal with his opinion of music – ever since. When you think of mainstream jazz in the last few decades… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Great games on new platforms is … well, great for customers! This week we see two cool games, 1996′s PC game Duke Nukem 3D and 2007′s Nintendo DS game Scribblenauts, land on new platforms. Duke Nukem comes to Android soon, and Scribblenauts has just been released for iOS. Duke Nukem 3D Comes to Android I posted my Duke Nukem Forever review here, saying basically that while the game wasn’t up to the same standards as Duke Nukem 3D – it also wasn’t as bad as some would have you believe. So much of the expectation and disappointment comes from the original Duke Nukem 3D from 1996, which I did a… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today’s Gear Deal brings us the updated 14.5″ HP ENVY 14 “Sandy Bridge” Laptop with one of Intel 2011 2nd Generation Core i5 or i7 CPUs. The Envy 14 is thin, light and, thanks to the quad-core processor, packs a punch. It measures 1.16″ thick and weighs in at 5.69 pounds. It features 1GB DDR3 Radeon HD 6630 switchable Graphics, Beats Audio, gets up to 6 hours battery life, has a backlit keyboard, has a slot-loading optical drive, includes an HP TrueVision HD webcam, has a mini DisplayPort, HDMI connectivity and more. You can even get the optional WWAN/3G. Best of all, our Gear Sponsor has found a 25% off coupon. The HP ENVY 14… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As Michael pointed out this week, pricing of some upcoming tablets has shown that the manufacturers haven’t been listening. Some people want tablets, but most want iPads, and to get the average consumer interested, the price needs to be low enough to make it an impulse buy. Kogan’s new Android tablets look to fit the bill. Available in 8″ 800×600 (SVGA) and 10″ 1024×768 (XGA) models, the tablets come with Gingerbread 2.3 (no Honeycomb here, folks), a single core 1GHz Cortex A8 processor with 512MB RAM, 4GB built-in storage, microSD slot (up to 32GB can be added) HDMI output and a front-facing 2.0 megapixel camera. Prices start from AU$149 for the 8″ model, and… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I have been using one specific Bluetooth headset in my car for the past year or so, but I lost it a few weeks back. Okay, I didn’t exactly “lose” it but, rather, my wife Elana took it. I was thrilled to have her take the headset because: A. She’s my wife, and I like her to have stuff she wants B. She’s my wife, and I wanted her to have and use a headset so she would be safer on the road C. I knew I had a headset on the way that would be just as comfortable and sound just as good one she took It recently… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Yesterday Kotaku noted (via Gamepolitics) that Sony is still looking at a plan to allow gamers with PSP games to re-buy those games on PSN for a ‘special price’, noting Sony: is still trying to figure out what it plans to do with consumers who own games on the UMD format as it heads towards its March release of PlayStation Vita. He said that Sony is “looking into” offering UMD owners the chance to re-download their games on the Vita for a special price. This is not the first time the home office for Sony has talked about how to deal with those who have lots of games on UMD format; last Continue reading on Gear Diary …

I love Sandisk’s Sansa line because they are cheap, use standard connectors and work on just about any OS.  So when they offered to send me the new Clip Zip to review for Gear Diary I jumped at the chance.  Will it be as nice as their past devices?  Let’s find out. The Clip Zip is the next version of the Clip.  My friends in the Linux community have much love for the Clip.  It’s cheap, supports Ogg Vorbis codecs, and it connects to your computer as conveniently as any flash drive. That means you can us any OS that supports USB mass storage.  Windows, Mac, Linux and even my Asus EeePad Transformer… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As an eBook/online media/hypertext document guy, I don’t think I’ve made any secret of the fact that I really like it when a publishing company tries to push the traditional bounds of the form beyond “printed words on the page.”  Vook, for example, has done some very interesting work in that regard, and they are hardly alone.  Inkling is doing some fascinating stuff in the academic textbook realm.  The folks at Threepress are doing yeoman’s work in trying to get some good standards defined.  And there are plenty of others out there plugging away.  (I am also highly disappointed when a group that one thinks should do better–cough cough Wired cough cough–doesn’t bring it off.)… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Today is shaping up to be a fun day for anyone who loves their iPhone, iPod touch or iPad. As you know iOS 5.0 should be released some time today. That also means iCloud is coming and, of course, the iPhone 4S arrives Friday (although reviews are already coming in, and it is awesome). The fun has already started with two new apps from Apple being released. The free Find My Friends app that was discussed last week is now live in the iTunes App Store. We will be trying it out and will bring a full review shortly… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

iOS 5.0 and iCloud go live later today. With them come a host of opportunities to have all of your Macs and iDevices works together flawlessly. (Or at least we hope flawlessly since the initial MobileMe rollout was a disaster.) One issue that came up for me was the desire to get away from using Gmail as my address book and move all my contacts to iCloud. The reason for this is rather simple — I want one set of address book data and I cannot stand the anemic way Google handles things in this regard. There are numerous way to do this but I thought I would walk you through the method I just… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Sarah and I were eating dinner last night and discussing Steve Jobs and his legacy. She pointed out that it would have been fitting for Simon and Schuster to release Steve Jobs’ biography as an iBooks exclusive for a few days prior to street date release. Not only would this reward Apple fans, it would generate buzz for iBooks and stoke demand for the biography across all formats and platforms! Sadly, unless they’re planning something awesome last minute, it looks like there won’t be any special iBooks deal. However, you can preorder the biography now at both Amazon and B&N. It’s $17.88 for the hardcover and $16.99 for the ebook at both stores… Continue reading on Gear Diary …