Do you have less room on your iDevice then you think you should?  Are you seeing space taken up by a media file that you can’t remove via an iTunes sync?  Do you have weird, grayed-out items in your list of iDevice media files when you look at them in iTunes?  Well, Gear Diary is here to help!  (This comes firmly under the heading of, “Doug screws things up and finds out how to fix them so you don’t have to!”) I am pretty dang happy with iOS 5 on both my iPhone and my iPad.  But there is some odd behavior that I have been seeing since I upgraded, and I wanted to share with you all what to do about it should it happen to you. In a nutshell, I’m getting some zombie media files. “What the heck do you mean by that, Doug?”  Well, it’s pretty simple: for some reason, on my iPad and iPhone, I have ended up with TV show and movie files–both purchased and rental–that show up in iTunes, but don’t appear in the appropriate media app on the device.  For example, I rented an Episode of “Primeval”, watched it, and then (I thought) [...]

Earlier this week I wrote about the great 50% off sale on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare on the Mac App Store. The deal is still going on, by the way! Anyway, it put me in the mood to replay the game, so I checked Steam to see if they ever opened up Steam Play – they hadn’t. Fortunately I had reviewed the game back in the summer of 2008 for the Mac, with a game gotten through Aspyr’s GameAgent. This meant I had a full game at some point. UN-fortunately, the install file was >4GB, and the Iomega 250GB hard drive I used for backing up my Mac had died last year, and my secondary was FAT32 and unable to deal with the file. So I had no backup. I knew that EA used a similar Digital River download system as GameAgent before they kicked off Origin, and I know I had never had any issues re-downloading stuff I got all the way back to the original Battlefield 2142 in late 2006! So I HOPED that would be the case here. Sadly I was mistaken – I looked for some sort of ‘download manager’ or client, but there wasn’t [...]

Yesterday Nuance released Dragon Express in the Mac App Store. At an introductory price of $49, the application is a less expensive way to get Nuance’s voice-to-text transcription on your Mac than the $200 Dragon for Mac. (It only runs on OS X Lion and if you haven’t upgraded to it you should.) It would be easy to think of Dragon Express as Dragon for Mac Light and, on one level that is what it is but, after using it yesterday, it strikes me as more of a port of Nuance’s Dragon Dictation iOS app. Just as the iOS app lets you dictate and then send the text to another application, Dragon Express lets you dictate into its own window and, when done, send it elsewhere. That certainly makes it less convenient than the full, $200 Dragon for Mac, but there is a reason one might choose Dragon Express and I’m not talking about the lower price. You see, while Dragon for Mac tends to be a bit of a resource hound and can slow down my computer at times, Dragon Express seems incredibly “light” and is something that can be left running in the background all the time. As [...]

Yup, it’s the time of the year when you must engage in that popular sport of trying to figure out WTF to get for everyone on your holiday list.  Some people, no problem:  with my brother, I just buy him guitar equipment.  Or for my son Joseph, if it’s Lego or Hot Wheel-related, I know we’re Good to Go.  But what about when your Dad only says, “I don’t really need anything,” or “Just some cologne would be fine?”  (No, Dad, no; you can’t keep the Old Spice factory operating all on your own.)  And what about those folks on your list who are a little, um, off?  Different?  Odd?  Weird? Selk Bags think… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Less than two months ago Facebook had its big f8 event where they launched their music integration amongst other things. At that event Spotify was heavily features alongside MOG, Rdio and others. I think that everyone expected some degree of success – I mean, folks already share EVERYTHING (often WAY too much) on Facebook … so why not this?!? And the results have been phenominal, with a report at Mashable saying: Facebook users have shared their listening activity more than 1.5 billion times with their friends, says Facebook’s Casey Maloney Rosales Muller in a blog post published Tuesday. “Developers have started to demonstrate that when music is discovered through friends, people listen Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Welcome back to another weekend of insane game deals! I am sure I’m getting jaded – it seems with each week I am unimpressed by the list of hundreds of games at 50% off or more and have a hard time grabbing five favorites … but when I dig in I still realize how awesome the deals are! I am focusing my lists more on the deals of 75% off or more to keep things manageable … but still have some that are >50% off – but that is my lower limit! I am continuing my ‘top 5 weekend deals’ section where I grab my favorite 5 deals of the week and provide direct links! For these games I select based on how good the game is as well as how sweet the deal – but each week there are great games at fantastic discounts! And as always thanks to the crew at Deals4Downloads for their help finding everything. TOP 5 WEEKEND DEALS! Sword of the Stars: Born of Blood for $3.74, Save 75% – from Gamersgate Assassin’s Creed for $3.74, Save 75% – from Get Games Mount and Blade + Warband Bundle for $11.25, Save 75% – from Direct2Drive [...]

One of the things that helps demonstrate to me that it is, as Hardison in the T.V. show Leverage points out, “Age of the geek, baby!”, is that stuff that used to be only of interest to math geeks, or computer geeks, or physics geeks, now gets wide coverage.  Like Pi Day, for example (3/14, in case you was wondering). Today is another one:  it’s 11/11/11/11 (whether you’re in Europe or the U.S., it displays the same!).  And 25 years ago, only my geek friends would have made note of it.  Now?  Now, I’m reading about it on Twitter, and on blogs, and all over the durn place.  And some folks are using it… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

The Boss is back – and it is bad***. The 2012 Mustang Boss 302 is the most fun I have had in a pony car since, well, ever. I even like this new Ford more than my cherished ’69 Camaro with the solid lifter crate motor. Ford has brought its heritage forward four score as they re-release the Boss 302 on the newest Mustang platform. Originally released in 1969, the Boss 302 was the first of three Boss factory performance models and was intended to help Ford compete in SCCA racing. Fast forward to 2011 and the new Boss lives up to every bit of its legacy – and then some. True, I never drove an original but after spending a week behind the wheel of the 2012 I really don’t care to experience the classic version (except perhaps to have it in a collection). As much as I appreciated Ford’s improvements for the newest Mustang platform, the Boss 302 is even that much better. The 5.0 in the GT with a six-speed manual gearbox was my pick of the litter of new factory fun cars so with the power and handling improvements made in the Boss it puts the [...]

BRRRRRRR!!!!! It’s cold out! (Okay, not so much since it is going to be 66 degrees and sunny today in NJ.) Still, we’ve already been hit with winter weather, and there is more to come in the next months. That’s a problem for any of us who use touchscreen devices. Sure, there are gloves that are designed to work with touchscreens,  but they tend to be a bit pricy and the styles offered tend to be limited. Besides, most of us in the northeast already have more than a few pair of gloves around.Why buy more when you don’t have to? That’s where Thumb Dogs come in. Thumb Dogs let you turn pretty much any pair of gloves into a pair of touchscreen compatible gloves. Continue reading on Gear Diary …

    Image courtesy of Free Republic Happy Veterans Day! But what does that really mean? Does it mean that everyone in uniform is a Veteran? Does it just mean another day off of work for some or some killer deals at the local Home Depot and Best Buy? The short of it is, that it’s a day to honor all those who have served. In my opinion there simply aren’t enough of those days in the year. Some may question what the criteria is to be an actual veteran, and I’m not fully sure myself what officially qualifies you in the eyes of the government. The way I see it, if someone has served or are still serving, then in my book they are qualified as one of our nation’s Veterans. The best was to thank a Veteran is simply to let them know you appreciate that sacrifices they made (or will make) for their country. So find yourself a Veteran today and let them know that their service is appreciated.  Veterans day for me is more a sense of pride and a day the think about some of my past experience in the military. I reserve Memorial Day to remember [...]

This isn’t tech-related, but I hope you will bear with me anyway. I am so glad that, during my lifetime we have gone away from the accusations of “baby killer!” and the like that dominated the left-wing discourse in my early childhood, coming back to the place where the incredible sacrifices — physical, psychological, monetary, time, and sometimes their very lives — are honored and respected.  It took a long, long time to go from the horrors of Vietnam and the public reaction to that to the rapprochement that happened in the 80s (more or less); “Good soldier; bad war.”  The scars of that horrible experience are still healing, but as a military brat myself I… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Atari and Hasbro finally settled their Dungeons & Dragons squabbles earlier this year … unfortunately too late to help those who wanted to create additional content for games like Neverwinter Nights 2. But at least one good thing has come of it – Atari is releasing two awesome Dungeons & Dragons compilation packs called the Master Collection and Neverwinter Nights Complete. They contain some of the absolute best RPGs ever released! Here are a few details about the ‘Master Collection’: The Dungeons & Dragons Anthology: The Master Collection features some of the greatest D&D titles ever published in a single package including six Game of the Year winners, all for $19.99. Games in The Master Collection include: · Baldur’s Gate 1 & 2 + Expansions · Icewind Dale 1 & 2 + Expansions · Planescape: Torment · The Temple of Elemental Evil Here are a few details about ‘ Neverwinter Nights Complete’: Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights Complete, a PC gaming classic for the ages, brings together every game and expansion of the critically acclaimed franchise into one compilation. Dungeons & Dragons: Neverwinter Nights Complete features two Game of the Year winners, every expansion pack, never before collection release of [...]

For PC gamers, Steam is a nexus – great games, easy installation, achievements and social features, screenshots and video sharing, and lively user forums. Which means, like everything else, hackers have targeted it to show that they are misguided morons. News had been floating around for the last week that the Steam user forums had been hacked, and now we have full confirmation. Head to the main page to see more, but here are the details. Dear Steam Users and Steam Forum Users: Our Steam forums were defaced on the evening of Sunday, November 6. We began investigating and found that the intrusion goes beyond the Steam forums. We learned Continue reading on Gear Diary …

Hey all, I wanted to give you a heads up that we are going to be experimenting with partial feeds for two weeks. Obviously if you usually come to the Gear Diary site to read our articles, you won’t notice anything different. Those who read us on RSS will notice a “(read more here…)”  tag at the bottom the now truncated posts. I don’t particularly like partial feeds, but I need to see if using them takes care of  some of the anomalies that I’ve been noticing. Thank you for your patience while we try to figure this out, and if you want to give me pros or cons for either partial or full feeds… Continue reading on Gear Diary …

As I say often, I love to support the efforts of ‘indie’ game developers as much as possible, since they are able to directly serve a niche interest and be extremely responsive to fans. But for the first couple of years of the iPhone, these generally meant quick, trivial ‘Doodle Jump’ style throwaways. But now we are seeing games coming to the iPhone and iPad that offer a much more robust experience – I reviewed the excellent Avadon before, and now we are seeing more and more games that push the boundaries of what is possible on a smartphone. RAVENMARK: Scourge of Estellion from Witching Hour Studios is just that sort of… Continue reading on Gear Diary …