Alex has just sent word that WebIS is offering holiday specials on their software. If you’ve put off purchasing Pocket Informant or FlexMail but the intention was there, then you ought to take advantage while the cost is so insanely low. These sale prices are good through the 6th, so you can wait until your barbecue guests have left before you press ‘purchase’. Clicking the links below gets you the special pricing and helps support Gear Diary. FTW!

This weekend we honor the independence of the United States of America. American’s do it in our own personal ways. We do it by getting together with family, eating smoked ribs (home smoked over many hours with my own personal rub), and watching the fireworks. Maybe playing a bit of paintball and volleyball and swimming. As well we like to share in the joy by providing fairly rock-bottom pricing for our software. Its our little way to give something back to this great nation.

Enjoy!

A couple of months ago, I was given a box containing a treasure like no other. Inside were the remains of two pocket watches; both were in terrible shape, and both were obviously old. Since they came from my uncle’s widow, I knew that they were somehow related to my family, but there was no further information.

One of these pocket watches would yield a most amazing discovery, the other is still a mystery.

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I do not have a green thumb, but through much trial and error over the years I have compiled a list of plants I can keep alive. I have also learned that there are some, that when I see them seemingly thriving and beckoning to me at the store…no matter how good they look, I should just keep on walking.

When dealing with indoor plants, I know that I do best with ones that can handle diffused light and weekly watering; since I love blooming flowers, I tend to buy orchids.

Outdoor plants must be able to handle direct sun, intense summer heat and watering every other day; I do very well with cacti and yucca.

For the last couple of years, my mother has purchased hibiscus plants at Sam’s when they did their annual display. She’ll keep them for a week or so, and when they start looking awful, she’ll ask me to take them and see if I can do anything to help them. The first thing I do is repot them, because they are usually root-bound. Once that’s done, all I can do is sit back and hope that I am watering them enough (but not too much) and giving them enough sun (but not too much).

Inevitably, they die.

This year, when mom gave her sad hibiscus plant to me, I was armed and ready with a tool that I had spotted at CES: the EasyBloom Plant Sensor, a device which the manufacturer states can determine which plants will thrive in a specific spot in your yard or home, diagnose an ailing plant so you can bring it back to health, and access detailed plant information on over 5000+ plants on the EasyBloom website.

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Take a moment and let that picture sink in…it’s amazing, right?

Say hello to the PhoneSuit MiLi Pro, and iPhone / iPod compatible, rechargeable, micro video projector. Not only is it a portable video projector, it is also a speaker system. So the next time you want to share photos, videos, or even a business presentation, you don’t need to hook your device up to an external monitor, TV, or worse – huddle around the small screen.

Instead, you can “scale your iPhone’s video up to a 40 inch for screen for eye strain free, relaxed viewing.” The site mentions that you can project from 5 to 70″, but that 40″ is optimal. The suit includes a built-in rechargeable battery so you don’t kill your iPhone’s, and even better – “[its included] VGA cable allows you to connect the MiLi Pro directly to your Laptop or PC’s VGA port. [Its included] RCA cable will allow you to connect most standard AV equipment sources such as DVD players, VCR’s, etc. You can switch between the various inputs at any time with the input source button.”

The MiLi Pro will work with the iPhone 3GS, 3G, 2G and iPod Touch. Its price and actual availability date hasn’t been announced yet, but you know that we’ll be all over it.

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the sexy-licious Nokia N85

Here’s a special for those of you who’ve been eyeballing a particular Nokia model but didn’t want to pay retail. On Thursday, June 25 (AKA tomorrow), Nokia will be offering 30%-50% off select Nokia devices at their Flagship Stores in New York City (11am-4pm EST) and Chicago (10am-3pm CST).

According to the info I’ve received, “For those who cannot make it into one of our stores, the sale will also take place during this same time slot (11am-4pm EST/10am-3pm CST/8am-11am PST) on NokiaUSA.com.”

Sale pricing and the devices on sale are listed below:

Model # / % Off original Price /  Sale Price
5800 30% $280.00
E63 30% $195.00
E66 33% $275.00
E71 32% $285.00
E75 28% $380.00
N79 39% $260.00
N85 33% $330.00
N95 8G 34% $355.00
N96 37% $440.00
N95-3 57% $299.00

Grrrr! No N97, but I see plety of other great deals!

This morning I had notification that HTC’s new Android device, the Hero, will soon be available “to people across all major European carriers in July and in Asia later this summer.” Even more interesting was that a “distinct North American version will be available later in 2009.”

The HTC Hero features a 3.2 inch HVGA touchscreen that has an anti-fingerprint coating for improved smudge resistance, so it looks like someone has caught on to the to a few of the iPhone 3G S’ tricks. “The white HTC Hero comes with an additional Teflon coating providing enhanced durability and comfort, a first in the mobile industry.” It will also ship with a “five mega-pixel autofocus camera and a 3.5mm stereo headset jack.” Hmmm…so far, what’s not to like?

An added bonus is a feature called “HTC Sense”, which is an introduction of a “new mobile experience designed to enhance people’s lives. You as the user are encouraged to customize the information and content you want at your fingertips. From there, HTC Sense will integrate these communications in a way that is unexpectedly intuitive. First implemented on the HTC Hero, HTC Sense will be included on a portfolio of products moving forward.”

No pictures accompanied the press release in my inbox, but Chris Davies over at SlashGear has a full gallery of great hands on photos that should be even better than the typical sterile press shots; I figured he wouldn’t mind if I snagged one.

The full press announcement follows…

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Not long after I received this rather benign looking kit containing a 125mW Green Laser Pointer and a pair of Laser Protective Goggles from SKYlasers, I started really paying attention to all of the reports regarding people with lasers – red and the stronger green, interfering with pilots flying passenger airplanes. In February 2009, there were already 148 reported incidents of laser attacks, and just last week a plane arriving at Sea-Tac was lasered no less than 20 times.

What’s the big deal? Well to start, shining a high powered laser at a plane creates the possibility of messing with the pilot’s vision. If the pilot’s vision is compromised, then there is a possibility that he or she might not be able to land the plane properly. If the pilot can’t land the plane properly, then there is a possibility that it will crash. If the plane crashes because someone was playing with a high powered laser, then there is a possibility that without actually meaning to, and without necessarily understanding the consequences, one irresponsible person could be the means for destroying hundreds of others’ lives.

But what about when a high powered laser is in a responsible person’s hands? Someone who doesn’t plan on assaulting an unwilling bystander with a blast of light that could cause eye damage faster than one could blink to block it? I wanted to find out why – other than the fact that it is “cool” -  a responsible person might want to play with a high powered laser…

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HP and Microsoft sent me an HP Pavilion dv2-1199us Entertainment PC to try out. Once I got past the fact that the model number is a mouthful, I couldn’t help but notice how lovely this moonlight white computer is – both in appearance and specifications.

The exterior is described as a “magnesium-aluminum-alloy case in a white imprint finish,” but that barely describes it; the look is stunning.  The touch pad is a mirrored surface, and it runs Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit). The dv2 has a bunch of bells and whistles…both in the hardware and in the included Microsoft software, and you can watch me make a complete dork of myself opening it here…

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I couldn’t resist; I put in my order and received an Amazon Kindle DX.

Some of the more obvious differences between the two devices are that the DX has a ~9.5″ screen, while the 2 has a ~5.8″ screen; the DX measures 10.4″ tall x 7.2″ wide x 0.38″ thick, and the 2 measures 8″ tall x 5.3″ wide x 0.36″ thick; and the DX can hold ~3500 books while the 2 can hold ~1500. The keyboards are a bit different, there are no buttons on the DX’s left side, and hmmm – just watch!

The full review will be coming soon. Will it replace my Kindle2? Probably! I already love the larger screen and the bigger size doesn’t bother me at all…yet!

I hate to even bring this up in the midst of all this iPhone 3.0 madness because it might be missed, but we have a major announcement to make…and I can’t keep quiet any longer!

Remember the post I did about how one of you could win a regulation basketball signed by the active player of your choice or one of two trips to the 2010 NBA ALL-Star Game in Dallas courtesy of Microsoft and HP? As you will recall, there were approximately two dozen other sites involved in this promotion, and I had mentioned that the odds for winning were pretty darn good.

Understatement much?

It turns out that two of the big winners were from Gear Diary!

Read on to see what our readers scored!!!!!

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June 17th happens to be the same day that Venus Williams, Barry Manilow, Newt Gingrich, and Joe Piscopo add another candle to their layer cake; if he were still alive, M.C. Escher would as well. It also happens to be the day that our own Doug Goldring entered this world. I can think of a lot of people who are glad for that.

Please join me in wishing Doug a very Happy Birthday!

[Editor's note: This is a joint review by Judie and Julie that will be appearing simultaneously on Gear Diary and The Gadgeteer. Judie's comments will be in black, and Julie's will be in blue italics.]

Like many who own an Amazon Kindle or Kindle2, Julie and I have grown to greatly enjoy the convenience of carrying our current and future reading material on our own “virtual book shelves”. The question of how to keep our Kindles protected was one that we had to answer fairly early on, seeing as Amazon did not include any type of cover with our pricey new readers. For a while, I kept mine inside a floppy Cole Haan, but that all changed the day I received the Sky Dragon Kindle2 Cover in red from Oberon Design.

I have been protecting my Kindle 1 and 2 ebook readers with covers from M-edge.  But for this review, I received the Tree of Life Kindle 2 Cover and the Sun Kindle 1 Cover from Oberon Design. I couldn’t help but fall in love with all their gorgeous designs even before I received them in the mail.

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This weekend was spent attending Kevin’s family reunion. David, one of his cousins, smoked a couple of pork shoulders. Instead of using a knife and fork to pull the pork, he was using these claw things…

I’d never seen them before, but they looked like something that would be indispensable to anyone who grills.

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It’s always amazing to me how inexpensive laptops are when you don’t necessarily need one. Case in point, New Egg has a Lenovo G530 laptop for just $379.

$379? You probably have that much money in your change jar or under your couch cushions. Go look…see if I’m not right.

Anyway, it appears to be a nicely loaded 15″ screen dual-core with a 160GB hard drive and 2GB RAM. It shouldn’t cost too much to upgrade the RAM to 4GB, if 2GB’s not enough juice…

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I love to cook, and I love to use fresh herbs from my little garden, but I don’t particularly enjoy the monotony of chopping fresh herbs into uniform bits. That’s why I am especially enjoying the set of Herb Scissors that Useful Things sent me.

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