Once you graduate college or high school and start moseying out into the real world, you start to notice: finding dates is hard.  You are no longer surrounded by potential partners just your own age; you’re surrounded by, well, everybody.  Including old pharts like yours truly.  So how do you find a partner?

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We’re back with the next edition of Gear Chat. This time out Mike is bringing us some gaming news and Thomas and I talk tablets, apps and iPad 3.

Listen below or click here to download.

As Mike recently pointed out, Adele is a phenomena who popularity exploded this year because… she has a great voice and the songs are great! She’s had a rough time lately however thanks to throat surgery and a silent recovery.

After a polyp was removed Adele was told not to speak for a month. According to an upcoming interview on 60 Minutes, Adele, who loves to talk, found the silence more difficult than the actual surgery. Fortunately for her she lives in the era of smartphone apps. As she explained,

I had an application on my phone that you type the words into it and then it speaks it.

But there’s more. You see, most text-to-speach apps offer G-rated language and Adele is a self-professed potty-mouth. … Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

This is a sponsored post, all opinions here-in are mine.

Make Calls, Save Money

As crazy as it sounds, there are still people in the world who use their iPhones and Android handsets to …  make voice calls. I know, Crazy! Right? If you are one of them, and, especially, if you travel internationally, the cost of those calls can add up quickly. Vonage has been around for quite some time, but they’ve just released a new iPhone and Android calling application that is pretty impressive.  I’m already using it for calls when I’m in a WiFi network; although the app works over 3G, over WiFi the calls are fantastic and they don’t use any of my data plan. I had a chance to speak with the Vonage mobile app team yesterday, and as soon as the call was over I downloaded the app.

I’m impressed. The app is easy to use, loads quickly, and the quality of the calls is excellent.

Let’s run down what stands out in this app, and then walk through the process of actually setting it up so you can see just how easy it is to use …… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

If you have been around PDAs since the Windows CE days, you know that one of the earliest and best app makers was PhatWare, bringing Calligrapher, PhatPad and other apps to a variety of platforms for nearly 15 years. Now they make the next leap, bringing PhatPad to Android – and making the files compatible between iOS, Android and the older Windows Mobile devices as well! Here are some of the details:

PhatWare today announces the launch of PhatPad for Android, a note-taking and collaboration app featuring PhatWare’s proven handwriting recognition technology. PhatPad, which has already gained a significant following among iPad users, now will turn an Android Tablet or Smartphone into an

My favorite browser, regardless of platform, is Google Chrome and I wondered how long it would take for Google to release Chrome for Android. Well, the wait is finally over. Sort of.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

General Sherman (the tree, not the guy who marched from Atlanta to the sea)

Despite what you may think, “going green” and thinking about the environment and the future are not new things.  There is the story–possibly apocryphal–about the New College at Oxford planting oaks to replace the beams in the Great Hall . . . several hundred years later, when they (inevitably) became beetle-infested.  Teddy Roosevelt was thinking green when he designated huge swaths of the United States National Parks, to be preserved for everyone.  Johnny Appleseed is an American legend for planting a zillion trees, and many nations around the world celebrate Arbor Day by planting trees.

Now we have a lot… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Sling Media, makers of the SlingBox, today announces the availability of the SlingPlayer app for the Kindle Fire. What is the SlingBox? It is a device that works with all of your various set-top boxes to:

allow folks to watch their TV from wherever they are with their PC, Mac, tablet or smartphone. And now, with SlingPlayer for Kindle Fire, they can bring their living room TV experience to their Kindle Fire tablets.

The SlingPlayer software is already available for Apple iPhone and iPad devices, Android Phones, Android Tablets as well as for the Blackberry, Windows Phone and other devices. We have written about the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

The other day one of my Rabbinic colleagues asked what “system” I use in the synagogue to keep track of all of the various lifecycle “events” that take place in the community as well as make sure that all of my colleagues have as accurate and up-to-date information as possible. I wrote up my answers and then, after sending them to him, realized that while our uses for the services I mention are rather specific, the way in which we use them can easily be adapted to a host of different work-settings.

Here’s what I told him.… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

Got arachnophobia?  Well then, maybe the new Android offering from Itzy Interactive isn’t for you.  But maybe not.  Or, perhaps, you’ve realized that these helpful little critters are really our friends (most of the time), and what you need is a little empathy, a little time viewing life from a spiders-eye level.  Hey?  So maybe you need to check out the free new Android game Itzy3D.  Here’s what the Itzy Interactive has to say about their game:… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

You know how it goes:  doing backups is a pain in the tuckus, and so you put it off, or you don’t do it regularly, or some such.  And then . . . the blue screen of death!  Or the Genius Bar guy utters those fateful words, “You’ll have to do a full restore.”  Or your IT person says, “We’re going to have to reimage your disk.”  Panic!

Code 42 software wants to help you with their CrashPlan software:

Code 42 Software Inc., developers of award-winning onsite, offsite and online backup solutions for consumers, businesses and the enterprise, today announced updates and new security enhancements to the CrashPlan and CrashPlan PRO mobile apps. The latest version adds support

Are you a Hotmail user? I have had an account since … forever. And while it hasn’t been my primary email since … well, since I signed up for Yahoo mail around the same time, it is an account that I have maintained and used for a variety of specific purposes through the years.

I have found the Hotmail implementation on iOS to be adequate but not outstanding, although it is better than the native support on Android in my experience. But as I reported last fall Microsoft released a native Hotmail app for Android, and it is actually pretty good, featuring push support and a decent interface.

Now Microsoft… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

It’s Presidential election season here in the U.S., and one of the categories of voters you often read about are the so-called “low-information” voters.  This is a category that baffles me, honestly, because the trouble I personally have is there too durn much information out there.  In this modern world, with stuff practically flooding at you from the Web, the radio, online, streaming utilities, on your smartphone, your iDevice, the problem for me is filtering it, not being “low information”.

Fortunately, there are apps out there to help you with that.  This week, Mobiles Republic has three popular free news apps (and plans to release four more specialized news apps throughout the course of the year):

Today we heard about a cool new set-top box for your HDTV from Pyramid Distribution, called the iGoGo TV. The iGoGo is an Android-powered box that brings a robust ‘smart TV’ experience to your home. Because it is based on standard Android 2.3, it means you will be able to run tons of the same Android apps you already know and love.

Featuring wired and wireless networking, support for 1920x1080p full HD, 4GB built-in memory expandable to 32GB by micro SD, support for USB hard drives for unlimited storage, and more.

The iGoGo also includes a 2MP webcam with microphone, so you can use Skype to chat with folks anywhere around the… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...

For a long time, I was commuting between Austin and my job in California.  Which, quite frankly, sucked, was hard on Sami, and was really hard on my kids.  But then the iPhone 4 came out, with FaceTime, and The Boy and I could talk, free of charge via wifi, from our own phones wherever we were.  I would carry him with me into the kitchen while I made dinner, and he would show me whatever projects he was working on.  It wasn’t a substitute, but boy did it help.

Now a couple of communications companies are teaming up to bring that capability, via HDTV no less, to hospital rooms.  Sick of driving, dealing… Continue reading on Gear Diary ...