Xbox One – What about Gaming?

Well, THAT didn’t take long! In fewer than a dozen hours the XBOX One reveal went from being exciting … to a disappointment. Over at GameIndustry.biz they are already calling the reveal of the XBOX One an ‘awful start’, and discussing how Microsoft needs to redeem itself at E3. Of course, leave it to Ctrl-Alt-Del to joke about how Sony hasn’t even figured out how to assemble their new console yet!

Rather than pontificate on that sort of stuff, I wanted to address 5 areas of concern to me as a PC gamer: continue reading

Cognition Episode 2 The Wise Monkey

A few months ago I reviewed the iPad version of the first ‘episode’ of Cognition, the adventure game series from legendary developer Jane Jenson and Phoenix Online Studios. Now we have Episode 2 of Cognition, and are on the case of the Wise Monkey. Let’s take a look!

Type of app: Adventure Game

Platform/where to buy: Mac or PC; available in the Phoenix Online Studios Store

Developer: Image-Line

Description:
Here are some of the features:
- Play as Erica Reed, FBI detective
- Solve a deep and intriguing mystery that involves your twin brother
- Investigate crime scenes, interact with other detectives, and hunt for clues
- Use Erica’s special powers to uncover the mystery
- Your choices have consequences!

Major features:

Once again you are playing as Erica Reed, a special agent for the FBI. In the first episode she lost her brother in the prelude, and it haunted her throughout as she sought the Cain killer. Now she is on a new case, and has a new boss in town. But in the opening minutes she faces potential poisoning, meets the new boss who is less than enamored with her performance, and … her friend and sometime love interest is kidnapped right out of the squad room – and his ear is chopped off and left behind. Now Erica takes over his ‘Wise Monkey’ case to find the connection!

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Jagged Alliance Flashback

Anyone with a history in classic PC gaming is familiar with the Jagged Alliance franchise. Going back to the 90s, the tactical strategy games defined the ‘thinking man’ style of gaming for many. Now in the last 36 hours, the Kickstarter campaign is very close to hitting its goal – but needs your help!

Project Title: Jagged Alliance: Flashback

Status: Active

Closing Date for Funding: Thursday May 23, 5:59pm EDT

URL of the Project: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/2079547763/jagged-alliance-flashback

From the developer: Here are some key features:

Jagged Alliance: Flashback is our vision of returning a once critically acclaimed franchise back to its roots, it’s not a reboot, it’s a reset!

Our main goal is to bring back the tactical turn-based action that the original Jagged Alliance games are known for – the game was a thinking man’s game, a thinking man with lots of guns!

Why I think you should back this effort:

Jagged Alliance is a true classic franchise and the efforts of this team look to bring the classic game to the modern era without so many of the compromises we see in many ‘modernization’ efforts.

Here is an updated look at the game:

For more info and to keep up-to-date on progress:
‘Jagged Alliance: Flashback ‘ main site

And of course head to the Kickstarter page to get more information about how you can support the game!

The 2014 Kia Cadenza

Last week I was invited to test drive the 2014 Kia Cadenza along with a small group of other bloggers and auto journalists. The location Kia chose couldn’t have been more beautiful; we arrived in San Diego on Wednesday afternoon and took a short ride 20 miles north to Del Mar, an oceanside resort town. We stayed at the L’Auberge Del Mar, a 120 room boutique hotel on a hill overlooking the ocean. Our views were spectacular.

I heard repeated apologies from Southern Californians for the “May Gray” (overcast skies) we were experiencing, which made me laugh; I was steps from the ocean — close enough to hear it! Coming from dry, dusty West Texas, what did I have to complain about?

It was in front of the L’Auberge where I was first introduced to the 2014 Cadenza, Kia’s new luxury sedan. The funny thing is that the Cadenza had been parked right there when I first arrived — a little to the side of the valet stand and on the left of the drive-through circle — where the valet might put one of the hotel’s guest’s nicer cars. Good thing it wasn’t a snake, or it might have bit me, because I didn’t even give it a second glance; the car fit in well with its surroundings.  It was only later, when I came down for dinner, that I realized I had completely overlooked the star of this week’s show. This oversight would actually help me form my opinion about the Cadenza as the event went on.

2014 White Kia Cadenza

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The popcorn keeps expanding at the Popcornflix movie streaming service, as Unicorn Media, a leading Internet video solutions provider, announced partnerships with Cypress and Screen Media Ventures, LLC for expanding the free Popcornflix app on Xbox LIVE (gold subscribers).  Popcornflix also owns and distributes its own content via iOS and Android apps, Roku, connected TVs and online for free.

Screen Media Ventures, LLC developed and owns Popcornflix. Cypress, in conjunction with Screen Media Ventures, developed the Popcornflix Xbox LIVE app using CypressX, Cypress is a digital agency that creates apps that provide interactive experiences across mobile platforms and gaming consoles.

Unicorn Media enables Screen Media to ingest one video file, one time and deliver that content to the Xbox 360 via a single URL- with no SDK or plug-in required via its patented Unicorn Once™ technology. Unicorn Once™ optimizes a single mezzanine file, detects network conditions and re-packages the file on-the-fly to deliver the most efficient format for delivery to Xbox360.

Users can use the Popcornflix app to view and pick new arrivals, the most popular selection or browse all movies. Users can also use the app to search movies by genre, title, actor or director.

Xbox 360 users can navigate and interact in the Popcornflix app using their voice or a hand wave using the unique, hands-free Kinect controller.

Popcornflix, a free ad-supported free Movie App, is the only independent film distributor with long-form feature-length videos. I recently interviewed Gary Delfiner, President, Screen Media Digital and creator of Popcornflix, who said he relates to my personal Gear Diary mantra of ‘complex items in simple terms’. “We provide a simple streaming video solution,” says Gary.

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With the advent of such things as Google Wallet and Apple’s Passbook there is a growing interest in virtual wallets. At the same time the need for a physical wallets is as great as ever. We looked at high-tech options like the Flipside Wallet and minimalist options like Vέος llc CNC Aluminum Wallet. Flipside has even jumped into the super-minimalist waters with their STRATA wallet. Waterfield’s new Finn Leather Wallets look like a great addition to the growing number of options currently available. As Waterfield puts it, the Finn Wallets offer “a good balance between functionality and minimalism”.

The wallet comes in two sizes.

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We talk up the folks at Eton quite a bit for their excellent emergency radios and lights. If your home and camping kits don’t have at least an Eton radio, stop what you’re doing and go shop for one. I’ll be right here waiting. They’re versatile, offer multiple features, and will last a long time. However, maybe you don’t want to tote your awesome emergency radio to a day at the beach, you just want a solid speaker to play some music. Eton has ideas for that too, and like their radios and lights, their new Rugged rukus speaker is far from a one-trick pony.

Sure, the Rugged rukus offers Bluetooth streaming, so your smartphone can stay snuggled safe in your bag while you enjoy some Pandora. And it’s splash-proof, so if high tide or a water fight sneak up on you the worst that happens is a soggy towel, not a broken speaker. But there’s more, of course. It’s got a solar panel for easy charging outdoors, PLUS it will charge your smartphone via USB. You’re powered and entertained, no matter what you need or where you’re camping/sunbathing/communing with nature.

Pair this with a Lifeproof case (or, if you’re cheap/simple, a Ziploc bag), and you really will be set for a day at the beach! Just, seriously — watch out for high tide. My parents have lost two cell phones and a Kindle to sneak wave attacks, so we take splash-proof gear very seriously in my family … I’m thinking this may need to be slipped into their beach bags this summer to avoid further electronic carnage in the ongoing battle against the water!

Rugged Rukus is available now from Rei, Amazon, and Apple for $99.99…be sure to check out!

“The beginning of truly intelligent TV”…

“A huge day for all entertainment”…

These are some of the memorable quotes from today’s Microsoft Xbox announcement presentation, which included two female media executives sharing the stage, military dogs in the next Call of Duty game, Steven Spielberg, exclusive sport partnerships, and, mostly importantly, the “All in One” Xbox One system – technology that will step behind the curtain and let you take center stage.

I felt this presentation was about smart media integration and expanding consumer offerings more than actual information beyond improved computer power/processing. The big hardware setup innovation was having HDMI cables from the TV to the Xbox One (releasing “later this year”) and the cable box to the Xbox One, which will eliminate the manual switching and hardware headaches. Other hardware specs included USB 3.0, 8-core processors, WiFi Direct and 8 gigabytes of RAM.

The presentation began on the Xbox One home screen including trending, games TV/movies, music. Users could access all areas and “switch like a TV flip” on the system. All presenters were able to change inputs to watch live TV and instantly switch among different areas using voice commands beginning with “watch”, and “show”. Universal gestures like grab & pan and swipe up were also used. Multi-taskers were treated with the Snap mode (multiple windows), Skype group video call options, and interactive TV options for award shows, political debates and more.

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A bit less than two years ago, I excitedly drove to my nearby Verizon store to give up my Motorola Droid and jump ship over to an iPhone 4s. I was sure this would be a great match, and my days of smartphone-hopping were over. And they were, for quite a while. But over time I’ve grown frustrated, and the iPhone has begun to feel a bit stale.

My main frustration has been with the battery life. My 4S started behaving atrociously about three months ago; I would routinely get under 8 hours of standby and maybe 5 hours of usage on just email and texting. A few times that dipped down to 3 hours of use and 6 hours of standby; obviously, something was wrong. I tried wiping the phone and starting from scratch, but that didn’t fix the erratic, angry battery. An informal poll among some 4S owners in my office indicated this is possibly related to iOS, as everyone has seen this behavior in some form or another, but without a fix it’s become incredibly frustrating.

My dissatisfaction is also with the iPhone’s user interface. In some ways, the consistent rows of icons are simple and effective, but compared to the competition they just feel static and a bit dull … stale. I don’t need much, but having the notification menu as my only insight into new emails, messages, calls and notifications outside of opening each app is getting clunky. There’s just nothing dynamic about the everyday workflow anymore.

So, lucky for me I am due for an upgrade in a few weeks. But what do I choose?

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The Land of And

As noted pretty much everywhere last week, Google introduced new stuff at Google I/O. They also had a keynote by Larry Page, and one of the things he said that was picked up widely was:

Every story I read about Google is “us versus some other company” or some stupid thing, and I just don’t find that very interesting. We should be building great things that don’t exist. Being negative isn’t how we make progress. Most important things are not zero sum, there is a lot of opportunity out there.

Many sites took this as a statement showing how Google doesn’t want to ‘go thermonuclear’ a la Apple. But others, such as DaringFireball’s John Gruber, called BS on that and instead noted that, “They want everything; their ambition is boundless.”

And more importantly, he notes that THIS IS A GOOD THING! Huge ambitions lead to huge innovations – or paranoia and monopolistic encroachment, as anyone who messed with Microsoft in the 90s can attest. Google is a company uniquely positioned to help push some amazing new horizons by seeing the world in which it has the responsibility to deliver the best solutions in a way that makes everything else seem outdated.

But it has been a long time since THAT has happened. I will not jump on any sort of ‘Google doesn’t innovate’ bandwagon, but I will say that the majority of their efforts in recent years have either been half-baked or me-too products, half of which have been killed off or are languishing on life support.

To see why Google works best in ‘The Land of OR’, look to its history:

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The Recliner Folio looks like most folio style cases, as it folds together to look like a notebook or folder. The case sports a tri-fold design; the flap that holds it closed is held in place with a magnet and will fold out of the way when in use. I like this design because it is easy to use and opens and closes quickly. I never had an issue with the flap opening when it was not supposed to, so my iPad stays safe and sound in the folio. The outside of the case is a soft faux leather material. The material feels good in hand, and it also provides some non-slip traction when the case is resting on a table or other surface. All of the ports and buttons are easily accessible, and the camera opening allows for full functionality.

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FLStudio Mobile Android

OK, I will admit to being almost entirely negative about the state of music production apps on the Android platform. Much of this centers on one absolute reality – iOS has core audio services built-in that take care of things for developers, whereas on Android not only is there a lack of such services, the audio system is so weak that there is no assurance of a low-lag environment on any device. That has meant it was up to developers to code their own low-lag audio system for their apps, and has also meant that very few apps are available. Now Image-Line has finally managed to bring FL Studio to Android based on their own engine – let’s see how they did!

Type of app: Music sequencing and production

Platform/where to buy: Android (also iPhone & iPad version); available in the Google Play App Store

Developer: Image-Line

Description:
FL Studio has loads of content, including:
• 133 high quality instruments, drum kits & sliced-loop beats
• Step sequencer for fast percussion programming and sliced-loop reworking
• High quality, battery-friendly audio engine (latency depends on the device)
• Drum loops and sliced loops ready to start your project with a cool beat
• Effects include Limiter, Reverb, Delay, EQ, Amp simulator & Filter to enhance your mix.
• 99 track sequencer and intuitive editing options
• Save and load your songs, export to WAV and AAC
• MIDI file import/export
• Share your songs via Email or Dropbox
• In-app user manual
• Android 2.3.3 required
• Works with all screen resolutions, but FL Studio Mobile is optimized for 1280×800, 800×480, 960×640 and 480×320 screens.

Major features:

FL Studio (formerly known as Fruity-Loops) was born as a PC-centric loop based music platform that has grown into a very powerful and popular music production system (referred to as a DAW or Digital Audio Workstation). It made the leap to iOS a couple of years ago, and has grown to a feature-rich universal binary app, and has now made the jump to Android. Neither of the mobile versions approach the desktop version in terms of functionality, but they are really very solid ways to accomplish on-the-go recording.

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The Swann HD PenCam Mini 720p Video Camera and Recorder will let dad feel like a super agent man. The camera looks like a ballpoint pen one minute, but it transforms into a high-tech spying device the next. As a pen the Swann HD PenCam Mini 720p Video Camera and Recorder looks nice; it has a ribbed casing with metallic gold trim. A pocket clip holds the pen safely in your pocket. Looks, however, can be deceiving.

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For you tennis aficionados out there, the 2013 French Open is nearly upon us, and if you are gainfully employed (read: busy working away from the TV) you might have some difficulty keeping abreast of the latest match developments while at work. You know the routine: if you are an office type, IT (folks like me) are doing their darned best to keep employees from being distracted by fun and keeping their productive noses to the grindstone. If you are working on the go, it’s a bit of a herculean effort to find a place to sit down and keep up with the latest in tennis news and scores. Tennis lovers want a tool to keep them in the loop, and the faster, the better.

Luckily for iPhone users, Live Score Tennis is now available in the iTunes App Store to cater to such informational cravings. Best of all, it’s free! Free, nada, zilch, zip as in Tennis “Love” score values. Live Score Tennis boasts lightning fast notifications, coverage of more than 5,000 players, information on the big tournaments like the French Open, ATP, Challenger or WTA, plus detailed info on single players. Video highlights, rankings, statistics and more via live feed and push notifications are at your fingertips, no matter where you are.

So tennis junkies everywhere, hop on over to the iTunes App Store and give the FREE Live Score Tennis app a spin. Just remember to put your phone down from time to time, as we don’t want to be responsible for any monkeys on your backs making a racket! If you try it, let us know what you think in the comments below!

I upgraded my camera to the Sony NEX-6 today, and I am already loving it. At $899 for the body and lens kit, the NEX-6 is pricey. But for the size, speed, and image quality — it really can’t be beat. One of the new features on both the NEX-5r and the NEX-6 is built-in WiFi. This lets you add apps to your camera and do such things as send images from the camera directly to your smartphone or tablet. Another app-powered feature is the Smart Remote Control. This feature allows you to use your smartphone or tablet as a remote viewfinder and trigger for your NEX-5r or NEX-6. Sound like a gimmick? Not even close. continue reading

Running on Air

I remember being about 20 miles into my first marathon, and the pacer making a very big deal about breathing deeply and in general watching our breathing closely. Even then this was not news – after getting myself into ‘fuel trouble’ on my first half-marathon, I started to pay attention to a whole bunch of running-related things such as nutrition, hydration, tapering, and breathing. Someone had mentioned to me that one of the best ways to manage breathing was to pace it so you are breathing in and out in sync with steps, and that you should spend more time getting air in than sending it out.

Little did I know this was ‘a thing’, and was called ‘rhythmic breathing’. A renowned coach named Bud Coates had worked on a system based on a ‘balanced’ 3:2 ratio of inhale to exhale. Here is what he says about why it works better than an even 2:2 cycle:

Many runners develop a 2:2 pattern of breathing, meaning they inhale for two footstrikes and exhale for two footstrikes. Some breathe in for three steps and exhale for three steps. Both have the same result—your exhale is always on the same side. Breathing patterns that extend the inhale will shift the point of exhalation alternately from left to right or from right to left, from one side of the body to the other. The singular point of all rhythmic breathing patterns is this: Exhale on alternate footstrikes as you run. You never want to continually exhale on the same foot.

You can read the entire article here or check out the book here (Amazon has it for $9.99). I am not selling it nor do I get anything from any sales, I just enjoyed the article, and as for the book – the comment about the beginning being worth $1000 and the rest being worth $0.01 is not far off.

I call this breathing approach ‘balanced’ because it is right in line with everything else I have been reading – you want to balance the forces and pressures felt all over your body. Most roads have a ‘crown’ – some rather significant – and running the same way on the same roads with the same crown places an unbalanced set of forces on your body that can end up in injury. The same is true if you run long distances with your phone or mp3 player on the same arm and headphones always wired along one path. Your body deals with this by an unbalanced compensation.

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I’m a big fan of Bluetooth enabled, wireless speakers in this age of cell phones, tablets, and computers.  We’re always on the go, always have our mobile phones with us, and therefore, many of us carry our music collections with us as well.  Even if you don’t carry your MP3 collection on your cell phone, most of our phones can use Pandora, Spotify, or any number of mobile music apps.  The market is ripe for great sounding, decently priced Bluetooth speakers.  Unfortunately, the Kinivo BTX350 does not meet that first criterion.

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EA Sports, Amazon, and DirecTV have released details on great deals included in the upcoming limited-edition version of the Madden NFL 25 Anniversary Edition video game for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360.

These deals equal more than $400 at a $99.99 Madden NFL 25 Anniversary Edition game price, which is now available for pre-order exclusively on Amazon (quantities are limited).

This “Ultimate NFL Experience”  includes the game, a Madden Ultimate Team subscription, and various offers from DirecTV/NFL Sunday Ticket.

The Madden Ultimate Team subscription includes one pack every week (starting Week 1 and ending on Week 17).  The Anniversary Edition packs feature two rare players, four silver players and four bronze players.

Users can enjoy DirecTV NFL Sunday Ticket services whether or not they are a subscriber when purchasing this special anniversary game edition.

• Free access code (computer, tablets, and mobile devices) for DirecTV’s NFL Sunday Ticket for 2013 NFL regular season (17 weeks) including DirecTV Red Zone Channel access (user who do not receive DirecTV service)
• $10 off per month for 1st year of DirecTV service + NFL Sunday Ticket MAX free (users who receive DirecTV service but are not currently subscribers)
• Free NFL Sunday Ticket access on computer and mobile devices (current DirecTV and NFL Sunday Ticket MAX subscribers using current username/password)

Madden NFL 25 Anniversary Edition features Barry Sanders on the cover and will officially release on August 27, 2013. Madden NFL 25 Anniversary Edition will feature 30 new moves with various combinations plus the all-new precision modifier.

team & marke launches fläzbag tablet pillow stand

I don’t know about you, but when I think of “products from Germany”, I think of severe stuff, by and large.  BMW and Audi cars.  Fine engineering, expensive, heavy-duty.  When I think of Germany, I don’t think of goofy stuff.  Germany makes you think of wars and Bauhaus design elements and Autobahns and such.  Germans with a playful sense of humor?  It’s hard to believe.

But it’s true.  In fact, my favorite 90s show “Northern Exposure” played on this very expectation, when Maurice ordered a rare Ausberg clock which came with a German engineer to install and tune it.  Expecting some slender, black turtleneck and round glasses wearing German nerd, he instead got a loud, funny, offbeat bohemian (much to his dismay).  An important reminder that Germans, and German engineering, like Americans come in all shapes and sizes and types.  They don’t just make high-end autos, they also make things like the fläzbag, a tablet (iPad, Kindle, Nook, what have you) pillow stand. Want a soft, goofy pillowy think to hold up your tablet?  Well, maybe this time you should trust the Germans!

So if you’ve been wanting an unusual stand for you iPad or Kindle or nook or whatever, something that will stand up not just on your desk, but also on your bed or your couch or heck, even on your stomach, maybe this is what you’ve been needing.  Surf on over to the team and marke (would that be “team und marke”?) web site, where it’s available for and MSRP of between €34.80 and €54.80.  And if you get yourself one, be sure to let us know what you think below!

Toddy Screensters

If you own any device with a touchscreen, then you know all too well how quickly and easily they get dirt and grease and all sorts of crud all over them. I tend to have a small microfiber wipe with me in my car and my laptop bag at all times, and a couple of my jackets have them on the inside pockets. But for those looking to wipe their screens with a bit more ‘character’ than a simple square microfiber wipe, Toddy introduced Screensters. They sent me a couple to try out, so let’s take a look!

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Zact Debuts Industry’s First Smart Mobile Service with “Never Overpay Guarantee”

As far as I’m concerned, the more choices there are out there among cell phone service providers the better.  Yes, I have AT&T and I’m okay with that, but I would be more than happy to move to another service that offers a bit more flexibility.  For example, when I was traveling, I used my data download a lot; a lot a lot.  Not every airport I went to had WiFi, and of those that did, their connectivity was, shall we say, spotty.  So I was dependent on the cell network.  With our family plan, that meant I was soaking up most of the data usage, and the family had little.  Now I’m at home, and the reverse is true.  Unfortunately, the plans that are available through AT&T are somewhat limited, and customizing them is basically impossible.  (And don’t get me started on how silly I found it that I was required to have all the phones in our family plan be in the same physical “region”, i.e. I couldn’t have a 408 number with my family living in the 512 “region”, even though my 408 number was also with AT&T  — and we’re talking about mobile phones here.)

So I was pleased to read about Zact’s “smart mobile service”.  I may not move to Zact – I’m damn lazy — but it’s good to know there are options out there.  Zact offers you a cloud-based software platform for creating your own mix of talk, text and data details, and you can even forgo buying a data plan altogether and  instead buy an app-specific data plan for maximum savings.

For complete details, I suggest you surf on over to Zact’s web site; if you’re thinking of changing your plans, this is definitely something you at least want to look at.  And of course if you do end up signing up with them, please be sure to let us know all about it below!

Gadgets have become packed with more and more features, many of which we end up forgetting about or just never use. When the Roku 3 was announced, we had an internal discussion at Gear Diary about how the headphone jack in the remote was a useless feature — who would hook up headphones to a remote to watch TV, when they could just plug headphones into a tablet and have the same private viewing experience? We use our Roku 3 all the time but never gave the headphone jack a thought, until today when I stumbled upon a situation where it worked perfectly!

In our house the living room is next to the stairs, and off the stairs is our bedroom. Sarah was taking a nap this afternoon, and I needed to get through our pile of to be shredded mail. Normally I’d watch TV while shredding with the volume turned up, but that would have been mean to Sarah. So I had resigned myself to watching on my iPad instead of the glorious 40″ TV right in front of me, until I remembered the Roku remote. Now I could drown out the shredder, watch TV as loud as I wanted on the nice big screen, without disturbing my sleeping wife!

It’s amazing how little features, even ones we dismiss as being silly, can end up being ridiculously useful! Ever stumble across a simple little utility or feature that you dismissed, only to later realize that it  was EXACTLY what you needed? Let us know your best tips in the comments!

Google Games Center

At Google I/O last week we got to see a number of new things, including the music service we already reported on as well as the ‘-1′ to Google’s myriad chat options with ‘Hangouts’ combining chat and talk. But as a gamer who has enjoyed more and more games coming to Google Play in a reasonable time, I was interested in Google Play Game Services, the awkwardly named game center for Android games. After playing around with a couple of games that utilize the service, I was underwhelmed with what is essentially a mashup of Open Feint and Game Center that seems to offer much more to Google than to gamers — with one key exception.

Since I am certain to get some ‘Apple fanboy’ emails, let me step back. All roads in gaming lead back more than 30 years to either the PC or arcade. Early consoles were an unsatisfying attempt to bring the arcade into the home, and for many, many years pretty much any non-arcade effort on a console needed the caveat ‘for a console’ attached. GoldenEye was a pretty good shooter … for a console. XBOX Live was a decent service … for a console. And so on. They needed those caveats, because each was barely on par with what was available on the PC for several years.

So when Apple introduced Game Center, there were few who would have called the service ‘innovative’ in any way – it simply brought matchmaking and achievements and friends lists, all staples of PC and console multiplayer, to the iOS universe. It wasn’t even the first; Open Feint had already done a decent job of bringing some of these to the platform, but required the developer to code the interface to the platform into their game.

So now Google has Google Play Game Services. YAWN.

What is it? Basically, it’s an Open Feint clone that also includes several ideas from Game Center and also provides yet another non-optional way for Google to stuff their abysmal Google+ ‘social’ service down our throats.

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Dale Carnegie Training Offers Eight Smartphone Apps for Free!

“Industrialist” Dale Carnegie started a training course to help people learn to success in a capitalist system, and he did it 100 years ago.  By American standards, that’s almost unbelievable.  (If you’re in Europe or most parts of Asia, where you can see businesses that have not only been around but even in the same family for hundreds of years, probably not so much.)  And partly to show that their keeping up with the times, they’re offering eight of their smartphone apps for free.As an American, I’m surrounded by things that are short-term and new.  ”Established 1985!”  ”Serving Austin since 2002!”  Etc.  Stuff in the U.S. is new; even the oldest of the old–in the North East primarily–is only a few hundred years old.  So for me, as a typical American, anything that lasts, I dunno, 25 years or more, is really doing well.

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I reviewed Toast’s wood back for the iPad mini back in March. (Read the review.) It went on easily and looked good. Unfortunately a key shortcoming led me to remove it shortly after posting the review.

My summary comments on the iPad mini cover say it all…

What I Like: Three different wood options; Option to have a plain back or one of a number of interesting designs; Ability to customize the case; Easy to apply but hard to remove; Terrific attention to detail

What Needs Improvement: Top and bottom of the iPad’s back remain exposed

Here’s the original video review.

My video review of the original iPad mini cover

Yes, a back cover that leaves the top and bottom of the iPad completely exposed isn’t much better than having no protection in the first place. I wrote the review and, once it was published, pulled the cover off. Sadly Toast covers are not designed to be reusable. The wood cover came off in pieces and had to be thrown out. I felt bad wasting such a nice wood product but I really need iPad protection that actually protects.

Recently I learned that Toast had redesigned their iPad mini covers and, in so doing, addressed this key shortcoming. Obviously I was not alone in my criticism of back protection that only protects part of the surface. (Don’t you love when companies pay attention to feedback?) Toast was kind enough to send a new sample and I’m glad they did. By adding top and bottom protection the company has designed a wonderful way to merge the classic look and feel of wood with the newness of modern technology.

The new Toast Real Wood Cover for iPad mini looks similar to the original one. It is, of course, a bit longer since this new cover extends to cover the upper and lower portions of the iPad.

The cover is still available in three different woods and a number of different designs.

As you can see it is roughly the same size as the iPad mini. Toast sent the walnut cover with the “Birds on a branch” artwork etched and cut into it. I love the way it looks. At my request they also added www.geardiary.com to the cover!!

Before you apply the cover to the iPad mini you’ll need to make a decision. As Toast explains, the Apple SmartCover works best when the cover can come into direct contact with the iPad. While the SmartCover will work with the full Toast cover installed, if you plan to use one with the iPad on a consistent basis you are best served by removing the strip on the right hand side. It is perforated and comes off easily. The result is complete protection except for the side being exposed. It is a mixed bag. On the one hand the SmartCover does get a better hold on the iPad. On the other hand removing the strip means a portion of the iPad will remain exposed when you don’t have the SmartCover on. There are pros and cons to each approach.

Obviously I opted to remove the strip.

After deciding whether or not to remove the side strip you will want to install the Toast cover for iPad mini. The back of the packaging explains that you’ll want to expose a bit of the adhesive on the underside of the cover and line it up with the iPad. It took a few tries before I got it right. And while it is important to be careful you will also want to move quickly- the cover cures in a matter of minutes and if you try to move it after that you will end up destroying the cover.

Notice the corner cutouts? These allow the Toast cover to wrap around the corners of the iPad and protects them. It is a smart design and works well.

Once in place the cover looks and feels great. The branches are etched into the wood but the birds themselves are cut completely through. As a result the silver back of my iPad mini shines through and gives it a ton of visual interest. And, as you can see, the cutout for the camera lens and buttons are are laid out perfectly. (The lens is a tiny bit off center but that is user-error not something the company did wrong.) If you look at the right hand side you’ll see the SmartCover holding on.

I appreciate having the Gear Diary URL carved into the cover. It isn’t too obvious but it is there. That means anyone admiring the Toast cover on my iPad will also see, and hopefully visit, the site. Hey, free advertising is free advertising.

In all this is an awesome update to a lovely iPad mini accessory. It resolves my one and only issue with the Toast Real Wood Cover for iPad mini and, as a result, I can now recommend this cover without reservation! And, unlike the first iPad mini cover I reviewed this one won’t be coming off any time soon! You can learn more and order yours here on the Toast website.

MSRP: Plain- $35, Design- $40, Add $5 for personalization

What I Like: Three different wood options; Option to have a plain back or one of a number of interesting designs; Ability to customize the case; Easy to apply but hard to remove; Terrific attention to detail

What Needs Improvement: Cover not reusable once installed

Source: Manufacturer supplied review sample