Despite what our mothers told us, sometimes being popular is better.

A good friend of mine and I have an ongoing rivalry about many geek things. We argue incessantly about things like Macs vs. PCs, what games are better, etc. I scored a major victory when I convinced him that a Macbook Pro was the best 15″ gaming laptop for a reasonable price. He actually bought one! Of course, he runs Windows on it exclusively, but still, I consider it a victory.

In any case, our largest …

Recently, Amazon announced the release of it’s electronic book reader, the Kindle, to mixed reviews.  Here’s what I think about it.

Reading books in electronic format is nothing new.  eBooks have been around for several years now, as have dedicated electronic readers.  Sony, within the past year or so, released their latest eReader, and has very recently updated it.  The only thing new here is the use of eInk, which takes no power to display, so the battery last a very long time (thousands of page turns).

Amazon’s kindle is very similar, but with some notable differences.  Most notable, in my opinion, …

Over the course of my geek life, I have collected and used many gadgets.  Some have been good and some have been bad.  To shed light on what makes a gadget good in the eyes of a geek, I give you “The 10 Commandments of Geek Gadgetry.”

I. Thou shalt use a standard plug (preferably USB).  I cannot tell you how convenient it is to have gadgets that use standard plugs for power and to interface with a PC or other piece of hardware.  It just makes life so much better when something fails or if you have to, God forbid, …

Okay, I broke down and got an iPhone, against my better judgement.  But I played with it at the store and it was just so slick and fun to use, I couldn’t resist.  But there are caveats, my friends!

Well, my Windows Mobile phone ticked me off for the last time on Saturday.  Add to that the fact that I live a mere 565 yards from the Apple Store, and the next thing you know, I have an iPhone.  There are goods and there are bads.  Here are my thoughts.

iPod: Apple says this is the best iPod they’ve ever produced.  Malarkey!  …

For those of you who saw my post on TV On The Go and then followed or participated in the comments, here’s the latest.

For years, I have been pulling recorded TV manually (because of a bug in DVArchive that doesn’t allow it to run reliably forever, at least on my PC) from my ReplayTV to a PC and then running a semi-complex series of scripts to convert the quasi-proprietary MPEG-2 streams to divx so that I can take the shows on the road on my Archos 504.

I decided to try a piece of software called iPodifier.  This is a nifty …

Who wants an AppleTV?  I sure don’t.  It just doesn’t do what I want it to.

All in all, the AppleTV is a good step in the direction of what we really need for true television nirvana.  I have always been of the mindset that personal computers are the perfect platforms to do what we want, how we want, where we want.  I’m speaking of recording TV, viewing movies and DVDs, listening to music, viewing photos, and playing games.  But unfortunately, there is one big thing standing in the way of this: ourselves.

What I mean by that is the idea that …

Have you seen Microsoft Surface (http://www.surface.com)?  It’s really cool, but probably not for the reasons you might think.

The basis of Microsoft’s new Surface technology seems to be multitouch.  But that’s nothing new.  Not at all.  Heck, the Apple iPhone is supposed to have multitouch and that’s due out any day now.  As well, some other peeps (http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/) have been working on this technology for some time too.

So what is it?

Well, Microsoft, in a bold move outside of their usual realm (this is hardware and Microsoft is a software company), has seemingly developed a table-top interactive display.  There’s nothing …

Why can’t anyone come up with a decent iPod interface for cars?

If you read my previous post, you probably suspect that I went ahead with the purchase.  Yes I did.  The Acura RDX is indeed geek nirvana.  And understated in my prose was the voice command capability of the vehicle.  Oh, it’s awesome!  So far, my favorite commands are “XM 41″ for some head-banging tunes, “passenger temperature 32 degrees” to freeze out whoever is riding with me, and “find nearest fast food restaurant” for righteous eats.  The whole system is very seamless and it seems like pretty much every function …

I believe I have found my next car.  The Acura RDX!  And for all the geek reasons!

Right now, I have two cars: an Isuzu Rodeo Sport (affordable, but bad mileage) and a Honda S2000 (testosterone nirvana!).  Neither is blessed with an abundance of geek goodness.  Heck, the interior of the S2000 is very spartan.  Some S2000 afficionados even feel that the car is so purely a race car that it shouldn’t even have a radio!  But I digress.

As such, I have decided that my next automobile purchase will be based on geeky goodness.  That means all the creature comforts I …

Picked up the Mio DigiWalker C220 GPS yesterday.  Not a bad little unit, but it isn’t necessarily the Holy Grail of GPS units.

One of my favorite video podcasts is InDigital with Hahn Choi, Wil Wheaton, and Jessica Corbin (mmmmm, Jessica Corbin).  A few episodes back, Wil Wheaton (yes, THAT Wil Wheaton) reviewed the Mio DigiWalker GPS system and gave it a great review.  My TomTom 700 is getting a little long in the tooth, so I figured I could use a new GPS.  And at less than $200 (Amazon price $180), how could I go wrong?

But let’s back up.  Wil …