Gadget Gary

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Gadget Gary
Best in Show
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Apr 22, 2013  | 

I now consider myself a veteran of CES. The good news is that I know exactly how to navigate the floor. The bad news is that it gets harder each show for me to be wowed by anything.

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Gadget Gary
Blackberry Torch 9800
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Nov 23, 2010  | 

The iPhone has clearly infiltrated our culture. Its owners are rabidly loyal, and they’ll tell you that every other phone is inferior to theirs. Alas, the many people out there still devoted to BlackBerry can only look longingly at the iPhone, wishing for some of those cool features that Apple has become famous for.

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Gadget Gary
Contour Score
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Sep 19, 2011  | 

My 13-year-old son is an avid skier, skateboarder, and longboarder. From time to time, he’ll document his activities with a Flip camera.

There are two issues with the Flip, however. First, you have to hold it in your hand. Second (and more important), Flip is out of business.

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Gadget Gary
Dre Trippers
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Sep 16, 2010  | 

When I was a teenager, I had these giant Koss headphones. You know the kind. They covered both ears with these giant cups. They sounded great. I remember listening to Blows Against the Empire, the 1970 album by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship, with them. Music would bounce back and forth from the left channel to the right and back in glorious stereo.

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Gadget Gary
Drobo Cop
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Jan 30, 2012  | 

I recently mentioned how much I really dig my network-attached storage (NAS) hard drive and how I like to keep all of my music, photos, and videos on it so I can feed the whole house with media via Apple TV or Roku. Since I have a huge investment of both time and personal memories stored on this drive, I really need to protect it properly — and that’s why I’ve recently moved to a RAID drive.

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Gadget Gary
FLO TV
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Apr 01, 2010  | 

Figuring out how to watch TV while I’m out of my house has always been a challenge. I got a black-and-white Sony Watchman as a gift for Christmas in 1985 that worked pretty well for the time; I took it to the pool to watch Mets baseball and to my son’s basketball games to watch Jets football.

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Gadget Gary
For What It's Worth
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Jun 07, 2013  | 

Yes, I readily admit it: I I am a TV junkie. I watch a ton of shows, and I go through  different phases of what I'll binge on.

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Gadget Gary
Game Booey
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Aug 15, 2011  | 

I've always considered myself a trivia whiz. I'd devour any and all trivia books I could find. As I got older, I played games on the computer and online. That eventually morphed to the present day, where I like to sharpen my skills on various gaming consoles. One of the best games I've found is Buzz!

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Gadget Gary
Gearhead University
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Oct 16, 2012  | 

My wife and I sent our oldest son off to college this fall. On the ride up, she and I laughed as we told him that when we first went to campus back in 1979, there was no Internet, no cellphones, no e-mail, no fax machines, and Federal Express was an overnight service strictly for businesses and rich people.

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Gadget Gary
Gifting Gary
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Nov 20, 2012  | 

I'm trying to get my holiday shopping done early this year. I have my wife, my kids, and the gang at work to shop for, so I need to make sure everyone gets exactly what they need. My 18-year-old is probably the easiest. He's the one away at college (I wrote about him in November), so for him, I'll get the Slingbox 500 ($300).

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Gadget Gary
Hurricane Gary II
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Dec 25, 2012  | 

It seems like it was only yesterday that I was writing this very column about Hurricane Irene for our November 2011 issue. And now we’ve just lived through Hurricane Sandy, which came with huge warnings and delivered much devastation. Me, I was without power, landline phones, Internet, and cable for 6 days.

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Gadget Gary
Livescribe’s Echo Smartpen
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Oct 29, 2010  | 

Do you ever sit around and daydream about inventions that could make your life easier? Whenever I get in my car for the 45-minute ride home from work and I’m feeling exhausted, I imagine roads where magnetic strips are built into the ground to guide my ride so that I can just plug in my destination, drift off, and wake up when I get to the driveway. Think about how great that’s gonna be!

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Gadget Gary
Mike'd Up
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Feb 13, 2013  | 

I've been working in radio for close to 30 years now, and I have access to all kinds of recording equipment, including some great microphones. Most of the gear I can get my hands on is pretty high-end stuff that uses XLR connectors and would require elaborate equipment that I just don't have at home. So I was really interested when the MXL Studio 1 USB microphone ($130) landed on my desk. It's a portable condenser microphone that connects to your computer via USB. MXL boasts that it's plug-and-play, and that's not a joke: No installation discs. No drivers. No preamps, mixers, or extra gear. Nice.

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Gadget Gary
Remote Harmony
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Dec 06, 2011  | 

Logitech is a cool company. It took all of the top aspects of its best-selling universal remote control and made it so that you could control your TV, set-top boxes, music systems, and other home gear on your iPhone or iPad. My kinda thing.

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Gadget Gary
See It Now!
Gary Dell'Abate  |  Jun 06, 2011  | 

Everybody loves to post fun videos of the cool things they’re doing on Facebook, YouTube, and even Twitter. Sometimes, though, you miss the coolest, funnest stuff because it’s hard to record all the time. But wait. What if you could?

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