We’ve finally got around to getting our hands on the Palm Pre Plus, Verizon’s version of the Pre, which Palm had hoped would spur the additional sales needed to take the company away from the brink of irrelevance at best, and extinction at worst. While that may not have happened, and while we can go over the myriad of reasons why (Palm, your App Store is atrocious…,) one that thing we are sure about is that the Pre Plus is a great phone. In fact, it has some features that you’d be hard-pressed to find in any other device, like the ability to act as a Mobile Hotspot for up to five other devices. We’ll be hitting you with a review of the Palm Pre Plus shortly, but in the meantime, go ahead and take a gander at our Pre Plus unboxing gallery.

Read More | Palm Pre Plus unboxing gallery

Gallery: Palm Pre Plus unboxing gallery

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The Short Version: If you donate to Haiti relief by SMS by texting “HAITI” to the number 90999, or by texting “YELE” to 501501, we will match your donation multiple times. Just leave a comment telling us how much you donated, and we will take care of the rest. We are currently matching donations 14 times.

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Over the past couple of days, while trying to carry on with “business as usual,” I’ve personally found it hard to focus on tech, gadgets, and all of the CES 2010 goodness that we have yet to bring you, as the world is focused on the disastrous aftermath of the earthquake in Haiti. We’re sure you’ve seen the imagery, but if you haven’t, or if you aren’t quite sure, I encourage you to watch this AP report:

Gear Live & Friends Will Match Your Haiti SMS Donations!
We felt it was time to do our part to help, so with the support of a bunch of Gear Live friends, we are announcing that we will match SMS donations made by Gear Live readers and viewers. As many of you know, the Red Cross has made it super-simple to donate $10 to help out by simply texting the word HAITI to 90999. In fact, this has been so successful that it’s already earned $11 million in just a few days. That is fantastic - but the damage to the country is far greater than that, and every little bit helps. So here’s what we’re gonna do:

Starting now, if you send an SMS donation to either the Red Cross (by texting the word HAITI to 90999) or to YELE (by texting the word YELE to 501501) Gear Live will match it, up to $500. In addition, we have a bunch of our friends joining in as well:

• David Geller of Eyejot and WhatCounts will match up to $2500
• Leslie Camacho, President of EllisLab (which makes the fantastic ExpressionEngine CMS) and Roger Rustad (wondering network guru) will personally match up to $600 $1200
• Nate True of Tap Tap Revenge and iPhone hacking fame will match up to $500
• Jeremy, Adam, and the team at Stage Two will match up to $500
• Dave Taylor, the man behind AskDaveTaylor.com, will match up to $250
• Don McAllister of Screencasts Online will match up to $250
• Robert Scoble, the face behind Building43, will match up to $200
• Local Gear Live fan Shauna Causey will match up to $100
• Parnassus Ventures, the folks behind 140: The Twitter Conference, will match up to $100
• Jason Neudecker, a Gear Live Twitter follower, will match up to $100
• Hadley Stern and Apple Matters will match up to $100
• Xavier Lanier and Notebooks.com will match up to $100
• Amisha Gandhi-Lanier and Served Raw will match up to $100
• Kevin Urie from Social Media Club Seattle will match up to $100
• TechieDiva.com will match up to $50
• Eric Siegfriend and DanceHop will match up to $50

In total, so far, that’s $4500 $5400 $5650 $6550 $6700 in pledged matching donations! For each donation you make, each entity above will match it, until their limit is reached. In other words, with our current eight eleven twelve contributors, your $10 donation will actually be matched six nine eleven twelve fifteen seventeen times, resulting in a $70 $100 $120 $130 $160 $180 payment. So, what do you need to do? This is the easy part. Just scroll down and leave us a comment letting us know that you made a donation, and whether it was a $5 or $10 contribution. If you do it multiple times, let us know that too. Even better, if you want to be on our list as a person or company that will match donations, let us know!

Now, what if you don’t have any money to donate? We will make it easy. Just comment with a link to an article on from any of the following websites that you found interesting or helpful, and we will donate $10 on your behalf:

Gear Live, Notebooks.com, AskDaveTaylor.com, Gear Diary, Mobility Minded, Technologizer, WindowsPhoneThoughts, Served Raw, SlashGear, or GeekRoom.

I have to give a big thank you to my pal Xavier over at Notebooks.com. He came up with the idea and invited me to donate. I then asked a few friends, and never thought we’d get the support that we did, so we kicked off our own campaign. Together with Notebooks.com, we have $10,500 $11,400 $11,650 $12,550 $12,700 in matching donations for your SMS contributions!

The time is now! Leave a comment after donating, tell your friends, forward this around, and share this on Facebook and Twitter using the buttons at the top of the article. Make us spend every penny of the matching funds that are available.

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During CES 2010, we were able to catch up with Ryan Biden of BlackBerry, and he was able to give us a live unboxing of the new BlackBerry Presenter device. For those unfamiliar, the BlackBerry Presenter hooks up to a monitor, projector, or display, and allows you to wirelessly give a PowerPoint presentation using a file stored directly on your BlackBerry, with no need for a PC. It’s a great idea, and you can check out the device in this episode. We will also have a demo of the device in our next episode of Bleeding Edge TV.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4


Wanna earn up to $20 to do product reviews? Check out Gear Live on Expo TV, sign up, and submit video reviews of your products for cash!

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If you’re an aspiring author who’s been wanting to publish a book, or if you’ve got a blog that you think would be fantastic as a printed work, pay attention. FastPencil has hooked us up with 10 giveaway packages that will let you take your work and put it into a physical, published form, for free. In case you aren’t aware, FastPencil is a super-simple way for anyone to write, organize, sell, and distribute physical books, as well as ebooks. Ten of you will win:

• A free printed book
• A free eBook
• Free shipping and handling

In order to redeem, you’d just put in your original work in the FastPencil system, or if you have a blog, it can be automatically imported. Seriously, it’s very cool, and we’re gonna hook up 10 of you with the prize package. How do you enter? Simple. Just leave a comment here on this post, or over on the Gear Live Facebook page. We will choose ten people randomly a week from today!

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We just landed a Barnes & Noble nook, and while our review is forthcoming, we figured it’d only be appropriate to hit you with a nice gallery of unboxing photos of the device aimed to take on the Amazon Kindle. We give you a look at the nook packaging, touchscreen, welcome screen, and of course, multiple views of the hardware itself. Our early impressions? The nook is nice, and feel great in the hand.

Head on over to our unboxing gallery to check out our Barnes & Noble nook photos, and let us know what you think, and what you want to hear about!

Gallery: Barnes & Noble nook unboxing!

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Remember that HP Envy 13 we showed off a couple of weeks ago? Yeah, the one that was even featured in Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance music video? Well, thanks to HP, we’ve got one to give away to one of our readers. All you need to tell is is what you want the HP Envy to do for you. Need some ideas? Check out the video above. There are a few guidelines:

• Videos may be SD or HD, live-action, or animation, and must be under 100 MBs in size.
• Videos must clearly answer the question “What do you want the new HP Envy to do for you?”
• Videos must be posted to YouTube, and announced on Twitter with a link to the YouTube video. Start your tweet with “Hey @gearlive” and include the hashtag #HPEnvy.
• All content must be owned by entrant.
• Anything depicting violence, bodily harm (including cigarette smoking), profanity, nudity or explicit sexual content, or unlawful activity, including underage drinking, binge drinking, or gambling is not permitted in any video submission.

So, why is the HP Envy 13 cool? There are a bunch of reasons you should be interested. Aside from being slim and stylish, it weighs just 3.74 pounds and is less than 1-inch thin. It rocks a 1.86GHz Intel Core 2 Duo that lets you play Blu-ray movies or edit video without lag, and there’s even an optional ultra-high capacity battery that’ll last up to 18 hours. Lastly, the 400 nit display is gorgeous, twice as bright as other similar notebook displays.

Wanna win? You’ve got all the details - get to work on submitting those videos! You have until December 18th at 11:59 PM PST to get them in.

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After reporting on the existence of the Sonos S5, we were immediately excited to get our hands on a unit to see how it stacked up against the rest of the lineup. If you’ve followed us for any length of time, you know that we at Gear Live are huge Sonos fans, so it makes sense that our unit arrived as soon as they were available, and we had it set up within minutes. Literally.

The S5 is the easiest way to get up and running with Sonos. We had it unboxed, plugged in, and playing music in under five minutes, controlling it with an iPhone. The price is right too, something we’ve previously criticized Sonos about. The entry level into Sonos used to be $999, but with the S5 that drops down to $399. Put this one on your Christmas list, folks. We’ve snapped a bunch of images of the S5, which you can find in our Sonos S5 unboxing gallery.

Read More | Sonos S5 gallery

Gallery: Sonos S5 unboxing gallery

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In this episode we open up the DJ Hero Renegade edition set. DJ Hero is the new turntable-based rhythm game featuring hip-hop, electronic, and rock music, and the Renegade Edition has a bunch of premium touches, and is also available just for a limited time. We show it all in this edition of Unboxing Live.

By the way, if you like music and haven’t played DJ Hero, you owe it to yourself to check it out. In our opinion, this is better than any Guitar Hero or Rock Band game that has come before it, in the way that you interact with the music, and the totally unique pairings that they throw at you. We are definitely DJ Hero believers! You can pick up DJ Hero on Amazon.

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - Apple TV High Resolution
|Download| - MPEG-4


Wanna earn up to $20 to do product reviews? Check out Gear Live on Expo TV, sign up, and submit video reviews of your products for cash!

Read More | DJ Hero

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Yes, we realize we are in the midst of our awesome Modern Warfare 2 Xbox 360 limited edition console giveaway, but hey, it’s the season for giving and we are taking part in yet another fantastic contest that we need to tell you about. Here’s the deal:

We, along with 24 other sites, have partnered with MAGHOUND and People StyleWatch to bring you the MAGnificent Makeover sweepstakes. Up for grabs is a grand prize that includes:

• Roundtrip Airfare for two (that would be you and a guest!) to New York City, NY on a Thursday through Saturday
• Airport Transportation to and from the NYC airport to the hotel
• Hotel Accommodations for a Three-Day/Two-Night stay at a NYC hotel of the Sponsor’s choice
• An afternoon of pampering at a People StyleWatch Recommended Salon, which will take place on the Friday of the trip. Guy or girl, be ready for a salon consultation and treatment that’ll have you walking out feeling like a new person.
• A $1,500 Shopping Spree with a People StyleWatch Editor (on that Friday) who will advise on trendy outfits and wardrobe suggestions at a retail store of the Editor’s choice

Oh, did you think that was all? We’ve also got three first prizes as well. That’s right, three people will be chosen to receive a $100 gift card to either Macy’s or Sephora, your choice.

Here’s the kicker - the contest ends on December 15th, and you can enter once per day! Seriously, go back daily and you increase your odds of walking away with this amazing prize package. Head on over to the entry page to enter and get full details, and be sure to select “Gear Live” in the “How did you hear about this?” pulldown menu.

Read More | MAGnificent Makeover Entry

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We were able to get our hands on the Motorola DROID a few days early, and we’ve got to say, this thing is a beauty. Android 2.0 is responsive and crisp, especially on the fantastic DROID display. We are going to be diving into the DROID a bit more in-depth in our full review, and we’ll have a few videos up as well, but in the meantime, please enjoy our Motorola DROID unboxing gallery. We’ve got a bunch of pictures up that’ll give you a nice look at the device.

Read More | Motorola DROID unboxing

Gallery: We open up Verizon’s Motorola DROID

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