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Here comes another practical WUSB application (and “native” peripheral) that follows Kensington Wireless USB Dock Station. The IOGear Wireless USB to VGA Kit is touted as an alternate in-room display adapter that can stream HD (720p) within a 30-foot range wirelessly. You could say this is another niche multimedia product for connecting your PC (XP 32-bit, Vista 32-/64-bit) to a projector or a LCD TV. However, when you come across wiring obstacles such as marble and fireplaces, cutting this cord is something that maybe worth $229.95 (MSRP) - street price will dive near Christmas.

The IOGear WUSB to VGA Kit is among the first to be certified by USB-IF, which guarantees the VGA dongle will work with future PCs (or maybe Macs) with native WUSB host. There’s one caveat though: the IOGear (likely powered by DisplayLink) doesn’t support HDCP so while you can playback any 720p ripped movies or movie trailers, Blu-ray playback is out of the question.
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Dream Cheeky once again brings us yet another questionably useful USB gadget. The USB Webmail Notifier reportedly works in the background to inform you of new emails by illuminating in blue, red or green. It even tells you the capacity of unread emails by audible alerts. Supposedly, a soft red illumination means an incoming email arrived in Gmail, but you can associate each of the three colors with a different email client.

The bundled software will work with Gmail, Yahoo, Outlook Express and any POP3 programs. One thing to keep in mind is that Dream Cheeky does the email authentication for you so you may want to make sure your password isn’t sent out as clear text or it would be a huge security risk. We do wonder how the USB Webmail Notifier handles a sudden influx of emails.
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Weird USB drives are popular among users and companies looking to hand out memorable trinkets to employees and customers. Some of the most memorable flash drives we have seen in a while would have to be the new line of Star Wars Mimobot drives. Those wanting a flash drive that looks like a person, but is perhaps a little less geeky than the Mimobot, can get their own USB People drive.

The USB People flash drive is exactly what it sounds like - a USB flash drive that has movable arms and legs. The drives look sort of like the Lego people that come with some Lego kits to me. To get to the USB connector of the drive you pull off the head. The drives come in a few models including a doctor, Vet, policeman, secretary, jogger, construction worker, footballer, rugby player, businessman, and more. You can also create your own custom USB People drive. Storage capacities range from 64MB to 8GB. Pricing is unknown at this time.
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If you work in an office with lots of people or in a cubicle farm, odds are it does not always smell so good. It could be anything from the weird guy in the cubicle next door that doesn’t bathe as often as the others in the office would like, or maybe it’s the lady in the cubby next door that likes onions on everything. The Desktop USB Fragrance dispenser can mask the odor of your neighbors, but it can’t hide your geekiness.

This isn’t the first fragrance dispenser we have seen, but at least the one today doesn’t put oil right next to your computer. The desktop USB Diffuser is ultrasonic and works as a humidifier as well. The fragrance strength is adjustable and the device has a LED power indicator. Exactly what type of fragrance you put into the device is unknown. Since the device is ultrasonic, I doubt it would work with oils.
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Our avid readers (and peripheral manufacturers) should be delighted to see this headline: WUSB finally beginning to match USB 2.0 performance. NEC’s the one to deliver the good news at Intel Developer Forum (IDF) Fall 2008. While the system is still a prototype, it did prove that with “native” host and firmware improvement effective speed can top 200Mbit/s or 25MByte/s, at which speed most would find acceptable for general use. Of course, you would need to have a “native” WUSB mass storage as well to reach this transfer rate; unfortunately, no one has announced such retail product yet. NEC exhibited a similar setup that performed at 130Mbit/s at last year’s IDF. Wireless USB promises 480Mbit/s at distance up to 3m and 110Mbit/s at up to 10m. NEC didn’t say the effective range, hopefully somewhere near 5m - the max. cable length of a USB 2.0 cable.
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There are a couple of things we all want from our computers - less wires and more speed. Our beloved USB connection can provide both of these thanks to wireless USB and the coming USB 3.0 specification. USB 3.0 promises data transfer speeds up to 4.8 Gbps. USB 3.0 was first announced at Intel’s IDF 2007. At the time, it was first announced the specifications are expected to be finalized in the middle of 2008 and devices are expected to hit market 2009.

A USB 3.0 data transfer demo at Intel’s IDF 2008 has proven that the specification is a little closer to becoming a reality. Fresco Logic has demonstrated data transfer using USB 3.0 for the first time at IDF 2008. The company employed a self-developed software development platform to achieve SuperSpeed data transfer speeds of 350MBytes/s or 2.8Gbit/s using its own USB 3.0 host and device controller IP. To put this into perspective, this is about 60% of its theoretical speed of 4.8Gbit/s. The platform is connected to the PC through a PCI Express port and used Xilinx Inc’s Field Programmable Gate Array.
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Archos is trying to lure iPod touch users with its new line of what the French company touts as the Internet media tablets. All three hard drive-based tablets - Archos 5, 5G and 7 - share an Cortext-powered superscaler ARM processor; a touchscreen GUI; an uncompromised Opera web browser with Adobe Flash 9 support; 800-by-480 native resolution; and WiFi.

The regular Archos 5 has a 4.8″ screen, and capacity starts at 60GB and goes up to 250GB. The high-end Archos 7 gets a 7″ screen, and comes in 160GB and 320GB. And for those looking for always online capability, the 30GB Archos 5G will come with built-in 3.5G HSDPA radio - the only thing you need is your SIM. VoIP seems to need some hacking or to rely on upcoming software upgrade. A future planned HSDPA USB dongle will give Archos 5, 7 the same connectivity option as the 5G. The trio also receives Hi-Def treatment if you invest in a DVR Station and an optional plug-in that work together to output 720p WMV HD / MPEG-4 over HDMI. It’s important to point out 720p mode won’t work with H.264 as it maybe too taxing on the CPU. Check out the PDF for full details on pricing, add-ons and specs.
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Surround sound headsets for gaming seem like a hot topic these days: after Razer’s announcement yesterday about the upcoming Megalodon, we now came across this Plantronic’s new surround in a pair of cans, the Gamecom 777. Much like the ASUS Xonar U1 USB sound pod that we reviewed here a few months ago (and unlike the competing solutions from Creative, including the HS-1200 X-Fi headset), the Gamecom 777 uses a combination of Dolby’s Pro Logic II surround decoding and Dolby Headphone technologies to deliver 5.1 surround to a pair of headphones.

What we find interesting about the Gamecom 777 is that it looks like they’re trying to offer a more general-use pair of headphones by making the Dolby processing engine a separate (USB-powered) component that detaches from the rest of the unit. Pull out the plugs and you have a set of stereo headphones that – oddly enough – has two headphone jacks that we guess you’d use for other music sources. We’re just not sure when you’d have a system that accepted two headphone jacks, or whether the Plantronics’ headphones sound good enough to make them a good choice for music lovers. We guess we’ll see in September, when the Gamecom 777 hits the streets for $99.
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In 2007, Microsoft got back into the gaming peripheral business and pulled its SideWinder brand out of mothballs. The first SideWinder product was a gaming mouse, simply called the SideWinder gaming mouse. A few months before it unveiled the SideWinder gaming mouse, Microsoft unveiled its Reclusa gaming keyboard built in conjunction with Razer. This week Microsoft has announced two new products that will carry the SideWinder moniker.

The two products will include the SideWinder X6 gaming keyboard and the SideWinder X5 gaming mouse. The most interesting feature of the new keyboard is the number pad that can be moved to the right or left side of the keyboard. Moving the number pad to the left side of the keyboard allows the gamer to keep a hand on the mouse still access the number pad keys. Other features of the keyboard include two-color adjustable backlighting, the ability to record macros in game, up to 90 different macros per game, and more. The X5 mouse has sensitivity of up to 2000 dpi and nine buttons with five of them fully programmable. The X6 keyboard and X5 mouse will both be available in September at $79.95 and $59.95 respectively.
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Some people like to be in touch with their feelings and all that garbage. This type of person blogs about the mundane aspects of their personal lives and keeps a diary. We’ve never really understood the need for a diary, but many people keep them. If you like the idea of a diary, but don’t like the thought of actually having to write by hand on paper the Secret Diary may be just what you need.

The Secret Diary looks very similar to the Corsair Flash Padlock flash drive in that both have a numeric pad for entering your 4-digit PIN. But unlike the Corsair flash drive, the Secret Diary encrypts entries stored on it via 256-bit AES crypto and is able to self-detruct the data when someone attempts a force brute attack. (The Padlock on the other hand is extremely easy to hack.) Users of the Secret Diary can optionally register a never lost password and get a subscription that backs up diary entries in the case of loss or theft. The drive also bundles software for making diary entries interactive including a fortune cookie, My Stars application, Dream Catcher, Thinking Deep, and Mood Art. Interestingly, it features an emotion sensor that analyzes the text you write and displays a swirl in the heading colored to match the mood of the writing. Pricing and availability are unknown at this time.
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