Best computer news

Happy Chinese New Year! This year is a special year for those born in the year of the tiger as it rolls around again. People born 12, 24, 36, etc… years ago have special cause to celebrate the return of their birth year which happens in 12 year rotations vs. 12 months via the zodiac. The first of the year’s Tiger decorations shows up on a USB flash drive from Kingston. Not the traditional iconic Asian tiger image, this is more of a anime style cartoon. Kingston’s drive sports a respectable 8GB of storage. With Kingston, there’s no need to worry that it’s a quality product.

This drive is a member of the special edition DataTraveler line that has been popular and has been issued for the last 3 years starting in 2007. The slider drive is again being released in Asia from the Taiwanese based headquarters. It’s unlikely that any of these will make their way outside of Asia as the demand probably isn’t there.
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Motorola has a new add-on for their WiMAX USBw 200 adapter. It’s effectively a docking station for the mobile adapter with it’s own power supply and larger antenna. The larger docking station sits upright and accepts the USB WiMAX adapter into its center. The elevation and angle should provide a modest improvement in signal by itself. Using the docking station’s dual internal antennas the sensitivity of the unit is roughly doubled from 3db up to 6db.

The USBw 200 adapter doesn’t need any other drivers to support the docking station. The USB dongle has all the drivers you need within its on-board flash memory. Unfortunately, the USBw 200 only has drivers for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7. WiMAX service is only available in a few select cities but continues to roll out. Service may not be available for you yet, but the USBw 200 has been out for a few months and the new docking station should arrive later this year. We expect more pricing details as the shipping date (Q2 2010) gets closer.
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Members of the device tinkering community have managed successfully get a Droid device to connect to USB peripherals. The Linux-based Android OS should be readily extensible, but the hardware that is wrapped around the OS isn’t always conducive to all the possibilities. The trick isn’t quite polished, it involves making your own USB cord and some cable swapping during a hard boot. It’s still a little buggy, but it’s a great step forward.

Once the hack gets a few more people working on it, there should be more stability. Currently, it’s not even really useful, devices are detected and powered up but not quite accessible. With the door open the Linux community should hop on board and knock the kinks out of it. Being able to access flash drives, MP3 players, TV tuners or digital cameras through USB On-The-Go should help extend high power cell phones like Droid into mobile Internet devices. Any thing that can run on Linux should be able to work on Droid. Look here for more news, hopefully wiring diagrams for the cable will show up so you can get in on the phone too. Video demo after the jump.
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From Fashionably Geek: The iKey KYB-170-OEM wrist keypad is an updated version of the iKey AK-39 keypad. Both meet military specifications and can be integrated to control computers worn on your wrist.  The KYB-170-OEM features a 17 button keypad, an integrated micro Force Sensing Resistor (FSR) pointing device and can be manufactured with any available [...]

While we are really big fans of security, Yanko, you’re doin it wrong. They have a new concept in flash drives they are shopping around. It looks like a lollipop or pacifier with a hollow ring dial. The USB connector is secured inside the device similar to flip-out style flash drives but it’s locked inside. Spinning the dial, you enter your combination which allows you to flip the connector out and it functions as normal. Remove the drive and retract the connector and it’s locked again.

Currently, the drive only sports the physical security of the lock. Snap the drive open and your secrets are compromised. That’s if you actually struggle with the 2 digit combination. It would only take 99 tries to figure out the combination and free drive and free data. The only thing this device is really good for is slightly increasing the effort it would take to get your goods, only slightly. It is a good idea, at least it’s headed in the right direction but we are gonna have to recommend the beefier entrants over this cupcake.
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Not much to look at really, the new Logitech MK710 is a decent wireless desktop set including what looks like to be an ordinary cordless keyboard and a sculpted laser mouse. Logitech found a way to jazz it up a little bit with some very important features. The edges of the keys have been contoured and sculpted for comfort. There’s an LCD screen instead of annoying LEDs to indicate CAPS LOCK, mute and battery status. Not sure if they even needed to include battery status because the keyboard is reported to be able to for THREE years. That’s longer than most of our hard drives. The mouse is rated at the same 3 year marathon stamina level. You can throw out the mouse, and replace it with another Logitech Unifying mouse such as the Anywhere MX or Performance MX. We’re still scrounging for details, but most Logitech mice take 1 AA and their keyboards take either 2 AA or 4 AAA. Either way, it’s not something you’ll really need to worry about once you set it up.

The other major aspect of this keyboard, which is way overdue from manufacturers of wireless devices, is encryption. War-typing is an uncommon but very real threat to personal security. Wireless keyboards send their keystrokes over the airwaves and anyone with an antenna and some know-how can snoop your typing for passwords and important information. The MK710 keyboard uses 128-bit AES encryption to keep your strokes from prying eyes. With at least some expectation of privacy, it’s a keyboard that you should use for a long time. The MK710 desktop set will hit the shores around April of this year for $99.
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While it will be hard to stay on home keys with your butt cheeks, the Wolfgang Keyboard bench from designer Nolan Herbut (Her butt?) does cushion your ample hind quarters with pressable keys. It’s a non working concept of course, but I say version 2.0 should have a anus trackball.

Project Page (Design Yearbook via Design [...]

Those who dig novelty storage design no longer have to bear the cost of the marked-up internal drive. LaCie recently debuted a aptly-named Box, a minimalist 3.5″ SATA USB 2.0 drive enclosure featuring a cool blue LED strip on its underside. Even though the ambient LED glow doesn’t do much, it has become the Neil Poulton’s signature styling cues on a number of LaCie’s external drives.

You also won’t find any fans on the USB 2.0 Box which now relies on natural airflow to provide ‘cooling’ through vent holes on the bottom. For this reason, LaCie recommends using 5,400-rpm drives over 7,200-rpm counterparts. For a drive enclosure, it comes with a generous 2-year warranty with a host of software including Backup Assistant and USB Boost, promising to speed up performance by as much as 33%. The LaCie Box should be found on virtual retail shelves for $40 or below anytime now.
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No, don’t worry there’s nothing in Samsung’s latest MP3 player that will “out” you. What you do in your own time is up to you, and whether you like show tunes or Korn this hip little player might just tickle your fancy. The TicToc player has an innovative way of making use of very little surface for buttons. The screen-less player -like the iPod shuffle – is about the size of the lid off of a tube of lipstick. There’s a single button on one end and a headphone port on the other. Push the button to turn the power on. With the button facing up, hold the button to increase the volume. Turn it upside down, so that the button is facing the ground and hold, Voilà volume goes down.

Shake it like a Polaroid picture if you want to change tracks. Shake it slow, and it will queue up a slow song. Shake it quickly and it will load up a faster one. Not to be attempted in movie theaters, learn from Peewee’s mistake. With the accelerometer built into the iPhone, it’s a wonder Apple didn’t come up with this. Many digital cameras already make use of the portrait/landscape orientation, but this is the first time we’ve seen it used to alter function. What will be next? Digital Cameras: Right side up is image mode, upside down is movie mode. Innovation like this is a good sign of a recovering economy; let’s hope we see more of both.
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S1Digital has released a new 100-disc carousel disc changer for Blu-ray that is special tailored for media center PCs. This USB 2.0 Blu-ray player holds a up to 100 discs, and can pull each disc up from its cataloging software. As each disc is loaded into the carousel the software locates case art and media and downloads them into your library. This allows for a text, genre or cover art searching for the movie you want to watch. Movies can be played at will, but Blu-ray video almost maxes out USB 2.0 bandwidth, unless S1Digital moves up to USB 3.0.

Another ability this player brings is the ability to download the discs to a hard drive. Instead of leaving discs in the player, special software will rip the content to hard drive from which video can be played back. The best part is that the player can be loaded up, and told to rip your entire collection without intervention. That only works of course if your discs are DRM-less Blu-ray. Each disc can take up to an hour to load so you could fill and rip them all in about 4 days if you happen to have 3TB of storage handy. In 6 months that won’t be much, but today that’s still a little heavy. Also heavy is the price tag, $1500 to get this massive amount of Blu-ray content at hand.
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