There are many who posit that the Internet was developed around a single major goal, the one goal, the cause of more struggles, bloodshed and wars than even religion: The desire to ogle cans. From the era of crude paint drawings to the barely discernible ASCII images on sheets of perforated green bar paper, naked pictures have been sought after since the first hairless apes donned clothing. Whether the internet birth drove porn or just followed it is a chicken-or-the-egg question that will likely never have a satisfactory answer. Everyone needs a little sumtin-sumtin in their lives, but there’s a time and a place for everything. The Porn Detection Stick contains portable software that will scan through all images stored on a computer doing heuristic pattern matching to find out if you have a secret cache of skin pics. Even more frighteningly, it will rummage through the remnants of deleted files as well. So even if you, like my friend Derek, deleted all your porn the day you got married, this tool will still be able to find your filthy, filthy stash.
The tool is currently only designed to hunt stored images so your browsing history won’t be inspected but your temporary internet files may still tattle on you. The drive’s maker, proofpronto, claims the drive has less that .007% false positives. You really should go clean off your drive right now because your boss is ordering a few as we speak. For workplace legal concerns, this really could be a useful tool, a small office could be inspected in weekend “A search of a 500 GB hard drive with over 70,000 images takes only about an hour and a half”. The drive is on sale now for $98 on their site. Here’s hoping they run out of them or something and you get to keep your job. Permanent Link
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SuperSpeed USB is here, you can touch it, buy it and USE it, but where are our USB 3.0 thumb drives? Super Talent has revealed another slim uber-fast flash drive for our portable pleasure in the near future. The drive is being released in two line-ups. The first will be the consumer models, the SuperCrypt, available in sizes from 16GB to 256GB. The second is the more prosumer variation starting a 32GB up to the same 256GB, the SuperCrypt Pro.
Both lineups are equipped with serious hardware-based encryption built into their tiny chassis. The SuperCrypt sports 128-bit ECB encryption while the Pro model rocks with 256-bit XTS encryption, but will likely add to the price-tag. This robust data encryption won’t get them top secret clearance though, there’s still no tamper-proofing that really needs to go along with drives that tout security muscles. The DoD is only allowing drives with physical and digital security certifications back on premises. Hopefully, SuperTalent will craft a Pico version soon, and get it FIPS approved. We’re also still waiting on an overdue RAIDDrive from SuperTalent as well. We love press releases, but until it’s on Newegg, it’s just empty words. This latest promise predicts sales in March. We Are holding our breath. Permanent Link
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There’s a list of 50 products that the governing body around the USB standard has listed as approved by them to carry the USB-IF logo.
This number seems awfully small, especially for those of us still forced to use USB 2.0 to move VMDK’s and encrypted DB archives around. Spending hours a week waiting on data to move adds up and costs valuable work dollars. While this doesn’t seem like many, the number is growing fast. The other thing to consider is that the silicon is what is getting approved and that it will be re-used and re-sold under many other names. NEC’s chipset is now in dozens of the first USB 3.0 upgrade cards and many more core technologies being examined now will be similarly cloned under a single USB-IF product banner.
Unfortunately, there aren’t a ton of the MUST HAVE devices on the market yet. Currently, our top pick for most useful device would be the Sharkoon drive station; anyone doing mass amounts of drive cloning and imaging should have one of these already. Once R&D groups have their imagination stimulated we should have a plethora of interesting products in the chute like Tritton’s. Here’s to 50 more USB 3.0, we’re right here behind ya! Permanent Link
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The Astro Drive A101 is here to win hearts and inspire by being the smallest USB 3.0 device. Well, for today that is, currently there are only 50 some-odd USB 3.0 certified devices out there and this may currently hold the title. We’ll likely be announcing its successor in about 2 weeks so try not to have a heart attack. This drive from Walton-Chaintech bears the Apogee name and follows close on the heels of a speedy USB 2.0 drive from the same company. Due to the extravagant and ethereal nature of the press release, we’re forced to assume that this has similar internals. With 180MB/s read speed and 130MB/s write speed, this will be a very worthy flash drive (There’s even a faster, more capable drive, but that’s for geeks born with silver spoon in their mouth.) If they have a flip out connector and keep the price under $300 for the large 128GB variant, we’ll have our pre-order in before the end of the day (32GB and 64GB models are available as well). Unfortunately, the price and where to pre-order are still absent from their site along with most of the other details that would be important to most of the people that this drive would thrill.
The press release is worthy of a read for fun though. It seems that choosing to use 2 colors in the casing turns this into a super-charged lifestyle drive full of vigor and fashion. They really do go on about the colors, both of them, being really important while details about speed, memory type and pretty much anything else are not to be found. From the text we’d expect to see Ashton Kutcher toting one of these but from the picture they’ll be lucky to get an endorsement from Infra-man. Once we have more details, or at least a second detail we promise to get really excited.
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If you bought your netbook hoping to have a decent MP3 or video player, you probably had a lot of buyer’s remorse the first time you tried to crank up some tunes on it. The underpowered netbook is usually equipped with some really underwhelming. Logitech’s latest Laptop Speaker Z205 is an easy way to give any laptop a boost. The Z205 sports an internal sound card and stereo speakers for quality sound and projection.
The slim unit is designed to fit directly on the top of you laptop LCD. Sitting a little closer to ear level means less volume and less distortion. There’s a carrying case included to making packing this along with you just as easy as it is to plug it in. There have been a few of these to come out int this form factor but none have carried Logitech’s name and reputation. The price is a reasonable $39.99, but it would be hard to pass up the option of an NXT version or slightly bigger drivers. If the size is right for you, they should reach shelves any day now. Permanent Link
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IronKey, we remember when you were just a rugged, secure flash drive. Today, the company is making huge strides in secure computing and enterprise level encrypted operations. The Virtualized USB Key that they are now touting is going to be high security private communications device to handle corporate banking. With some banks now turning around and suing their clients for not securing their own assets, companies are forced to take more personal stake in securing their information.
IronKey has been using their secure and tamper-proof / tamper-evident drives to ferry data securely and more recently to host entire secure operating systems. This latest offering extends the last, with a secure operating system, bootable or run from a window, which connects to a specialized webservice or web site. The drives are locked to only be used for the specific bank service as well the account is locked down to only allow access by the drive. The Iron(Bank)Key can be further secured by SecureID or other token device making for a 3 or 4 factor authentication process for maximum confidentiality. This will most likely be marketed to banks to be distributed by them to their bigger customers, like Coke, Hilton or Bruce Willis as the The Jackal. Owing to that, it will likely be a few years before we get to see these come out to the end user. Permanent Link
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USB 3.0 Stuff
Other USB Worthy News
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USB displays, network cards, hard drives and video cards are here, why not just a whole USB work station? Tritton has the answer to that question. The era of personal computer has peaked and people are now wishing for some more simplicity. Tritton has announced it is working with Microsoft to deliver that simpler future within the confines/garden of Windows MultiPoint Server. Combined with Tritton’s SEE2 USB video technology, today’s overpowered server computers can provide a full workstation environment to USB thin client workstations. The thin client architecture is already seeing a revival amongst institutional clients via VDI and other contenders.
Partnered with a Microsoft server product for ease of administration, simple USB 2.0 connectivity with no complicated wiring schemes and a workstation price point will make netbooks seem expensive. USB workstations could easily start as low as $100, and require that only a single server be maintained to serve entire offices. Desktop support staff requirements would be slashed right along side hardware costs as the only pieces to maintain are a server and physical connections to the devices. The MultiPoint Workstation 300 is an industry first, and can support up to 10 clients per MultiPoint Server. Due for release later this year expect to have one of these in front of you at some point in the next 2 years as a certainty. Permanent Link
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Everyone who ever went to Space Camp or followed the Grateful Dead has probably at one time or another been interested in hydroponics. Click and Grow finally has a computerized, no hassle version that you can run at your desk or windowsill. Insert a custom seed pod into the Aeroponic container and you’re halfway done. Hit the Internet to download the latest watering and conditions information for your selected plant and use USB to upload this information to the Click and Grow unit. That’s all there is to it. Just keep it plugged in and filled with water and you should have blossoms, fruit, vegetables or buds.
Some of the higher end models can actually extricate moisture from the air to water your plants. All models are completely soil free, but the seed pod packages do come loaded with the vital nutrients and fertilizers required to get your product to prosper. More so than more passive monitoring systems of the past, the chamber is actually used to make temperature and humidity adjustments in the closed environment to get the maximum growth for you prize Crops without letting your deadly black thumb get the best of you yet again. For those of you interest in more aggressive gardening, not the Phish crowd, may want to be wary of the providers claims. At least a few of the species they have listed there take more than a seasons to start bearing fruit. YMMV but Caveat emptor and good luck with your plants, you needs your spinach to grows up big and strong like Pop-Eye. Permanent Link
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The new Cleankeys keyboard is designed to help you keep from getting a virus, you know, a real one, not one of those sissy computer viruses. The keyboard is made to work around the clock in a business setting and be frequently wiped down and disinfected. Dentists and Doctors have been have been waiting for this for years, unfortunately they may the only ones who can afford it. The touch-sensitive keyboards run from $400 to $450, depending on the tactile version you choose; the two models vary by being completely feature-less and smooth or having small grooves that allow for tiled sensation. Both versions have no moving parts or tactile feedback, but do include a round touchpad so that no a mouse is required at all.
While these features seem like they might have been designed by Apple, they actually have function besides just looking cool but they will take some getting used to, something akin to learning to type on that bluetooth laser keyboard. They are waterproof and spill-proof as well, allowing for accidents which are common in the workplace according to Murphy’s Law. That way, you don’t even have to unplug it, just hit the pause key and wipe it down. The pause key suspends keyboard functions when you need to clean the unit; the CleanKeys resumes when you hit it again. The keyboard is run off a wireless USB connection and recharges via a mini USB port that is tightly concealed until it’s needed to juice the battery. If you’ve got the dough and have a bit of that germ phobia that seems to be so trendy lately, the CleanKeys can be ordered now from their suppliers. Brief video demo after the jump. Permanent Link
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