Take your computer with you...

It looks like this U3 is going to be the next "big thing" in portable storage. Leave your notebook at home, and take on of these with you.

KINGSTON AND SANDISK both announced U3 compatible memory sticks.
To explain. U3 is basically a profile on the go standard for putting your life, specs and settings on the stick itself, and carrying it around with you. Plug it into any computer, and you are "off and running" just where you left off on the last PC you plugged in to.

Nice article expands on the topic here.

Smarter Flash Drives

While some tech savvy folks have been loading applications that run from their USB flash drive, now it's hitting the mainstream. The drives are priced at about the going rate, so these included applications are added value.

Memorex today announced its U3 smart Mini TravelDrive™, the first in Memorex’s family of TravelDrive portable storage devices to offer built-in U3™ support that transforms USB flash drives from simple storage devices into USB smart drives. Memorex’s first U3 smart drive hosts a personal workspace of not only a user’s data and files, but also software programs, personal preferences, passwords and settings, and the means for managing them — all in a highly secure and stylish device. The new metallic “platinum” Mini also features many of the signature characteristics of Memorex's award-winning line of USB TravelDrives, including a slim design; cool, blue LED status indicator; reinforced aluminum lanyard connector with lanyard; ergonomic gripping area; and more.

BTC MP3 Player

I've had a BTC DVD drive before, and been less than impressed. I can only imagine what this thing can do. On the other hand, the specs look pretty impressive.

BTC's newly announced SG106 digital music player has all the features that a consumer could wish for: its fashionable appearance, small dimensions and scratchproof aluminum surface finish will surely entice many consumers. With a storage capacity of 6GB, which is larger than most competitors' products, the SG106 is capable of providing virtually endless listening pleasure. This high quality digital music player supports the most popular compression formats and allows users to save and listen to about 1500 songs in MP3, WMA ,WAVor OGG format. Besides playing back from the memory the player also features a built-in stereo FM receiver that gives users the opportunity to listen to and record FM broadcasts!

Gmail Drive

You know when you log into Gmail, it has that 2+ GB of storage space ticker? Well, most of us don't get that much spam. Here's a neat idea, and maybe even more convenient than a USB flash drive. After all, you can't lose this!

The two gigabytes of storage you get with a Gmail account seems like an enormous waste of space for just e-mail. You're not likely ever to fill it; were you to come close, Google would no doubt have doubled the space by then. Wouldn't it be nice to be able to use some of that storage for something other than mail?

Well, you can. A free piece of software and the know-how to change a few Gmail settings are all you need to turn your Gmail storage into a virtual hard drive you can access any time you're connected to the Internet.

Two Billion Phones!

Now that is A LOT of phones worldwide. I'm wondering it that counts all the outdated phones we all have in our drawers!

THE TOTAL number of mobile phone connexions globally has gone past 2 billion over this weekend, according to Wireless Intelligence. It took 20 years to reach the first billion but a mere three years to add the second billion.

Fill 'er up!

Want longer power for your MP3 player? This is an innovative, albeit, somewhat radical approach.

Toshiba today unveiled its latest fuel cell prototypes, this time targeting Flash- and hard disk-based MP3 players. The test units are integrated into the players rather than attached to them externally.

Don't expect to see the players or the fuel cells on sale any time soon - even Toshiba now reckons they won't see commercial availability until 2007 at the earliest.

I just hope this thing doesn't leak, or this could get messy.

If at 1st you don't succeed...

The so-called "gaming mouse" has evolved into a niche product. Gamers always demand the latest and best computer stuff, so why would they use a mouse designed for office tasks. Logitech has some great gaming mice out, at a premium price. Microsoft decided to join the party, but their attempt seems to fizzle.

Microsoft has, in general, made pretty good mice. This is one of its worst. It's as if someone in the marketing department saw all these gaming mice in Best Buy and CompUSA from Logitech and Razer and decided Microsoft needed to make one, so they took it upon themselves to design the whole thing themselves. It seems obvious that no gamer ever really tested this thing. The mouse is not comfortable to hold, doesn't move nearly as smoothly and accurately as other laser-powered mice, is too lightweight, and has terrible side button placement. The surface is shiny and smooth in a way that looks kind of neat in photos, but becomes annoyingly slick if your hands get a little sweaty in an intense gaming session.

Wireless Vital signs

Who says monitoring has to be invasive? This little patch can find out the essentials, and wirlessly send the info to your MD. Now only if the blood drawing was this painless.

Patients will attach this patch to their arm, and it will wirelessly transmit blood pressure, heart rate and blood oxygen levels to a handheld. (The data can also be transmitted by wire.) The handheld, in turn, will transmit the data to a doctor. The device is a prototype now, but it may go on the market next year.

Nanotechnology Robot

This robot is really small. These are timid steps, in a whole new area of technology.

"It's tens of times smaller in length, and thousands of times smaller in mass than previous untethered microrobots that are controllable," said designer Bruce Donald of Dartmouth University. "When we say ‘controllable,' it means it's like a car; you can steer it anywhere on a flat surface, and drive it wherever you want to go. It doesn't drive on wheels, but crawls like a silicon inchworm, making tens of thousands of 10-nanometer steps every second. It turns by putting a silicon 'foot' out and pivoting like a motorcyclist skidding around a tight turn."

Designing the perfect Lego set...

Now users can design their own Lego project, and buy the right parts directly from the source itself. No more piecing together multiple sets until they end up in a big jumble of parts in some carton!

Users of Lego Factory and Lego Digital Designer can design their own customizable models using the 3D modeling software. Users have figured out a way to modify the software that allows them to build the models in a more cost-efficient way.

Ready to try it? Here's the link. You can also view some projects by fellow Lego builders. Now this is progress!

Car + Computer = Carputer

If you've been yearning to digitize your driving experience, this is the long weekend project for you. Actually, it may take a couple of weekends when you see what these guys are up to.

Building and integrating a complete PC media center into your car is a substantial investment in time and money. It also takes significant planning, particularly for builders who want to fabricate OEM-style designs that blend into the factory dashboard aesthetic. Wiring diagrams reveal how complex these projects can get.

See some excellent commentary on this here.

1st LiteOn LightScribe Drive

LightScribe is the slick technology of "writing" a label onto the top of special discs. Only a few drives support it. Up until now, in the States, you had to buy an HP drive to be able to do this. Now LiteOn debuts a drive supporting LightScribe. The rest of the specs are state of the art. I hope that this brings this neat technology to the mainstream masses.

Lite-On SHW-16H5S specifications
Write speed
DVD+R DL 8x (Z-CLV)
DVD+R/RW 16x (CAV) / 8x (Z-CLV)
DVD-R DL 4x (CLV)
DVD-R/RW 16x (CAV) / 6x (CLV)
CD-R/RW 48x (CAV) / 24x (Z-CLV)
Read speed
CD/DVD-ROM 48x (CAV) / 16x (CAV)
LightScribe Labeling
CD-R/DVD+R 1.6x
Access time
CD/DVD-ROM 160 ms / 160 ms
Buffer size 2 MB

Yahoo Email Overhaul

Yahoo is making some changes to their email system. This may be in response to the Gmail (Google) approach. "New & Improved" is great, but expect some glitches.

YAHOO HAS started testing a version of its free e-mail service on real customers.
A chunk of the current e-mail accountholders will be shifted over today, although Yahoo is not saying who the guinea pigs are, although it is expected that there will be about a million of them.

The overhaul is being touted as the most extensive since Yahoo began offering free e-mail accounts eight years ago.

Supposedly, you'll be able to read your emails right from the inbox without having to switch back and forth. Computer mice are rejoicing everywhere!

iPod Nano Stress Test

You've got to love a site that would destroy a new Nano in the name of science.

The iPod nano is clearly intended to be Apple's new best-selling iPod product, as the iPod mini used to hold that title but no longer exists. And honestly, given all of the improvements that the iPod nano has seen over the mini and even regular-sized iPods, we can see it hitting that point in the very near future as Christmas decorations start showing up in stores sometime in mid-October.

Diehard iPod users who have gigs upon gigs of music will probably still avoid the nano because of its relatively small storage capacity in comparison with standard iPods. After all, the gap between the highest-end iPod nano and the lowest-end iPod is rather large—4GB vs. 20GB—but of course, with only a US$50 difference between the two, this strategic spacing is right out of Apple's playbook. However, iPod shuffle users and previous (or even current) iPod mini users may be very tempted to get an iPod nano now, given all of the new and shrunken bright & shiny features.

Or, if you're like us, you're one of Apple's most favorite customers of all: iPod adders. No matter what you already have, you'll want to add an iPod nano to your collection.

The nano is nearly perfect; it is amazingly small and packs almost all of the features of the iPod photo and a few more. If it weren't for its lack of Firewire, lack of compatibility with older accessories, and no current support for video output, I don't think we'd hesitate to give the nano a perfect ten. Those shortcomings drop the iPod nano's score a couple of points to a solid eight.

Third New Disc Format On Drawing Board

I think that Microsoft has too much money in their coffers, and doesn't know what to spend it on first. On Friday, I posted about their plan to get into monthly TV Guide services for DVD recorders. Now, with Blu Ray and HD discs in a battle to be the next thing in optical storage, Microsoft jumps into the fray. And just when Samsung was announcing a drive to unite the two competing formats.

We might have to agree with the poster here and realise that with Sony, Toshiba and their two blue-laser high definition formats fighting for acceptance, a red laser HD format will only serve to muddy the waters for the average Joe. Ironically, it's this very squabbling that has created the opening for the FVD format. In addition, the process is different enough from current red laser processes, compression and decoding techniques that the general consensus is it is not subject to normal royalty rights for DVD. This would allow the local producers of optical discs and drives to enter the global market (China alone is a huge market) without paying royalty costs to the big international formats.

Just for comparison, the FVD format will be able to produce first-generation discs with a storage capacity of 5.4GB for single-layer discs, and 9.8GB for double-layer discs. The ITRI has more information and a nice table to compare FVD to DVD on this page, if you would like to read the complete specs.

And to make matters one step worse, this FVD standard only has marginally more storage than current DVD's. If we're going to go buy new toys, it should be for more than 0.7 GB more in the single layer ones, and 1 gig for the double layers.