Filed under: Digital Cameras, Features, Peripherals, Wireless, Networking

You may have seen the Eye-Fi, launched this week, nearly a year and a half since we first heard about it. If you’re just catching up on the news, it’s basically a WiFi-enabled SD card (and accompanying web service) used to transparently and wirelessly transfer photos from your camera to your computer and/or a variety of photo sharing sites. Sounds like a great idea in theory, it turns out that the Eye-Fi is, in its current release, an answer seeking a question. Read on.

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Continue reading Eye-Fi hands-on, impressions

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Buffalo’s out tooting its own horn today, as the AirStation Wireless-G MIMO Performance Router claims to be the “first commercial wireless router to come with DD-WRT firmware pre-installed.” Aimed squarely at the SMB and SOHO market, the WHR-HP-G54DD (WHR-HP-G54 pictured) is the first device to emerge from the firm’s partnership with NewMedia-NET. Of note, this device features five QoS levels to prioritize traffic, optimized link state routing (OLSR), a data transfer application with VPN functionality, PPTP protocol support, WMM and DDNS, and a bevy of management applications including remote network status logging, remote web management via HTTPS and web-based backup / restore. If all this sounds like your cup of tea, you can pick one up now for £41.70 ($86), and you can check out the full (and we mean full) list of specifications right there in the read link.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We realize what day it is, but we’re pretty certain the FCC isn’t messing around on this one. Right on cue, regulators have “approved a rule that would ban exclusive agreements that cable television operators have with apartment buildings, opening up competition for other video providers that could eventually lead to lower prices.” The move was apparently “unanimously approved,” and Chairman Kevin Martin went on to say that there was simply “no reason that consumers living in apartment buildings should be locked into one service provider.” Not surprisingly, a spokeswoman for Comcast proclaimed that “many consumers were likely to wind up paying more for services if the FCC’s interference in the competitive marketplace stands,” but it’s fairly safe to assume Verizon and AT&T see things very differently.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

The folks over at CNET aren’t wasting a moment getting to know Panasonic’s latest Blu-ray player, so why should you? Reviewers started off by praising Panny for getting a Profile 1.1-compliant player out before the actual deadline, and minor gripes about the DMP-BD10A (namely, the remote and the fold-down door) have been addressed satisfactorily. Additionally, it was noted that audiophiles would find lots to love courtesy of its ability to output DTS-HD Master Audio / Dolby TrueHD soundtracks in bitstream format, and sticklers for image quality are likely to be equally impressed. Put simply, this unit “performed excellently by properly deinterlacing 1080i signals to 1080p without artifacts or jaggies,” and it managed to measure up quite well with other highly-regarded BD players when playing back films. All in all, the BD30 was awarded a 7.4 out of 10 rating, and we’re pretty certain that adding an Ethernet jack and built-in decoders for high-resolution audio formats would’ve made this thing even more attractive.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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By Andrew Liszewski

If you think the 160GB external drive I posted earlier is still too big to carry around on a daily basis, then your only other option for a decent amount of storage on-the-go is a flash drive. I can remember when 32MB on your keychain was mind-blowing, but that seems absolutely minuscule when you can now get a 32GB version instead.

At that size, USB 2.0 almost seems too slow for copying data if you intend to completely fill the drive. The DiskGO also includes a copy of Cryptarchiver Lite, which can be used to encrypt your data up to 128AES. When you consider how much data can be easily lost with a drive this small, encrypting your files is really not a bad idea.

The 32GB version of the DiskGO is available from the EDGE Tech website for $399.95, but smaller, more affordable versions are also available.

[ DiskGO 32GB Flash Drive ] VIA [ Popgadget ]

Flash Drives, Storage, USB

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By Andrew Liszewski

LED flashlights can easily outperform their incandescent counterparts, but to really light up the night you need to use the same type of high-intensity lamps used in car headlights. But according to Popular Science, in order to get one into a handheld flashlight the designers of the Xenide had to shield the on-off switch “so that it wouldn’t short out from the massive voltage needed to ignite the lamp.” Cool.

The lights are commonly referred to as Xenon, but they’re actually made from Metal Halide. Xenon is just an inert gas that’s used in the arc chamber where the Halide is charged with electricity to create light plasma. So that’s where the ‘Xenide’ name comes from. The flashlight uses rechargeable lithium ion batteries and on a full charge has a projection distance of about 2200 feet. While the 90 minutes of run-time isn’t great when compared to LEDs, I think I’d still rather use one of these for trick or treating.

And like anything even remotely cool, the Xenide isn’t cheap. The basic 15w version costs about $350 while the high-end 25w version costs about $500.

[ AE Light Xenide Flashlight ] VIA [ Popular Science ]

Lighting

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By Andrew Liszewski

Buying a laptop hard drive and enclosure and simply building an external drive yourself is usually the cheapest way to go, but sometimes you just like to spend a few extra bucks and have the assembly part already done. And that’s part of the reason I like this ToughDrive from Freecom. It has a 160GB drive, and USB2.0 connectivity, but it’s the enclosure itself that makes it stand out.

The outside of the drive has a soft silicon cover while the inside has an anti-shock frame allowing it to stand up to a bit of abuse, including being dropped. But what I like most about the ToughDrive is the built-in USB cable. I have a couple of very slim external drives already, but I still have to throw in a USB cable whenever I take them with me, which I find pretty annoying. So I’d gladly opt for a short, built-in cable that I know I can never forget.

The ToughDrive 160GB is available directly from Freecom for $149.

[ Freecom ToughDrive 160GB ]

Storage

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By David Ponce

We’ve covered Neuros Technology in the past. They make an awesome device that allows you to record video and reformat it to mobile formats on the fly, altogether bypassing the PC. It’s dead easy to get video on to your cellphone, PSP, iPod or whatever else. Think of it as a digital VCR that’s as small as a pack of smokes. Or a little media center. And it’s all DRM-free.

A while ago, they came out with an updated version of the recorder, called the Neuros OSD. It’s got a bunch of new features, including the ability to watch YouTube videos. Matter of fact, the feature list is quite long and definitely worth a look. It’s only $230 or so.

Well, the Holidays are just around the corner, so we figured we’d get Neuros to give one device to a lucky reader. How do you win? Leave a comment in this post telling us what you’d do with your Neuros OSD: what will you record, what will you watch it on, how much of your life will you waste watching video instead of doing something productive? Or anything else you think we might find interesting. We’ll pick a random winner Sunday the 4th of November at 11:59 EST.

Announcements

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By Evan Ackerman

It’s always so depressing to watch what happens when a good concept becomes overly commercialized. The Keyport Keyholder takes up to six standard keys (house, car, etc.) and puts them into a little metal case that lets you select which key you want whenever you want it. Not a bad idea, right? The website, though, is full of hype: its “ultra futuristic look” has been “created to complement your personal style” in the form of “one universal access device” that’s “the most sophisticated entry device available.” Um, it holds keys, get over yourselves… Skymall (of all places) has been offering the exact same thing for credit cards for years, for all of $40. This thing? It’s $295, plus $75 (!) in shipping if you live outside the US. And there’s more: once you order it, you have to send THEM the six keys you want in the Keyholder, and they’ll put them in. I can only assume from this that there is some sort of proprietary key-integration system, meaning that if you want to change a key, you can’t just go to the hardware store and do it for 5 bucks. How do they get away with all this? It’s a ‘limited edition,’ of course.

[ Keyport ] VIA [ NOTCOT ]

Household

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

Is this what you’ve been waiting for? The ability to record high-definition, HD DVD content to DVDs? Well, have at it boy, Toshiba just announced their new Vardia RD-A301 recorder. It conforms to the HD Rec extension which allows HD DVD format content to be stored on red-laser DVD-R/RW/RAM disks like the RD-RX7 unveiled at CEATEC. That’s about 2 hours on a 4.7GB disc. Like the RD-A300, the A301 also features a 300GB hard disk. December, that’s when, for about ¥100,000 (about $870) in Japan.

[Via Impress]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

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