Gizmo Zone

Kronos USB Drive Watch is Super Cool

I read somewhere that the cell phone industry is hurting the watch industry. I know that I no longer wear a watch; rather I use the clock on my Motorola Razr phone. One watch that I might wear though is the Kronos USB Drive Watch.

Unfortunately it seems the watch is only a design concept at this point. The watch is very attractive in what seems to be a stainless steel case with a red and black face. The interesting part of the watch for geeks is the built in flash drive with a USB connector that stores in the watch band. I think lots of geeky types would buy this watch is it were built. The designer, Andrew Willkerson, designed the watch as a design project for a graduate computer modeling class.

Elgato Introduce H.264 USB Encoder for Mac

Macs will eventually get H.264 (AVC) hardware acceleration for both decoding and encoding. In fact, ATI X1600 Mobility can handle that already via AVIVO. Before Jobs gives the greenlight, someone has ought to come up with a solution to help out the folks with low-end Macs to speed up their DVD ripping process to AVC format.

Enter the Elgato Turbo 264. The USB dongle with a curiously spelled name does the exact same job as the ADS Instant Video To Go USB encoder except the Elgato bundles their in-house converter whereas ADS licenses the software from ArcSoft. If Video To Go is any indication, the Elgato should improve encoding speed by 2 to 4 times. Practically speaking, I do think people still need this despite of the presence of duo core in iMacs and MacBooks, because converting stuff into H.264 at 640×480 is still painfully slow even with these new advanced processors. A co-processor especially designed for the task couldn’t be more welcome.

Toshiba 16GB Flash Drive

CeBIT 2007 has another cool display for a new type of USB Flash Drive. Toshiba presented its newest USB Flash Drive, which has a 16GB capacity.

Does anyone know if this is the record? I know that the 1GB is one of the more popular models, and I’ve heard them go higher, but not this high. I have no idea how much this will cost, or when it will hit the market, but something tells me that it won’t be cheap.

By the way, Toshiba is also putting a 32GB SDHC Memory Card on display at CeBIT. Am I displaying a severe lack of tech knowledge by sounding surprised at the high memory potential of these devices? Are we already this high?

ModBook upgrade will due to ship in May

Axiotron today announced that it has doubled pen pressure sensitivity on its ModBook Mac tablet line to 512 levels, but pushed back the shipment date to May of this year. The updated pen offers users of applications such as Adobe Photoshop or Corel painter improved sensitivity and control of pen strokes. Axiotron is offering the free upgrade to new customers and is retroactively applying the change to all ModBook orders placed since its introduction, which accounts for moving first customer shipments to May of 2007.

Axiotron’s ModBook features Wacom Penabled hardware, the same technology used in Wacom pen tablets and interactive pen displays. The ModBook’s Digitizer Pen boasts 133 position updates per second and supports 20x display resolution. The Axiotron ModBook enables users to draw and write directly on the screen, and the handwriting recognition built into Mac OS X Tiger turns hand scribbles into text in every application while providing extended control of the system through gesture recognition. The ModBook is priced at $2,780, and will now ship in May of 2007.

HP Maybach ns42 - the Luxury Ultra-Portable Notebook

Hewlett Packard is to releasing its HP Maybach ns42 luxury ultra-portable laptop, created in collaboration with Maybach car maker’s designers according to  Tech2.ru.

“The frame is decorated with genuine leather and classic Maybach labels. Sensory buttons with amber-colored highlight are disposed under the touchpad. Configuration is not certain, but the new model is supplied with Intel Core 2 Duo processor, built in 64GB solid-state drive and video adapter (presumably GeForce Go 7 or 8 series),” according to Tech2.ru, which has also provided the pictures of the HP Maybach ns42.

It is also reported that the luxury sub-notebook weighs three pounds. There is no information on notebook’s screen size, but the pictures show it has the standard 4:3 screen, contrary to majority of modern widescreen laptops. The full HP Maybach package contains special case for transportation, Bluetooth mouse and additional battery.

“The price is unannounced yet, but to all appearance it will work out at not less than $4000,” the report says.

Source: Tech2.ru

Belkin Flip: flip your monitor from laptop to desktop

If you’re working on a laptop but would like to use your desktop monitor, you’ll flip over this product. As Belkin’s ad line reads: “Two computers. One monitor. No problem.”

It’s simple. Just place the remote anywhere on your desk and press to flip your monitor from one computer to another. You can also connect your old and new desktop computer, giving you instant access to files, programs, and games on both computers. Besides letting you share one monitor, keyboard, and mouse between computers, it also enables you to share one set of speakers, handy when the good ones are connected to the desktop.

Supports both PC and Mac notebook and desktop computers; features a 2-color LED that indicates which computer your Flip is accessing; comes with 2 cables to connect computers and is also available with a wireless remote. Priced from $49.00 to $79.00.

HP Compaq 6515b business laptop

The HP Compaq 6515b delivers a highly portable business tool that helps keep you connected and productive so your office can now go where you go.With the low-profile 14.1-inch widescreen display you get 30% more viewing content than the standard 14.1-inch XGA display.

The HP Compaq 6515b delivers a highly portable business tool that helps keep you connected and productive so your office can now go where you go.With the low-profile 14.1-inch widescreen display you get 30% more viewing content than the standard 14.1-inch XGA display.

Canon PTZ Network Camera VB-300

Canon has recently unveiled their PTZ network camera codenamed VB-300 which is suppose to be used for security reasons, or maybe for bosses to check on employees to see if they are really working or not - it all depends on the owner.

One of the coolest thing is the built-in InfraRed filter that can detect when it is day or night, and afterwards display the images even if the quality is low.

Other features concerning security include being able to rotate 360 degrees for an overall view, progressive scan so there won’t be any blurry images, and AutoFocus with 2.4 X Optical Zoom. Cool enough? The last good thing is the “two-way audio system” which consists of being able to send and receive audio at the same time.

Buffalo RUF2-HSC Flash Drive

Buffalo Japan has launched a USB drive with security function to protect your valuable data. The pen drive includes a security software which asks for password verification prior to accessing the data. So even if your drive gets lost, you don’t have to worry because the data has been encoded and no one can access it without password. It’s available in 256MB ($63) / 512MB ($67) / 1GB ($110) / 2GB ($195) capacity.

The drives will be available from April in the Japanese market.

Iodata TB-BH 8GB USB drive

Iodata Japan has introduced a new series of flash drive which works on both Windows and Mac based computers. The black colored TB-BH comes in 4/8GB, while the lead-red colored drive comes in 4GB. The pen drives (12g) supports Ready Boost function and includes ‘QuickSecure’ data encryption software for security.

The 4GB model costs about $109, while the 8GB version is priced at $212. The TB-BH series will be available from April.