Author: Daniel Sung
LaCie DataShare – memory card readers in the 5.5 style
The milk from LaCie’s design cash cow is still full and creamy with the release of the £9.90 DataShare flash memory device by 5.5 designers.
It’s a rather pretty, simple and elegant solution to the card reader problem and neat way to store your SDs and their micro cousins at the same time. They transfer at USB 2.0’s 480Mbps and probably last you somewhere in the region of 10,000 insertions. They’ll be available at the LaCie online store just as soon as they pull their fingers out.
Konami pulls "Six Days in Fallujah" video game
Tough one this and quite surprising too in some ways but first person shooter fans will shed a tear today as Konami announces that they will not distribute the Iraq war epic Six Days in Fallujah.
Funnily enough there was a whopping great out cry about the game giving a firm answer to the question of how soon is too soon? The answer is apparently four years when you’re still fighting the same war.
I say it’s surprising because the cynical side of me though the media circus of a few weeks back was just some kind of PR stunt to make people buy the game but if it was it’s backfired in a rather large way. Scores of ex-servicemen complained despite the title going out of its way to use authentic materials for a full account of what it was like to be there and now it appears that all the work was for nought.
(via Asahi)
Medion Akoya P6618: 16" entertainment latop – just £599
Dell might have ceased offering value for the time being but you can always trust Medion to pipe up with a bargain of a 16″ entertainment laptop when times are hard.
The Medion Akoya P6618 comes with a 16:9 HD 1366 x 768 TFT and an Intel Centrino system with Core 2 Duo T6600 2.2GHz processor and 4GB of DDR2 to push it all through. Add to that a very respectable 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GS graphics card and a 500GB HDD for just £599 and you’re looking at a pretty good, all round deal.
Sure it’s DVD drives instead of Blu-rays, the screen ain’t no LED and there’s solid state storage but what do you expect for the price? You’re still hooked up with HDMI ports, a good set of on board speakers, a 4-in-1 card reader, Gigabit LAN, draft-N wireless, eSATA, 32-bit Vista and enough software to do pretty much whatever you want. If you’re looking for an economic entertainment PC, then all you need to do is go to Aldi in 3 days time, or maybe even now by the looks of things.
Dell Studio XPS 435 – good looking outside meets turbo charged innards
If Dell is trying to shed their “stack ’em high, sell ’em cheap” image this year, then they’ve managed it with the release of the Adamo notebook and today with the Studio XPS 435 desktop computer.
The names of the game for this machine that starts off at £1,699 are power and future-proofing but the latter of those is rather a dangerous call to make in any field of consumer tech. Your vision of the future will look just as dated as any other machine in two or three years’ time. So, let’s just call the XPS 435 what it is – an expensive, good looking piece of fun.
So, click on the image below for the full tour…
GE creates 500GB holographic storage disc
It seems that every other month someone’s coming out with the prototype of a disc that can store X times more than a DVD/Blu-ray. I was actually thinking of making one myself with a stack of blank BDs and some blu-tac but then GE put together a method of storing 500GB using holographic disc storage which is much more interesting.
Instead of etching 2D patterns into the surface, holographic technology uses a three dimensional process with the disc acting like a maze of microscopic mirrors giving a depth to the optical layer where all the data is stored. GE expects them to be introduced by 2012 but the real key is, of course, how expense they will be.
Blu-rays began as $1 per GB when they first came out dropping to something closer to half that today. GE hopes these holographic discs will be 10 cents per GB, so a much more affordable $5 for the whole thing.
The thing I can’t help wondering, though, is whether there’s really a viable future in optical storage? Between SSDs and cloud computing, I was hoping to rid myself of discs by 2012.
(via NYT)
Swine Flu: Google maps and Twitter panic
The weekend’s reports of an outbreak of Swine Flu originating in Mexico have created something of a stir on Twitter and done a very interesting job of highlighting some of the major differences between the real-time search system and the more established approach of Google.
On the one hand, Google has assimilated an interesting webpage on facts of the flu on their own and other people have created Google maps pinpointing all the confirmed cases worldwide. At the other end of the scale, the speed of response and democracy of search results on Twitter has produced something closer to mass panic.
There’s been a Chinese whispers effect whereby a host of tweets built around anecdotal evidence, to put it kindly, have produced a mixed bag of misinformation and hysteria. My personal favourites are the opportunist:
and the poetic:
There must be some interesting looking log cabins in that town.
To fan the flames of total ignorance, I’d suggest that this outbreak will have a similar effect as the bird flu a few years back. We’ll see it all over the news. They’ll be plenty of reported deaths but they’ll mostly be amongst the very old and the infirm and the WHO will get a grip in it soon enough.
Meanwhile, if you find yourself hot, sweaty and oinking uncontrollably, I suggest you get yourself down the docs pronto.
(via FP)
UPDATED: BT announces cheapest UK home and mobile broadband combo
It’s pretty much a straight up fight for your data between all the mobile networks and just about everyone else who pipes any kind of service into your home. Doubtless the electric and water companies will be on it soon enough but today is the turn of BT to land their latest blow in the shape of the cheapest home and mobile broadband combo package on the block.
They’re offering you a dongle, 1GB of mobile data per month at a supposed 7.2Mbps and limited 8Mbps home broadband package for a total of £303.08 over 18 months or just £15.65 a month if that sounds too scary.
The deal’s well over £100 cheaper than similar offers from Virgin and Orange and comes with the BT satisfaction of speedy set up and the fact that it’ll probably work more often than not.
Out now over here.
Facebook voters say yes to more content control
The ballots are in, the votes have been counted and the titchy 600,000 out of 22 millions Facebook users have voted in favour of terms and conditions giving them more control over content posted on the social networking site.
The turn out was supposed to have sway if it represented a minimum of 30% of the Facebook population but it seems they underestimated the utter apathy of the internet population. Three percent managed to click an opinion. All those who couldn’t be bothered, raise your hand now. Yep, me too.
(via PC Pro)
JVC launches Everio X super slo-mo hybrid camcorder
In an industry where, suddenly, if you can’t record full HD and take stills with a CMOS sensor, you’re not in the game, JVC has still managed to pull out an impressive camcorder in the shape of the Everio X.
The X, or GZ-X900 as it’s also known, offers 9-megapixel pictures and 1080p HD at a weight of 298g but, most interesting of all, it features video capture at up to 500fps. That translates as 10x super slow motion speeds. It’ll be like watching the Tornado Camera in your own home movies.
It’s out in June complete with 5x zoom Minolta glassware, an HDMI 1.3 port and will record onto SDHC. Prices to follow.
JVC HD40 & HD30 Preview:
One Billionth app downloader wins $10,000 iTunes voucher
If you know Connor Mulcahey, age 13, of Weston, CT, I wouldn’t bother buying him any music for his birthday. Ever.
Connor was the downloader of the one billionth application from the Apple App Store this afternoon. The lucky app was Bump, an information exchange app as created by Bump Technologies and it’s taken just nine months of the store being open for the milestone to pass.
Little Connor is now the proud owner of iPod Touch, Time Capsule, MacBook Pro and a $10,000 iTunes gift voucher. Not bad for an impulse buy.
