Category: Peripherals
USB 3.0 spec set in stone – move your files about at speeds of 4.8Gbps
If you’re constantly shuffling vast Blu-ray rips from device to device and sighing while your PC locks up for 27 minutes, rejoice! USB 3.0 is coming to make all your data-copying woes disappear.
The shadowy USB consortium, which meets in Vienna once every 1000 years, has confirmed the spec of USB 3.0, proudly telling everyone that a 25GB file will copy from a PC to a 3.0 device in 70 seconds…
USB Endoscope – seeing things that should never be seen
Ever wanted to insert a camera into various orifices in your body? NOW YOU CAN with the USB Endoscope. Blowing every single other USB gadget I’ve ever seen out of the water, the USB Endoscope indulges your inner gut fetishist, while simultaneously allowing you to broadcast the images over the web with the greatest of ease. Hey, check out my urethra!
If you haven’t lost your lunch yet, then you’ll want to be buying one, right? It’s US$99 (about £67 in real money) and features 640×480 resolution, built in illumination, and – critically – a thickness of just 12mm. It’s just over 14cm long, so you won’t be able to push it in too far – promise me you won’t lose the damn thing in there, okay?
USB Endoscope
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Vuzix announces widescreen virtual reality glasses
Following on from the VR920s, which I reviewed earlier in the year, Vuzix has just announced a pair of widescreen multimedia glasses – the AV310. Like the others, they sit on your nose, and position two dinky screens in front of your eyes, so it’s like having a massive screen further away. They’ve also announced an upgrade to the AV230XL – their entry level goggles – which upgrades them to OLED displays.
The AV310 is the first commercially available video headset available in widescreen 16:9 aspect ratio. It ships with a cable for connecting to your iPod or iPhone, as well as a variety of other devices with TV-Out functionality, including many recent MP3 players. The OLED displays on the AV230XL – and I got to see these myself – look phenomenal. Far brighter and more responsive than LCD displays. Very impressive.
REVIEW: Wacom Bamboo Applications
Following my preview of the new applications available for Wacom’s “Bamboo” PC input tablets the other week, Wacom has sent me a tablet to have a play with, and test out the new apps. Here’s what I think.
Bamboo Scribe
I was originally going to try to write this whole post just using the tablet and bamboo scribe to convert my handwriting into text, but then I realised that it would take me hours. I don’t have hours, so you’ve got a keyboarded post instead.
Bunny Webcam might just get you in the night
In a straw poll I just conducted with a few former colleagues over Skype, I asked five people whether this product is cute or creepy. Turns out that four out of five rated it as “cute” – surprising, because I think it’s one of the the scariest things I’ve ever seen. Place your vote in the comments.
It’s a plush bunny toy, with a webcam in its nose. The webcam’s not that great – 1.3 megapixel, and it captures in 640×480. Not awful, but not brilliant. Still, if you’re buying a plush bunny webcam, then let’s face it – you’re not doing it for the specs.
There’s a wide range of these webcams, from the cute (cow, penguin) through the obscure (supposed-to-be-a-mole) to the utterly trouser-browningly-terrifying (“Angel Baby”).
Bunny-in-a-wittle-hat webcam
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Wacom's "Bamboo" tablets get a bunch of new features
Wacom has just announced a whole host of new applications for their “Bamboo” range of consumer input tablets. There’s Bamboo Scribe, Bamboo Link, Bamboo Space, Bamboo Dock and Bamboo Minis…
LG GP08-NU10 Super Multi Drive – external CD/DVD burning for travelling Macs
When companies announce new optical drives it’s rather hard to tell exactly what they can manage between the burning and reading of CDs, DVDs, Blu-rays and whatever else may be round the corner just waiting to become obsolete. So, the LG GP08-NU10 Super Multi Drive, what do you reckon that’s all about then?…
AMEX Portable Blu-ray Super Multi Drive – the sexiest external burner on the block
Well Jobsy may have decided that Blu-ray isn’t welcome on his new MacBooks but that hasn’t stopped everyone else wanting it or AMEX from making a rather delicious looking external drive to fill that very Apple accessory void…
Sanyo has said it's doing something to make Blu-ray lasers better
To this end, Sanyo is promising to boost the capacity of Blu-ray discs to 100GB and maximise write-speed of burners to around 12x.
It’s all thanks to clever and more powerful new blue laser diode technology, which allows up to four data layers – each packing in 25GB of deleted scenes and staggeringly dull interviews with the leading man – to be stuck into a single Blu-ray disc at TWELVE TIMES writing speed…
USB Negative Scanner – reliving the past on your PC
There’s a fair few negative scanners around on the market, but Firebox reckons its new model is the mutt’s nuts, saying it’s “smaller, faster, better”. I bought one for my Dad a year or so ago, and although it was good, it was a little temperamental, and didn’t come equipped with drivers for older PCs.
