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Personal Computing
Wikipedia to open up to video
By Jude Garvey
03:10 June 22, 2009 PDT
The Wikimedia Foundation plans to launch an editable, video encyclopedia to complement its text-based online encyclopedia. Since its launch in 2001, Wikipedia has grown at an astounding rate, with about 65 million visits per month and thousands of volunteer contributors writing, adding to and editing thousands of articles every day. In a multimedia age, adding video hopes to take Wikipedia to a new level. Read More
The 128GB USB Flash drive arrives
By Mick Webb
23:49 June 18, 2009 PDT
USB Flash drive capacity has come a long way in a very short space of time. It was merely a couple of years ago that a 32GB memory stick was considered groundbreaking. Taking storage capability to dizzying heights is the new DataTraveler 200 series from Kingston Technology which features the world’s first 128GB capacity Flash drive. Read More
Samsung's all-in-one HD video conferencing monitor
By Darren Quick
22:08 June 18, 2009 PDT
Video conferencing offers businesses a way to save time and money on travel expenses while providing that all-important face-to-face communication. Samsung, partnering with RADVISION, has developed the VC240, a new all-in-one solution that integrates all the components required for high definition desktop video conferencing into a single unit. As well as operating as a standalone desktop HD video conferencing device without the need of a PC, it can also be used as a high-resolution monitor. Read More
Meals on the go: Heinz USB powered mini-microwave
By Paul Ridden
18:33 June 16, 2009 PDT
Heinz, famous the world over for its ketchup and baked beans, claims to have come up with a quick and easy solution for the legions of stressed out workers who are missing out on meals because they are tied to their desks. A portable microwave oven amusingly called the Beanzawave might not sound that impressive, but add its miniature dimensions and USB connectivity to the mix then this could be a recipe for success. Read More
Carcoon Server Shield portable clean room protects your hardware
By Alan Brandon
17:39 June 15, 2009 PDT
Responsible IT departments have well established data backup procedures and disaster recovery plans to cope with the unexpected. But some threats to IT infrastructure - like the dust created by building works in the vicinity of sensitive and valuable hardware - are known about in advance. To cater for such scenarios, Carcoon, the UK manufacturer of inflatable covers for cars and motorcycles, has developed the Server Shield. Read More
Painless mobility: Goldtouch Go! Travel keyboard
By Paul Ridden
06:37 June 15, 2009 PDT
Laptops are an absolute necessity for the many road warriors who regularly key on the go, but as any portable computer enthusiast will attest, the integrated keyboard often gives rise to comfort and productivity concerns. Can a solution be found in the Goldtouch Go! Travel keyboard? Read More
Western Digital lets loose mammoth 4TB external hard drive
By Paul Best
18:57 June 10, 2009 PDT
It doesn’t seem so long ago we were oohing and ahhing that an external hard drive could hold a terabyte (TB) of data, then a couple... and the march continues unabated. Western Digital (WD) has followed on from its 2TB MyBook with the release of the 4TB dual-drive My Book Studio Edition II. Read More
Mac OS X Snow Leopard set for September release
By Darren Quick
03:57 June 9, 2009 PDT
Since Snow Leopard, aka OS X 10.6, was previewed at last year's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) Mac users have been waiting patiently for release details. Now, courtesy of this year’s WWDC, they have them. With most of the improvements of the under-the-hood variety, the upgrade for Mac OS Leopard users will be available from September at the Global Financial Crisis friendly price of USD$29. Read More
NEC puts the wow into work with its $8000 curved display
By Darren Quick
01:34 June 5, 2009 PDT
NEC’s CRV43 ultra-widescreen curved monitor is one of those bits of tech that's definitely drool-worthy and likely to put some real wow into the workplace. The 43-inch curved display is essentially four digital light processing (DLP) monitors stitched together with LED backlighting to deliver an impressive set of numbers - 2880x900 double WXGA native resolution, 0.02 second response time, 200 cd/m2 brightness and 10,000:1 contrast ratio. First unveiled at CES in January 2008, the monitor will go on the market next month. All you need is a cool USD$8000 and it's yours to drool over. Read More
Mercury On-The-Go Pro offers 500GB of bus-powered external storage
By Gizmag Team
21:51 June 4, 2009 PDT
Billed as the largest capacity, fastest bus-powered portable storage solution on the market, OWC's Mercury On-The-Go Pro series features 500GB, 7200RPM HDD and triple interface (FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and/or USB 2.0) connectivity for data transfer at speeds of up to 100MB/s. Read More
PC-in-a-vase does compute
By Darren Quick
02:40 June 4, 2009 PDT
Here at Gizmag we've covered some unusual gadgets over the years, but a computer hidden in a vase? What at first might sound like a joke, actually makes sense when you consider the once-humble PC is arguably more at home in the living room than the study as digital content and media have grown. Computer manufacturers have obliged by producing PCs designed to blend tastefully with the décor – but none of them blend as seamlessly as the PC-in–a-vase from Taiwanese manufacturer ECS. Read More
New GPU-based SuperServer delivers 12X more computing power
By Mike Hanlon
03:35 June 1, 2009 PDT
NVIDIA and Supermicro today announced the immediate availability of a new class of server that combines massively parallel NVIDIA Tesla GPUs with multi-core CPUs in a single 1U rack-mount server. This unique configuration delivers 12 times the performance of a traditional quad-core CPU-based 1U server. Supermicro will be demonstrating the NVIDIA Tesla-based SuperServer 6016T-GF-TM2 at Computex 2009 in Taiwan this week. Read More
NEC develops white LED-based LCD module covering 100% of the Adobe RGB Color Range
By Mike Hanlon
04:52 May 31, 2009 PDT
NEC Electronics America is set to show an important new white LED-based LCD module this week at the Society for Information Display (SID) Display Week 2009 in San Antonio, Texas. The amorphous-silicon color thin-film-transistor (TFT) liquid crystal display (LCD) module achieves an ultra-wide color gamut for 100 percent of the Adobe RGB color range by incorporating a newly developed LED light-source unit into the backlight system and a newly developed color filter. Read More
EMC's Symmetrix V-Max cloud storage solution
By Alan Brandon
23:34 May 25, 2009 PDT
If you want speed, torque, and raw two-wheeled muscle, buy yourself a Yamaha V-Max motorcycle. If you are looking for performance and scalable power for your virtualized data center, check out EMC’s Symmetrix V-Max. Yamaha’s version may offer a claimed 197 horsepower, but EMC says their V-Max Engine churns out enough power to support hundreds of petabytes of storage for enterprise cloud storage networks. Read More
How to get rid of quizzes (and other crap) from your Facebook news feed
By Loz Blain
21:53 May 24, 2009 PDT
Most users have come to accept the new Twitter-style Facebook home page - but one thing continues to infuriate: all the annoying quiz and application updates in your news feed. But all is not lost if you are sick of learning "what Simpsons character" your friends are - here's a quick and easy way to make those annoying quizzes disappear from your news feed. Read More
Sharp launches first notebook PC with optical sensor LCD pad
By Paul Best
01:06 May 19, 2009 PDT
Sharp Corporation is releasing a new notebook PC with an innovative optical sensor built into an LCD touch pad – which the company claims is a world first – at the end of the month. While Sharp’s Mebius PC-NJ70A netbook will only be released initially in Japan, the 4-inch track pad, which recognizes input by pen or touch, clearly signals the direction notebooks are headed. According to Sharp, a pen can be used to input drawings and text, while finger gestures on the LCD pad can enlarge, shrink or rotate items on the notebook screen – all in addition to the conventional ways a mouse is used. Users can sign their name to a photo before emailing it, for instance; or they can use two fingers to zoom in and out of internet websites to adjust them for the best view. Read More
LaCie DataShare SD and MicroSD Dual USB Card Reader
By David Greig
23:21 May 17, 2009 PDT
The clever creation of 5.5 designers, LaCie's latest data sharing offering is a twin-barreled USB Card reader designed to bring a new lease of life to old SD and MicroSD Cards. Read More
Pencasts let you spruce up your website with a few doodles
By Darren Quick
21:48 May 12, 2009 PDT
Even in the digital age, there are still some cases where the pen is mightier than the keyboard. Scribbling a quick diagram or making a few quick handwritten notes can convey some information much more effectively than a slab of text. That’s the reasoning behind Livescribe’s Pulse smartpen, a computer in the shape of a pen that not only digitally captures handwriting, but simultaneously records audio and synchronizes it to the writing to create what it calls “pencasts”. Now Livescribe is taking pencasts to the next level with a social media tool that enables them to be embedded within any website or blog. Read More
Samsung’s 70 Series LCD monitors perfect for work and play
By Darren Quick
22:03 May 10, 2009 PDT
Samsung is definitely getting its money’s worth out of the manufacturing process that produces its proprietary high-gloss Touch of Color (ToC) finish. ToC can be found on everything from the company's latest TVs to its latest camcorders. Now computer monitors can be added to that list with the release of the 70 Series monitors. The new LCD monitors not only boast a crystal-like bezel with ToC finish, but also they feature the contrast and response of Samsung’s LCD TVs, making them ideal for watching TV as well as displaying the office spreadsheet or playing games. Read More
LaCie releases new high capacity network storage drives
By Darren Quick
22:27 May 7, 2009 PDT
With the advantage of freeing up a server to concentrate on tasks besides file serving, Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices have become an increasingly popular option for small offices and home users over the last few years. LaCie has two new high capacity NAS solutions for anyone considering going this route – the Big Disk Network and d2 Network. The d2 Network supports up to 1.5TB capacity, while the Big Disk Network combines two drives in a RAID 0 setting, for up to 4TBs of storage. Read More
MSi gx laptops get turbo boost
By Darren Quick
04:53 May 7, 2009 PDT
If there’s one button that could possibly be more tempting than “do not press”, it's the one with “turbo” written on it. Perhaps recognizing this MSi has included a turbo button on its new GX623 and GX633 laptops that ramps up the speed of the CPU when the laptops are connected to mains power. If instead you’re looking for reduced power consumption and longer battery life, MSi’s ECO Engine can cycle through a range of power setting tweaks at the touch of a button. Read More
USB VoIP speakerphone a good call for Skype
By David Greig
17:20 May 6, 2009 PDT
The USB VoIP Speakerphone is a nifty PC attachment that is ideal for Skype users. It can be plugged directly into the computer and uses digital signal processing (DSP) technology to deliver clear voice quality. Read More
Windows 7 Release Candidate available to the public
By Tim Hanlon
06:02 May 5, 2009 PDT
If you missed out on the limited public beta release (Build 7000) of Windows 7 back in January, here's your chance to score the first release candidate (Build 7100) of Microsoft's big redeemer. This time around, there'll be no limit on the number of downloads or the number of serial numbers given out - until the end of July, that is. Read More
AOL’s Socialthing aims to simplify your digital life
By Darren Quick
22:24 May 4, 2009 PDT
Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are designed to make keeping in touch with friends and family easy, but as the list of such sites continues to grow, the task of keeping up to date with all that data can quickly lead to information overload. "Lifestreaming" applications designed to simplify the process by aggregating data from multiple sources are now emerging. AOL's Socialthing is the latest lifestreaming app to join the ranks of FriendFeed, Tumblr.com and the recently announced Vine from Microsoft. Read More
Seagate Replica promises simple PC backup
By Mick Webb
19:33 April 30, 2009 PDT
It is no secret that we are increasingly dependent on digital information as hard drives replace cupboards full of photo albums, racks of CD’s and boxes of files. But with this convenience comes a danger - one which an estimated one third of consumers ignore by failing to back up their files according to research cited by Seagate in releasing its new continuous backup solution - Replica. Read More
Freedom Glen
- November 25, 2009 @ 02:47 UTC
