If you look back a few months you might remember the fireproof and waterproof harddrive we reviewed from ioSafe that was capable of withstanding temperatures of 1550F for 30 minutes as well as being dunked in 10 feet of water for 3 days. If your house caught fire and you wanted safe data then an ioSafe is a fantastic option.

ioSafe have now introduced a new version of the drive that runs an SSD drive rather than a harddrive inside. It is called the ioSafe Solo SSD. ioSafe say that the external water and fireproof SSD is the first of it’s kind. The drive comes in capacities of up to 256GB and connects to a computer via an eSATA/USB interface.

The material used to keep things safe on the drive is called ArmorPlate that is a military grade steel casing. By using the grade of steel it does the drive receives protection from shock and protects it from being crushed. [Read more…]

Light Blue Optics have created a new interactive projector called Light Touch that can turn any surface in to an interactive touch-screen.

The projector is capable of throwing a 10 inch image on to a surface such as a table and is also capable of detecting when the image is touched. The system uses what’s called holographic laser projection technology that can create bright and high quality images that always stay in focus regardless of the distance between the desk and laser. The Light Touch also uses HLP that is able to throw a very wide angled image allowing the projector to sit close to the desk. [Read more…]

Buffalo have revealed their latest external harddrive called the HD-AVU2. The drive connects to a computer via USB 2.0 and is available in four capacities of 500GB, 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB.

There isn’t a wow factor about this external hard drive and the only thing that would make it stand out on a shop shelf if how it looks – important to some but with things like this, sometimes the specification really does become more important. [Read more…]

AllThingsD are reporting that Apple [AAPL] are set to announce something big on January 27. The event has been described as being “on and it’s going to be a big deal”.

The event will be held at the Yerba Buena Centre for the Arts in San Francisco and it is expected that the iSlate will be announced at this event although nothing has been confirmed if it is or is not the device that will be mentioned.

Other information found over at The Wall Street Journal mentions that the iSlate (or whatever Apple choose as the name) will be shipped in March with either a 10 or 11 inch touch-screen and will cost around $1,000 which could possibly include a 3G data plan to allow you to be online at all times. [Read more…]

If you lack USB ports on your computer due to having a camera or two, MP3 player, mouse, keyboard, modem, USB flash drive and a plethora of other gadgets then this 24 port USB hub could answer the problem. As the name suggests, it allows you to connect up to 24 USB devices to it. The hub is powered by an AC adapter allowing you to loose no power when connecting up devices. Also there is plenty of power to keep compatible gadgets charging too. [Read more…]

This is a portable handheld scanner. Think of it as the guts of any standalone image scanner that either glides from left to right or top to bottom (depending on the scanner model). It allows the user to scan the contents of any books, letters, recipes, bank statements, receipts and much more by gripping the the scanner in one hand and gliding it smoothly over the surface of the page (don’t worry though, you won’t have to go at a snails pace – images can be scanned very quickly at around 4-5 seconds). Though instead of having it constantly hooked up to a PC while you scan your various images and text, the portable handheld scanner houses a microSD card slot in which you can connect an SD card and copy those images and text directly from the page and download them to the card memory. Note also that many of these portable handheld scanners hold an internal memory of around 8mb

The scanner pictured is able to capture these images up to 8.5 inches by 50 inches in length and is also capable of capturing data at either high definition at 600dpi or standard definition at 300dpi then store them as standard jpeg files to your chosen destination folder. [Read more…]

If you are looking for a more stylish nettop for your home office then perhaps these new nettops from Artopz will be good for you. Artopz are a company based in San Diego and have created some NVIDIA ION based nettops that function both as a computer and a desk lamp. The desk lamp side of things is made possible by using fibre optic light panels.

Three designs of this nettop are being made available called Romanz, Lavaz and Deluxz and they have a 1.6GHz Intel Atom 330 dual-core CPU inside along with a nice amount of memory at 4GB along with a fast 128GB SSD.

Each nettop runs Windows 7 Home Premium in the 64-bit variety. [Read more…]

Intel have announced a new range of Intel Atom processors for the next generation of netbooks. The new Atom processors will come with integrated graphics and memory controllers allowing for power reduction along with performance improvements.

The new processors are being made available in netbooks from ASUS, Acer, Dell, Toshiba, Fujitsu, Lenovo, Samsung and MSI that will be shown off at CES in a couple of weeks time. The new processors have a 20% reduction in power usage and are also smaller too allowing for longer life on battery as well as smaller netbooks to be created.

‘We’re excited to be delivering the next-generation Atom platform and working across the industry as we head into a second phase of growth, powering innovative new system designs with better performance, smaller footprints and better battery life.

[Read more…]

Transcend have launched a new range of SDHC memory cards that fall in to the Class 10 category that allows data to be transferred up to 20MB/s compared to older Class 6 cards that can transfer data at up to 6MB/s.

On the higher end of the card capacities the largest can store up to 16GB of data and with the Class 10 status, it allows for video and audio to be played at a higher rate. This can allow for HD video recording quite easily. [Read more…]

Researchers from the University of Tokyo have managed to create some flexible flash memory that can be rolled with a curvature of up to 6mm before the electronics break. To achieve this the researchers managed to put memory cells on to a polyethylene naphthalate sheet.

There are limitations though as the current prototypes and test units are only capable of storing data for about a day before the information degrades, however, it’s a step in the right direction that eventually will lead to some super slim memory modules that will be far easier to embed in to slim electronic gadgets. [Read more…]

A new gesture capture system has been created that allows you to wave your hands in front of a computer screen to control objects on the screen. This new system is still in early stages, but a big step up here is that it requires no gloves to control it.

The system works by using a Bi-Directional screen called BiDi that has a screen and behind it that shows a pinhole array pattern. The backlight is alternated with the image allowing the screen to show an image as well as capture what is in front of the screen. By using optical sensors behind the glass a hand can be captured and gestures calculated without the user needing to touch the screen. [Read more…]

Seagate are planning to unveil a new hard drive at CES next month that will see the form factor reduced to just 7 millimetres. The 7mm form factor is a saving of about 25% from the current drives used in netbooks and will allow netbook manufacturers to design even thinner models.

Traditionally the thicker the drive the more platters could be crammed inside it allowing for more storage space. Thanks to advances in technology, drive makers such as Seagate are now capable of getting a sufficient amount of data on to a single platter, thus saving space in thickness of the drive. [Read more…]