Friday, June 19, 2009

Seagate's FreeAgent Go Offers World's First Bus-Powered 640GB 2.5-Inch Portable HDD [Storage]

Seagate's FreeAgent Go Offers World's First Bus-Powered 640GB 2.5-Inch Portable HDD [Storage]

Seagate's FreeAgent Go line of hard drives is home of the first 640-gigabyte portable in the beloved USB bus-powered 2.5-inch form factor.

This means that you get a ton of portable storage space, and you still don't need an AC adapter. You just plug the drive into a USB 2.0 port and proceed with your business. Simple, easy, nice. Pricing and availability is still up in the air for now, but we'll keep our eyes peeled. [Seagate]




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Code-X Yacht Will Have Two Kinds of Power: Super Clean and Oh So Dirty [Yachts]

Code-X Yacht Will Have Two Kinds of Power: Super Clean and Oh So Dirty [Yachts]

There's a real company promoting a not-so-real poweryacht called the Code-X. The differentiator—or "thing that's supposed to land a billionaire customer"—is that the boat will have two Formula 1 engines and two solar-powered electric ones.

It's not abundantly clear when you'd use the as-yet-unannounced electric engines, or exactly how efficiently the onboard solar panels will collect sunlight and charge the as-yet-unannounced batteries.

Let's be honest: You probably won't use them all that often. The point is to have them, and to tell your rich-ass friends that you are, in Code-X's words, "a pioneer and frontrunner on the path to a cleaner and more environmentally friendly future." The point is to be saying this while gunning your twin F1 Limor 710HP smogmasters to drown out the riffraff circling you in those environmentally unfriendly Jet Skis.

The most sinister thing about the whole operation is the length that Code-X went to render a completely non-existent boat into so many real-life scenes, almost as if James Cameron was the company's marketing consultant. [Code-X via Josh Spear via DVice]





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Good God, Even the Commodore 64 Has a Twitter Client [Twitter]

Good God, Even the Commodore 64 Has a Twitter Client [Twitter]

After seeing this latest Twitter app offering, I think Commodore 64 availability should be the benchmark to judge whether or not your web 2.0 app has officially "made it." Yes, there's really a twitter app for the C64.

Breadbox64 runs on the embedded Contiki OS, and lets you tweet and view your friends' timeline from the ancient platform, provided you have the proper networking gear installed. It will even automatically update your timeline every two minutes. The UI is as 8-bit as can be, though I wouldn't call it the most aesthetically pleasing thing in the world (you didn't expect it to look like TweetDeck, did you now?). Anyways, you can download it if you want here. It's good for a novelty tweet or two. [Van den Brande]




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Wireless Resonating Power from Intel Research [Wireless]

Wireless Resonating Power from Intel Research [Wireless]

Intel researchers are working on wireless power that doesn't use a conductive pad. Instead, it uses magnets and a tuned directional transfer coil to send music from an iPod a couple of feet to a speaker. It works!

This setup is deceptively simple. There's an electro-magnetized ring of wire sending 1-watt signal at 7.6-something MHz. From there, a carefully placed and wound coil of wire (yellow) sends the magnetic signal in a direction where another smaller coil (green) specifically tuned to receive the power and send it to a tiny speaker. It reminds me of the way a generator or motor work, somehow. The range was about 3 feet and the music was quiet by audible and worked when I moved the speaker in different directions. Impressive!

The chances of this making its way into mobile gadgets that charge with no cables or pads, ever? We're far off. The range and power are dependent on the size of the coils and the exact way they are wound, so they resonate the magnetic signals just right. Maybe a micro array of these, optimized several generations from now, will do the trick.

Or maybe the Dharma institute already has the answers.




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Sony Vaio NW Is A Blu-ray-Toting $880 Notebook [Vaio]

Sony Vaio NW Is A Blu-ray-Toting $880 Notebook [Vaio]

Sony has just trotted out the Vaio NW, their new line of Blu-ray equipped, mid-market notebooks, and at 1.2-inches, they are quite slim too.

The NW features a 15.5-inch widescreen display (albeit 1366x768), along with a HDMI output connector for plugging it into a TV, so you can enjoy the full 1080p goodness of your Blu-ray discs. There is also a "display off" button, which does exactly what you would expect, ideal if you have got this plugged into a big screen in a darkened room.

Specs include an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 4GB RAM, up to 400GB hard drive and an optional dedicated ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4570 graphics card to improve your movie watching. Slot-wise there are three USB ports, ExpressCard, SD and Memory Stick PRO.

Available this summer the Vaio NW can also come without the Blu-ray drive for a saving of $80... but given this is all about HD and movie watching I really don't know why. [Sony]




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