C-Star Technologies is releasing a phone management system that’s long overdue and may be a little too late, the UTR-Fi3001B. The migration to digital phone systems is well underway but if you are still using any sort of analog phone system personal or professional you’ll want to check these out. This box connects to your PC via USB and has a pass-through RJ-12 phone connectors for connecting to a wall plug and a phone. The software that comes with the UTR-Fi3001B can record caller-ID, pickups, hangups and every second of audio. Record all your conversations and take notes on the call and make address book entries with ease with built-in functions. C-Star doesn’t list a price but is ready to ship them in bulk and in multiple colors no less. A perfect complement for any salesperson, tech-support call monitoring or teleworker that needs quick recall of any detail of a any phone conversation. The UTR-Fi3001B is only for single line phones but the UTR-Fi3002B can handle 2 line phones. No hint on price or availability interested parties will need to hit them personally until retail units make it to the shelves.

Icron apparently has been busy with their secret USB projects. At upcoming CES 2010, the Vancouver-based company, which brought us the ExtremeUSB distance extension technology, will finally show us what their hardcore engineers have been working on.
The most exciting of all is the Wireless ExtremeLink PC-on-TV which supposedly serves as a Windows extension on your HDTV. Icron has confirmed the remote unit will connect to the host PC thru a dedicated 802.11n link, and the same box will have several USB ports for expansion. It remains to be seen whether there are some other technologies (e.g. DisplayLink USB video) behind this if the remote unit is going to pull video stream from the host. The company will also demo USB over DisplayPort using a standard, well, DisplayPort cable. If this works as expected, then we should be able to get rid of one more USB cable connecting between our PCs and HD monitors with built-in USB hub & webcam. Video demo of the Wireless ExtremeLink after the jump.

Digital self-serve kiosks are found all over the place for quick tasks like printing maps or pictures. You can create greeting cards and photo albums. These are well on their way to becoming the vending machines of the digital era. The next evolution of this trend is here with the vending machine dispensing data instead of physical goods like the MK3 Kiosk. Movies can be downloaded from these Redbox competitors straight to your portable hard drive. Nothing to return, nothing to rewind(how long until no one knows what that meant?). The content simply expires and won’t play in the player. This XIMD technology smacks of the original Divx expiring DVD’s that came in went in months around the dawn of DVDs.
USB 3.0 technology should be able to push a full DVD of content to your drive in under 10 seconds. Xona’s media distribution system will feed the MK3 Kiosk with current and obscure movies. Prices, peripherals and plans will have to come later as the devices roll into retail locations around the world.

Everyone knows that the key to faster-than-light (FTL) travel is in random number generation. Advances in Bistromathics just aren’t happening fast enough so folks like Peter Allan are racing to crack the random number puzzle. It isn’t the most interesting read for those not obsessed with number theory but it is an interesting project. This garage project uses an Arduino board as the base and a small motors and an optical sensor to measure sand through a tiny hourglass.
Computers have exceptionally poor imagination. This might seem obvious but the hurdle to programmers, cryptographers and lottery officials is a very major one. Many of technologies require very truly random numbers generated often. Any patterns that start to emerge from non random systems starts to emerge over time break those systems. The amount of sand that falls at any given time creates a reading on the device. This random amount of sand specks is sent via USB to the PC system. The PC can then use or incorporate this data where it’s needed. These aren’t for sale yet but production is being considered in the near future.

For John so loved us all that he gave his PortableApps Format 1.0 release to the world. Having put the finishing touches on a few remaining items that allow for many more programs to share in the portable glory. The 1.0 release is effectively an invitation for developers to tinker with creating portable applications with a friendly wrapper and installer. The specification includes functions that help handle portability features like registry redirects and setting storage locations. The truly hardcore portable applications can run on all windows versions from 98 and up. With the maturity of many Java and .Net applications the bar has been obliged to move. The times, and the relative ubiquitous installation of both .Net frameworks and Java run-times, has called for the inclusion of applications that require those frameworks. Recent work on making the JRE portable has also met with some success.
This expanded base has opened the door and PortableApps.com is welcoming all comers to add their applications to the fun. The same philosophical guidelines remain around GNU and GPL code being required. Commercial development can be accommodated as well with special permission. There are quite a few new applications for grabs on the site thanks to this expanded policy. This is truly great news for those of us checking the site daily for new gems to add to our Swiss Army flash drives.