If travel and photography are your thing, Panasonic has some gear you need. Matsuhita, a.k.a. Panasonic, submits for your approval the DMC-TZ10. This little 12MP point ‘n shoot packs an internal GPS system to tag each of your photos with longitude and latitude information, which is already consumed by online services like Picasa, Flickr and alike. GPS information is then instantly processed to show map locations and track trip trajectory. While they are plugging the heart of a navigation system into the camera, they keep most of the rest of one as well. The Lumix DMC-TZ10 camera contains a Navteq geo-location database with 500,000 points of interest, covering over 73 countries. Now your camera can let you know your whereabouts and maybe something else you might be near to go take pictures of (e.g. landmarks).
There’s also a slew of other more traditional features like a 25mm wide angle lens, which is capable of zooming up to 300mm. The Lumix DMC-TZ10 doubles as a high-def camcorder, recording video at 720p in AVCHD Lite with audio encoded in Dolby Digital. If you can upgrade to a SDXC, you can afford adjust your video bit-rate up to 17Mbps. Still sporting one of the best image stabilization systems, this new Lumix maybe bound to be even more popular than it’s predecessors.
Archive for ◊ January, 2010 ◊
There’s just not enough noise makers in the world and here’s Creative to ruin the quiet. Coming out in China shortly, this USB drum kit is fun for the whole family near the computer or on the go. The included software makes it a breeze to start up your own drum solo with just about any kind of percussion instrument you can imagine. The software with an as yet untranslated name can synthesize traditional Chinese drums, rock drums and cymbals, bongo drums and more. All this can be captured and recorded for your own personal Stomp (the performance group, not the fetish) style masterpiece. There’s also a guitar hero-esque set of games you can plan on the USB connected drum for fun and even a little fitness. The drum’s skin flexes and feels like real for comfort and extended play sessions.
The USB drum also works as a speaker. You can select up to three sound types and play them along with your music or more with hot keys. Aesthetically, you can just leave it on your desk as a simple PC speaker to complement your other trinkets of pan-Asian flare. Price and release date are unknown as of yet, but Creative doesn’t usually make us wait long after their announcements. Unfortunately, this might not be released outside the Central Kingdom.
It’s definitely a landmark for a technology to have hit the mark where bleeding edge gives way to fun. Hardbox has released another external hard drive in the shape of a book. It may not be a true novelty drive, but it’s the coolest we’ve got so far, comparing to some commodity drive. The Hardbox would fit in just fine on any book shelf except for the fact that we’re not really racking up books on our shelves like we used to. So this may stand out like a sore thumb next to your junk mail and gum wrappers but it still looks good. That’s ignoring the USB 3.0 sweetness in sizes from 1TB to 3TB.
Sarotech has been making this particular style drive for awhile and knows the external harddrive game. If you are thinking about storing data at anywhere near those capacities, you definitely need to be putting some money into USB 3.0. Anything else would just be ridiculously time consuming. Sarotech should be shipping the Hardbox drives in February.
UWB’s fate is pretty much tied to that of Certified Wireless USB, which is only communication protocol that still depends on the said radio technology. While there are already several WUSB devices, from video / audio adapters to hard drives and docking stations, on the market, the adoption rate is a far cry from that of other USB standards. The performance of these wireless peripherals is quite discouraging with real-world transfer rate averaging at just around 15MB/s. Native WUSB hosts can remove some overhead, and likely provide some speed boost, but significant improvement will only come with new specs, just like USB 3.0.
WiMedia Alliance, believed to be in the process of disbanding, has released version 1.5 of the common radio platform specs, which in a nutshell defines the foundation for Wireless USB. The upgrade now pushes speed from 480Mbps to 1024Mbps, doubling the available bandwidth for peripherals that stream 1080p video from a laptop to HDTV. Whether or not this will save WUSB remains to be seen, but the new specs certainly outpaces 802.11n in speed, yet slaughtered by upcoming WiGig 1.0 (7Gbps).
Subculture fans will line up for a new USB flash drive featuring Halloween Town’s fearless leader, Pumpkin King Jack Skellington. Famous from the movie The Nightmare before Christmas, this movie tie-in thumb drive is going straight to the top of our our favorites. The spooky effigy of Jack from the digital clay-mation cult favorite hides a USB connector and 4, 8 or 16GB flash drive. Made of impact resistant plastic, the Jack Skellington drive is effectively waterproof and shockproof. Reenact the movie and remove Jack’s head, and jack him into your USB port for quick access to flash storage.
A-Data has conveniently included a few trial pieces of software which are woefully unrelated to Jack’s dark image. A Marilyn Manson album or Rob Zombie MP3 would have been much more suitable for this fun flashback drive. These applications are free from A-Data’s web site as well. The USB drives are available at favorite gadget provider Brando’s online store for $30, $47 and $72 depending on the amount of storage you want.
As we amass more and more flash drives, it gets to be harder and harder to tell them apart. Fun drives like this, 18 and Over drive, helps us keep our files sorted. This fun 2GB drive makes the distinction that the content is adult oriented or not to be put in children’s hands. No, this is not just a Pr0n drive, it can be for any sensitive content. Tax documents, controversial programs that might get you into trouble with system administrators or vacation photos that don’t need to end up on the company file server. More and more invasive system monitoring by corporations requires serious control of your personal files so that they stay personal.
Our flash drives are sorted by abilities and then by function. Fast drives are application drives or bulk data drives like iso’s and virtual disks. our sportier looking drives are for office documents, code libraries or reference materials. Then we have my special purpose drives from leather clad to bare circuit board on the outside. The insides vary from prank programs to forensics and password stealers. Plugging the wrong one in at the wrong time can be disastrous. Having unique cases and labels makes them easy to sort and keep track of. Check out some of our favorite stand-out flash drives from weeks past or pick up this one for about $35.