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Eleksen Fabric Keyboard
Posted by John Goulden Categories: Corporate News, Handhelds, Microsoft, Peripherals,
Be prepared for what will surely be an onslaught of peripherals for Microsoft’s Ultra-Mobile PC platform. Eleksen, makers of fabric-based interface devices, has introduced a trio of products aimed at users of the new UMPCs. Bluetooth and USB-equipped keyboards will be available, as will a carrying case that has a keyboard and other controls integrated into it’s soft exterior. The keyboards are designed around Eleksen’s ElekTex technology, which allows touch sensitive interfaces to be placed in a variety of textiles. The Bluetooth keyboard even has drivers to allow its use with smartphones and PDAs, further broadening its usefulness.
Flexible keyboards may be nothing new, but with Eleksen’s products being incorporated into textiles, the possibilities are just about limitless. In fact, the company also has their interface technology designed into jackets (the Kenpo iPod jacket), backpacks and other items that have controls for audio players built right in.
Read More 
| Eleksen
Gallery: Eleksen Fabric Keyboard
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There’s no question that dye sublimation printers produce outstanding results, but their biggest drawback has always been cost (hardware and cost per print). Seeing no need to stray from the norm, Sony introduces the UP-D75 Color Photo Printer, with a suggested retail price of $2,995 USD. Naturally this isn’t aimed at the average home user, but focuses more on the photography studio and self-serve kiosk markets. To give printed images a real photograph look and feel, the printer laminates a clear finish (glossy, textured or matte) onto the picture. This laminate layer also serves to protect the pictures from fingerprints and smudges. Since no one likes to wait, the UP-D75 trys to be obliging with a snappy print speed of 80 seconds for a 300dpi 8x10.
Read More | Fosfor Gadgets
Gallery: Sony UP-D75 Color Photo Printer
Maybe you play a lot of flight sims, or do CAD or graphic design work - but regardless of the reason, sometimes those monster 24-inch and 30-inch LCD monitors that Dell, Apple and others offer just aren’t enough. Digital Tiger has heard your plea and they have introduced the Zenview Command Center Elite. The Zenview offers up six Samsung 24-inch LCD panels for a total resolution of 5760x2400. DVI inputs are offered (and are the ideal connection), but if you’ve spent all your money on this monitor and have nothing left for a semi-decent video card, then analog inputs are also available. With a 6ms (gray to gray) response time, ghosting and streaking on the Zenview should be negligible. Want to watch a
lot of television? Then you’re in luck as the Zenview also comes equipped with TV inputs (composite, s-video & component).
Sure, the Zenview isn’t the only multi-monitor solution around, but it’s one of the nicest we’ve seen with it’s 24-inch panels. The price on the other hand, isn’t quite so nice coming in at $11,999 USD.
Read More | Zenview Product Page
Gallery: Zenview Command Center Elite
Logitech NuLOOQ Adobe Navigator Device
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Accessories, USB, Design, Peripherals,
Holy gizmos Batman, Logitech has gone loopy. Check out this new designers tool:
Logitech (SWX: LOGN) (NASDAQ: LOGI) and Adobe Systems Incorporated (NASDAQ: ADBE) today announced the results of a collaboration to provide creative professionals and design enthusiasts new levels of control when using Adobe® Creative Suite 2 (CS2) and standalone CS2 applications: the NuLOOQ™ Professional Series. The new Logitech product line comprises the NuLOOQ navigator™, an innovative device used in conjunction with a mouse and a keyboard to manipulate images and documents, and the NuLOOQ tooldial™, customizable on-demand interface software that provides quick access to design tools. Both are designed for use with the Mac® versions of Adobe Creative Suite 2, Adobe Illustrator® CS2, Adobe InDesign® CS2, and Adobe Photoshop® CS2.
So here’s the breakdown. Think of this as the Adobe super-gizmo. I’m not really sure what the heck Logitech is thinking here, but they have some good intentions. Most of us that are designers already use a mouse/trackball, keyboard and a tablet. So to add yet another tool to the arsenal seems like a bit of overkill, but I can see what they are trying to accomplish. Similar to how there are devices for video editors, this would be akin to a Countour Shuttle Pro (used by video peeps), but for designers. This is essentially a 2-part device. You have the actual hardware piece which can be used on it’s own, but it also works with software that is specifically designed for use with the Adobe CS2 Suite of apps. NuLOOQ tooldial software is completely customizable and configuration is pretty straight-forward. My only concern is that it will be a bit overwhelming for most people. If you have been used to doing things by using the toolbars and menus and keyboard shortcut’s, this device may actually slow you down, which defeats it’s purpose. Hard to really say without testing one out in a production environment for a while.
The NuLOOQ Professional Series (which is the harware and software package) has a suggested retail price in the U.S. of $149.99 and will be sold beginning in March. The NuLOOQ tooldial can be purchased separately online for a suggested retail price of $49.99. A 30-day free trial is also available for download at the NuLOOQ Web site.
Read More | Logitech
Gallery: Logitech NuLOOQ Adobe Navigator Device
So you have this burning desire to commit every one of your hundreds of books into electronic form? Instead of wasting the better part of your life scanning the books one page at a time, or practically destroying them in order to accomplish the task faster, turn your sights to the Atiz BookDrive Book Scanner. The $35K scanner will automatically turn the pages of the inserted book and scan in whatever you request of it. Need to quickly plagerize a few pages for that school project you have coming up? Pop in the desired book, tell it how many pages you want scanned and away it goes.
Obviously the intended market for this scanner isn’t your average home user. Government institutions, libraries and schools are the intended recipients, and the BookDrive should help save countless hours of tedious work. Other book scanners exist on the market, but one of the main selling points of the BookDrive is that it’s portable. Rather than drag a huge pile of heavy books to a stationary book scanner, tote the scanner to the books.
Gallery: Atiz BookDrive Book Scanner
Solio Solar Charger for your iPod: Back in Black
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Accessories, Apple, Cameras, Smartphones, GPS, Handhelds, Misc. Tech, Peripherals, Portable Audio / Video,
For those of you planning to conquer Mount Everest in the near future, you know you can’t possibly do this without taking your iPod with you right? Well how the heck are you gonna charge that sucker on your way up to the summit? Solio has the answer for ya. All the goodness and eco-friendly power of the sun can now be harnessed just for you so that you can power all those gadgets for free, courtesy of that shiny ball of light in the sky. But what about all your other gadgets? Relax Skippy, have sunlight, will travel…
Solio is a portable, renewable power source that draws energy from sunlight, storing it in an internal battery and using it to charge virtually all mobile electronic devices, including:
• Cell phones
• iPods/MP3 players
• Digital cameras
• PDAs
• GPSsSo wherever you are…whenever you need power…Solio is there.
Anything: Powers virtually all your hand-held electronics
Anytime: Stores power for whenever you need it
Anywhere: Chargeable from the sun or wall socket
Anyone: Easy to use by attaching a cable and pushing a button
How’s that for gadget coolness? The latest Solio now comes in black, along with the older Coldplay version. Pretty spiffy for those of you with a black nano or 5G Video iPod. Now you can climb and conquer in style, while maintaining maximum fashionability. Rock on…
Read More | Solio
Gallery: Solio Solar Charger for your iPod: Back in Black
Elecom MF-DU204G 0.85” USB Hard Drive
Posted by John Goulden Categories: Accessories, USB, Peripherals,
Flash memory USB drives are a dime a dozen these days, at least until you start getting into sizes larger then 2GB. Once past that “magical” barrier, the price escalates enormously due to manufacturing costs for such dense flash memory. Hard drives, even very small ones, are typically lower in cost per megabyte than their flash-based cousins. Therefore we can postulate that Elecom is trying to capitalize on that cost savings with their newest product - the MF-DU204G. The MF-DU204G is a USB memory stick with a hard drive instead of flash memory. With a size of 68x30x13mm at 44 grams in weight it’s not as small as a flash-based drive, but extremely tiny for a disk-based model. Software is included to password protect the drive in case it should fall into the wrong hands, and should it fall (literally) the durability of the drive is certainly questionable. The nice thing about flash memory is that it almost thrives on abuse, whereas hard drives do not.
No word yet on pricing or availability but we can presume that the price will be below a flash drive with an equivalent capacity or Elecom’s new product has zero advantage going for it.
Read More | Elecom (jp) via Akihabara News
Gallery: Elecom MF-DU204G 0.85” USB Hard Drive
Woot! Selling $50 250 GB Hard Drives Today
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Hot Deals, PC / Laptop, Peripherals,
Just a quick heads up for those of you who appreciate a good deal. Today’s Woot! is a 250 GB Western Digital Caviar drive, selling for just $50 USD. Not too shabby, if we may say so ourselves. I almost bought one, when I realized that it wasn’t a SATA drive, and that it only has a 2 MB cache. Oh, and it’s refurbished. Still, $50 for 250 GB of storage is a rarity.
Read More | Woot
Gallery: Woot! Selling $50 250 GB Hard Drives Today
Radtech Impact Hard Drive Enclosure
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Accessories, USB, Peripherals,
For those of you who may have upgraded the hard drive in your laptop, or maybe just happen to have a spare 2.5” drive laying around, this is a great gadget to make good use of that drive. Radtech’s Impact HD Enclosure offers maximum protection for your data by incorprating 64bit encryption via the use of a physical layer of security. The drive enclosure offers a unique 64 bit encrpytion hardware key, which plugs in via a FW400 type of port. The key works in real-time, so encrytion doesn’t affect performance. The drive offers USB 2.0 and FireWire 800, although we personally would have like to see the FireWire 400 port which is more popular and found on most devices. FireWire 800 just doesn’t seem to have caught on as well, which is evidenced by Apple’s recent launch of the MacBook Pro, which dropped the FireWire 800 port.
The Enova X-Wall engine provides real-time, hardware-based encryption and decryption. X-Wall shuttles encrypted data as fast as a standard enclosure.
Unlike easily circumvented and platform dependent software-based encryption, Impact enclosures strong encrypt (DES) every bit and byte on the hard drive. The included Secure Token is a physical key which must be present to read from, or write to the drive. Without the secure key, the drive and its data are rendered useless and unreadable - 2 keys are included with each enclosure.
The enclosure is made from a lightweight heat-dissipating 1mm thick extruded 6075 Aluminum alloy, and offers a decent amount of shock protection making this a pretty rugged drive with some corporate strength security to boot. James Bond would be proud. All the details can be found over on Jason O’grady’s PowerPage.
Read More | O’Grady’s Powerpage
Gallery: Radtech Impact Hard Drive Enclosure
Cinnamon Peripherals CinnaRack for Mac mini
Posted by Frank Bisono Categories: Accessories, Apple, Design, Peripherals,
So you got that tight little Mac mini because you are a clutter freak and wanted to minimize what you have on your desktop. Somehow, as small as the mini is, the mere sight of it is bugging the heck out of you, so you want to hide it even more. Your wish has been granted by Cinnamon Peripherals with their CinnaRack for Mac mini.
The Mac mini is one of the smallest computer desktop ever made, but you can reclaim even more desktop space by mounting your Mac mini under your desk or under a shelf!
Now be forewarned, this is a limited edition prototype, and there will only be 50 made available for purchase. Nonetheless, it looks like a decent product and is sure to be a hit with that minimalist crowd.
The CinnaRack for Mac mini is designed to allow maximum airflow for the Mac mini. If your computer is hanging in the air, why limit its air intakes to the sides, like on a desk?
This is a limited edition, production protype. It lacks the ability to connect to our future accessories but is available at a special discount price. It’s also the only Cinnamon Peripheral that will ever have our complete company name silkscreened on it. Grab a piece of history!
The CinnaRack for Mac mini production prototype is made from anodized aluminium to closely match the look of the Mac mini.
Read More | Cinnamon Peripherals
Gallery: Cinnamon Peripherals CinnaRack for Mac mini
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