Hi-tech Frontier

EagleTec USB NanoSac Micro SD Card Reader A week or so ago Evan brought news of the EagleTec USB flash drive which managed to cram as much as 8GBs into a drive that was barely larger than a USB connector. Well it seems that EagleTec has used their magic shrink ray to come up with a microSD card reader that’s just as minute. It’s pretty much as small as the company’s USB flash drive, but it allows you to read and write to microSD or microSDHC flash cards up to 32GB in size. It supports Windows XP, 2K and Vista (you guys better start listing Windows 7 soon) and OSX 10.2 or higher. And at just $13 from Brando, it’s a no-brainer if you’ve got a small collection of microSD cards.

Radio Valeriec oncept with No Switches or Buttons ! The design of Radio Valerie concept was aimed to make a very effortless and logical product that can ensure effective operation as well as unique décor. It’s really hard to realize that this product is a radio by seeing it since there are no switches or buttons on the surface. All you will get is an antenna stick and a rotating speaker which actually works as a volume controller. The antenna is being used to tune the frequency by moving it left to right and vice versa. The speaker placed on the top and also serves the purpose of increasing or decreasing the volume by rotating.

Anti Sleep Driving Alarm We all know the dangerous of driving when we are so sleepy. Sometimes when we got a lot of things to do in the office, it forces us to work overnight. When it’s time to go home, we are already tired and sleepy. You want to go to house as soon as you can but you don’t want to endanger your life of the situation. ##CONTINUE##The only choice you have is to take a rest for a while and go home when you are ready. However, in this situation, you need to be at your house so that you can take a rest for the rest of the night and gain energy for the next day. In such a situation, you will need anti sleep driving alarm. Anti Sleep Driving Alarm is a device that will keep you awake while driving. This device is actually intended for truck drivers who run the risk of falling asleep behind the wheel. This device is used behind your ear. This alarm will sound anytime the wearer’s head move forward more than 30 degrees. The alarm will wake you up anytime you are asleep while ...

Lux : Fashion + Green Technology Lux is an innovative technology brought to you by Mae Yokoyama, a Konstfack student, that shows the means of getting benefited from the sun and how to turn energy into beauty. This is actually a necklace that comprises solar panels in order to accumulate energy from the sun during daytime. This accumulated energy then is used to lighten the LED bulbs to give an appearance of dazzling pearls of this fashionable necklace. This useful product will help people realize the value of sun and will give a feel of elegance to fashion concerned personnel. After charging for two hours only, the pearls can remain on for a minimum of four hours.

Dacia SHIFT Two Seater Concept Car with Transparent Removable Roof The superb Dacia SHIFT concept car was inspired by the Dacia Duster concept and was specially designed keeping the needs of the young Bucharest residents in mind. This two seater car comprises excellent cutting edge design with a transparent removable roof which will allow the passenger freedom of an open sky even though the roof is closed. The power source of this can either be a lithium-ion battery or electric piles that run by liquid hydrogen. The branding of this car have been furnished in a quite simple and excellent way, Dacia have been placed between the headlights and SHIFT in a larger format underneath.

RunCore Pro IV SSDs launched, tested, seem pricey RunCore's always offered fast SSDs, but we're not so sure its new 2.5-inch ProCore IV drives offer the right mix of price, performance, and storage for the target market -- sure, they're fast, with up to 240MBps reads and 185MBps writes, but they're also expensive, starting at $179 for 32GB and quickly ramping up to $599 for 128GB and a whopping $999 for 256GB. That's a lot of scratch for the average laptop customer, and while the speed gains may be obvious, we're not so sure the storage tradeoff seems worth it. That said, RunCore's made it pretty easy to swap one of these puppies in: each drive includes a USB enclosure and cloning software that'll have you up and running at high speed in a jiff.

HyperMac external battery powers MacBooks for 32 hours Yep, Sanho's Hypermac is a big clunky external battery pack. Sure, we're intrigued by the idea of running a MacBook Pro for 32 hours straight, but we'd really rather hunt around for a power outlet than drop $500 on the 222Wh unit required to make that happen. On the other hand, we could definitely see splurging for the $150 car charger or the $200 60Wh model, but we're crazy like that. Shipping later this month, we're told.

Z Corp 3D printer We're eagerly awaiting the day when 3D printers achieve the same sort of ubiquity as their two dimensional brethren -- we can only imagine the sweet office pranks that will become available once we can conjure tiny objects from our imaginations (via AutoCAD). It looks like the fine folks over at Hawaii's State Department of Education have more civic-minded uses for the machine, however. As high school students from throughout the islands complete their 3D design projects they send the files to the education office in Honolulu, which manufactures physical models with a Z Corporation 3D printer and ships them back to the students, who can then review the model and refine their design. A machine like Z Corp's ZPrinter 310 Plus (seen above) will run you a cool $19,900 before shipping, sales tax, and so forth, so it looks like all of you amateur CADsters out there might want to find a pen-pal in the Pineapple State if you want to make your ID dreams a reality. ...

MSI intros GX623, GX633 laptops with "Turbo Drive" technology MSI's new GX623 and GX633 laptops aren't the first to boast the company's so-called Turbo Drive technology, but we're never ones to turn down the opportunity to press a turbo button, even if that turbo button may not fully deliver on its awesome promise. Expectedly, both of these are in the same vein as MSI's previous GX630 model, and boast the same 15.4-inch display, along with a Core 2 Duo processor and ATI Radeon HD4670 graphics on the GX623 model, or an AMD X2 Turion Ultra processor and NVIDIA GeForce GT 130M graphics on the GX633 model. Otherwise, you can expect each to pack MSI's ECO Engine, which'll let you easily switch between a gaming mode and more energy-efficient options, along with up to 4GB of RAM, a max 500GB hard drive, and all the usual modern amenities like 802.11n WiFi, built-in Bluetooth, and a 2-megapixel webcam. No word on prices just yet, but it looks like both sho...

QNAP's TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS sets sail We know you love a good NAS, so we're pleased to report that the crew over at QNAP Systems has announced the TS-239 Pro Turbo NAS, a dual (2TB) bay Atom-based device that sports a 1.6GHz Atom CPU, 1GB DDRII memory, a none-too-shabby 350MBit/s throughput, and iSCSI target service for SMB and SOHO users. Other features include hot-swappable locking disk trays, two (count 'em!) Giga LAN ports, three USB 2.0 ports, two eSATA ports, and support for Windows, Mac, Linux, and UNIX operating systems. You can expect the myriad of features the company usually provides in their network appliances, including thin provisioning, online RAID capacity expansion, AES 256-bit volume-based encryption, SMS and email alerts, bit.torrent and EMule downloads, FTP and web server support, database and content management, print server, XDove mail, and Surveillance Station for video monitoring and recording. We still don't know why Nas doesn't have a contr...

Thanko's new wireless mouse can be operated without a desk You know when you flip over your optical mouse and trigger the beam a few times just for kicks, sending your cursor skittering across the screen? Thanko turned that into a thing. The company's newest wireless mouse includes media controls and so forth on the flip side of the mouse, allowing it to act as a remote of sorts, but it also presents you with the optics of the mouse for mid-air operation with your thumb. Sure, maybe it works great -- but we somehow doubt it. If you're hanging out in Japan at the moment, it'll run you 4,980 yen (about $50 US) to find out.

Eye-Fi's 4GB WiFi Video cards now with more options for Internet regret You know that video mode you haven't used since first bought your compact point and shoot? Right, the one that does 720p HD video if you've purchased a camera within the last 6 months? Well, Eye-Fi's back to remind you that it's now selling its $99 Eye-Fi Explore Video (with geotagging) and $79 Eye-Fi Share Video SDHC cards nationwide. They've also enabled video sharing with Picasa, Photobucket, and SmugMug in addition to Flickr and YouTube. The result is dead-simple, un-edited direct-to-internet video sharing without the need for a tethered computer. Of course, these cards work equally well for dumping your films and photos over WiFi to your Mac or PC at home -- but why live your life in a bubble?

CenTrak intros world's thinnest active RFID, opens new realm of possibilities Despite being oh-so-promising years ago, we've seen little innovation in the RFID space over the past several months. Today, however, CenTrak's proving that the dream is still somewhat alive. The outfit has just introduced the planet's thinnest hybrid active Radio Frequency Identification tag, which is said to be so thin that it's almost "indistinguishable from a standard employee badge." The IT-740 Staff Badge checks in at just three millimeters thick and includes a trio of programmable buttons, a system controlled LED, hole mounts for portrait or landscape orientation, water resistance for easy cleaning and "ultra long battery-life." For employees, rocking one of these guarantees that your superior will recognize every step you take, every move you make and every bond you break. Which, sadly enough, isn't nearly as bodacious as The Police make it sound.

PSP mod adds mouse, a touch of class to Sony's beloved handheld Not all input devices are created equal. Some of us long for that old coin-op console joystick every time we bring up GalagaREMIX on the iPhone, while others can't imagine engaging in a first person shooter without the aid of his or her trusty mouse. To that end, PSP hacker TokyoDrift (not his / her real name) has wired an old PS2 mouse into his portable's serial port, by way of an ATMEL ATmega8 chip-sporting breadboard. The various PSP buttons can be mapped to the mouse's buttons or scroll wheel, and scaling and sample rates are adjustable. We know there are plenty of you out there that can't wait to try this one out for yourself -- so hit the read link, peruse the forums, and get inspired.

LG GC900 Viewty Smart previewed After being officially unveiled (twice) for the European market last month, LG's GC900 Viewty Smart has finally arrived into the loving hands of those at GSMArena. The unit you see above is actually a pre-production unit, but it was baked enough to warrant a full-scale preview until review units start to ship. One of the biggest reveals was this line: "It's not a smartphone or anything, no matter how much we would have liked that; instead, it's a regular full touch feature phone, but one with a really polished UI and top-notch imaging capabilities." Critics spent a good bit of time checking out the still-novel 8MP camera, and while they were generally pleased with image quality and color, they weren't so stoked about the phone's ability to capture video. Overall though, they couldn't help but gush about the "gorgeous display" and "best-of-class user interface," which definitely leaves us even hungrier...

Nokia E63 getting goth makeover The E63's always going to play second fiddle to its older, sexier brother, the E71 -- but it certainly doesn't help anyone take the phone seriously when it's only available in playful, non-neutral colors. Don't get us wrong, blue and red both suit this phone well -- but if you're going to take it into a board meeting, you might want something that's not going to turn heads and distract the suits from that fabulously interesting PowerPoint presentation on third-quarter financial projections. To that end, it seems that Nokia Europe is prepping a blacked-out version of the low-cost business device, though it's not clear when or where you might be able to pick it up. Speaking of blacked-out Nokias, you feeling any heat over there, E71x?

Rotel's new 15-series components show stereo some love Not everyone has jumped into the multi-channel audio arms race, and the last time we checked, the majority of music was available in two-channel stereo format. Rotel has introduced a new set of 15-series components for just such stereo lovers. At the head of the stream is the RCD-1520 slot-loading CD player with a toroidal transformer and segmented power supply that promise not to gum up the Wolfson DACs with noise. The RC-1550 (pictured) and RC-1580 stereo preamplifiers do their level best (pun intended) to embody the "straight wire with gain" ideal; pair them up with the 2x200-Watt RB-1582 or the 2x120-Watt RB-1552 amplifier. Finally, if you're after all-in-one convenience -- or not into expensive interconnects -- there's the RA-1520 integrated amplifier that wraps a preamp and a 2x60-Watt amplifier in one tidy package. This is Rotel gear, so you know prices aren't cheap; but then again, if you're st...

Source announces Warpia wireless USB-to-HDMI adapter We've been waiting for an inexpensive wireless USB-to-HDMI solution for what seems like forever now, and it sounds like we'll finally have some options soon: Source R&D has just announced that it's going to be shipping the Warpia Wireless USB Adapter set at the end of May for an estimated $129-$149. Just like the Atlona AT-HDAiR, the Warpia kit is just a rebranded OEM unit from Wisair, so most of the same caveats apply: max resolution is 1400 x 1050, range is about 30 feet, and HDMI and VGA are the only output options. Still, we can't really think of a better way to do some quick'n'dirty Hulu watching, so we'll be on the hunt for one of these soon -- keep an eye out.

SmallHD releases elegant 720p DP1 field monitor Tired of those totally vanilla field monitors -- particularly those with a resolution half that of the camcorder you're using? Yeah, so was SmallHD. The aforesaid startup has just launched its one-day-only pre-order of the forthcoming DP1, an elegant 720p field monitor that's a drastic departure from the norm. Encased in anodized aluminum, this 8.9-inch LED-backlit panel boasts a native 720p resolution, 500:1 contrast ratio, 300 nits of brightness, full RGB color control, 178-degree viewing angles, an array of mounting points and a slew of inputs (HDMI, composite, component, VGA and S-Video). In the box, you'll find the monitor itself, a 12V power supply, HDMI / component cables and a Neoprene sleeve to keep it safe whilst on the go. It's available for pre-order right now at $749 in black or silver, though you'll lose out on the sleeve if you don't get your order in by midnight ET tonight. Shipments are expected to...