by Shane McGlaun

Data is the lifeblood of any business and if data is lost it can mean all sorts of bad things for a company from lost money to lawsuits. The best way to prevent data from being lost is to back the data up to an external NAS storage solution designed for businesses. The catch for smaller companies is that NAS solutions tend to be very expensive.

Seagate has announced two new NAS devices in its BlackArmor line that are affordable for small businesses and even home users looking to protect important data. The new products are the BlackArmor NAS 420 and NAS 440. Both the solutions are four bay network attached storage arrays. The NAS 420 ships with two hard drives installed and the NAS 440 ships with four hard drives.

Read the rest of this entry »

by Shane McGlaun

A couple years ago, I moved from a simple point-and-shoot camera to a much more complex Nikon D80 DSLR. At the time, the D80 was one of the best cameras you could get. The thing I missed right away with the D80 compared to my old camera was the ability to shoot video, but at the time, no DSLRs were able to record video.

Today things are much different and there are several DSLR cameras on the market that can shoot video in HD resolutions, like the Nikon D90. Canon today announced a new entry-level EOS Rebel T1i DSLR camera that can record video in full 1080p resolution, though at only 20 fps.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Andrew Liszewski

Wacom’s new Intuos4 tablets have officially shown up on the company’s website, coming as a surprise to no one since the units have already been spotted on store shelves. The Intuos4 will be available in 4 different sizes ranging from the Small model (6.2 x 3.9 inches for $229) to the Extra Large model (19.2 x 12 inches for $789) and all feature 2048 levels of pressure sensitivity. In other words, these are all still high-end Wacom tablets.

Other notable updates to the Intuos line include a set of customizable ExpressKeys with accompanying OLED displays showing their current function, a Speed Ring touch-sensitive scroll wheel that can be used for zooming, scrolling and changing brush sizes and a clever ambidextrous design that can be customized for left or right-handed users by simply rotating the tablet 180 degrees.

[ Wacom Intuos4 Tablets ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I miss having a trackball on my laptop. But it’s been many, many years since any notebook manufacturer has included a built-in trackball, and the external models you can still buy are usually too big to throw in a laptop bag. Thankfully Evergreen has heard my laments and complaining, and has created what is probably the smallest USB trackball accessory on the market.

The trackball itself looks to be about the same size as the ones used on the Blackberrys and it’s surrounded by three compact buttons that serve as left, right and middle/scrolling mouse buttons. It’s also got a retractable USB cable making it extra portable, and is available for about $20 on the Donya Japan website.

[ Evergreen USB Mini Trackball ] VIA [ DVICE ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Given the Yankee’s new stadium has a price tag of $1.3 billion, it’s not surprising that some of that money has been spent on what has to be one of the largest ‘TVs’ in the world. The image you see here was taken by a New York CBS affiliate and shows an early test of the stadium’s 103 by 58 foot (that’s almost 6,000 square feet) Mitsubishi Diamond Vision LED display. It’s composed of 8,601,600 LEDs and besides being HD it can also display up to 4 video feeds at one time, and do picture-in-picture.

Unfortunately some fans are worried that the new screen might actually be too big, and that it could become a distraction or overshadow what’s happening on the field, but apparently they’ve never sat through an entire baseball game before. As far as I’m concerned, the more distractions, the better.

[ Wired Gadget Lab - Monster Screen in New Yankee Stadium Looks Great, But Won't Show Crucial Replays ]

By Evan Ackerman

This unassuming little box could possibly be the future of PC gaming as we know it. If you’re much of a gamer, you know what the problem is: a couple days after you spend a grand or two on a decent gaming computer, the next generation of hardware comes out and your system is outdated and slow. The solution offered by OnLive could be a great one, if it works… Just outsource all your gaming hardware over the internet, and you’ll never have to worry about upgrades again.

It’s an awesome concept: why dump a bunch of money into a personal gaming computer when you can run your games on a beastly server that someone else pays for? Of course, it all depends on you being able to play your game on the aforementioned beastly server, which necessarily has to happen over the internet… You transmit your control inputs, and then you receive compressed video of the gameplay while OnLive’s servers do all of the graphics heavy lifting. OnLive says that a 1.5 MBPS connection will let you play games at standard definition with a lag of 2 milliseconds, including video decompression. A 5 MBPS connection can get you 720p at up to 60fps, which again is totally independent of the hardware requirements of the game you’re playing and entirely independent on your internet connection.

It’s not just that you don’t need great hardware, you can also use the OnLive system on totally crappy hardware. Or on no hardware; it’ll happily hook up to your TV with the aid of a cheap little peripheral that you can plug controllers into. The whole system will be probably be set up as a subscription model kinda like XBox Live, and it’s currently undergoing beta testing with a launch sometime later this year.

[ OnLive ] VIA [ Kotaku ]

By Evan Ackerman

I stopped by the 2009 Game Developer’s Conference here in San Francisco last night to check out the latest and greatest in gaming hardware and software, and of course the biggest news that there could possibly be is the imminent release of a new Duke Nukem game. And this time, it’s for real. How do I know it’s for real? Because it’s not Duke Nukem Forever, which is the game you really want to see.

Instead, Apogee is releasing six (!) new Duke Nukem games for the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS. Actually, there are sort of only really three games… Here’s the deal: there’s going to be a trilogy of new games: Duke Nukem Critical Mass, Duke Nukem Chain Reaction, and Duke Nukem Proving Grounds. Critical Mass (which we saw a demo of) is somewhere in between alpha and pre-alpha. The other two will be continuations of that plot, and will come out at some “reasonable time” after the first one. While there are two separate games designed for two separate platforms, the storyline is the same, it’s just the style that’s different, so you’re not really missing anything by just playing the games on one platform.

More on the games themselves, after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

I spend a great deal of time sitting at my desk, which also means that I’m usually listening to music for a good portion of the day. In fact, unless I’m reading or watching TV, I’ve almost always got some tunes going. When it comes to my iPhone, I’ve still been using those same earbuds that Apple sent along in the box. They’re alright, but certainly not the best things out there. I suppose it’s laziness more than anything that has stopped me from upgrading. Needless to say, I was happy to see the Atrio M8 earphones from Future Sonics show up for review.

These aren’t the crappy earphones that you’re going to find at Walmart. Rather, they are considered “professional” grade audio equipment. The real question is whether or not they live up to the claims, and the $200 price tag. Read on for my full review, and I’ll give you my answer.

Read the rest of this entry »

By Chris Scott Barr

Do you love beer? I mean do you REALLY love it? If you answered yes to any of the previous questions, then you might want to consider switching your soaps. No, I haven’t dug up any study that shows the negative effects of booze on your epidermis. What I have found is soap that’s made from beer.

Sure, some of you out there might be saying “but soap isn’t a gadget, why are you telling me about this?” The simple truth is that according to a recent survey of visitors* more than half of you are liquored-up while reading the site, so I found this to be very appropriate. Each bar of soap is made with one of many different beers including Sam Adams, Foster’s and Guinness. Don’t worry, it’s got lots of other ingredients to make sure you’re left clean, and not just smelling like beer. At a price of $20 for 5 bars, it’s a perfect stocking stuffer for the kids, or for your Uncle Larry that just celebrated 20 years of sobriety.

*A complete lie. There was no survey.

[ Etsy ] VIA [ GearFuse ]