Oh! Gizmo

By Luke Anderson

I love my latest digital camera because it takes CompactFlash memory, rather than SD. While that unfortunately meant that I was left with several useless SD cards, I was more than happy to shell out the extra cash for a much faster format. While CompactFlash is already the fastest flash memory that you can put inside of a camera, the standard is getting revamped to provide even more speed.

The new standard being developed by the CompactFlash Association, dubbed CFast utilizes a SATA interface which promises theoretical transfer speeds of up to 375MB/sec. I’m sure that in reality speeds will be much slower, but even half of that would be a tremendous boost. There are a couple of downsides to this new memory. The first being the fact that it is still 18 months to 2 years away from being finalized. The other (and more important I think) is that the cards won’t be compatible with current cameras. You’ll need to start saving now if you want to take advantage of this faster format.

VIA [ UberGizmo ]

By Shane McGlaun

Sony announced a new digital photo album called the HDMS-S1D recently that features an 80GB internal HDD capable of storing up to 50,000 digital photos. The photo album connects to HDTV sets via HDMI and has multiple methods for importing photos available.

The S1D can import photos via virtually all memory card formats plus CD, DVD, and USB or over an Ethernet network connection. Once photos are imported, they can be managed with the included remote control. Organization options allow for grouping photos by date or events like birthdays and holidays.

Photos can be rotated, edited and deleted from the system via the remote. The S1D has the ability to arrange photos for a slideshow or into a digital scrapbook with Sony’s x-Application that is included. The application includes 30 pre-loaded music tracks to set your photos to and you can print photos directly from the S1D to your printer. Pricing for the HDMS-S1D digital Photo Album is around $400 and is available at Sony retailers or the Sony Style website.

VIA [ Sony ]