Oh! Gizmo

By Andrew Liszewski

This morning Elecom released a whole slew of new card readers, and while most of them just seem to feature a new color or slightly more compact design, this particular model, the MR-C20, stands out thanks to its magnetic backing that lets you stick it to a filing cabinet or PC tower instead of having it cluttering up your desk. It’s also available in trendy colors like black, white, fluorescent green and hot pink, but like most readers these days it eschews support for compact flash in order to stay compact.

[ PR - Elecom's New Card Readers ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Today Kingston Digital announced a new flash card reader called the MobileLiteG2, or Second Generation, that’s pretty much as small as you can get while still supporting formats like SD and Memory Stick. Of course you won’t be jamming a compact flash card in there, but their popularity continues to dwindle anyways. And as small as it is, the G2 still manages to squeeze in retractable covers to protect both the USB port and connected flash cards, and it’s got a tiny matching MSRP of just $11.

[ PR - Kingston Digital MobileLite Generation Two ] VIA [ Ubergizmo ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Sometimes passwords feel like more of a pain than a plus, so I like this 2.5-inch SATA HD enclosure that uses an RFID tag to protect your data. Unlocking your precious files is as easy as waving one of the 2 included RFID tags over the enclosure, and you just repeat the motion to lock everything back up again. It’s compatible with 2.5-inch SATA hard drives up to 160GB in size, but I can’t help but wonder if the dirt cheap $16 price tag from Chinavasion is an indication of how well this thing really works.

[ RFID Security 2.5 Inch SATA HDD Enclosure ] VIA [ The Red Ferret Journal ]

By Andrew Liszewski

I like the idea of a portable hard drive that can survive a little wear and tear, but A-DATA has taken things to the next level with their new SH93 portable drives. No longer do you have to worry when working in the bathroom next to a bathtub full of water since the SH93 drives can survive depths of up to 1 meter for a full 30 minutes thanks to their industrial looking rubber and plastic housing.

The drives also use special cushioning materials inside to survive the military MIL-STD-810F drop test, so if you accidentally push it off a desk there’s a good chance your data will still be intact. The SH93 drives will be available in 250, 320, 500 and 640GB capacities in your choice of a red or yellow finish, though official pricing and availability hasn’t been announced.

[ A-DATA SH93 HDD ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Sony is known for making some unusual decisions at times, but not when it comes to design in my opinion. Take these relatively new USM-L Micro Vault flash drives. They’re clean, compact and feature a BIC-inspired ‘click to open’ mechanism that hides and protects the USB connector when not in use. The drives are color-coded based on their capacity (they range in size from 1GB up to 32GB) and a “prism” LED flashes and glows to indicate when the drive is in use. The USM-L Micro Vaults also support Windows Readyboost, and include Sony’s Virtual Expander software which will automatically compress or decompress files as they’re copied to or from the drive, roughly tripling their capacity.

[ Sony Micro Vault USM-L ] VIA [ Fareastgizmos ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Today Sandisk announced a new line of compactflash cards aimed at professional photographers with read & write speeds of up to 90MB/s over a UDMA-6 bus. The Extreme Pro CompactFlash cards feature the company’s “Power Core Controller” for increased reliability over the life of the card, and include other pro features like a silicone coating for moisture and humidity protection. According to Sandisk the new cards are available/shipping worldwide now in 16, 32 and 64GB capacities ranging in price from $300 up to a hefty $800.

[ PR - SANDISK EXTREME PRO COMPACTFLASH MEMORY CARD RAISES BAR FOR PROFESSIONAL GRADE PERFORMANCE, CAPACITY AND RELIABILITY ] VIA [ SlashGear ]

By David Ponce

Backblaze is an online data storage solution. For $5 a month per computer, you get unlimited storage. But no one really cares about that, since there’s a lot of competition in this field. The reason we’re writing about them is that they’ve decided to show us how to build the basic unit of their storage solution: a custom-built, 45-drive, double-PSU, Linux-powered, 67-Terabyte, 4-U, rack mounted, storage pod. This particular storage unit can be built for a mere $7,867. We actually wish we were being sarcastic about that figure, but as it is, it’s really freaking cheap. The diagram below shows you how much a Petabyte of storage (or about 15 of these storage pods) would cost under several competing cloud storage services.

The reason they’re making this information available

is that by sharing, others can benefit and, ultimately, refine this concept and send improvements back to us. Evolving and lowering costs is critical to our continuing success at Backblaze.

Hit the link below to find out all the details on how to build your very own $7,800, 67-Terabyte storage solution.

[ Backblaze Article ] VIA [ BoingBoing ]

By Andrew Liszewski

If you thought you had problems storing all the RAW files from your digital SLR camera, imagine having to deal with the stream of data coming from a digital motion picture camera capturing footage at 24 frames per second or higher. That’s why researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Integrated Circuits IIS in Erlangen, Germany have developed the FlashBox which docks to a digital film camera, like the ARRI D21 or the Sony F35, and stores up to 500GB of footage on a couple of swappable SSDs.

At just 5.1 x 3.1 x 2.8 inches in size and 3.3 pounds the FlashBox is remarkably light and compact, but it can capture and store Bayer raw sensor data in resolutions up to 2048×1000 pixels, or compressed using the JPEG2000 codec. A built-in LCD also allows the footage to be played back as soon as it’s captured, and a “multi-level prompting process” ensures recorded scenes don’t get accidentally overwritten which is one of the few times when nagging software is a definite plus.

The FlashBox will be available to select beta testers sometime in the Spring of 2010, but a prototype will be exhibited at the IBC (International Broadcast Convention) show in Amsterdam starting on September 11.

[ Fraunhofer-Gesellschaft - The little giant of storage for the big screen ]

By Andrew Liszewski

Professional photographers (and apparently Autobots) with digital SLRs that still use a compact flash card might want to start saving their pennies for PhotoFast’s new CFast Gen1 CF cards. Available in 8, 16 or 32GB capacities the cards feature read speeds of up to 100MB/sec and write speeds of up to 50MB/sec thanks to a built-in SATA controller.

The CFast Flash Drive Series is the new and improved combination of CF and ATA Serial Transport (AST), it contains a SATA controller and flash memory in a (m)atchbook-sized package with a 7+17 pin connector consisting of 7-pin signal and 17-pin power and control connector. Within a maximum speed of SATA II 3.0 Gbps, this faster data throughput will make for increased performance in burst shooting modes and faster read times when you put the CFast card into a card reader to transfer to the computer.

There’s no word on pricing or availability just yet, but don’t expect the 32GB model to come cheap.

[ PhotoFast CFast Gen1 ] VIA [ Akihabara News ]