Category: Portable

Sandisk Announce Clever USB Enabled SD Memory Card

Sandisk Announce Clever USB Enabled SD Memory CardSanDisk today introduced the less-than-snappily entitled SanDisk Ultra(TM) II SD(TM) PLUS, an innovative SD flash memory card with built-in USB connectivity.

The card has a built-in USB connector for instant connectivity – users can flip the card to expose the USB connector and then plug it into any USB port and watch the blinking LED do its thang as the data is transferred.

The neat folding design eliminates the need for an easily-lost cap too.

This dual functionality could prove to be an alluring selling point, as consumers wanting to download images to their computer currently have to invest in external card readers or mess about with a connecting cable.

Travellers will find the twin functionality particularly handy, with the USB connection making it easy to download their holiday snaps onto cyber-café computers and mail them off to jealous chums back home.

The Ultra II SD PLUS is targeted primarily at the professional digital camera and prosumer market where 4 mega-pixel or higher resolution digital cameras are requiring significantly faster flash memory film cards.

It’s quite a nippy card too, offering a respectable write speed of 9-megabytes per second (MB/Sec) and a 10MB/sec read speed.

Sandisk Announce Clever USB Enabled SD Memory CardSanDisk expects the card to initially be available in two capacities with the 512MB card having a suggested retail price of $109.99 (£58, €84) and the 1GB version carrying a suggested price of $149.99 (£79, €115)

Shipping to stores is expected in April. We might even be tempted.

SanDisk

Sony PSP UMD Movie Pricing Announced

Sony PSP UMD movie pricing announceKids today, eh? Spoilt rotten they are.

When I were a lad, an ‘entertainment system’ would take the form of a wobbly cassette player or perhaps a racy CD/radio combination for the well-heeled, but these young ‘uns today are positively spoilt for choice.

Not only can they loll around in their messy bedrooms all day and play state-of-the-art video games and music CDs on their PlayStation Portables, but now the little blighters can watch the latest movie releases too, courtesy of Sony’s proprietary Universal Media Disc (UMD) format.

Within weeks, weary parents around the country will soon be nagged into submission by persistent teenagers demanding the $28.95 (£15.30, Euro 21) to buy the cult classic, ‘The House of Flying Daggers’, scheduled for release on 19th April, 2005.

New films published on UMD will share a simultaneous release date as US/Region 1 DVD releases, with a price of $28.95 (£15.30, Euro 21) or thereabouts with a lower price of $19.95 (£10.50, Euro 15) for films that have already been released.

Accordingly, the other four previously announced UMD titles – Hellboy, Resident Evil: Apocalypse, XXX and Once Upon A Time In Mexico – will all retail for $19.95 when they go on sale on 19th April.

Following the initial flurry of releases in April, Sony plans to annoy parents further with the release of new titles at monthly intervals thereafter.

As a special bonus, the first million PlayStation Portables sold in the US following its 24th March release will also come with a UMD movie copy of Spider-Man 2.

Although the pricing appears attractive to the target audience, it’s the same price as regular DVD and some may feel that they’d be better off buying something with greater compatibility.

PlayStation Portables

Snakes Snare N-Gage for Nokia

Snakes N-gage NokiaThe all-time classic Nokia game, Snake, has now hit their gaming platform, the N-Gage. Best of all it’s free to download.

One initially surprising thing is that the whole game can be uploaded to another N-Gage via Bluetooth. Clearly this hasn’t been a feature of the commercial games already released, which include snowboard-a-thon SSX yesterday, but as it’s a give away, it makes it an interesting way to get it spreading.

Pasi Pölönen, Director, Game Publishing at Nokia said in a statement, “The unique method of viral distribution via Bluetooth, plus the free download, means that practically every N-Gage owner can enjoy the addictive gameplay and upload their high scores to the N-Gage Arena.”

Snakes on N-Gage has been updated to run in 3D, taking advantage of the additional processing power of the N-Gage. It also lets up to four players join together in a game by using Bluetooth to connect them up.

N-Gage hasn’t been the huge success that Nokia had wanted, but it is clearly not going to let the N-Gage slip away unnoticed.

Just looking at the Snakes Break Out Website, that they’ve prepared to support the release of Snake, proves that. It appears they have spent a considerable amount of money on its faux-TV appearance – and this is for a game that is FREE to download.

Snakes Break Out Website

The First Review of Snakes?

Centrino Chips Get Updated by Intel

Today Intel release information about their new Centrino range of chips, aimed at notebook computers.

The release of the code-named “Sonoma” chip has been delayed for several months as Intel ironed out some problems they had been having with the chips. Intel hopes it will further bolster their current 85% dominance of notebook chips.

Such is the keenness of the laptop manufacturers to bring the machines to market that Sony have already released their FS range and Toshiba the less than catch-ly named Dynabook VX 470LS notebook. It is understood that 80 laptops with the new chippery will be available from today, with that number growing to 150 by the end of the year.

Intel have been very crafty with the Centrino range, which includes microprocessor; wireless; and supporting chips providing sound and graphics, as the Centrino brand cannot be used unless the entire bundle of chips is bought from Intel.

As is always the case with the introduction with a new range of chips, the new models will come in at about the same price of the previous high end chips and the current offering will slide down in price. Expect some bargains.

Intel

SmartDeck from Griffin gives iPod control

Griffin SmartDeck iPodGriffin Technology has announced what they call SmartDeck Intelligent Cassette Technology.

At first glance it appears to be a “seen it” product, a bit of audio cassette-shaped plastic that you pop into your cassette player to let you play the music you’ve got on your digital music player.

Take another look beacuse this device is smarter than that. Rather than having to fumble for the control on your iPod while you should be concentrating on things like … driving. This little beauty lets you use the buttons on your cassette deck to control your iPod. The fast forward and rewind buttons take you to the next or previous playlist track; the Stop and pause buttons do as would be expected; and hitting Eject or selecting car stereo’s radio also put the iPod on pause.

How does it do it? The cassette adaptor has sensors on it (note the teeth inside the holes in the middle of it) and passes this information down a single white cable to the four-pin top accessory port on the top of the iPod. Clever isn’t it?

Griffin are also claiming it automatically sets optimal volume on the iPod for best audio quality and the devices innards are the highest-quality to give crystal clear quality sound.

It should be available in the second quarter of 2005, priced at $24.99 (~€19, ~£13.50). If you can’t wait until then to see it, it’s going to be on show on Booth #1917 at current MacWorld show.

Griffin SmartDeck

Gizmondo beef up with Disney and Sega

Since we first brought news of the Gizmondo gaming console to you in June 2004 it has been coming on leaps and bounds.

Not only is the Gizmondo a handheld games platform, but it’s also able to play music and video; has GPRS, Bluetooth and GPS built-in to it; works as a wireless email and SMS client; and has a digital camera built in. All for an expected $399 in the US or £229 in the UK.

While this is all very lovely, it’s common knowledge that what keeps a gaming machine alive beyond the spec sheet is the games it runs. Tiger Telematics, who have developed and sell the Gizmondo, are developing their own original software, having bought two software developers Indie Studios and latterly Warthog Games in October 2004, but they are also wisely doing deals with other companies.

The fruit of these now-combined studios, renamed Gizmondo Studios, will be nine titles; City; Colors; Johnny Whatever; Sticky Balls; Fallen Kingdoms; Momma, can I mow the lawn?; Milo and the Rainbow Nasties; Furious Phil; and Future Tactics.

A three year deal with Disney should bring their games to the Gizmondo platform. The initial fruits of the deal will be Tron 2.0. Developed in-house by Gizmondo, the contract also “envisions for four additional titles to be determined by mutual agreement”. The agreement has the Gizmondo paying a minimum guarantee totalling $100,000 for the Tron 2.0 property over three years. Four other titles could also be developed under the deal.

Tiger Telematics have also signed a letter of intent with Taiwan-base Digital Media Cartridge Ltd, hoping to bring many of the classic Sega video games to the platform. Currently this deal looks a little less certain that the Disney deal, but the games being discussed include Sonic the Hedgehog, Outrun, Golden Axe, Altered Beast and Shinobi.

As an icing on the cake, our friends at CNET declared the Gizmondo a finalist in the Next Big Thing awards.

The Gizmondo soft launched by taking pre-orders in the UK in October 2004, and should be in UK shops in February 2005 priced at £229. The online capabilities will be provided using a Gizmondo-branded Pay As You Go (PAYG) service.

Gizmondo

8GB USB Drive Shown at CES

i-Disk_II-8GB-USB-DrivePretec Electronics have announced an 8GB USB drive, that they’re calling the i-Disk II, at CES today. Currently it’s the highest capacity key chain drive and the second to market.

Along with the 4GB that they’re simultaneously releasing, it provides high speed access by using what they call “dual channel technology” providing read / write speeds of 16MB / 12MB per second.

Both USB drives come bundled with the FlashMail, MobileLock, and SecretZip software. Flashmail provides email access from any machine simply by inserting the USB drive into a Windows machine.

The 4GB is now available and Pretec say the i-Disk II 8GB USB flash drive will be delivered by Q1 2005. It’s not cheap, being priced at $999 (~€755, ~£531), but it’s a huge amount of solid state storage.

BUSlink released the first 8GB drive, which is physically slightly bulkier, but has a slower read/write rate, 10MB/9.2MB. The bigger downside is it costs, $1,799.99 (~€1,360, ~£956).

Pretec’s other claim to fame, is as the company that brought iDisk Tiny, the smallest USB flash drive, to the world in 2003. They have now updated this with an even smaller version called the CU-Flash.

We’re big fans of USB flash drives and see them extending beyond the current “Here’s my power point presentation” corporate usage to becoming totally mass market as the public come to realise that they can be used to hold their identity data and provide access to their personal information and email. At these capacities they also become practical for holding private collections of audio and video media.

Pretec
BUSlink

6 PSP Games Due from EA

SIRIUS SportsterToday Electronic Arts (EA) used CES to announce its line-up for the US launch of Sony’s handheld entertainment system, the PSP due in March.

The six games are FIFA Football and MVP Baseball, (only available in the US and not in the UK) along with four previously announced franchise greats; Need for Speed Underground Rivals, Tiger Woods PGA TOUR, NBA STREET: Showdown (working title) and NFL STREET 2: Unleashed.

EA say each game has been specifically designed for the PSP, as they found that trying to port the games didn’t work visually and they wanted the handheld titles to take advantage of the unique PSP functions such as WiFi head-to-head game play. To create the games, EA created the very dramatic sounding Team Fusion.

More details of the games are on their dedicated PSP site. It has some screen shots of the games which looks most impressive.

EA’s dedicated PSP site

DVR Wireless Kit for Police from Avalon RF

Avalon Rugged Police Tablet PCDesigned for law enforcement, perimeter security and long-range video links, AValon RF’s new wireless range includes receivers, transmitters, remote display units (RDUs) and a variety of specialised antennas. The company’s technology provides broadcast quality, interference-free video links over the frequency spectrum of 56MHz to 2.5GHz, allowing security personnel to use a rugged PDA and Tablet PC to wirelessly view video from remote cameras while driving in a patrol vehicle.

For instance, the AValon ICV04 is a four-channel video recorder that lets you record streaming audio and video on an internal hard disk drive at 30fps. It is designed to fit under a vehicle seat and receive commands through a remote control, a computer, or a remote smart display. Recording is triggered manually or automatically by an external signal, such as a siren, flashing light activation, or code 1-2-3 in a police patrol vehicle. The recorded streaming video can be read via a USB port or archived on a standard CD-RW media.

Other features of the neat device include four video/audio inputs for a wireless LC618M lapel camera (or MX416 microphone), windshield camera, back seat camera and a trunk camera, VITC time/date stamping on all recorded video, support for up to 1 hour of recording on a 400MB Dataplay CD, and a USB 2.0 interface-to-vehicle computer/gateway. It utilises standard 12-volt powering and comes in ruggedised enclosure.

AValon RF

AudioFeast: 100+ Radio Channels on your Music Player

AudioFeast, the first to market with a portable Internet radio service for MP3 players, mobile devices and PCs, has made another major announcement that should greatly entice consumers to embrace online music.

The company’s new portable music service lets you listen to Internet and terrestrial programming on your portable digital audio player, including over 100 channels of commercial-free, digital quality music. The company also announced a strategic collaboration with iRiver America, manufacturer of portable digital audio devices, to deliver AudioFeast compatibility with iRiver’s iFP-700 series and iFP-800 series Flash-based MP3 players.

The service differs from online music stores, such as Napster and iTunes, by allowing customers to subscribe to a wide range of programming that is automatically refreshed on a portable device. They gain easy access to a library of music without incurring the effort and expense of having to find, purchase and download each and every song. To encourage consumers to try out its new experience, AudioFeast has created a free Basic Service, which comes with 60-minute channels of music, news, sports and entertainment programming.

With around 70 media partners, AudioFeast has licensed a selection of news, sports, drama, comedy, business and entertainment channels, along with a variety of hobby and niche programming options. A sample includes: A&E, Bloomberg Radio, BBC Radio, the Discovery Channel, the History Channel, NPR, SportsNews Radio and The Wall Street Journal Radio Network. As the service expands in the coming weeks, another 100 channels of music will be added, including pop, jazz, electronica, trance, R&B, rock, alternative, classical genres and more, according to the company.

“Our goal is to re-ignite the passion consumers once felt for radio. By expanding and improving consumer entertainment options, we can continue to fuel consumer adoption of the MP3 player,” said Tom Carhart, chief executive officer at AudioFeast. “Our research shows that Internet listeners have an especially deep passion for specific and established programming, and an equally strong desire to make that content portable. Now for the first time they can enjoy their favourite shows anytime, anywhere for one low price.”

However, the service will face competition from companies like Audible, who have been selling downloadable audio books for a long time; the fast growing band of individual and small companies who are offering audio content for download (sometimes called podcasting); and the growing number of audio players that have built-in FM tuners, allowing users to listen to popular radio stations for free.

:SP:We have seen, and continue to see downloadable audio, for playback on portable music players as a significant distribution path for audio content. We feel people will eventually tire of listen to every album that has ever been recorded, and look to using their commute time into the work to catch up on their chosen work subject or hobby.

AudioFeast