Quick look: iOmega iConnect Wireless Data Station
Ever since Iomega announced the iConnect Wireless at CES we’ve been thinking long and hard about our NAS usage. Do we really want a NAS with built-in drives? Why can’t we be free of NAS hegemony?
Well, the $99 iConnect promises to break our shackles. It’s a NAS without a drive. Here’s a quick hands on and we’ll do a full review this week. The press release, for your edification, follows.
Iomega’s New iConnect Wireless Data Station: Share Files, Manage Torrents,
Access Your Data Remotely, Backup Your PC and Mac
And Much More for Only $99
***
Transform Your USB Hard Drives and Flash Drives into “Smart” Network StorageSAN DIEGO, January 5, 2010 – Iomega, an EMC company (NYSE: EMC) and a global leader in data protection, today announced the worldwide launch of the Iomega® iConnect Wireless Data Station, a powerful and yet inexpensive device that provides a simple way to bring all of your USB storage into your network, allowing you to connect, share and access files anywhere, even over the Internet – all for only $99.99.
On display this week at the Consumer Electronics Show (Booth # 31823, South Hall 3) in Las Vegas, the iConnect Wireless Data Station has no onboard storage, instead allowing users to bring all of their desktop and portable USB storage into their network. Connect the Iomega iConnect device to your router in either a wired or wireless configuration*, and it’s as easy as plugging external USB drives or USB Flash drives (any brand) into any of the four USB ports on the Iomega iConnect device, making the drives automatically connected to and accessible from any computer on your network or remotely via the web.
With that simple set up, users of the iConnect Wireless Data Station not only have incremental storage on their network to save, share and enjoy, they also enjoy such capabilities as a UPnP™ DLNA Certified AV Media Server that streams photos, audio content and videos to a variety of media devices; a torrent download manager for managing peer-to-peer file transfers; Time Machine® support for Apple® users; device-to-device replication for data protection; print serving to the network and much more.
“For computer users with plenty of USB-connected storage devices, the new Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station is great way to save money and make your USB storage drives ‘smart’ at the same time,” said Jonathan Huberman, president of Iomega and the Consumer and Small Business Products Division of EMC. “For less than $100, users now have a NAS device that offers everything from remote access to torrent download capability to a built-in iTunes and media server. The iConnect Wireless Data Station is a great way to utilize what you already own in a whole new way.”
Benefits and Features of the new iConnect Wireless Data Station
The new iConnect Wireless Data Station utilizes the acclaimed EMC LifeLine™ software, a fully-developed Linux operating environment and suite of applications that is designed for cross-platform support with Windows®, Mac® and Linux computers. Users of the iConnect device interact with an easy-to-understand interface that provides all the latest in multimedia serving as well as remote access features, making it a breeze to access your own data, whether in the office, the home, or anywhere else in the world.**Among the many value-add features of the iConnect Wireless Data Station:
• Easy file sharing, data backup and print serving from any networked Windows® PC, Mac® or Linux workstation.
• Gigabit Ethernet and wireless connectivity by connecting directly to your router in either a wired or wireless (802.11b/g/n wireless protocol) configuration.
• Remote access allows you to connect securely from anywhere in the world and get full access to pictures, videos, files – everything stored on the connected USB drives. An added bonus: remotely access and administer the iConnect device through a personalized web address.
• Simple expandability means you can add storage capacity by simply connecting more or larger external USB drives.
• Device-to-device replication for data protection allows you to define a job to copy and/or synchronize files to and from the connected USB drives or any other shared storage on your network. Iomega makes it easy with one-touch copying with the QuikTransfer button on the front of the iConnect device.
• Print Serving with intelligent print sharing capability for up to two USB printers.
• Time Machine support allows Apple users to easily backup any Mac computers running OS X (10.5 or later) using Time Machine.
• UPnP™ DLNA Certified AV Media Server provides the ability to stream photos, audio content and videos to a variety of media devices, such as game consoles (Microsoft Xbox® 360, Sony PlayStation® 3), audio bridges, iTunes® players, networked digital picture frames, Iomega® ScreenPlay™ products and more.
• Photo slideshow capabilities with an integrated utility based on the Cooliris™ technology for quick browsing of pictures stored on the connected USB drives.
• Torrent download manager allows the iConnect device to manage peer-to-peer file transfers without the need of a dedicated PC.
• Picture Transfer Protocol (PTP) provides no touch, automatic transfer of photos from digital cameras via one of the four USB ports on the iConnect device.Backup and Security Software for a Total Data Protection Solution
The new Iomega iConnect Wireless Data Station comes complete with a portfolio of backup and security software, including native security support with robust username and password authorized access. RSA® BSAFE® encryption security technology is included, too, for protecting installs and upgrades from viruses or malware. RSA is the security division of EMC that protects digital data at many of the world’s largest banks.Also included with the iConnect Wireless Data Station is the Iomega Protection Suite of software. Available via download, the Iomega Protection Suite includes Iomega QuikProtect for simple scheduled file-level backup; a choice between EMC® Retrospect® Express or Express HD to back up your data, plus applications and settings; and a free subscription to a market-leading software that protects your PC with anti-virus, anti-spyware, and web security protection.
Compatibility
The iConnect Wireless Data Station is compatible with Windows®, Mac OS®, and Linux® PCs. The interface is localized for 11 languages (including English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Traditional and Simplified Chinese, German, and Russian).Price and Availability and Warranty
The new Iomega® iConnect Wireless Data Station, on demonstration at the Consumer Electronics Show (Booth # 31823, South Hall 3), January 7-10, in Las Vegas, will available worldwide starting in February for $99.99. (Pricing is U.S. suggested retail.) The iConnect Wireless Data Station is backed by a three-year warranty (with product registration).
Read more here:
Quick look: iOmega iConnect Wireless Data Station
The next frontier: Converting 2D to 3D
Remember at CES when all of the companies were like “We’ll convert your 2D to 3D?” Yeah, ummm, nah. What will happen is that studios will back-convert some of their old movies – or movies not shot in 3D – to 3D using a time-consuming, partially automated process. Like in love, the first cut is the deepest:
The first step is to separate the shot into somewhere between two and eight layers of depth. Take, for example, an image of a man standing in front of a brick wall, with a blue sky behind the wall. The graphic artist might separate the shot into three layers: the man, the wall, and the sky. Then, he would take each layer and draw contour lines around any object that appeared there. He’d start by marking depth lines on the man using a computer, turning the image into a sort of topographical map. He’d repeat the process for any objects in the other layers. (If there were a bird in the sky, he’d draw lines there, too.)
This creates layers that the computer can then ‘tween based on surround frames. If the spot where a character was before is visible later, the computer can approximately assess what should be “behind” the character. While it sounds more like the Turner-ization of black and white movies (you have to be pretty old to remember that golden period in television), it’s the only way you’re going to be able to see Shaft in 3D.
Read more about it at Slate.
Originally posted here:
The next frontier: Converting 2D to 3D
BioWare tries to balance the BioWare way with the attraction of new fans with Mass Effect 2
Cool guys don’t look at explosions
Ladies and gentlemen, I have a conundrum. As many of you know, Mass Effect 2 comes out on January 26. It’s the first big game of the year. There’s only one problem: I’m having a heck of a hard time getting excited about it. What’s wrong with me, because clearly something is?
At CES last week, I spoke to BioWare’s Casey Hudson, who’s the game’s project director. He was the project director for Mass Effect and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Needless to say, he’s overseen some pretty big games. Good games, as a matter of fact. Me? I make Netherweave Bags all day in WoW.
My initial question touched on the so-called controversy involving BioWare and JRPGs. It seems someone at BioWare had recently made an off-hand remark about the lack of evolution in JRPGs in the past few years. Now, this wasn’t an official BioWare position, obviously (and as I was politely reminded), but rather one man’s opinion. Regardless, let it be known: BioWare respects the JRPG, it just has its own way of telling a story. The BioWare way, if you will.
After that incredibly awkward opening, we moved onto a subject which is something that I’ve seen discussed in various message boards: whether or not Mass Effect 2 will move far away from the traditional BioWare model in order to attract a new audience. (You can almost hear every single person on NeoGAF lamenting, “Oh, but we liked Game before it became too mainstream, now we hate it.”) You know, perhaps transforming the game from a space opera into little more than GTA or Call of Duty with a dialogue wheel.
To that, Hudson responded by saying it’s all about balance. Does BioWare want to open its games up to new audiences? Sure, but at the same time, there very much is a BioWare-style game, and these games have done pretty well so far. While perhaps a little less dramatic than “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” BioWare, Hudson said, absolutely realizes that it has a knack for a certain type of game. It just so happens that more than a few people out there enjoy that type of game. So please don’t think that Mass Effect 2 is going to mutate into Resident Evil in Space or anything. It’s not.
Come to think of it, Resident Evil in Space… isn’t that Dead Space?
But back to my original premise: why can’t I get excited for Mass Effect 2? Or, more generally, why can’t I “get into” BioWare games? (Someone should answer that with, “You’re doing it wrong!”) I never thought I’d like Fallout 3, but after forcing myself to play it, yeah, I ended up liking it quite a great deal.
I suspect the issue is, BioWare games have such a fantastic reputation, that I expect to start a new game and immediately be all, “THIS IS INCREDIBLE.” Luckily, I bought Mass Effect during the big Steam sale over the holidays, so I’ve committed myself to take at least one night off from WoW to give them game a game. (I probably should have mentioned earlier, if for no reason other than to maintain a sensible paragraph structure, that my previous BioWare experience consists of less than one hour of Kotor, less than one hour of Jade Empire, and occasionally watching my brother play Dragon Age.)
Make no mistake that after talking to Mr. Hudson at CES (and reading more and more about Mass Effect 2 since then), I’ll be playing the game come January 26. This, of course, provided there’s no last-minute unlocking shenanigans on Steam like the kind that marred the release of Modern Warfare 2.
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BioWare tries to balance the BioWare way with the attraction of new fans with Mass Effect 2
MSI concept all-in-one has keyboard that slides out the bottom – wait, that doesn’t work at all
I feel like I’m missing something important with this concept. It appears that the keyboard slides out from the bottom of the monitor, but there’s no way to orientate it the way a keyboard should be. I’m not crazy, right? It looks like it only comes out vertically? I guess it’s still a concept, so they’ve got some time to work it out, but man, I wouldn’t type on a vertical keyboard for all the tea in China.
See what I mean? Is there any support there?
I would have stayed to ask, but they were being cagey about their other concept products, so I left in a huff.
See more here:
MSI concept all-in-one has keyboard that slides out the bottom – wait, that doesn’t work at all
MSI’s two-screen wonder looks a lot like that extinct OLPC 2.0
Remember that OLPC design that had two touchscreens joined at the hip, kind of like we saw with the Courier later? Yeah, it got canned, but the basic design seems to have lived on in this MSI concept.
I begged and pleaded but they wouldn’t let me play with it or the bigger version… and then I saw why: the large one was basically a transparent printout over an LED backlight. The little one I think was actually showing a real display, but now I’m starting to doubt that as well. They were kept under glass, like rare cakes, and even the most despicable name-dropping and assurances of MSI glory on TechCrunch left their guardians unmoved.
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MSI’s two-screen wonder looks a lot like that extinct OLPC 2.0
LG’s UHD TV: 3840×2160 pixels of goodness
Gigantic TVs aren’t really my area of expertise, but this one was so big and beautiful that I couldn’t help snapping a few shots as I drifted by it on my way to who knows where. This thing, if production is even planned, will likely cost somewhere around… oh, your first-born child. It might be worth it, too.
Click for full size, and here’s the little boast that was displayed alongside it. I’ll get more info if I can find it.
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LG’s UHD TV: 3840×2160 pixels of goodness
Video highlights from CrunchGear’s CES 2010 booth
CrunchGear had its own booth at a CES event this year and of course we streamed all the interviews live. East Coasters may have missed out due to the late schedule though. So here they are for a second time. Daniel Brusilovsky started out the panel with a demo of mSpot video streaming Android app.
But we go on to take a look Sticker, Shapeways, a Geek Not Needed router, the L5 iPhone remote, v.Clone Iomega software, Blue Microphones, Mad Catz Cyborg R.A.T. mouse, LowJack computer software, an HP CTO, PocketCPR, Pogoplug and finish up two hours of interviewing with a look at the Gunman iPhone game.
Forgive all the shuffling. We did this via Livestream, after all. Click through for all the interviews and general CrunchGear hijinks.
See the rest here:
Video highlights from CrunchGear’s CES 2010 booth
Chumby Sunfury tablet coming?
We missed this one. But then again, the onle mention of the Chumby Sunfury tablet at CES ‘10 was in the Marvell booth. We were too busy palling around with Stan Lee to notice anything else. Good thing the nerds from technabob has our back and managed to get a spec sheet.
Now, I must state before we go any farther that this tablet might never make it to market. The concept could very well have been mocked-up for Marvell’s CES showing. After all, the Sunfury is listed with a Marvell PXA168 CPU. Chumby might be getting out of the cut-throat hardware business and into licensing its novel software like with the Chumby-powered Sony Dash. Still, there is a part of us that hopes we’ll eventually see a Chumby-branded tablet. Who doesn’t heart Chumby?
The Sunfire is reportably going to rock the aformentioned CPU, 802.11 b/g, 128MB or 256MB of RAM, microSD card slot, and loaded with Chumby widgets. It will also be able to playback MOV, H.264, AVI, MPEG-4, MP4, and MJPEG files. The Marvel PXA168 and Adobe Flash Lite will be tapped for most of the heavy lifting which means the Sunfire will basically be void of any real computing power and will be just a larger-screen Chumby. That’s still cool in our book.
If the Sunfury is really in the works and not just a PR scheme, we still think the hardware will be picked up by other companies and sold under their name. Chumby would likely provide the interface though. No word on price or release date.
Originally posted here:
Chumby Sunfury tablet coming?
CEA boots small vendors out of Las Vegas hotels
In the dog eat dog world of the CE business, margins are low and money – especially in this economy – is tight. That’s why a number of smaller vendors, including some we talked to in Vegas, took rooms in local hotels or ran “peripheral” events in other venues. The Daily Tech reports that some of those vendors have been ousted by the hotels themselves after the CEA, the organization that runs CES, convinced management to force them out.
Why? Because the CEA requires payments of $100,000 and up to exhibit at CES and their inability to pay for formal space at the show or in one of the show’s official hotel spaces is apparently an affront to the gadget gods. While the CEA puts on a nice show, it is my opinion that trade shows are dinosaurs and the extortionist tactics used by CEA to convince Las Vegas hotel to do things like this is an affront to capitalism and whatever else is good and wholesome about a massive trade show in a resort city in the middle of the desert.
In the end, CES is place where CE companies troll for customers. If the CEA wants to increase barriers to entry to their perceived value-add proposition, more power to them. Just don’t expect vendors to play nice next year in this game of cat and mouse.
If you’ve been booted, let us know. We’d love to hear your story.
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CEA boots small vendors out of Las Vegas hotels
Here’s a 1990 CES photo set for your amusement
Another year, another CES. The show this year wasn’t that different then previous years with some new stuff, a lot of old crap, and nerds all over Vegas. Hopefully you followed us around the show floor via our massively-successful Livestream feed. If not, stay tuned. We’re going to cut a lot of the fluff and repost the good stuff like my interview with a panda and Doug walking into a wall.
But if you still have the CES bug, let me suggest this Flickr set from the 1990 Winter CES. Yup, Winter. The show was held twice a year from 1978 to 1994 — Winter in Las Vegas and Summer in Chicago. Anyway, enjoy the set. We did. [via gamovr]
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Here’s a 1990 CES photo set for your amusement