Tuesday, August 25, 2009

Kingston 256GB DataTraveler

Kingston is back again with a new product that is breaking the barriers of portable memory. The Kingston DataTraveler 300 is a 256 GB thumb drive that can hold up to 51,000 images, or 54 DVDs, or 360 CDs! This drive has an amazing 20 mb/sec read. and a 10 mb/sec. write speed. It is a capless design, and the dimensions are 70.68 mm x 22.37 mm x 16.45 mm. This thumb drive also offers password protection software available for windows and windows vista users. This is only available for Europe and the UK. This will cost you a whopping $924 USD, but it also comes backed with a 5 year warranty. Which in my opinion is a pretty steep price for 256 GB of memory, considering you can buy external hard drives that have 5 times the memory but are a fourth of the cost.

This is a huge step into the future for portable memory. Not that long ago it was a huge deal putting 1GB into a thumb drive, and now they are cramming over 250GB into a tiny device. I find this very exciting because I am eager to see whats next from Kingston and their competitors. Even though this is a great new product, I don’t think I would be very willing to pay almost $1,000 for it. Hopefully their will be more companies producing mass storage thumb drives, so we can see some variety in choices and in price ranges.

Thursday, August 6, 2009

3D Best Buy Ads

Best BuyEver wanted to shop online for things in 3D? Well now you can thanks to an innovative little promotional stunt from Best Buy. If you looked through your Sunday paper and carelessly tossed your ads section then go and find it because the Best Buy ad has something other than a bargain in it.

Last Sunday's Best Buy ad can be viewed in 3D, if the good 'ol fashioned 2D just isn't doing it for you anymore. But the best thing about seeing the ad in 3D is that you don't need to buy any of those goofy and uncomfortable glasses. What you will need is a computer with an attached webcam. Turn on your webcam and allow Best Buy access to it and the hard part is done. Then all you need to do is slowly move the ad towards the camera until the camera recognizes it.When the product you are looking at is right next to your face you'll know it worked.

But wait, there's more! Try turning the ad in different directions and you will notice that the 3D image moves with it! How is this possible you might ask? Well, thanks to a helpful little thing called Augmented Reality. Now Augmented Reality is probably one of the coolest new gadgets out there. It has already been seen put to use in things like baseball cards and action figures and now even retail ads. With Best Buy taking the first step, we will no doubt see other businesses using AR to find new ways to empty your wallets.