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Pretec announced on Tuesday its latest CompactFlash cards, which are substantially faster and higher capacity than other available CF cards.

The new cards come in two speeds: 233x (35MB per second) and 333x (50MBps), which is for now, as far as we know, the fastest for CF cards. The 233x model comes in 64GB and 100GB capacities while the 333x model comes in 32GB and 50GB capacities.

These cards can be used with digital cameras or mobile devices or reconfigured to work as solid-state hard drives. As I blogged recently, this is also good news for those who want to … Read more

Sony Electronics announced on Tuesday its third-generation internal Blu-ray optical drive, the BWU-300S. The new drive reads Blu-ray media and writes single- and dual-layer BD-R discs at up to 8x speed (36MB per second).

At this speed, it burns a full 25GB disc (single layer) in about 15 minutes and a full 50GB disc (dual layer) in about 30 minutes. While these numbers are big, this is probably as fast as computer-based Blu-ray recording can get due to the fact that the discs can spin only so rapidly (almost 10,000 RPM for 8x operation). In addition, the BWU-300S also … Read more

If Apple's "I am rich" app limits your ways to show off, no worries. Here's another product that can help you do that with style, and is substantially more eye-catching, better sounding, and, most importantly, more expensive.

It's called the Art.Suono Wireless Music Transmission System and iPod Dock and it costs $1,500. Designed by David Wiener Ventures, which makes products under the DWV and Ferrari brands, the Art.Suono is a limited-edition, luxury iPod-compatible product that works as both an audio instrument and, depending on your tastes, a piece of art.

The product … Read more

Despite the no-frills name--Toshiba USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive--the company's new line of pocket-size drives boast some unique and colorful designs and features.

The drives are housed in a sleek, glossy chassis embedded with contemporary graphics and available in four color schemes: Electric Blue & Black, Carbon Grey, Hot Rod Red, and Gecko Green. They offer storage capacity up to 400GB, larger than most existing products though still less than the 500GB OWC Mercury.

The new drives ship with NTI Shadow backup software, as well as internal shock sensor and ramp-loading technology that deliver extra … Read more

With a name that recalls the famed Japanese ninja movie, the MiniStation Shinobi is arguably the thinnest and lightest external hard drive to date--merely .2 inches thick and weighing only 2 ounces.

Buffalo announced the drive on Monday. Unlike other pocket-size external hard drives that use the 2.5-inch drives found in most laptops, this one uses the 1.8-inch laptop hard drive that's more often associated with smaller devices such as portable media players. For this reason, the external hard drive is significantly more compact and lighter, but it also features limited capacity: up to only 60GB. This … Read more

Lexar Media, a maker of digital storage cards, announced on Monday its 16GB version of the Kodak-branded Secure Digital High-Capacity (SDHC) high-speed card.

The new card offers speeds up to 60x, which translate into about 9MB per second, allowing for capturing full-motion video without interruption. However, this speed is still not fast enough for dSLR cameras, whose photos can easily be as large as 9MB each, especially when you want to snap multiple photos at a time.

The new SD card works not only with Kodak cameras, but also any SDHC-compatible digital cameras, camcorders, and PDAs. It comes with a … Read more

It can be a hard choice between a direct attached (DAS) and a network attached (NAS) external storage device. The former offers high-speed data throughput but requires a computer, while the latter can work by itself with a throughput speed that's limited by the network connection. How about not having to pick one over the other?

Buffalo Technology is offering that option on Monday with its new DriveStation FlexNet storage device. The device comes with both 10/100 Ethernet network storage functionality for it to be an NAS and a USB 2.0 connection for it to work as … Read more

Cell phones may or may not mess with our brains, but now our brains can mess with them.

NeuroSky, a San Jose, Calif.-based company that focuses on developing brain-controlled interfaces, recently created a prototype of a system that reads brain waves and uses them to control mobile phone applications. Basically, the brain dictates the action of the device without the help of the middleman: the fingers.

This is how it works: software algorithms deduce from your brain waves what you intend to do and pass on the appropriate commands to the cell phone. During the demo of the prototype, … Read more

At Apple Expo in Paris on Wednesday, Griffin Technology unveiled its latest iPhone accessories, including the AirCurve acoustic amplifier dock and the Clarifi protective case.

The AirCurve dock collects and amplifies the sound from the built-in iPhone 3G speaker. It does so by using a coil waveguide within its base, and therefore doesn't need batteries or another power source to work.

While the acoustically amplified sound is not as loud as that made by electronic amplifiers, it's loud enough for you to enjoy music in a quiet room or to use as an alarm clock. The compact dock … Read more