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3D printing pioneer 3D Systems buys My Robot Nation

3D Systems, the company that says it pioneered 3D printing 26 years ago, announced today that it has acquired My Robot Nation, a California startup that gives buyers a set of simple Web-based tools for designing their own small, collectible 3D-printed droid figures.

During the last couple of years, 3D Systems has been on a buying spree, snatching up 24 3D printing companies. And Cathy Lewis, the company's vice president of global marketing, explained that the idea has been to add many new technologies and applications to 3D Systems' portfolio with a special emphasis on the consumer marketplace.

That'… Read more

Twitter open-sources its MySQL tweaks

Twitter has open-sourced some of the numerous tweaks it has made to MySQL, the database technology that the microblogging site uses to store most of the data generated by its users.

"MySQL is the persistent storage technology behind most Twitter data: the interest graph, timelines, user data and the Tweets themselves," wrote Twitter developers Jeremy Cole and Davi Arnaut on the Twitter engineering blog. "Since we believe in sharing knowledge and that open source software facilitates innovation, we have decided to open source our MySQL work on GitHub under the BSD New license."

The code Twitter'… Read more

WD My Passport Studio for Mac gets 2TB, too

While Mac users can use the recently reviewed Windows-preformatted 2TB WD My Passport portable drive, they now have another drive to call their own.

Western Digital announced today the new My Passport Studio, which increased the storage space to up to 2TB. Similar to the existing My Passport Studio, the new drive offers USB 2.0 and FireWire 800 connectivity in the place of USB 3.0. This is because Macs generally don't support USB 3.0, leaving FireWire 800 the only second fastest peripheral connection to Thunderbolt. In fact the new 2TB model shares the same design as the current 1TB model with the all-metal casing. … Read more

WD 2TB My Passport review: The future is here

The WD My Passport, the first-ever 2TB portable drive WD introduced last week, turned out to be pretty impressive.

Despite the fact that it offers the top capacity for 2.5-inch-based drives that use the current perpendicular recording technology, the drive is also compact and light. In fact, it's more compact than the My Passport Studio that offers just half of its storage space.

Originally, it was predicted that for 2.5-inch internal drives -- those housed inside portable drives like the new My Passport -- to reach 2TB, a new recording technology would be required. WD's My … Read more

Chevy adds GogoLink navigation to list of MyLink apps

Pandora has become the app most widely integrated with cars, but while customized streaming-music channels are nice, navigation is much more useful. Chevy obliges by adding the GogoLink navigation app to its MyLink connectivity system.

GogoLink will be available late this year in Chevy Sonic and Spark models equipped with the MyLink option. Including it in these cars lets Chevy offer navigation at the bottom of its model lineup.… Read more

WD My Book Thunderbolt Duo review: Good but not really a page turner

If price has been your biggest concern about a Thunderbolt storage device, and it should be, then the new My Book Thunderbolt Duo from Western Digital is worth the wait.

After teasing about it at CES 2012, WD finally released the drive, and it costs about $100 less than the 2big Thunderbolt from LaCie, which offers exactly the same storage capacities and RAID support.… Read more

WD debuts 2TB My Passport portable external hard drive

Western Digital announced late yesterday the first single-volume portable external hard drive on the market that offers 2TB of storage, 500GB more than the second-highest-capacity portable drive of its type, the GoFlex Ultraportable of Seagate.

The new drive belongs to the My Passport family which, prior to this, offered up to 1TB of storage space. Despite the doubling of the capacity, the new 2.5-inch drive remains compact, bus-powered, and portable. WD says it supports USB 3.0 and USB 2.0, and is preformatted using NTFS but can be easily reformatted for Mac OS.… Read more

WD ships Thunderbolt version of My Book external drive

After teasing about its new Thunderbolt at CES 2012 and Macworld iWorld, Western Digital finally officially announced today that it's now shipping its My Book Thunderbolt Duo dual-drive storage system.

This is the company's first Thunderbolt storage device.… Read more

Ford ushers in era of software upgradable car (video)

Very few people change the performance software on sport cars, but today Ford showed people that upgrading a car's software can be as routine as installing computer updates. The company is shipping owners of its cars with the MyFord Touch infotainment system a USB drive that changes the look and performance of the screens that access navigation, entertainment, climate control, and communications.

CNET got an exclusive look at this update when Ford's Director of Electronic Systems Engineering Jim Buczkowski stopped by to show us how it is done. After plugging in the USB drive, the car's infotainment … Read more

Ears-on with the Nakamichi My Mini Plus speaker

If you love taking your music on the road but don't want to pay a premium for a portable Bluetooth speaker, wired speakers, such as the My Mini Plus from Nakamichi, are a great option. Sure, tiny speakers won't give the highest musical fidelity, but technological advancements have made speaker drivers, amplifiers, and rechargeable batteries small enough to fit into itty-bitty enclosures.

The My Mini Plus from Japanese lifestyle audio company Nakamichi is one of the more recent portable speakers, and is shaped in a perfect cube that measures about 2 inches all around. It also comes in a choice of eight colors and weighs a bit less than the Apple iPhone 4S. … Read more