Digital Trends
They call it Sugar on a stick. It’s the collaborative open source software originally developed for One Laptop Per Child (OLPC), the hoped-for $100 XO laptop, which actually comes in a $199. And now it’s available for all PCs, and “a great new opportunity to breathe new life into these old machines," Walter Bender, founder of Sugar Labs, told the BBC.
It can be run from a USB drive, giving older PCs a new interface and access to collaborative educational software.
Mobile operator T-Mobile, a unit of Deutche Telekom, has long been the number-four player in the U.S. wireless market, behind Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint and lagging in both services and coverage compared to the larger companies. But T-Mobile isn’t throwing in the towel, and has announced plans to significantly expand its 3G wireless network services. The company says 3G was up and running in 130 U.S. cities at the end of 2008, and the company plans to double the population of people covered by its 3G services by the end of 2009. That would mean adding 100 additional cities by the end of the year, and coverage for more than 200 million Americans.
The MedAlert bracelet is a great idea, but can only carry so much information. But a former British SAS soldier has turned an idea that he used in Afghanistan into a business.
Back then, he had details like his allergies stored on a memory stick that he sewed into his clothes, in case of injury. Now he’s selling the U Tag, a memory stick that looks like a dog tag, and which can be worn or attached like a fob to a keychain. The aluminum case sports the medical snake entwined on a staff and the word ICE (In Case of Emergency).
Asus seems to be milking its Eee brand for all its worth, announcing plans for a plethora of notebook and even desktop units…and now gaming hardware. Asus has announced the Eee Stick, a “first-of-its-kind” wireless gaming controller for PCs that translates users hand motions into onscreen movements. The PnP accessory will ship with selected models of the Eee PC and Eee Box along with an unspecified collection of games developed exclusively for the Eee Stick. We imagine those games will try to tap into the burgeoning casual gaming market, rather than being super-involving, story-driven first-person shooters.
The new Memory Stick Micro media is one-quarter the size of Memory Stick PRO Duo and is only 1.2mm thick. Since the new Memory Stick Micro is a dual-voltage media, it supports devices operating at 3.3 volts and 1.8 volts; namely your cell phone. Users will be able to insert the Memory Stick Micro into an adapter for exchanging data from the flash card to other devices. Dr. Eli Harari, president and chief executive officer of SanDisk Corporation, said, "The Memory Stick PRO format co-developed with Sony has become a highly successful product line for us due to its popularity with a wide range of consumer electronic products such as digital cameras and videogame consoles. Sony and SanDisk recognize the rapidly growing market opportunity for memory cards with multimedia mobile phones, and are joining forces to develop the ultra-small Memory Stick Micro format to foster development of extremely compact multimedia mobile phones."
Here’s something you might be interested in shaking a stick at (sorry, had to). The new Computer-On-a-Stick is a bootable USB 2.0 flash drive which the maker Bionopoly through their new consumer brand FingerGear says is the first device of its kind to contain a complete onboard operating system. The Computer-On-a-Stick is shipping now.
The Computer-On-a-Stick, FingerGear says, allows users to directly boot into its Linux-based OS from any PC with an x86 processor. Besides the operating system, the flash drive has resident the mostly Microsoft Office compatible Office Suite developed by OpenOffice.org, the Mozilla Firefox browser, PDF Viewer and Creator and the GAIM instant messaging client, which is compatible with Yahoo! and AOL’s instant messaging applications among others.
From the press release:
With direct-encoding, the MSI MEGA STICK 528 lets you rip and save your favorite CD music in MP3 format. You can also automatically save it while recording without the inconvenience of large WMV file size and long conversion time. What’s more, the new MEGA STICK 528 supports 7 dazzling backlit screens to emphasize your individuality and synchronized lyrics diplay for all karaoke lovers, so they can sing along their favorite songs anytime.
From the press release:
The latest Memory Stick offerings, which are expected to ship this spring, give SanDisk the world’s first 2GB Memory Stick PRO Duo cards. That capacity will be available in both the existing Standard line and the new SanDisk Ultra II Memory Stick PRO Duo line, which provides faster read and write speeds for devices that can utilize them.
SanDisk Ultra II Memory Stick PRO Duo
Mega Stick 527 is designed to appeal to the younger audience (as you can tell by its look). What may be the coolest feature of this player is its USB 2.0 connection which you rarely see built into a flash player of this size.
The Mega Stick 527 supports both MP3 and Windows Media Audio (WMA) formats which offer you access to the widest selection of music download services on the Internet. If you do get tired of your playlist, the Mega Stick 527 has an FM radio with 15 preset stations to keep your favorite stations readily available. You can even record from the radio or live sources such as voice dictation or lectures using the player’s built-in microphone.
Sony Electronics is providing Memory Stick PRO media users with an expanded range of enhanced media that not only offers higher capacities and are high-speed read and write capable, but are also compatible with a vast array of current Memory Stick PRO devices.
The updated Memory Stick PRO (High Speed) media features capacities of up to 2GB in the standard-size media and 1GB in the Memory Stick PRO Duo media size and are designed to support both read and write speeds of up to 80Mbps (10MB/s.). Among the fastest in the flash media industry, this higher speed will be especially beneficial for transferring data-intensive images, such as high-resolution digital photos, to and from PCs and other devices that may incorporate a high-speed parallel data transfer interface in the future.
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