CES - Gadgets

LAS VEGAS--If you're looking for a hard drive that can withstand fire, water submersion, being crushed by a 35,000-pound excavator, and so on, there are none better than IoSafe devices such as the IoSafe SoloPRO, which is based on a regular hard drive, or the Solo SSD, which is based on a solid-state drive.

They all have one problem, however: their physical size. The drives are generally huge and weigh tens of pounds thanks to layers of protection. This means they're not even in the vicinity of portability, which is something most of us want these days.

Well, that's now changed. The company announced today its very first portable drive that offers similar levels of mishap-resistance as the rest of its products, the IoSafe Rugged Portable external hard drive. By the way, this is the product IoSafe has been being mysterious about in the weeks leading up to CES 2011.

The Rugged Portable comes in three flavors, including aluminum HDD, aluminum SSD, and titanium SSD. The HDD version is available in capacities between 250GB and 1TB, while the SSD versions are available in capacities of either 256GB or 512GB. All versions are based on a standard 2.5-inch drive and support USB 3.0 with backward-compatibility to USB 2.0. IoSafe says the drive will support Firewire connectivity by March.

IoSafe claims that the Rugged Portable provides physical security features including:… Read more

LAS VEGAS--After being demonstrated as a concept almost two years ago at the TED conference, Sifteo cubes are gradually making their way toward becoming actual, shipping products.

Today, as the fledgling company got ready to demo the product at CES, it announced that it would soon be launching an Early Access Program that would give consumers the opportunity to buy its much-anticipated interactive cubes at a discounted price before they go on sale nationally in the fall.

Just what are Sifteo cubes? Well, that's a little difficult to explain, but they're basically a form of digital interactive tiles … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You might not remember it, but the Zip drive was arguably the most popular external storage solution during the second half of the '90s. With the initial storage capacity of 100MB (which later increased to up to 750MB), it was a perfect replacement for the floppy drive.

The Zip drive is similar to a floppy drive, with the slot just slightly larger to accommodate the thicker Zip disks.

With the rapid increase of internal hard drives' capacity, though, the Zip drive couldn't keep up, and its popularity started to wane at the turn of the century. By 2005 … Read more

LAS VEGAS--Admittedly, Vizio's Android tablet is one I didn't see coming. After spending some time with it this afternoon, I'm declaring it a happy surprise. Granted, there's no pricing, and no firm ship date, but my vaporware detectors weren't ringing on this one.

Even in its fragile state as a hand-tooled engineering sample, it's clear that this 8-inch tablet has been approached thoughtfully. The capacitive touch screen is very responsive, and the custom UI running over an unidentified version of Android behaved fluidly. Unlike most Android tablets I've tested, Vizio's tablet dispenses … Read more

With the ever-growing popularity of tablets and smartphones, more and more manufacturers are attempting to combine the best features of both types of devices. Not to be left out in the cold, dark, dank world of tablet/smartphone obscurity, on Tuesday Asus announced the Eee Pad Memo.

The Memo includes a 7-inch IPS (in-plane switching) multitouch screen and a separate media phone extender. The device can be used as a phone and includes SMS text messaging.

The tablet/smartphone hybrid comes with with a stylus and includes the Media Note text application and Painter.

Media Note allows users to draw, make handwritten notes, as well as insert external media into said notes, like images, video, and Web links.

Painter allows users to paint on the screen using using the stylus, you know, for those of you so inclined to do so.

Specs:… Read more

A short battery life is bad news for any consumer electronics device, and tablets are no different. Unless we've been recently burned, battery life is that one thing we usually take for granted when looking at device specs, but it's always there, waiting to bite us in the rear when we least expect it.

Now a 16-hour battery life isn't ideal, but it would get most of us through our day with room to spare. For its Transformer tablet, Asus claims up to 16 hours of battery life; however, this figure is based on beta hardware and … Read more

LAS VEGAS--You should by now have heard of Seagate's Momentus XT (if not, check out our review). It is the first mass-produced hybrid hard drive that offers some benefits of a solid-state drive (SSD) at a much lower cost and without the sacrifice of storage space.

The Momentus XT is called "hybrid" because it consists of a traditional platter-based hard drive and 4GB of flash memory, within one physical chassis. Now what if you want to create a hybrid package by combining an SSD and a traditional hard-disk drive (HDD)?

The answer is what Marvell announced today, … Read more

Asus has teamed with Kinect hardware maker PrimeSense to develop a device that will let you operate your PC with gestures, in the same way Microsoft's peripheral lets you control Xbox games by flailing around your living room like a nutjob.

The Wavi Xtion system comprises two Wavi boxes (below) and an Xtion camera (above), which you slap on top of your TV. The Wavi boxes wirelessly stream data received from the camera between your computer and telly. The end result is that you can surf the Web, browse your media, and stalk your friends on social networks by … Read more

Graphics chipmaker Nvidia, eager to hasten the arrival of the 3D graphics era and spur demand for new 3D hardware, today unveiled a site for content called 3DVisionLive.

At the site, people can share their own 3D photos and see more from professional photographers; watch short videos, trailers, and sports; and rate the content they see. The site supports Nvidia's 3D Vision technology and old-school anaglyph technology with the blue and red glasses.

3D is a theme at CES this year--and not for the first time. Moving the industry is a massive undertaking that involves content creation, content distribution, … Read more