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At CES yesterday, Memorex announced the Ultra Travel Drive, a 2.5-inch portable hard drive with interchangeable color faceplates (it ships in a metallic-charcoal faceplate). It comes in three capacities--80GB, 120GB, and 160GB--and each drive ships with two extra faceplates that you can swap out. The 80GB drive comes with Sagebrush Green and Desert Orange, the 120GB comes with Ocean Blue and Fire Red, and the 160GB comes with steel-metallic and Arctic White glossy faceplates.

The curved drive fits comfortably in your hand, and the rubberized sides let you get a safe grip on it. A tiny LED on the … Read more

You might remember how last year AMD followed Intel's Viiv platform with its own Live Project. Both monikers were essentially lists of compatible hardware and software designed to bolster multimedia computing experience (the way Centrino did for wireless networking).

After a year of not much action on the Live front, AMD has just announced the laptop version of the spec, called (you guessed it) the AMD Live Notebook PC. The company calls it, "an easy-to-use mobile media center designed to help consumers simplify and enjoy their digital lifestyle."

What makes a laptop eligible for the AMD Live … Read more

At CES 2007, HP announced its MediaSmart server, a centralized media and data storage and server solution for the home. It has four drive bays and the unit will ship with only one or two SATA drives, allowing you to fill the remaining bays with your choice of SATA I or II drives. Additionally, it sports four USB 2.0 ports so you can add USB hard drives for expanded capacity. The total supported capacity is 6TB. You can also use the USB ports and built-in print server to network up to four USB printers. A Gigabit Ethernet port lets … Read more

Yahoo addicts can now get a suite of their favorite applications on select Nokia and Motorola phones with Yahoo Go for Mobile 2.0. The upgraded service offers a selection of new and improved services, including instant messaging, photo sharing, maps, and directory information, and a reinvented mobile search called OneSearch.

Motorola will debut the service on its Motorola Razr Maxx and the Razr V3xx. Both are high-end Razr models introduced in the last year. Nokia is taking a wider approach by adding Go for Mobile 2.0 to its line of series 40 devices, including the Nokia 6103, 6131, … Read more

After the huge launch of the PlayStation 3 in November, Sony seems to be relaxing on the gaming front. In a press conference last night, the company announced that it sold a million PS3s. Unfortunately, that's about all the news Sony had.

The Sony booth at CES had a nice handful of PS3s set up, but they were playing the same selection of Resistance: Fall of Man and whatever sports and racing games they had on hand. Sony did have a playable demo of the dragon-riding game Lair set up, but that was the most interesting thing at the … Read more

The name might be crude, but the product is pretty clever. Guitammer's ButtKicker Gamer is a vibrating bass module that puts some thump into your gameplay. The surprisingly heavy ButtKicker device clamps onto your chair, and the included amplifier runs between the ButtKicker and your audio input. When you start playing, the ButtKicker starts jumping, making your seat rock and rumble with every shot and explosion.

Rumble seats are hardly new for gaming; bass-rocking gaming chairs from companies such as Pyramat and D-Box can be had by anyone willing to shell out the cash. They're usually bulky chairs … Read more

Ambient light is the enemy of video fidelity for any display, because external light that hits the screen dilutes the light produced by the display. Plasma HDTVs are more susceptible to the wiles of bright room light because their screens are essentially big, reflective panes of glass, unlike the less-reflective plastic screens of flat-panel LCD TVs and rear-projection HDTVs. Last year, Samsung tried to address that issue with FilterBright, a technology it says helps reduce glare and otherwise improves the image quality in bright light. In my tests last year of models like the HP-S5053, I couldn't detect much … Read more

If Steve Jobs pulls the trigger today at Macworld on Apple's long-rumored new video iPod, said to feature a color touch screen covering its entire front surface for PMP-like video viewing, DLO will be ready with a new TransDock car FM transmitter/charger cradle combo.

This new TransDock, which jacks into a cigarette lighter, has a cradle that completely exposes the front of the video iPod, on the current or the rumored model. The cradle also swivels 90 degrees horizontally for viewing wide-screen video on this maybe-maybe not iPod. Versions are available in black or white.

Even if Jobs … Read more

HP is one of the first vendors to announce a laptop specifically built to run Windows Vista. The HP Pavilion tx1000us is what we call a convertible tablet PC, a standard-looking laptop whose screen swivels 180 degrees and folds down over the keyboard. It has a 12.1-inch screen and falls into the thin-and-light category of laptops.

The tx1000us takes advantage of several of the new tablet features in Windows Vista, including Pen Flicks (quick shortcuts you activate with a swipe of the stylus) and enhanced support for touch-sensitive screens--the kind that work with any pointing device or even your … Read more