Only- Electronics

Filed under: Digital Cameras

As rumors go, the Canon 5D Mark II is one of the more venerable of those back-room whispers to grace these pages. Now we’ve got the Canon EOS 5D Mark II Digital Field Guide on Amazon making a duplicate appearance on the publisher’s website. You know something we don’t Ms. Charlotte K. Lowrie? Guess we’ll find out in November-ish.

[Via Photography Bay]

Read — Amazon
Read — Publisher listing

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

So news is making its way around the internets that at the Wedbush Morgan Securities Management Access Conference, Atari founder Nolan Bushnell proclaimed the end of PC gaming piracy as we know it, thanks to a “stealth encryption chip.” The magic chip he’s referring to that “will, in fact, absolutely stop piracy of gameplay”? The TPM chip — what’s been on motherboards for years, that apparently Bushnell just found out about. While the tinfoil hats in the house will likely attribute TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and other onboard crypto-chips to the eventual downfall of privacy and personal computing, to date we’ve yet to see piracy stunted or civil liberties breached because of the little bugger. FUD you later, Nolan.

[Thanks, Carl]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Storage

Uh oh, Samsung’s just announced their first 256GB SSD. Not that you needed to know anything more than that to trigger salivation, but the MLC-flash SATA II drive has speeds of 200MBps read and 160MBps sequential write. Not like we’ll be able to afford it or anything, but they’ll be available come September, with a 1.8-inch version due in Q4.

Continue reading Samsung announces crazy fast 256GB SSD, our knees buckle

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Ain’t nothing like a good robot-related publicity stunt to get the heart poundin on a Sunday. For your consideration, Panasonic’s offered up a small 7-inch robot powered by EVOLTA AA cells, which willingly participated in a nearly seven hour rope climb of more than 1,700 vertical feet of sheer Grand Canyon expanse. Fine, we get it Panasonic, EVOLTA batteries last a while — now you can stop putting adorable little robots in harm’s way to prove it.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Robots

Ain’t nothing like a good robot-related publicity stunt to get the heart poundin on a Sunday. For your consideration, Panasonic’s offered up a small 7-inch robot powered by EVOLTA AA cells, which willingly participated in a nearly seven hour rope climb of more than 1,700 vertical feet of sheer Grand Canyon expanse. Fine, we get it Panasonic, EVOLTA batteries last a while — now you can stop putting adorable little robots in harm’s way to prove it.

[Via Pink Tentacle]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Desktops, Storage

Well, doesn’t Tranquil PC seems pretty stoked about their new Atom-based Harmony home servers? Though they’re not exactly mind-blowing (to us, anyway), two new fanless models should be shipping in June: the T7-HSAi (left, with a single 3.5-inch drive or two 2.5-inch drives) and T2-WHS-A3i (right, with up to two 3.5-inch drives), both featuring Ethernet, four USB 2.0 ports, 512MB or 1GB RAM options, and running Windows Home Server. With base configs and 500GB drives, the T7 will start at £278 ($550 US), and the T2 at £299 ($590 US).

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Truth be told, we still can’t believe this is the first commercially available glow in the dark Xbox 360 chassis, but then again, glow in the dark hasn’t been remotely fashionable since Bill Clinton left office. Still, if history is beginning to repeat itself, you know you want to be first on the bandwagon, and there’s no better way to throw it back than with the XCM Glow Pearl case. As it stands, the shell isn’t quite ready to be ordered, but we’re sure it’ll be worth every penny when your BFF sees just how gnarly this thing is in the dark.

[Via technabob]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Truth be told, we still can’t believe this is the first commercially available glow in the dark Xbox 360 chassis, but then again, glow in the dark hasn’t been remotely fashionable since Bill Clinton left office. Still, if history is beginning to repeat itself, you know you want to be first on the bandwagon, and there’s no better way to throw it back than with the XCM Glow Pearl case. As it stands, the shell isn’t quite ready to be ordered, but we’re sure it’ll be worth every penny when your BFF sees just how gnarly this thing is in the dark.

[Via technabob]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Robots

Suit up, space nerds, because the Phoenix lander is mere hours away from touchdown on Mars, and NASA’s blowing this thing out. Not only will you get a live video feed from their site, but apparently Mission Control ops will be liveblogging the touchdown and ensuing alien encouners / totally boring rock digging. Festivities kick off at about 6:00pm ET, prepare to set faces to stunned.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - Phoenix mission page
Read - NASA live video feed
Read - NASA Mission Control liveblog

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Filed under: Wireless

RFID has long since been a pretty common find in your modern day hospital, but now GE and CenTrak are teaming up to make the technology even more useful in those long, winding hallways. Simply hailed as RFID “virtual walls,” the creation enables venues to “track tagged mobile medical equipment down to a portion of a single room.” By providing sub-room-level distinction, personnel can locate hardware within a monitored area as tiny as 6- x 8-feet, and although it’ll likely be used to locate cardiac defibrillators and portable ultrasound machines, patients could theoretically be tracked, too. The new tech will be shown off at the Association for the Advancement of Medical Instrumentation (AAMI) Conference in San Jose next week, though there’s no word on how soon the duo will roll this stuff out en masse.

[Via medGadget]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments