360 DEGREES Weblog

Lacie’s pioneering ambitious to transform the modern desktop to a contemporary spot of design, found another climax in collaborating with prolific designer Philippe Starck. Starck’s intricate design capabilities find expression in a pair of well-honed external hard drives, which are available in either a compact, mobile configuration or a desktop derivate. The drives share a functional yet appealing gray brushed aluminum enclosure, which is both protective and heat dissipating, in strong visual contrast to a polished organic front that is entitled as ’sculptural magma’. Contrary the mobile modern sculpture, the desktop configuration accompanies a touch-sensitive field in the high polished molten front enabling a one-touch application launching. Further notably is Starck’s signature slender and widened ‘t’ symbol indicating the drives activity, and both feature USB 2.0 with 480Mbits/s transfer rate whilst the mobile disc is available with 320GB and 500GB, and the desktop with 1TB and 2TB storage capacity.

The Kindle 2 is falling from $299 to $259 and they will be selling an international version with built-in AT&T SIM card for $279 on October 19. Quoth the suits:

“Kindle has revolutionized the way we purchase and read books, by making it mobile, easy and intuitive,” said Randall Stephenson, chairman and chief executive officer of AT&T. “We are excited to work with Amazon to help readers access books even faster and from significantly more places than ever before, including more than 100 countries and territories around the world through AT&T’s global wireless coverage.”

p.s. the little letters say that Int. downloads costs $1.99 per download for the GSM charges

The Microsoft Courier made its first appearance last week, but now, a leaked video shows just how the interface works. It was “produced by the same firm that collaborated with Microsoft’s Pioneer Studios and it walks through a slightly different iteration of the Courier interface.

Unlike their Vaio P laptop, whose pocketability is dubious at best, Sony’s PCM-M10 digital audio recorder is small enough to be easily stashed in your back pocket without sacrificing functionality. Audio is captured as 96 kHz/24-bit WAV files (at the maximum quality setting) or as MP3s to max out the 4GB of internal memory, but that can be expanded with microSD or Memory Stick Micro cards. It is a Sony product after all.

Other features include a built-in electret condenser stereo mic and speaker, cross-memory recording, digital pitch and key control, a digital limiter, low-cut filter and a USB connection for easily transferring recordings to your PC. It also uses standard AA batteries instead of an internal rechargeable one, and can be yours for a somewhat hefty $399.99.

Being a pioneer from the day one of the e-Book reader industry, Irex, a Philips subsidiary company, has now introduced a new device for the gentle reader abroad. The DR800SG is armed to capture the throne with unlimited 3G wireless access powered by Verizon, and HSDPA connectivity provided by Qualcomm Gobi radio, to unopposedly buy books wirelessly from the Barnes & Noble’s e-bookstore in addition to 1.140 newspapers in their original layout from Newspapers Direct. Till the 2GB built-in storage is reached, which is enough to comfortably store a private library’s content, an side-note feature is on hand. Besides aforementioned media, the new Irex also supports a few common formats such as ePub and PDF, displayed on an 8.1-inch touchscreen with advanced visibility and contrast ratio.US 399

Best Buy’s Geek Squad, the team of tech “experts” who can be relied upon to (allegedly) shoot movies of you in the shower or quickly copy your porn collection, has added another super service to its menu. Now, for “just” $1 per disk, the Geek Squadders will rip your CD collection to any of MP3, AAC, WAV, WMA, WMA-Lossless, or OGG and return the resulting files to you. On a frikkin’ DVD.

This is, of course, exactly what you can do yourself in iTunes. Even grandma can manage it as the default ripping settings are just fine. And while the addition of proper metadata and artwork is welcome, the small print shows that you’ll be nickel and dimed to death on this one.

The above mentioned DVD is part of the price, and you can also choose to have the music put onto, say, a new iPod and this transfer will incur no extra cost (good luck getting that music back onto a computer from the iPod, though, without third party software). If you choose to have the music put on your own iPod, it’ll cost $25, and if you opt for a second DVD, that will be another $45.

Further, if you want less than 100 disks ripped, you’ll need a “Geek Squad CD Ripping Card” or be charged an additional $35 for the shipping kit that will be sent to you. It almost seems like the bigwigs at Geek Squad heard the word “rip” and decided just add the word “off”. There is also some irony in the labels to the side of the hard drives and iPods that can be filled up with the music: “Free Loading”.

Thanks WIRED

Ah, convergence. Pure Digital — DAB and WiFi radio extraordinaire — has just made live a product portal for its forthcoming Sensia, which looks to be a serious leap forward in terms of features and design. For starters, this product ditches the typical retro vibe and goes for something entirely more Jetsons-esque, and while many of Pure’s past radios have had some sort of display, the 5.7-inch touchscreen (640 x 480) is certainly a first. Boasting DAB and FM tuners, this device is also equipped with an 802.11g module that lets it pull down radio streams from the web as well as stream other media from networked PCs / storage. Other specs include twin 3-inch full-range drivers, an RF remote, optional rechargeable battery and a 3.5 millimeter socket for connecting those “other sources.” Moreover, users will be able to tap into a variety of applications, from weather to news to Picasa to social networking. If all goes well, it’ll ship before the holidays for £249.99 ($406).

Thanks Engadget

Fill even the largest room with music from your iPod or iPhone with the Bose SoundDock 10 ($600). Featuring twin “Twidders” to handle the mids and highs, a hefty, rear-firing subwoofer hidden inside the 19-pound enclosure, and a simple, clean design, the SoundDock 10 also sports an interchangeable dock system, letting you switch out the included iPod/iPhone dock for a Bluetooth receiver for complete wireless control over the entertainment.

Sharp has recently developed a new technique that has allowed them to stretch the capacity of a Blu-Ray Disc to 75 and 100Gb’s.  Pretty cool eh?  Through changing the way the discs are manufactured and improvements made upon the laser, Sharp is waiting for approval from the Blu-Ray Disc Association.

In an attempt to explain the tech specs in basic jargon,  Sharp has pioneered a new laser that reads a new aluminum oxynitride film (dielectric is the old one) coating that allows the disc to have up to three and four layers instead of the current two, allowing for more storage.

During CES 2009 they showed the PowerMat.  This was the first time for wireless charging done simple.  Now Duracell is entering the market with a similar product called the myGrid SmartPower and it looks to be a little easier than that PowerMat.  What we saw of the PowerMat was that you needed to attach a sleeve to your gadget in order for the wireless charging to initiate.  From the looks of this picture it seems that the connection between your gadget and the mat is a much smaller attachment that isn’t going weigh things down as much.  I like that schematic better but I am not so sure I want anything attached to my phone or gadget during the course of my day.  No word yet on price but it will ship sometime in October.