Hasta La Gadget!

Deep in the bowels of the Las Vegas Convention Center last week, we found Victorinox, makers of fine folding Swiss Army knives.

They’ve made the leap into the 21st century with USB drives that form part of their knives’ complement of tools. What we didn’t expect was just how much data they’ve managed to cram into a tiny, elegant, folding package.

The Victorinox Slim is available in capacities up to 64GB. A larger model, the Slim Duo, includes two side-by-side drives for a maximum total capacity of 128GB.

Both are about as big as three or four dimes laid end to end, and fit nicely into even very cramped USB slots.

Like the Sandisk microSD card we mentioned last year, the Victorinox drives manage to cram so much data into such a tiny space by layering memory chips on top of one another inside the skinny, 1mm thick chip package that forms the heart of the drive. It’s an impressive feat of electronic engineering.

The fact that the drives have an understated Swiss Army knife design is pretty nice, too.

After an exhausting and exhilarating week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Vegas, the Gadget Lab is back with a full report on what was hot at the show.

CES 2011 saw an explosion of tablets from manufacturers big and small, and a multitude of new smartphones that connect to the new 4G cellular network.

Motorola and Research In Motion hogged the media spotlight with their tablet offerings. Due for release in the middle of this year, Motorola’s Xoom will run Honeycomb, a version of Android tailored for tablet devices. The problem was we didn’t get to try it, because Motorola isn’t done making the Xoom yet.

RIM’s BlackBerry PlayBook, on the other hand, was a real, working product. Dylan got his hands on the tablet and was very impressed.

I personally found the new Android smartphones to be the coolest part of the show, namely the Motorola Atrix 4G (even though I had some trouble dealing with Motorola). It features an Nvidia Tegra 2 dual-core processor that makes it very powerful. Even more interesting, it plugs into a dock that turns it into a desktop-like computer that you can control with a mouse and computer.

We close the podcast with a quick peek at Apple’s next operating system upgrade for the iPhone, iPad and iPod Touch: iOS 4.3. We gained access to a developer beta, and the coolest new feature is multitouch gesturing to multitask on the iPad. (Don’t forget to read our close look at iOS 4.3 beta.)

Like the show? You can also get the Gadget Lab video podcast via iTunes, or if you don’t want to be distracted by our unholy on-camera talent, check out the Gadget Lab audio podcast. Prefer RSS? You can subscribe to the Gadget Lab video or audio podcast feeds

Gadget Lab audio podcast #99

http://downloads.wired.com/podcasts/assets/gadgetlabaudio/GadgetLabAudio0099.mp3

CES isn’t all about the gadgets and the deals. Sometimes, it’s about the booth babes — and the recycling.

At the show last week, Wired.com’s video team interviewed four people for their unusual perspectives on the enormous electronics tradeshow, which brought an estimated 140,000 people to Las Vegas for a weeklong download of gadget news and wheeling and dealing.

Above, iFixit CEO Kyle Wiens points out just how wasteful a tradeshow like CES is. Not once, he says, did he see a recycling bin, and tradeshow goons even made him give up the water bottle he was trying to keep for reuse.

Besides conspicuous consumption and waste, another aspect of CES is the booth babes: Attractive, scantily-clad women hired to hawk a company’s wares. The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal looked into the business and found that, yes, there are companies you can call up if you want, say, to hire a dozen Penthouse models who can talk about gadgets.

We interviewed Wired magazine publisher Howard Mittman on the rising importance of CES to the media industry. With the proliferation of tech-based media distribution platforms like the internet and the iPad, CES is turning into a must-attend show for people in publishing now too. And business is pretty good, according to Mittman.

Finally, one of the biggest stories of the show was the comeback of Motorola, a company that many left for dead a couple years ago. Wired’s Fred Vogelstein, who was at CES working on a magazine story, talks about the Android-powered return of Moto.

Videos: Annaliza Savage (producer), John Ross (camera), Michael Lennon and Fernando Cardoso (editing)

CES 2011 might be over but we’ve still got a few gee-bees of data to get through before calling it quits. One nugget of unpublished glory is this SmartStor Zero NAS from Promise Technology. Now hold on… just because it’s a DLNA 1.5 compliant Network Attached Storage device doesn’t mean that it’s complicated to use. Hell, even iOS users can join the DLNA streaming and media transfer party even though Apple is one of only a few major manufacturers missing from the alliance. Promise has purposely dumbed down this particular 1TB or 2TB NAS to make it suitable for use in any home where a “zero configuration” storage and media streamer is the priority. That’s most households, come to think of it. Promise’s Billy Harrison gave us a walkthrough of the highlights including a live demonstration of the free (for a limited time) SmartStor Fusion Stream app running on an iPad (and soon Android and Windows Phone 7 devices). Compared to many DLNA streamers that we’ve seen this one was dead simple to use and even allowed us to upload / download music, video, and photographs to / from the SmartStor Zero. Of course, other devices that support native DLNA upload and DLNA download (like the Droid X) will work right out of the box. Fusion Stream also supports media multitasking right inside the app. But hey, don’t take our word for it, watch Bill lay down the truth after the break.

Continue reading Promise’s SmartStor Zero NAS streamer dumbs down DLNA for the iPad (hands-on)

Promise’s SmartStor Zero NAS streamer dumbs down DLNA for the iPad (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 14 Jan 2011 10:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA’s Tegra 2 was tearing it up on the CES 2011 show floor in a host of new tablets, but unbeknownst to us, Qualcomm’s long-awaited dual-core Snapdragon made a pair of cameo appearances as well. The first was in ASUS’ Eee Pad MeMO, which showed off its pressure-sensitive stylus action on the floor, and the second is in the new Qualcomm reference design you see immediately above. According to a video released on Qualcomm’s website — which you can watch after the break — Qualcomm attempted to distract tech journalists from Verizon’s press conference by giving them a sneak peek at the HTC Thunderbolt here instead. Then, we like to imagine, the company brainwashed the lot into believing the 1.2GHz MSM8660 with Adreno 220 graphics is destined for a host of tablets and phones. Of course, if that’s actually the case, we’ll gladly join the throng. Where do we sign up?

Continue reading Qualcomm unveils dual-core Snapdragon reference handset at CES 2011

Qualcomm unveils dual-core Snapdragon reference handset at CES 2011 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 13 Jan 2011 18:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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