Hasta La Gadget!

The iCade Arcade Cabinet began as an April Fool’s joke in 2010, but this golden unicorn of iPad accessories has actually made it to production, showing up at our door last week. iCade creator ThinkGeek partnered with Ion to make this former imaginary gadget a reality, and so far it appears to be a hit, backordered for weeks soon after hitting the online store in April. The $100 cabinet pairs with your iPad or iPad 2 over bluetooth, bringing familiar hardware arcade controls to the Atari’s Greatest Hits app, which includes classics like Missile Command (free), and Pong, which you can download from within the free Atari app for $1. The iCade is an awesome addition to your gaming collection, but it won’t replace the hours of coin-dropping at your local arcade. Read on to find out why this accessory may become a permanent fixture on our desk.

Continue reading Ion iCade Arcade Cabinet review

Ion iCade Arcade Cabinet review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 May 2011 12:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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No, not those MiniDiscs. The ones we’re talking about, created by researchers at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf, are much, much smaller — less than 300 nanometers across. The tiny disks of magnetic material are formed using glass spheres that are themselves about 300nm in diameter. They are arranged into hexagonal shapes on top of a thin, magnetic layer and are then bombarded with argon ions. The ions wear away the magnetic layer that is not protected by the glass spheres, leaving behind tiny disks. The argon also starts to eat at the glass too, shrinking the spheres and, as they erode, chipping away at the edges of those newly formed disks on the surface. This gives them a nano beveled edge, allowing for a so-called vortex twist that enables magnetic storage of individual bits at incredibly low power. While it remains to be seen what kind of storage density can be achieved in this manner, we do know one thing for sure: you’re a real trooper if you made it through that post. Give yourself a pat on the back and three internet points.

Mini disks with slanted edges could save your data, not the music industry originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Mar 2011 08:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Name recognition? Ah, who cares? Particularly when you’re hawking an Ion 2-based media PC for €100 €200 Xtreamer — the same folks responsible for the e-TRAYz NAS — is gearing up to unveil its latest concoction at CeBIT 2011, but it looks as if most of the beans have already been spilled. It’s billed as a portable HTPC, and it can be ordered with a dual-core Atom D525 / Ion 2, up to 4GB of DDR3 memory, HDMI / DVI outputs, six USB ports, an eSATA socket, Bluetooth, WiFi, gigabit Ethernet and support for IR control. Predictably, that low (low!) price point doesn’t include an operating system, but at least that gives you the option to slap whatever you want on there. If you’re looking for a TV tuner or optical drive, you’ll need to turn to external options, but those looking for a barebones system to build on should be able to procure one in a matter of weeks. That is, if the Boxee Box doesn’t lure you in while you wait.

Update: Seems as if the final retail price is actually going to be set at €200, which simultaneously makes a lot more sense and makes us wish it weren’t true.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Xtreamer Ultra HTPC launching with Ion 2, 200 Euro price point originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 08:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Treading on the brink of being another CES crapgadget, here’s Ion Audio‘s venture into the book-digitizing business. The Book Saver promises one-second color scans of both pages of a book and comes with OCR software and the ability to export to PDF or JPEG formats. Plans aren’t quite finalized and the unit before us wasn’t functional, but a 2GB SD card is expected to be included while there’s also a USB connection to hook up straight to your PC or Mac. The big problem here is that there’s no automation for page turning, and worse yet, you’ll need to lift the entire, somewhat fragile, scanner in order to flip to the next page. That’s done using that fetching Wiimote KIRF up at the front of the device and there are a pair of cameras embedded in the bottom of the overarching plastic casing. MSRP is set at $149 and availability is coming in June at places like Barnes & Noble, Staples, and Office Depot … you know, in case you actually want one.

Ion Book Saver hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 08 Jan 2011 22:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re still struggling to find the speakers on this thing, but Life Technologies’ new Ion Personal Genome Machine does at least have one big advantage over most other iPod docks: it’s… a personal genome machine. Curiously, the company itself isn’t doesn’t seem to be talking up the iPod dock at all, but MedGadget reports that it can be used to explore a genome and check on the status of given sequencing run with either an iPhone or iPod touch. As for the device itself, while it’s still only designed for research use and “not intended for animal or human therapeutic or diagnostic use,” the company does have some pretty grand designs for the future. According to Ion Torrent founder Dr. Jonathan M. Rothberg, the company hopes to eventually do nothing short of doing for DNA sequencing what digital cameras did for photography. Head on past the break for the complete press release.

Continue reading Ion Personal Genome Machine: the DNA sequencer with an iPod dock

Ion Personal Genome Machine: the DNA sequencer with an iPod dock originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 23 Dec 2010 01:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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