Hasta La Gadget!

If you’re looking to get in touch with some styling cues you left behind in the ’80s, or perhaps just perform a study on effective product packaging, Tobii Technology would like you to get a load of these. They’re called Tobii Glasses, a pair of eye-tracking specs that look a little less obtrusive than some others we’ve seen, but despite that are also a bit less practical. These glasses pack a VGA camera, write to a hip-mounted unit with SDHC storage, and rely on IR emitters that apparently must be scattered about the field of vision that the researcher is looking to study. Those emitters enable very accurate and reliable monitoring of where the research participant is looking, but also seem to restrict the glasses’ to use in rather contrived circumstances. So, perhaps not the best solution for seeing just how far your husband’s eyes wander on an average day, but possibly an ideal accessory for all you marketing research managers out there.

Update: We got a note from Rasmus Petersson at Tobii Technology indicating that, indeed, the glasses can be used without the IR transmitters — you just lose some automation when it comes to data aggregation at the end of the study. So, married dudes, look out if your wife buys you a new set of specs for your birthday.

Eye tracking Tobii Glasses enable ‘fully valid research’ from a bodaciously styled pair of shades originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Jun 2010 15:10:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re big fans of Eye-Fi’s wireless memory cards, which enable you to toss that card reader out the window and download all your pictures wirelessly. So far Eye-Fi is about the only player in that little niche, but Toshiba‘s looking to blow it wide open with charmingly titled “Standard Promotion Forum for Memory Cards Embedding Wireless LAN,” which could be given the equally catchy abbreviation SPFfMCEWLAN (a name that is, thankfully, subject to change). Toshiba’s forum, which also includes Singapore-based flash company Trek 2000, will look to create a standardized 8GB SDHC card with integrated 802.11b/g, able to transfer JPEG and RAW images either from camera to a server or directly to another camera. Toshiba is hoping other camera and flash manufacturers will join in the standardization fun and we certainly do too — just like we hope they move past 8GB quickly.

Continue reading Toshiba looking to standardize wireless memory cards, crash Eye-Fi’s party

Toshiba looking to standardize wireless memory cards, crash Eye-Fi’s party originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Jun 2010 07:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The AirStash is a USB card reader combined with a Wi-Fi hotspot. Its purpose in life is to stream media to other devices, which means sending movies, music and video to phones, tablets and other memory-limited gadgets.

We first saw the AirStash back in January when a prototype was shown at CES. Since then it has gotten a price ($100) and gone on sale. You might also remember that, in the meantime, Apple released a new kind of computer.

Now, the AirStash won’t help you if you are desperately waiting for the sold-out Apple Camera Connection Kit (the AirStash is similarly back-ordered), but it could be ideal for iPad-toting photographers who hate plugging things in. You just pop your SD card into the slot and then dial in from Safari. From there you can browse a list of photos, view them and save them to your photo-roll. Better, it works as a mass-storage USB device, so you could actually plug it into the iPad via the connection kit.

The only problem is that the transfer is a little clunky: there’s no way to grab all the images at once. What may work, though, is using an iPad app called ShutterSnitch (also covered in Gadget Lab, this time in May). ShutterSnitch has its own FTP server, and normally pulls in images as you take them from an Eye-Fi card or a wireless transmitter. In theory, you should be able to combine the two for some fast wireless transfers (or fast-ish: the AirStash has a 802.11b/g radio).

It’s still a little awkward. The AirStash folks really need to write an App that pulls from their dongle to make things a little easier. Otherwise, this looks like a neat photographers’ toy.

AirStash [AirStash via John Nack]

See Also:

• Airstash: A Teeny-Tiny Wi-Fi Router and Card Reader
• ShutterSnitch Beams Photos from Camera to iPad
• IPad Camera Connection Kit Sells for $187.50 on Ebay

Five years ago, stuffing a fully-functional WiFi radio into the size of a standard SD card would’ve seemed like science fiction — and actually, it kind of still does. Be that as it may, Eye-Fi is now well into its third generation of products, amazingly, and we’ve gotten a chance to check out the company’s newest top-of-the-line model that just recently started shipping, the Pro X2. Like the original Pro model before it, the Pro X2 is differentiated from its less pricey stablemates in two major ways: one, its support for RAW uploads, and two, its ability to connect to ad-hoc networks — in other words, you can wirelessly tether the card straight to your laptop rather than going through an access point. Where the Pro X2 gets the nod, though, is in what Eye-Fi calls the “X2 Engine,” a three-pack of features that includes 802.11n support, Class 6 SD performance, and a nifty feature coined Endless Memory. Let’s have a closer look at what’s changed — and for current Pro owners, whether the X2 warrants an upgrade.

Continue reading Eye-Fi Pro X2 review

Eye-Fi Pro X2 review originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 30 Apr 2010 17:35:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Let it sink in, 20 nanometers. It wasn’t that long ago when 45-nm manufacturing processes were all the rage. Now we’ve got Samsung following Toshiba with a sub-25nm flash memory announcement all its own. Samsung’s 20-nm class 32Gb (gigabit) MLC NAND is sampling now, however, for use in embedded memory solutions and SD memory cards ranging from 4GB to 64GB. In addition to increasing densities and decreasing manufacturing costs, Samsung’s 20-nm class NAND is claimed to be more reliable and 30 percent faster than the 30-nm MLC chips forming the core of its existing 8GB and higher SD cards. That translates to cheaper class 10 (20MBps read, 10MBps write) SD cards when these ship to consumers later this year — always a good thing.

Update: There’s a chance that Samsung is playing fast and loose with words here. It repeatedly says “20-nm class” without specifying the actual node size. Is it 20nm, 22nm, 27nm? We’re digging for details and will update this post when we have them.

Update 2: Samsung’s response: “Unfortunately, we are not disclosing the actual process node for our memory devices. Thank you in advance for your understanding.” Yeah, we understand: Samsung’s process node is likely larger than the 25nm threshold set by Intel and Micron.

Samsung first with 20-nm NAND Flash: cheaper, faster SD cards on the way (update) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 19 Apr 2010 03:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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