A FLASH DRIVE MADE OF STRONGER STUFF
The dog will have a lot more trouble eating your homework when it's stored on Sandisk's Cruzer Titanium Flash Drive, a nearly indestructible flash drive that features 2 gigabytes of memory.
Packed in a patented Liquidmetal casing that's more than twice as strong as titanium, the USB 2.0 drive's retractable cap will never get lost. Included software automatically encrypts data. True nerds can even install a bootable Linux operating system on the drive. A 1GB version also is available.
DIGITAL MARRIAGE OF AUDIO RECORDER AND MP3 PLAYER
Sandisk's new Sansa e200 MP3 players do more than play music. They can capture it with a built-in FM tuner or record audio through a tiny embedded microphone. The one-button recording option is ideal for a lecture or for taking case notes without the need to fumble with an external microphone. Sounds can be played back through headphones or transferred to a computer.
But the devices are designed primarily for playing and storing music, which they do nicely using menus and controls familiar to any iPod user. Songs can be arranged by artists, albums, songs, genres and playlists, and pictures or movies are shown on a crisp but tiny 1.8-inch screen. Other features include a microSD port for additional expansion and a removable lithium ion battery that offers 20 hours of playback time and recharges through a USB port.
Content is managed with Windows Media Player, and the file transfer software works with Microsoft PlaysForSure and RealNetworks Rhapsody subscription services. The players (sold at www.sandisk.com) are available with 2GB, 4GB or 6GB of storage.
FOR GROWING COMPUTER FILES, A TINY PLACE TO STAY
With digital music, movies and photos, file sizes have become much larger since the days when text documents were the main items traded from PC to PC. But while files may be bigger, the portable drives that make it easy to store, swap and share them are becoming smaller — and Sony's new Micro Vault Tiny USB drives are some of the most minuscule yet.
Roughly an inch by half an inch and about as thick as a quarter, the Micro Vault Tiny lives up to its name in physical dimensions. The drive includes a program called Virtual Expander that compresses and decompresses files to allow up to three times as much data as usual to be put on the device.
The Micro Vault Tiny comes in four capacities, each with its own color: 256 megabytes in orange, 512 megabytes in violet, 1GB in blue and 2GB in green. A 4GB model in purple is due out soon.
The Tiny drives, available at www.sonystyle.com, work with most Windows and Macintosh systems and use either USB 2.0 or USB 1.1 connections.
WANT EVEN MORE RESOLUTION? TRY THIS CAMERA ON FOR SIZE
The slim Photosmart R967 from Hewlett-Packard is the company's latest entrant in the great megapixel race. This point-and-shoot camera has a 3x optical zoom and a large 3-inch screen to frame some extremely high-resolution 10-megapixel shots.
The R967 can also take video and comes with 32 megabytes of memory built in — although that won't hold very many full-resolution pictures. The camera relies on SD cards, not included, for increased storage.
The R967 also includes an anti-shake feature for reducing blur. It weighs about 283g and is less than 2.5cm thick. The camera is available through online retailers for US$449 and comes with software for both Windows and Mac.
You can create panoramic pictures out of up to five individual photos using a built-in merge function, and there is a macro mode for close-ups.
Amateur photographers may not need 10-megapixel images, but these high-resolution snaps scale quite easily into poster-size prints and other photographic indulgences.
SOME MUSIC FOR THE ASPIRING BLUE MAN GROUP OF ONE
The Blue Man Group, a musical melange of more than 60 performers known for their odd stage manner, interesting and unique gear and glossy blue visages, is offering two musical toys.
The Blue Man Group Instruments are a mixture of high and low tech. The Keyboard Experience, for example, has a set of six percussion tubes, a 37-key keyboard and a dock for an MP3 player. The keyboard has six sound modes including guitar, piano and Blue Man drums (which sound like a cross between a twanging rubber band and a taiko drum). The keyboard can also record and store musical creations.
The Percussion Tubes toy has eight motion-sensitive tubes. Tapping the tubes or waving a hand or other object over the opening produces a variety of sounds, like synthesized steel drum and marimba.
You can see the toys in action at www.bluemangroupinstruments.com. Batteries and blue face paint are not included.
As mega K-pop group BTS returns to the stage after a hiatus of more than three years, one major market is conspicuously missing from its 12-month world tour: China. The omission of one of the group’s biggest fan bases comes as no surprise. In fact, just the opposite would have been huge news. China has blocked most South Korean entertainment since 2016 under an unofficial ban that also restricts movies and the country’s popular TV dramas. For some Chinese, that means flying to Seoul to see their favorite groups perform — as many were expected to do for three shows opening
A recent report from the Environmental Management Administration of the Ministry of Environment highlights a perennial problem: illegal dumping of construction waste. In Taoyuan’s Yangmei District (楊梅) and Hsinchu’s Longtan District (龍潭) criminals leased 10,000 square meters of farmland, saying they were going to engage in horticulture. They then accepted between 40,000 and 50,000 cubic meters of construction waste from sites in northern Taiwan, charging less than the going rate for disposal, and dumped the waste concrete, tile, metal and glass onto the leased land. Taoyuan District prosecutors charged 33 individuals from seven companies with numerous violations of the law. This
Taiwan’s semiconductor industry consumes electricity at rates that would strain most national grids. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC) alone accounted for more than 9 percent, or 2,590 megawatts (MW), of the nation’s power demand last year. The factories that produce chips for the world’s phones and servers run around the clock. They cannot tolerate blackouts. Yet Taiwan imports 97 percent of its energy, with liquefied natural gas reserves measured in days. Underground, Taiwan has options. Studies from National Taiwan University estimate recoverable geothermal resources at more than 33,000 MW. Current installed capacity stands below 10 MW. OBSTACLES Despite Taiwan’s significant geothermal potential, the
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chair Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) returned from her trip to meet People’s Republic of China (PRC) dictator Xi Jinping (習近平) bearing “a gift” for the people of Taiwan: 10 measures the PRC proposed to “facilitate the peaceful development of cross-strait relations.” “China on Sunday unveiled 10 new incentive measures for Taiwan,” wrote Reuters, wrongly. The PRC’s longstanding habit with Taiwan relations is to repackage already extant or once-existing policies and declare that they are “new.” The list forwarded by Cheng reflects that practice. NEW MEASURES? Note the first item: establishing regular communication mechanisms between the Chinese Communist Party
RSS