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The CTR 500 Cellular Travel Router is a portable (but not battery operated) cellular router with built-in WiFi access point, Ethernet slot, USB port (for USB HSDPA/EV-DO modems including some cell phones) and PCI Express Card slot (for ExpressCard HSDPA/EV-DO modems). A nice set of features for a mere $180.00. It has cousins that are battery-backed, but without ExpressCard support.

Would make a great network infiltration device.

Technorati Tags: 2008 cell gadget Array

RDN will be posting coverage of security-oriented releases at the 2008 CES both here and on tumblr, prefixing all post titles with [CES 2008].

The fun starts with:

• Maxtor BlackArmor external storage solution(external HD with encryption; cheap, but no word on OS X, Linux or BSD compat)
• Yoggie Firestick Pico (USB hardware Linux-based firewall for secure, mobile internet access, not sure it’s going to help the 90% of mobile folks who go wireless, tho)

Technorati Tags: 2008 access CES firewall gadget security storage wireless

The Denon S-52 may be the coolest music gadget this season:

• iPod dock/charger
• 802.11 or Ethernet access to networked music libraries
• regular *and* HD Radio reception
• Denon build and sound quality

It’s a shame it costs a mortgage payment.. If anyone picks one up (preferably via the link to the left), let me know how it sounds. I’ll wait for a fell-off-a-truck sale.

You can get more info directly from Denon via their blog entry Strange, tho, that you can’t go to blog.denon.com directly and even more strange that there’s no RSS feed, but they must be doing something right it they can get people to pay $700.00 for a small device that plays music.

Technorati Tags: 2007 Entertainment gadget Array

I’ve said it before, Garmin Is Evil. Not evil in the bad, serial killer way, just evil in the enticing-folks-to-part-with-their-hard-earned-money-by-introducing-new-gadgets-with-killer-features way.

Their latest incarnations of evil are the Edge 605 and the Edge 705, two new cycling computers that have GPS capabilities. The first noticeable difference from the Edge 305 (which I own, along with the ForeRunner 305) is the gorgeous color screen reminiscent of their eTrex series. Both units are also bigger – 2” x 4.3” x 1” vs 1.75” x 3.7” x 0.9” – and have a higher resolution display – 176 x 220 vs 128 x 160. Battery life is also better – 15 hrs vs 12 hrs (and I’ve been very happy with the battery life of the 305), plus the new models sport a microSD card slot to hold map/route data (similar to the eTrex) – this would have been handy on some of my Seattle exploring rides this summer (I would up carrying both my ForeRunner 305 and eTrex.

However, you’ll want to focus your investment on the 705 since that’s where the major new mojo lies (the 605 doesn’t even work with Garmin’s heart rate and speed/cadence sensors).

The Edge 705 will interface with 3^rd-party power meters, which hardcore cyclists will appreciate since that’s the best way to accurately measure training effort. The other killer feature is the ability to share courses, workouts and saved rideswirelessly with other 705 units in range (3 meters). It will make shop rides much more efficient since you won’t need to ensure folks have cue sheets (just these expensive bike toys).

All units (even my old school 305) will work with Garmin’s forthcoming Connect service (which will be a combination of their MotionBased site plus new features).

If I manage to sell enough old tech to get one of the new models (both available in time for Christmas for ~$430.75 USD and $541.65-$709.07 USD) I’ll write up a review.

(You can review the full technical comparison here.)

Technorati Tags: 2007 Cycling Fitness gadget Garmin gps Array

I/we have a large amount of data and also have a number of computers and personal files that need to be backed up. I have been debating the best way to accommodate our storage needs for quite some time and was eager to try out LaCie’s latest offering since it had almost everything I was looking for (I prefer FW400/800 as well as USB).

The Ethernet Big Disk is a terabyte drive with gigabit Ethernet and 2 USB ports (one for interfacing with a computer as a non-networked drive, the other for expanding the storage with additional units). It supports SMB, AFP, FTP & HTTP file access over the network. I plugged it in to power, plugged it into the network switch (just 100MB) and it DHCP’d and address. I didn’t use the utilities that came with it for configuration since I mapped an IP to the MAC address and planned on using the web interface to manage it. It does have tools that work under both OS X and Windows (I didn’t look for the Linux ones yet, but will) if you need to tweak the config before using.

I setup a few basic shares and users - the admin interface is dead simple - and started copying files. On my 100MB network, it does about 10GB an hour copying from USB or FW drives through my MacBook Pro over the network. Mounting the shares was as easy as browsing my local network with OS X’s built-in browser under “Connect to Server…”.

I noticed it has something called a “media server”. it will scan selected shares for media files and add them to that “media server” automatically, so I dedicated a share for just our media files (iTunes music and movies/shows mostly) and waited for it to scan the contents. I poked around trying to find a UPnP client for OS X (since it says that is what’s needed) when I noticed that the “media” share I created showed up in iTunes!

I haven’t fully tested it across all platforms and haven’t setup the system and user backup strategy yet, but am very happy with the performance and capabilities in my single-system, single-user test. Since it does not do RAID, I will probably be getting a second unit or a separate TB plain drive and configuring some type of backup system to ensure our data is safe in the event of a hardware failure.

You can grab one of the units here: LaCie Ethernet Big Disk

Technorati Tags: 2007 gadget hard drive nas network storage Technology

One has to wonder what type of age we live in when a company can produce something like this that has the obvious sole purpose of supporting movie & music piracy.

Having said that, this would be an eco-friendly way of pirating, since you don’t need to keep a watt-eating PC up and running just to support your digital vice.

Technorati Tags: 2007 bittorrent gadget green nas piracy Technology