Samson just released a great looking product, the Q3. It’s a hand held video recorder and what is particularly nice about this unit, is the huge microphone perched at the top. Now it’s easier than ever to capture that perfect moment – in both video and audio.
In addition to the well positioned microphone, the Samson Q3 also has an expansion slot via SD card for additional memory capacity. Up to 32GBs to be exact. Thus the title of the article.
The Samson Q3 also has VGA output so you can easily connect the device to your TV for instant viewing.
Use HandyShare to edit and share video on your favorite websites including YouTube, Facebook and MySpace. You can connect the video recorder to your computer via USB connection.
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30 years ago this week Sony launched the first Walkman, the TPS-L2. This product changed the world for how people listened to their personal music. The TPS-L2 was a sleek package with small footprint that allowed people to easily carry their cassette tapes and listen to their music on the go.
The TPS-L2 originally sold for $200 and was called the “Soundabout” but the company quickly turned the company brand into the Walkman by the end of that same year. Sony never looked back…well, not until the iPod came out 23 years later.
With the introduction of digital music Sony lost their step in being the lead provider of personal audio players.
Now Sony is sporting their flagship Walkman the
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MacWorld posted an article about a French website getting the MacBook Pro to boot from a SD card in the SD slot. Not a huge feat, but I think it’s an indication that laptop manufacturers, both PC and Mac, will continue going down the road of being Optical-less [if that’s a world].
If you are a MacBook Pro owner and interested in this bootability, please visit the following link: here.
The MacWorld article also mentioned a new SD format of SDXC which is based off the new Windows exFAT format for extended FAT and FAT32 sizes. I’ll dig up some research on this and report back.
Source: MacWorld.
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The TASCAM’s DP-004 Digital Pocketstudio is based on 30 years of easy-to-use cassette Portastudios, and updated with four tracks of CD-quality digital recording. Like those groundbreaking Portastudios, a row of knobs set levels and pan instead of a list of menus.
The DP-004 can record two sources at once to the included 1GB SD Card. A built-in stereo condenser microphone makes it simple to record anywhere you go, perfect for concerts, rehearsals and songwriting inspirations. A pair of 1/4″ jacks on the rear panel allow you to connect your own microphones or sources. You can even switch the inputs to guitar level for recording.
You can connect to the Pocketstudio via two 1/4″ mic line inputs, switchable guitar input, headphone line out or USB 2.0 connection.
For recording options you have four track digital multitrack recording with 44.1kHz/16-bit WAV recording. The unit records directly to SD cards with autopunch, repeat and record undo functions. You can also have a dedicated stereo mixdown track.
As for power, just a couple AA batteries will keep this going for nearly 8 hours.
Street price is right at $200 bills.
TASCAM Pocketstudio product page.
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GetUSB.info posted a review article about 16GB USB flash drives. The benchmarking and testing was done by Test Freaks. Test Freaks is a website based specifically on review and testing of everyday technology so users can make an informed decision about their technology purchases. The review of 16GB flash drives is very in-depth and detailed so depending on what you look for in a flash drive, this review will have it summed up nicely for you.
The 16GB USB review includes the following drives:
Adata Sport Series RB19 16gb
Corsair Flash Voyager
HP USB Flash Drive v125W
Imation Swivel Flash Drive
Kingston Data Traveler100
Kingston DataTraveler HyperX
Memorex Traveldrive
OCZ Diesel
OCZ Throttle
Patriot Exporter XT
PNY Attache
PQI Traveling Disk 1221
Ridata EZdrive Lightning Series
Sandisk Cruzer Micro
Super Talent Pico-C
Transcend JetFlash Elite Enabled
Verbatim Store ‘n’ Go
I wont give away the full details on the 16GB USB review – please check with Test Freaks. However, it is painfully clear that Transcend Jetflash is a horrible drive. Which is funny as they spend a good amount of marketing time and money saying they are the best performing. Transcend must be taking Ford’s marketing philosophy and advertising their weakness. “Built Ford Tough” ha – those cars are anything but tough.
To get a bit of their approach Test Freaks considers:
…diskbench is nice in that it tells us the actual times and transfer rates to complete the tasks of Copy To or Write To the USB drives, Read From and Copy From as well. I run these three tests on my USB drives because they are the most common things people are going to be doing with their USB drives. First up is testing with the 350MB .AVI Video file, lower scores are better as they are shown in seconds. The first test is for Copy To or Write To the USB drives.
I’ve heard plenty of stories about fake flash sellers on eBay. Typically we see counterfeits with crooks changing the VendorID and ProductID of an ultra cheap brand to something premium for USB sticks [say a Sony MicroVault] but the thieves are also getting into SDHC cards, SD, CF and other media types.
What is amazing, is the willingness of these crooks to make good and show their good will towards a “bad situation” while all the while sticking it to you.
I recently found a website called SOSFakeFlash which documents many of these situations.
Take a quick read – it’s interesting to see what these crooks are up to – but at the same time know this:
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Yesterday GetUSB.info reported about a USB duplication service company that can remove partitions on a USB drive. USBCopier can remove Read Only USB partition and remove CDROM USB partition through some sort of software they have. They company can also remove those partitions for large numbers of drives. I guess that makes sense if you are in the business of flash duplication.
As GetUSB mentions, there is a utility out there to remove the partition of a U3 drive, but that only works for a specific model of flash drive. We know many times, the promotional drives you get from trade shows have the partition with the companies information on there, and more often that not, it’s a CDROM partition with an autorun. The autorun gets very annoying because continually launches upon connection. It would be nice to remove the CDROM USB partition so you could use the full capacity of the drive without the autorun.
Source: GetUSB.info.
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Elan is launching an adapter to connect any USB stick to your mobile device via the microSD slot.
Elan is a UK based company who developed the “Mobidapter” for mobile power users. The connector does not require drivers and will allow any USB device to be seen by the mobile host. Further, the Mobidapter doesn’t require a PC, so important tasks like backup, sync or accessing files will be much easier.
Unfortunately, there is no word on price and expected ship date is mid June 2009.
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Western Digital the leading on-line storage manufacturer based in sunny Southern California spent $65 million earlier this week to purchase Silicon Systems, a leading supplier of solid state memory drives.
The acquisition makes WD a player in the red-hot SSD industry, and helps fill a major void in WD’s portfolio. In a statement, WD president and CEO John Coyne said the acquisition will be “modestly accretive to revenue and margins†and will help the company address a $400 million SSD market, which encompasses consumer netbooks, clients and enterprises.
This rounds out Western Digitals portfolio to include solid state storage, WD branded products, client storage, consumer storage and enterprise storage units.
Source: Ziff Davis.
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Buy.com is giving away free shipping when you buy a 4GB microSDHC card for $9.86. What a great deal!
Get the Dealz now.
Here is the company line:
microSecureDigital High-Capacity (microSDHC) is a new class of memory cards designed to enhance the performance of high-quality still and video cameras. microSDHC cards from Dane Elec Flash meet all the standards of the SD Card Association 2.0 Specification for SD cards larger than 2 GB. Although identical in size to a standard microSD card, microSDHC cards are different and are only compatible with devices designed for SDHC. Please check the Owners Manual or Users Guide to verify that your device and your card reader, if you intend to use one, are microSDHC compatible. All Dane Elec microSDHC cards include adapters for use in any miniSDHC or SDHC device, furthering their utility. In the same manner, when using either adapter, ensure that the intended device is HC compatible. All Dane Elec microSDHC cards come with a 10-year warranty.Still interested – get the GFM Dealz now!
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MacWorld posted an article about a French website getting the MacBook Pro to boot from a SD card in the SD slot. Not a huge feat, but I think it’s an indication that laptop manufacturers, both PC and Mac, will continue going down the road of being Optical-less [if that’s a world].
If you are a MacBook Pro owner and interested in this bootability, please visit the following link: here.
The MacWorld article also mentioned a new SD format of SDXC which is based off the new Windows exFAT format for extended FAT and FAT32 sizes. I’ll dig up some research on this and report back.
Source: MacWorld.
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