Memory developer Kingston has launched 16 GB versions of its popular DataTraveler DT400 and DT100 USB flash drives. The DT400s ship with MigoSync software that enables users to work on multiple Windows PCs by migrating their email, browser preferences, and other desktop settings between Windows PCs, and also automatically keeps files and data synced with a predefined host machine. The DataTraveler 100s are built for simplicity: they offer storage and just the storage with no extra frills, features, or complications. Kingston is has also introduced the new DT101 flash drive, avai

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Computing

If you just had to run out to see the film version of the musical Mamma Mia!—or, perhaps, got dragged there against your will—online music service Napster hopes you were sufficiently swayed by the the Swedish disco-pop of 70s supergroup ABBA that you'll want to own their signature tunes for yourself. In fact, why stop with just the well-known hits like "Waterloo," "Dancing Queen," and "Take a Chance on Me?" Napster is offering the entire ABBA catalog in DRM-free MP3 format that'll work on everything from iPods to Zunes to computers to phones! It's OK. We know. Take a moment to catch your breath.

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

Although AOL itself has so far refused to comment, media reports have the company getting ready to retire some of its online service offerings—and more-heavily promote others—in an effort to brighten up its bottom line. The moves come as corporate parent Time Warner is shopping around for another company to take over AOL, or at least partner with it and share costs. According to a July 14 memo from AOL executive VP Kevin Conroy (no, not that Kevin Conroy) published by TechCrunch, services on the chopping bloc

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Computing

Remember the days when companies couldn't move fast enough to offer their products for sale online? For some, the tide now seems to be sweeping the other direction. Acer subsidiary Gateway announced today that it plans to abandon direct online and phone-based sales and to shift its sales and distribution model entirely to retailers, e-tailers, and other channel partners. Gateway says the shift will enable the company to simplify its business model. Gateway retailers will include Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco, NewEgg, Office Depot, OfficeMax, and—of course—Wal-mart. "Customers can rest assured that they will continue to get the award-

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Computing

In a move eerily reminiscent of MSN Music's recent decision to shut down its DRM authorization servers—only much faster—the Yahoo Music Store has alerted customers they will no longer be able to download songs or albums as of September 30, 2008. But it doesn't stop there: once Yahoo shutters the music store, it will no longer be authorizing DRM keys for music customers legitimately purchased through the store. That means after September 30, paying customers won't be able to move that music to new systems or devices in the future. Once an authorized PC or device dies, the music will die with

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

If you thought the worst that could come of scamming people on eBay was a slew of bad feedback and a boot from the site, you may want to pull down your collection of fake Beanie Babies now. One Portland man now faces four years in federal prison [PDF] as a result of a counterfeit software operation he operated through eBay. Jeremiah Mondello reportedly made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling pirated software through eBay, using 40 different fictitious identities and stolen bank account information to conceal his identity. The

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

The game Scrabulous is one of the most popular apps on Facebook, having been around for a year and a half, with a fan base of 40,000 and half a million users each day. It’s also one of the most controversial, as it seems to be very close to the game Scrabble (which is relatively new on the social networking site and boasts just 10,000 daily users and 5,000 fan on Facebook), whose rights are owned by Hasbro. Hasbro has already asked Facebook to remove Scrabulous, and now it’s filed suit against the game’s creators, Rajat Agarwalla and Jayant Agarwalla, as well as their company, for intellectual

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | World News

It was bound to happen when a country with 1.3 billion people starting wiring up: China has officially become the most population online nation, surpassing the United States for total users. According to information released by the Chinese government on Friday, the nation now hosts 253 million surfers. The country’s Internet usage has been surging upward in recent years as more and more Chinese plug in, despite strict government restrictions on the content they can access. The latest number represents a 56 percent increase from just a year ago. Internet penetration – the amount of the total population served by th

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

It’s mid-summer, and the seed that Yahoo sowed all the way back in September with its $3.5 million acquisition of Zimbra is finally starting to sprout. The company released the first publicly available version of Zimbra desktop on Thursday, an offline complement to Yahoo’s existing Webmail service. Like traditional offline clients, such as Microsoft Outlook, Zimbra Desktop offers support for both POP and IMAP mail protocols, making it possible to import Yahoo Mail,

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

Not long ago security research Dan Kaminsky revealed a flaw in the Domain Name System (DNS), although he refused to give details. Those came, somewhat inadvertently, thanks to another researcher, Halvar Flake. Now, inevitably, the first exploit code for that flaw has arrived. Luckily, it’s been created by two other researchers, HD Moore and Druid, who’ve developed an exploit module that runs that Moore’s vulnerability-testing framework, Metasploit, according to Vnunet. Kaminsky had refused to give details of the flaw until a solution had been developed, and that was followed by a massive patch rollout, so many servers are already patched ag

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Computing

That shiny new iPhone might look good and do a lot, but it could also fall victim to a phishing scam, according to security researcher Aviv Raff. CNET has reported that Raff has revealed both the mail and Safari browser apps on the iPhone could be fooled by a phishing attack. It’s possible for a hacker to send a mail that would seem to be from a trusted site – maybe a social networking or financial site – with a link to the site enclosed. Although clicking on the site will open what appears to be a genuine site, it’s spoofed, of course. iPhones 1.1.4 and 2.0 are vulnerable to the hack. Until a p

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Mobile

Do you bank online? If so, your transactions might not be as secure as you’d hoped. New research from the University of Michigan, which studied 214 US bank sites, has determined that three-quarters of them have flaws in their design that could end up compromising consumer security, according to a ZDNet report. Two common problems were putting secure login boxes on insecure pages, leaving them open to spoofed pages and rerouted pages, and also having security advice and contact information on insecure pages. Both could be addressed by using SSL (secure socket layer) protocol on the pages. Atul Prakash, a professor in the

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Computing

According to reports in The Wall Street Journal and elsewhere, the Federal Communications Commission has reached a tentative agreement to approve the merger between satellite radio operators Sirius and XM. Although terms of a deal have not been disclosed, reports have XM paying over $17 million (and Sirius another $2 million) to settle complaints about tower locations and exceeding transmission power limits for ground-based repeaters. Initially

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

Chipmaker Intel has formally announced its new Intel EP80579 Integrated Processor Family, a group of "Web savvy" system-on-a-chip designs and products that the company hopes will herald a new age of smart, Internet-enabled devices ranging from in-car infotainment to set-top boxes to industrial robotics. Formerly codenamed Tolapai, the new chips and designs represent Intel's first serious effort into the embedded and mobile systems arena (currently dominated by companies like ARM), as well as the consumer electronics and mobile Internet device (MID)

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | More Images | Lifestyle

If you’re the paranoid type or just someone who cannot afford to have his or her data stolen, the Maxtor BlackArmor external backup drive will likely bring you a large dose of piece-of-mind. Data on the drive is encrypted with a key at the hardware level using government-grade 128-bit AES encryption, so if you lose it whoever finds it will have zero chance of recovering the data. Even better, if someone steals the drive and doesn’t have the password, they can reformat the drive but the process destroys the encryption key, making all the data inaccessible even by data recovery professionals. This high level of security comes with a high price tag though, and the drive also suffers a few design drawbacks too, so you should only consider it if data security is a top priority.

Read | Permalink | Email This | User Reviews | Linking Blogs | Hard Drives & DVD Writers

If you’re the paranoid type or just someone who cannot afford to have his or her data stolen, the Maxtor BlackArmor external backup drive will likely bring you a large dose of piece-of-mind. Data on the drive is encrypted with a key at the hardware level using government-grade 128-bit AES encryption, so if you lose it whoever finds it will have zero chance of recovering the data. Even better, if someone steals the drive and doesn’t have the password, they can reformat the drive but the process destroys the encryption key, making all the data inaccessible even by data recovery professionals. This high level of security comes with a high price tag though, and the drive also suffers a few design drawbacks too, so you should only consider it if data security is a top priority.

Read | Permalink | Email This | User Reviews | Linking Blogs | Hard Drives & DVD Writers

Just when you thought manufacturers had finished carving out enough different laptop screen sizes, someone has to go and scribble another odd one onto the scale. Acer did it earlier this year with an 18.4-inch behemoth that created its own size class, and now Sony has done the same with its very own 16.4-inch laptop, which it claims is the first of its kind as well. Spanning the gap between 15.4-inch notebooks and 17-inch desktop replacements, Sony’s new FW-series notebooks will take advantage of a new screen size, but not just to add another shade of grey between big and small. The FW will actually adopt an unusual wide-screen 16:9 aspect ratio, a number that will be familiar to multimedia hounds as Hollywood’s magic

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | First Looks

If actor Eric Szmanda seems awfully comfortable in his role as a nerdy lab tech on CBS’s hit crime drama CSI, that might just be because of his real-life obsession with technology. Whether programming his own online radio station or jamming out with friends in a game of Guitar Hero, he’s never shied from his geeky side. You might even run across his naked avatar in Second Life. We recently sat down with Eric to find out more about Eric’s favorite gadgets from the show, his mishaps in gaming, and his online radio project, Erockster. Digital Trends (DT): Your character on CSI is a little bit of a geek. How close would you say that is to you in r

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | Featured Articles

I can probably cover the problems with one long sentence. Each console has unique advantages and disadvantages but no one game plays on all of them (and you often have to buy different versions of the game for each anyway). While PC Games have to deal with a missive diversity of hardware and operating systems with the result being that they typically aren’t as reliable as they need to be and fall well short of cutting edged performance. This increases substantially the cost of developing a new game and reduces the value of that game to us because if we don’t have the right platform we won’t buy it, and if it sucks on the platform we have we’ll likely not buy another. Ideally the game developers wou

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | Talk Backs

Exercise-oriented video games aren't new, but Wii Fit is certainly the most technically advanced one yet. Fun games like snowboarding, Hula Hoop, and tightrope keep it from being tedious. The ingenious Balance Board tracks your center of gravity, and although we're skeptical about its fitness evaluation criteria, a few weeks of use has noticeably improved our balance. We wish you could save your own workout routines, and we advise against taking it too seriously as a fitness tool, but overall we're impressed with Wii Fit, and the Balance Board has lots of potential as a controller.

Read | Permalink | Email This | User Reviews | Linking Blogs | Gaming & Accessories

My digital media was scattered among various drives, computers, and discs. I wanted seamless central control over all of it, so I decided to use my Sony PlayStation 3 as a media hub, with my 40-inch Samsung HDTV as a monitor. Now I can view or listen to all my photos, videos, and music via my TV screen, no matter where they are. Here’s a guide to building a digital media command center in your living room.   LEVEL 1: Connect to your home network In the PS3's main menu, navigate to Settings - Network Settings - Internet Connection, press X on your SixAxis controller and select Enabled. Then go to Internet Connection Settings (also under Network Settings), and select your network name (SS

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | Networking

It seems that only a few years ago, cameras with 5-megapixel sensors were the golden standard in digital imaging, with more resolution than some even thought necessary at the time. Since then, resolution has continued to skyrocket, prices have continued to fall, and now even a budget pocket cam might be packing a 12-megapixel sensor. Image Courtesy of Hasselblad But don't think we've hit the ceiling just yet. All that resolution may start to look inconsequential for amateurs who don't expect t

Read | Permalink | Email This | Linking Blogs | First Looks

Toshiba’s latest business notebook, the M300, won’t blow your hair back with whiz-bang features and record-shattering performance, but it’s a very solid package that covers all the basics one needs in a laptop that’s somewhere between an ultra-portable and a desktop replacement. This 14.1” notebook is tastefully appointed in a Titanium Silver finish, weighs just 5.2lbs, and has one of the best keyboards we’ve ever sampled in a notebook. Though its trialware issues and long boot time are easily remedied, its lack of security features –either biometric or facial recognition – are disappointing on a laptop aimed at business users. Overall it’s still a surprisingly well-polished machine that is extremely affordable and easy to live with.

Read | Permalink | Email This | User Reviews | Linking Blogs | Laptops

The Sprint Instinct from Samsung is one of the hottest new phones on the market, thanks to its slim profile, vibrating touchscreen, and standard headphone jack. It also has features that are now standard fare on midrange phones, like GPS, a Web browser, and a microSD slot. The Instinct's lack of built-in WiFi means prospective iPhone buyers probably won't be swayed, and its live TV streaming pales in comparison to that of the LG Voyager. But Samsung has clearly been listening to consumer complaints about the competition (and its own Glyde) and has made a reliable, satisfying handset with a stellar accessory bundle.

Read | Permalink | Email This | User Reviews | Linking Blogs | Cell Phones, PDAs