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Verbatim used Macworld to announce a new storage product that takes SSD technology and wraps it up in an ExpressCard compatible device. Verbatim's new ExpressCard SSD will come in sizes from 16GB to 64GB and is expected to become available before the end of February. Verbatim pitches the product as a superior solution than a USB-attached SSD thanks to the faster throughput offered by the ExpressCard interface.

The device, which is also compatible with PCs, isn't the first such component to hit the market, but Verbatim claims it will be the first to hit its advertised speeds with a read throughput of 125MB/sec and write speeds upwards of 30MB/sec. That's nothing compared to what the SATA interface offers, but certainly a suitable speed for quickly detachable storage. The price for the units will range from $100 to $300 depending on the storage capacity.

Comcast made good on its pledge to migrate its entire network management system to a new “protocol agnostic” platform by the end of 2008, according to reports, and the new rules are now fully operational in all markets. Broadband Reports has a fairly detailed summary of how the new Comcast policy works so as to slow traffic to high-bandwidth users during time of peak network congestion.

Basically the plan checks for two conditions to engage throttling: “sustained usage” of 70 percent or more of your allotted up or downstream throughput or if you are somehow identified as clogging things up for up to 15,000 subscribers attached to a given Cable Modem Termination System. Given any of these two conditions a user’s internet connection will be throttled for at least 15 minutes, or until his average bandwidth utilization rate drops below 50 percent for 15 minutes.

The new technique will not manage congestion based on what applications high-bandwidth subscribers are using. While this is certainly a more transparent approach it remains to be seen how effective it will be. In addition to the new throttling system, Comcast has also a 250GB monthly usage cap for all users.

I’ve been using Windows XP x64 for about a year now. My previous OS of choice was Windows 2000 which I really loved, I swore to never upgrade to XP and in a way I succeeded because XP x64 is really just Windows Server 2003 x64 with another name. The reason I finally upgraded was so I could access all of my new system’s 8GB of RAM, and also because I was getting tired of writing Win2K fixes for games like Bioshock and Crysis. But from the very beginning of the transition I was disappointed; XP x64, when handling large files would slow down to a crawl.

I tried in vain to look for a solution, to give you an example: I’ve got a RAID5 array with 3 x 1TB hard drives and a lone Raptor 150GB for the OS. If I played back a 1080p trailer off Apple’s site stored to my hard drive using Quicktime Alternative the video would start to skip massively if at the same time I copied a large file from the RAID5 array to my Raptor disk, or extracted a file using WinRAR in the same manner.

Of course this is not the only problem, just an easy way to reproduce it. When I extracted large files I noticed that the Task Manager did not report memory being used under its graph, however the counter for available memory under ‘Physical Memory’ would go down a whole lot, using as much as 4GB of RAM when copying files at least that large!

Read the complete entry, including a solution at the TechSpot Blog.

Video games and fitness have never really gone hand in hand, and it has only been in the past few years that game developers have recognized that there is a small (but growing) demand for games that involve physical activity. Nintendo has been one of the first to try and capitalize on this with Wii Fit, and though the benefits of it are still in the air and still arguable, there's no doubt that it's the start of something much bigger. In what can be seen as supporting evidence of that, a hospital in the UK has decided to make Wii Fit part of a rehabilitation routine for people in physical therapy.

Specifically, a hospital in England has been using Wii Fit sessions as a way to help people learn how to make use of prosthetic limbs, claiming that the balance board helps people understand how to control a replacement limb better and retain balance. This certainly seems like a unique approach to physical therapy, but one that makes sense. Hand-eye coordination improvement and video game use have gone together for a long time, according to many sources, and using video games would certainly be a more engaging way to train people.

While this may be limited to a single hospital at the moment, it wouldn't be surprising in the least to see similar endeavors all over the world. Every generation of video games has become more interactive and more engaging. Perhaps the stereotype of gamers as unfit will be dispelled because of this.

As expected Apple's marketing executive Philip Schiller took the stage today in San Francisco to introduce, among other things, a revamped 17-inch MacBook Pro sporting the new unibody structure and aesthetic that the 15-inch MacBook Pro and 13-inch MacBook gained a few months ago. It also received a slightly faster Core 2 Duo processor running at 2.66GHz and dual Nvidia GPUs.

The biggest change is the battery, which Apples says will run up to 7 hours while using discrete graphics and a whopping 8 hours while using integrated graphics. On the downside, though, to fit the larger battery in the system Apple has made it non-removable. This may turn off some potential buyers who would need to send their laptop back to Apple for a $179 replacement – although Apple estimates the battery will last five years under normal use.

The new 17-inch MacBook Pro will continue to sell starting at $2,799 and should begin shipping by the end of this month.

In a move that is sure to get a lot of attention, Apple made it clear today at Macworld that iTunes was going to see a change in strategy. Primarily, the service will be due for a DRM overhaul, which will be seen by consumers as more and more content being made available without any DRM on the songs sold. The limited selection of DRM-free music is about to be superseded by over 8 million songs, with an additional 2 million expected to be added before the end of the quarter. This is an exciting move for any iTunes user, and confirms rumors late last year that more content providers were getting ready to offer DRM-free music.

That's not the only change in store for iTunes. The service will also now have multiple pricing brackets, which apparently will be in the hands of the content providers, rather than Apple, to choose. To start there will be a lower cost 69-cent tier and a higher cost $1.29 tier. Somehow I doubt that many vendors will go with the lower price, so many might see this as just a price hike compared to their traditional 99-cent per song costs.

The biggest downside of all, though, is that to “upgrade” music already purchased, you have to pay the 30-cent difference between the original cost and the new $1.29 cost. That probably won't go over well with people who have massive media collections already, but no matter what anyone says it's a step in the right direction. Last but not least, iPhone users will be happy to know that they can now access the iTunes music store over the 3G network, not just Wi-Fi.

Microsoft has announced that 28 million Xbox 360 consoles have been sold worldwide by the end of last year, proudly declaring 2008 the “biggest year ever in Xbox history” and widening its lead over the Sony PlayStation 3 to around 8 million units. The $199 price point was really critical for success this holiday season, according to Microsoft, providing consumers with an option that was less expensive than competing products from both Sony and Nintendo.

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 is still far behind the Wii, though, which has sold an estimated 40 million units thus far. Other interesting figures revealed by Microsoft include an online community of 17 million members for Xbox Live and an 84 percent year on year increase in online consumer spending.

After a long wait, Google has finally released a version of its Picasa image editing software for Mac computers. Though still in beta, Picasa for Mac will have 'most of the core features of Picasa on Windows' according to Google, including photo organization, basic editing, slideshows, collages, movies and synchronization with Picasa Web Albums.

Picasa for Mac will import a copy of the contents of the iPhoto library and leave the original data unmodified, so you can try this tool without fear of losing or modifying their original image files. It is a nice and easy-to-use alternative to iPhoto – Apple’s own photo app that comes bundled with every new Macintosh – which you can download here.

Of course, it didn’t take long for Apple to up the ante with iPhoto ’09, which was announced today at Macworld and, besides offering the usual photo organization and editing features, introduces some nifty new options like the ability to tag people in photos and sync them with Facebook or synchronize geotagged pictures with Flickr.

Seagate already has the number one spot for desktop hard drive capacity, so the natural next step for them is to make their existing drives better. They've done that with an increase in density, announcing the first volume shipments for 3.5” drives utilizing 500GB size platters, resulting in a density of 329 Gigabits per square inch. This is first realized in the Barracuda 7200.12, which aside from the density is just like any other Barracuda drive.

Higher density leads to higher performance, requiring less effort for the drive to read large amounts of data. It also can ultimately result in lower drive prices, since less physical material is needed. And, perhaps most important, it leads to higher capacity drives. With platters of this density, 2TB hard drives could be just over the horizon. Or, perhaps just as cool, 1TB laptop hard drives.

Logitech has updated its G-series line of peripherals for gamers with the introduction of three new products – the Logitech G19 gaming keyboard, Logitech G35 surround sound headset and the new Logitech G9x laser mouse. The new G19 features a color LCD screen with a 320x240 resolution that can be used to provide information on active games and can double as a VoIP call panel, media viewer or PC performance tracker.

This is the first Mac-friendly gaming keyboard from Logitech and, in addition to the aforementioned feature, offers a dozen dedicated programmable keys that can each have three macros. The entire keyboard is backlit and should arrive in March for around $200. Next up is the Logitech G35 headset, which boasts noise cancelling technology, 7.1 surround sound and includes six voice-morphing options in case you want to sound like a cyborg or space squirrel while gaming.

Lastly there is the G9x laser mouse, a fairly minor upgrade on the popular G9 gaming mouse, which features an even faster sensor that tracks at up to 5,000DPI and can drop to as low as 200DPI. It includes two interchangeable, snap-on grips and features on-board memory, enabling users to program up to five ready-to-play profiles. The suggested price tags for the new products are $199.99, $129.99 and $99.99, for the G19, G35 and G9x respectively.

AMD is introducing a mobile platform at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas which it claims will fill a gap in the laptop market between low-cost netbook models such as the Asus Eee PC and ultra portables – with the former providing a limited PC experience, according to AMD, and the latter being too expensive. Codenamed Yukon, the new platform uses a single-core Athlon Neo processor clocked at 1.6GHz together with either an ATI Radeon HD 3450 discrete GPU or the X1250 integrated graphics.

Laptops based on the Yukon platform will be similar in size to other ultraportable laptops – some of the most prominent examples include Apple’s MacBook Air, the Lenovo X300 and the Sony Vaio TT series – but should be available for a much more affordable price tag. HP is among the first companies to announce a notebook using the Athlon Neo processor, the Pavilion dv2, which will start at $699 and top out at $899 for standard configurations.

Other specs for the single-core Athlon Neo processor include a 512KB L2 cache, Direct X 9 graphics, support for 667MHz DDR2 memory and a thermal envelope of 15 watts. A dual-core part, codenamed “Conesus,” will arrive in the second half of this year.

Best Buy offers used iPhones at lower price @ Reuters
Intel and NBC Create 'Monstrous' 3D Super Bowl Event @ Intel
Americans View 34 Percent More Online Videos @ ComScore
Even in recession, CES to have stuff worth seeing @ AP
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Five years ago in TechSpot:
iTunes DRM cracked wide open for GNU/Linux

Sling Media, the company behind the popular place shifting set top box that allows you to stream cable from your house to your computer and other devices, has announced the long-awaited iPhone version of SlingPlayer Mobile. The new app will reportedly offer similar controls to SlingPlayer Mobile for BlackBerry, including its novel ribbon interface, but also takes advantage of the iPhone’s touch screen and larger display.

Sling will be showing the iPhone version of SlingPlayer Mobile at one of its two kiosks on the Macworld Expo show floor and says the app will be submitted to Apple some time in Q1 for certification – whether or not Apple gives it the green light is another thing. Additionally, the company revealed that HD streaming will finally be coming to Mac users via a web-based version of the SlingPlayer software that will be accessible from Sling.com.

Despite of the adverse economic climate and the fact that Xobni is a free plug-in for a commercial product like Microsoft Outlook, the two-year old San Francisco based startup has another reason to celebrate the new year after receiving $7 million in Series B financing.

Personally, ever since I discovered Xobni I have never looked back and if you rely on Outlook for managing your email you shouldn't hesitate to at least give it a try (in case you didn't notice Xobni stands for "inbox" spelled backwards).

According to the developers, Xobni has been downloaded 1.5 million times since the first public release last year and they are now working with large corporations to show the benefits of the product under those environments. The company plans to release a paid version eventually that extends functionality beyond what is currently offered.

Waiting for the mobile version of Nehalem to become available before your next laptop upgrade? Well, if notebook vendors get their way you might have to keep waiting a bit longer. According to a recent report by DigiTimes, quoting Taiwanese sources, some notebook vendors have voiced hopes that Intel will consider postponing the launch of its next-generation Calpella platform until October instead of July or August as originally scheduled.

Apparently, because Centrino 2 notebooks haven't sold like hotcakes due to a souring economy and the rise of netbooks, laptop makers are asking for more time to clear up their inventories – whether or not they actively lobby the chipmaker and succeed remains to be seen. It wouldn’t be unprecedented, though, with Intel delaying its X48 chipset earlier last year amid pressure from several unnamed motherboard makers.