Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

I’m sorry, but I just wonder, is this entire thing just someone’s idea of “Just how far can we take this and people will think we’re serious?” I mean, the name itself. Who came up with it? You have got to be kidding me.

Okay. For those who aren’t aware...Cucku is a “Social Backup Service” that runs on Windows machines. It was available to select beta users since February of this year, and its 1.20 version just became available for all to download yesterday. You want to make all your personal files oh so safe? Well then, all you have to do according to Cucku (oh, that just makes me roll my eyes each time I type it), is back up all of your data to your friend’s computer. Oh, and in return, they back up all their work onto yours. You are “back-up buddies.” Isn’t that special? 

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Forget everything you know about your computer.  Now, take this disc and put in your DVD writable drive and whammo you’ve just backed up your iTunes collection.  Sweet right?  No clicking, no registering, no signing on.

Simplicity is everything behind ClickFree, a foolproof tool for those not intimate with storage solutions.  Selling now at places like Best Buy, ClickFree has hopes on tapping the dummie market (which means everyone not reading Gadgetell).  The concept is simple, the product is simple, the hardest part will be ensuring you have a writable DVD drive.

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Dell announced two new models for its Vostro line-up, the 13.3-inch Vostro 1310 and 15.4-inch Vostro 1510. Both the Vostro 1310 and 1510 will have a thinner and lighter slot load optical drive than their earlier versions. The notebooks will have no trialware installed and will come with 10GB of free Dell DataSafe Online Backup and a free year of Dell’s PC Tune up service. Customers will be given the option to have either Windows XP or Vista installed. For their technical goodies, both 1310 and 1510 come with Intel Core 2 Duo processors, up to 4GB memory, finger print readers and other standard Vostro notebook goodies.

Both the 1310 and 1510 are now available in Europe, the Middle East and Africa with retail prices of $749 and $599 respectively. A US release is set for May 1, while Asia Pacific and Japan will see the release on May 5. In addition to these two models, Dell also has a redesign for the 17-inch Vostro 1710 that is expected to be available in May.

Via [I4U] Product [Dell]

Polaroid and Storage Appliance Corp. are joining forces to create an external image backup device based on Polaroid’s ClickFree software. The to-be-named plug-and-save device will use a USB port to connect to a PC, search the PC for all images and instantly transfer them to the storage device without the need for software configuration. SAC’s ClickFree Backup currently works the same way, but for entire systems. Expect to see more partnered products - aka “other media verticals” - from Polaroid and SAC down the road. The release date and price have not yet been divulged. I wonder if it’ll be “instantaneous” for those still using Windows 95 and Mac OS 8. If it does find every image on your computer, you might want reconsider your folder of celebrity nip slip images.

Site [Storage Appliance Corp.] Site [Polaroid]

ZYB is a free online phone data backup service, allowing you to store, manage, share and access mobile data online. ZYB supports over 300 phones across all networks letting you:

• Backup your mobile’s contacts and calendar


• Manage your mobile’s contacts and calendar online


• Share contacts and calendar with friends and family


• Import public calendars to mobile (Google Calendar import has just been launched, whereas full two-way synchronization between ZYB and Google Calendar will be introduced later)


• Synchronize your mobile’s data with other devices and services (iPod, Outlook and others)

Unlike Yahoo Mobile and Plaxo, ZYB uses open standard and is completely free (for now—we all know good things don’t always last forever).

Keep posted for more extensive feedback on the service (or let us know if you have used it).

Read [ZYB]

The Zettabyte zBox isn’t just a networked storage device. Every piece of information you put on the drive gets sent to Amazon’s S3 storage cloud. This way if there were ever a flood, hurricane, or any other natural or unnatural disaster, you can rest easy knowing all your media is safe at the Amazon batcave. For this ease of mind you pay about a buck per gigabyte, monthly, for as long as you want to keep your data safe. It costs $50 for 30GB, and plans go all the way up to $300 for 690GB. The device itself is powered by a 266MHz PowerPC processor, and has 128MB of RAM. This is probably one of the best backup devices you can get, yet I still wonder how killer my bandwidth bill would be.

Read [Ubergizmo]

It is extremely annoying that Verizon charges you $15 to transfer over your phone book from handset to handset (besides the many other absurd charges and policies that they have). Now enter CellStik, we talked about them back here, but just recently had a chance to check out the actual product. The stick has a USB port on one end and a cellphone specific port at the other (I am using the one of the CSFMO1-00 Motorola versions for my E815). The backup process is rather simple: you plug one end into your cellphone wait for the green lights to turn on and press the backup arrow. Just like that all of your contacts are transferred onto the device for safekeeping. If you want an even more secure backup or the option to edit or enter more contacts into your phonebook all you need to do it plug the USB port into your PC to transfer over this file.

This is an extremely inexpensive (around $40 per stick) way to backup your lifelong list of friends and their phone numbers, as well as sticking one to Verizon when they go to charge you for the phonebook transfer. 

The one catch is that if you are changing cell manufacturers you need to buy 2 sticks, but the process will still work. Now only if they had a stick with interchangeable cell ports.

Click on to see more pics of the CellStik in use.

Read [CellStik]

If you are afraid of losing all the contacts stored on your mobile, try ZYB.com. ZYB is offering a new online service that allows users to store, manage, and share their mobiles contacts and calendar online. The service is free and works with almost all operators and more than 200 different phone models. It’s very simple to get started, just sign up on zyb.com, select your mobile phone model and in a matter of seconds you will receive a message (SMS) that automatically configures your mobile to your ZYB profile. Once configured, the mobile is now ready to be synchronised with ZYB. No installation of software required. After the first synchronisation the mobiles contacts and calendar can be edited from the user’s personal profile on zyb.com and all changes can be copied directly to the mobile.

ZYB allows users to store an unlimited number of contacts and calendar entries and access them online from anywhere in the world. As such ZYB also works as a backup, so if a user is unlucky and loses his mobile, all he has to do to get his data back is to sync a new mobile with his ZYB account.

So now when you drop your cellphone in the lake you don’t have to worry about your contact, you just have to figure out how to convince your wireless company that the red water dot is not actually from water and it is their fault.

[Thanks Tommy]

Does the thought scare you that you have to rely on Google to store all of your emails?  It scares me too!  That’s why we suggest backing up your Gmail account ASAP.  To do this, you’re going to need to go through a few steps to make sure that POP access is enabled and that your Outlook is properly configured.  Our friends over at Betapundit have compiled Microsoft’s instructions of how to accomplish this step-by-step.  So head over there and get yourself backed up right this very second.  (If you use Yahoo! Mail or Windows Live/Hotmail, it’s almost the same exact process)

Read [Betapundit]

It seems like Apple is ready to kick the sh!t out of Microsoft in about 45 min from now. We are set and ready to cover the 2006 Word Wide Developer’s Conference in San Francisco, CA. The man himself, Steve Jobs, will take the stage at 10:00 am PST and continue ripping on Microsoft (check out the pictures to see what we’re talking about). These past two weeks have been filled with rumors, honestly too many for us to even cover. They have included the new iPods, video iPods, metalic iPod nano’s, eliminating the shuffle, iTunes will add movies, the long awaited iPhone, Mac tablets, glossy MacBooks, a replacement for the G5 dubbed the Mac Pro, and the already confirmed Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. From the banners in the convention center we know Leopard will be the main discussion, but Jobness always has one more thing…

Click on for the live blog of the event as well as pictures from the convention center. As always you can hit Ctrl+R or F5 to reload this page.

Here is the first major assault on Windows Vista.

And here is the second...I must say, very clever.

9:35 PST - The Apple Store is now closed and everyone is walking into the main conference room. We should be rolling in about 30 min.

9:53 PST - Almost everyone is in by now, we have about another 15 min before it begins. Coldplay, The Postal Service, and U2 fill the speakers. I suggest that you Appleheads go get towels now to begin wiping up the drool that will follow.

9:59 PST - We are just about to go, give us a second while we add some more pictures.

10:00 AM PST - The crowd is getting louder as well is the music. The show hasn’t started yet but we just received this supposed leak of the Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard disc...we will find out soon if it is real or not.

10:04 AM PST - And here we go, Jobs takes the stage and the crowd goes wild. Steve tells everyone to “take the day off,”—crowd laughs. There are over 4200 registered attendees from 48 countries, largest WWDC ever. There will be tons of Mac demos and tons of people to help you out. 1"4 ratio of Apple engineers to attendees.

10:05 AM PST - Now the issues at hand...the Mac. There have been over 1.3 million Mac shipped (tiny number compared to the number of PCs shipped, but this is a Mac event so I’ll be quiet). 75% have been Intel based Macs. Both the MacBook Pro and MacBook have had great success and as expect the MacBook has lead the lineup.

“Today for the presentation, I’ve asked three colleagues to help me out. Phil Schiller, Bertrand Serlet and Scott Forstall, VP of platform experience.”

10:09 AM PST - Schiller takes the stage: Mac Pro, same case as the old G5 but with 2 optical drives, Woodcrest processors (based on Core 2 duo processors), up to 3 Ghz, 4 MB shared L2 cache, 64 bit, etc. It is 3x faster than the Xeon processors. 1.6 to 2.1 times faster than the G5 quad. There is room for 4 hard drives (up to 2 TB). 4 PCI express slots, Firewire 800, USb 2.0,graphics slot at the bottom…

There will be one main configuration: Dual 2 2.66 dual core Xeons, 1 GB RAM, 667 MHz FB-DIMM. 250GB HD. Nvidia geforce 7300GT, 256 MB and 16x Superdrive for $2499. The previously fastest model was $800 more and Dell’s closest model cost $1000 more. Starts shipping today. They built this thing from scratch in 210 days, WOW!

10:20 AM PST - Xserve is a 1 rack unit server built by Xtech. The new Xserve will be up to 3 Ghz, built on Xeons - quad performance like the Mac Pro. 5x faster than its predicesor. $3293 for a Dell, $2999 for a Xserve.

10:26 AM PST - Job is back, now lets talk dirty—Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard. 19 million users, 6 major releases with the last one being for Intel processors. Over 3000 applications run on PowerPC and Intel chips. Microsoft has been working on Vista for 5 whole years and each elements is just copying Mac OS.

10:28 AM PST - Bertrand: “Redmond start your photocopiers.” The jokes don’t stop, showing how Vista and Windows is just like OS X. MS has taken the same features and moved them around. Search boxes move from the top right to the bottom left. RSS has been in Safari and now hits IE7. iCal and Calendar all the same.

10:33 AM PST - Jobs is back on stage and tells us that some features will stay under wraps for now but here is a preview. “Money isn’t everything with R&D.” Major releases in Leopard:

1. Support for 64 bit applications - Can run 32 bit applications side-by-side with 64 bit applications


2. Time Machine - Only 26% of people backup files. Time Machine automatically backs up a music, folders, photos, everything. You change the file and it gets backed up. Of course you can restore it as well. You can backup a hard drive or just a file. If you ever rename the file or overwrite it you can now search via a time-line so you don’t have to loose it forever, hence the name Time Machine. This is great for finder and works with 3rd part apps as well. This looks really easy and a great life jacket for when you kills that important file. “Absolutely the best way to back up everything you have, store everything, and find what you need that you thought you didn’t”


3. Delivering a complete software package - Lots of new beta software will be finalized and ship with Leopard including Boot Camp (to load Windows on a Mac). Thus far 500,000 downloads. Also Front Row to access all of your media from your couch. There will be next generation versions of Front Row and Photo Booth.


4. Spaces / Virtual Desktop - It essentially creates a virtual space for clusters of apps to work together like Mail and Safari. You can drag information from one desktop to another.


5. Spotlight - One of the best features thus far in Tiger, you can search for files instantly. You will now be able to search other machines if you have permission. This includes other home computers as well as work servers.


6. Core animations - Core animation handles everything in between - color, size, opacity, etc. You can create whatever you want by zoom and flying a camera around. You can move items within their own layers.
7. Universal Access - “Mac OS X is so great that we want everyone to be able to use it. We’ve made major enhancements to Voice Over, Braille support, closed captioning support, faster, better navigation.” Text to speech sounds very good as well as the computer text. You can speed it up or slow it down.


8. Mail - New things including stationary (you can use photos to create HTML email), notes (will keep self emails out of your inbox and now in a notes box), to-do lists (set priority, alarms, any incoming message can be a To-do, any application can create these To-do’s...one system wide tracker)


9. Dashboard - Over 2,500 widgets available today.


• Developers will get Dashcode—an easy way to help the create the widgets you want and they have an itch to make. It has a CSS visual editor, RSS built in for updating content, Javascript, debugger...


• Users will now be able to turn any part of a webpage into a widget. With about 4 clicks from within Safari a user can create a Widget of a Dilbert Comic Strip, NYT best seller list, whatever you want.


10. iChat - Multiple logins, invisibility, animated icons, video recording, and tabbed chats. Photobooth effects in iChat. iChat Theatre, you can show iPhoto slideshows when talking. You can also change your background, like standing in the middle of Times Square or video background like being on a roller-coaster. Steve, “Life at apple is a roller-coaster.”

11:22 AM PST - These are the newest 10 core features of Mac OS X. They are all 64 bit. (iCal was not discussed but we hear it is moving to a multi-user platform like Google Calendar.) “We plan to get done with Leopard and ship it this coming spring. We think we’re going to get it out next spring.”

11:27 AM PST - Thats all, thanks for coming. There is no one more thing. In review we got the Mac Pro, the xServer server, and a preview of the top 10 apps in Leopard, due this spring. We are sure there will be lots more released in the near future.