Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

So, Junior just got his license and you’re worried about how fast he’s going to be ripping around the neighborhood, huh?  Well, Ford just may have the solution you’re looking for.  They’re coming out with the new MyKey and it is aimed to help parents both monitor and limit certain areas of their children’s driving habits.

With MyKey, drivers won’t be able to go over 80 miles an hour, and a warning chime will go off at 45, 55 and 65 miles per hour.  Kids won’t be able to turn on the radio until they are nice and safe and secure by fastening their seat belt.  Even once they can turn the radio on, there isn’t much danger of them blasting it, since the volume is limited to 44 percent of the maximum allowed. 

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Held just this past week in San Jose was the Plug-In 2008 conference; where automakers, utilities, battery manufacturers, and academics, along with plug-in advocates from all over, were all there with one goal in mind: how to figure out how to get these cars on the road in big numbers. They realize that this change isn’t going to be simple, whether needed in many ways or not. The automakers have to figure out a way to market the technology to consumers who for the most part know nothing about it. On the part of utilities, they have to develop the infrastructure that would enable millions of people without a garage to plug in their cars. And it’s up to all of them to figure out a way to make the vehicles affordable. Joe Consumer probably isn’t going to buy it if it costs as much as the Batmobile, even if it does save him on gas.

Some of the main issues tackled at the conference addressed just these concerns. First and foremost obviously being, that you have the advocates claiming how the electric cars will save the planet. Hurrah! While most of us by this point are kind of selfishly just wanting something that doesn’t cost so darn much every time we go to the gas station. Hey, this way we can save the earth and our stomachs. Win/win.

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Iomega’s eGo external drive line has now hit 1 Terabyte of storage.  Entitled the “Super” eGo drive, the portable storage device contains one single 1 terabyte drive.  The drive’s physical size is also increased, as it is a 3.5 inch drive, as opposed to the normal 2.5 inch size portable hard drives have.  As a reference point, this thing can hold 1.5 thousand hours of video.  It comes in three colors: ruby red, midnight blue, or jet black.  However, the Super eGo only interfaces through USB 2.0, and with a drive of that size I would’ve liked to see a FireWire interface. You can pick one up now for $270.

Via [Gizmodo]

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It’s very seldom that we hear about Sony coming out with a flash drive product, although we know that it certainly has some data storage devices in its arsenal but these mostly belong to its proprietary Sony Memory stick duo series which are used for most Sony Ericsson mobile phone’s and the PSP. So, it is refreshing to hear about this new USB flash drive which belongs to Sony’s Microvault product line. The flash drive we’re talking about is the USM-LX high-speed USB flash drive.

The USM-LX gives a maximum read-out speed of 31Mb/s which is the USB flash drive standard, is simply fast enough to handle large files - that is store, transfer and share just about anything. Sony has also made some stride in improving this flash drive’s design by using what it calls a “Click mechanism”. This eliminates the need for a USB cap, since all you have to do to connect the USB to your machine is to slide out the flash drive’s body to reveal the USB connector. This adds some convenience to users as it makes the flash drive shorter when not in use.

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Kingston has introduced one of its most secured data storage device yet with the new DataTraveler BlackBox (DTBB). We’re finally talking about real data security here with a 256-bit hardware-based AES encryption that automatically locks itself after ten unsuccessful password attempts. Even the US Government was excited about the DataTraveler BlackBox, so much so, that it has given it an FIPS certification. FIPS certification is given to data devices which have passed the Federal standard for data management and security.

Going back to the USB drive itself, we learned that it comes in 2GB, 4GB or 8GB storage capacities and retail for $165, $242, and $424 respectively. While the DataTraveler BlackBox is more expensive than your standard USB flash drive, its not a bad price to pay for ensuring that your personal data security will not be breached.

Read [DTBB Demo] Via [Crunch Gear]

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