I-O Data's HDCA-UT3.0K drive offers USB 3.0 and 3TB of storage

If you've been on the hunt for the biggest, fastest hard drive around, it seems your options are expanding. I-O Data just introduced the HDCA-UT3.0K external hard drive, which offers USB 3.0 support and 3TB of storage, which, as the company notes, makes it an ideal companion for TVs with a USB recording mode. Struggling to resist the charm of its blue LED and the possibility of owning more storage than you'll ever need? Look for it in mid-May with a price of ¥26,400 ($324).

Royal wedding livestream breaks hearts, records

No frogs transformed into princes and no wicked stepmothers were vanquished -- not on camera, at least -- but today's royal wedding managed to capture the world's imagination. Thanks to partnerships with CBS, the Associated Press, UK Press Association, and Entertainment Tonight, the marriage between Prince William and Kate Middleton broke viewing records on Livestream.com, maxing out at 300,000 simultaneous viewers and a total of "at least 2 million" unique users, according to Max Haot, the site's CEO. We reached out to YouTube and Facebook to see how they did on the streaming front, but neither site has a final tally -- though a Facebook spokesperson did tell us that 6,819,072 people have commented on the wedding in the past 24 hours. We don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but we hear News Corp. has secured the rights to the Royal Divorce -- just in case.


VIA  Engadget
SOURCE  Mashable

Digi WWWOW Award

DiGi passionately believes in Internet For All. It doesn’t matter who you are, what you look like, or what your point of views are – The Internet has a place for everyone to be themselves. For the first time in Malaysia, we’re celebrating the Internet with the DiGi WWWOW Awards that is by the people and for the people. The choice is in your hands!

Vote for your favourite online movers and shakers. Think you’re one of them too? Then nominate yourself and stand a chance to win awesome prizes! Head on to WWWOW AWARDS to participate now! VOTE FOR US NOW to make Gedoubleu Tech News an even better blog!

SIM-sized satellites to lift off with Endeavour this afternoon

They won't be beaming GPS or radio signals back to Earth anytime soon, but these one-inch-square satellites could one day travel to distant planets -- without fuel. Developed over a period of three years by a team of undergraduates at Cornell University, the Sprite chips could eventually be used for communication, flying in clusters like tiny space plankton. After hitching a ride on-board the final space shuttle Endeavour mission this afternoon, the three prototype satellites will be mounted outside the International Space Station, where they'll sit for the next few years, exposed to conditions found only beyond our atmosphere. Perhaps someday we'll even see some "Spprite" KIRFs by the time China's own space station is ready to hit the launchpad in 2020.

Formula 1 cars set to go all electric in the pit lane from 2013 onwards, racing purists outraged already

Formula 1, the pinnacle of gas-powered racing, is more often at odds with the eco-conscious electric car movement than in tune with it, but here's an exception to that rule. The FIA, the sport's governing body, announced back in December of last year a move to a hybrid four-cylinder turbocharged engine, which is still on track to be introduced in the 2013 season, and Williams boss Adam Parr has now enlightened us on some of the benefits of the new power setup. Noting that future cars' kinetic energy recovery system will be four times as powerful as on current models, Parr says enough electric juice will be available to power each one-seater through its journey into and out of the pit lane. That would mean that at least for the tame, speed-restricted portions of a race, the F1 gas guzzlers you know and love will be humming along in almost perfect silence while using good old electricity. Unfortunately, it's exactly that lack of vroom vroom that old timers like Bernie Ecclestone and Ferrari chief Luca di Montezemolo are afraid of, describing the new hybrid stuff as sounding "terrible" and insisting on the sport sticking to its V8 roots. Then again, as Parr says, if you don't move with the times, the times leave you behind.


VIA  Engadget, CNET
SOURCE  Reuters

Intel touts 50Gbps interconnect by 2015, will make it work with tablets and smartphones too

Woah there, Mr. Speedy. We've barely caught up with the 10Gbps Thunderbolt interconnect, debuted in the new Macbook Pro, and now Intel's hyperactive researchers are already chattering away about something five times faster. They're promising a new interconnect, ready in four years, that will combine silicon and optical components (a technology called silicon photonics) to pump 50Gbps over distances of up to 100m. That's the sort of speed Intel predicts will be necessary to handle, say, ultra-HD 4k video being streamed between smartphones, tablets, set-top boxes and TVs. Intel insists that poor old Mr. Thunderbolt won't be forced into early retirement, but if we were him we'd be speaking to an employment lawyer right about now.


VIA  Engadget, TG Daily
SOURCE  IDG News (PC World)

White iPhone 4 thickness creates issue for case makers, owners

By now you've probably seen the latest spectacle to consume the white iPhone 4: it's thicker than the black model. The image above illustrates the point using a piece of lead from a mechanical pencil. So what, you say, in righteous indignation to a device that shipped ten months late. Well, the size difference creates a potential consumer issue since cases (at least the good ones) are manufactured against the tight tolerances supplied by Apple. We've confirmed ourselves, that an Incase slider that fits a black iPhone 4 just fine has to be forced into place on the new white model. Unfortunately, Apple's own spec page doesn't highlight the change in thickness (measured at 9.5mm by TiPb). Instead it still shows a 9.3mm depth with a tiny disclaimer stating, "Actual size and weight vary by configuration and manufacturing process." The result is confusion -- will this case fit or won't it? -- which is never a good thing for consumers.

But why is the white iPhone 4 thicker? Phil Schiller mentioned that Apple needed to add extra UV protection among other tweaks, in an attempt to reduce the "unexpected interactions" between the white cover and the internal components. As such, Apple apparently needed to sacrifice some slimness for a better functioning white phone. In the end, we have what looks to be four different size / button configurations that must be considered when purchasing a shrink-wrapped case for your white iPhone 4, black iPhone 4, white Verizon iPhone 4, or black Verizon iPhone 4. Good luck with that.


VIA  Engadget
More Coverage  Mac Rumours, TiPB

LG's MeeGo smartphone and tablet prototypes to be demonstrated next month

You may have written off MeeGo handsets after Nokia all but abandoned the OS -- LG hasn't. While the company doesn't have any "definitive plans" to release a MeeGo smartphone commercially yet, LG is willing to show off some ports of MeeGo on multiple prototypes, including tablets and smartphones, at next month's MeeGo conference in San Francisco. With any luck, LG will use the spotlight to announce its intentions, proper like, and make a MeeGo handset running Intel silicon a retail reality in 2011 .


VIA  Engadget
SOURCE  Meego Experts

Samsung Galaxy S II review

If you don't already know all about the Samsung Galaxy S II, where have you been the past two months? The successor to one of the most popular Android handsets to date carries a burden of expectation almost as sizable as its 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus screen. It promises to be thinner, lighter, and faster than the Galaxy S that preceded it, while garnishing Android 2.3.3 with a set of TouchWiz customizations that might actually enhance, rather than hinder, the user experience. As such, the Galaxy S II earns Samsung full marks for ambition, but does this slinky new smartphone live up to its interstellar hype? Continue your read here. 

SOURCE  Engadget

Ubuntu 11.04 'Natty Narwhal' brings new Unity UI, controversy to the desktop

It's April, the fourth month of the year, and that means it's time for a new Ubuntu release. (This also true of the tenth month of the year -- those Canonical folks like to keep busy.) Ubuntu 11.04, or Natty Narwhal as the kids are calling it, is here and packing some significant changes from earlier editions of the Linux distro. The most obvious being the arrival of the Unity desktop environment, which was previously relegated to netbooks. It's got integrated search, a combination launcher and taskbar, and app menus that have been moved to the top of the screen à la OS X -- basically it's harvested the best ideas from Apple and Microsoft and splashed a pretty coat of aubergine paint on it. The new UI is not without its detractors and reportedly has some stability issues, but you can always choose "Ubuntu Classic" to stick with Gnome. The update also makes Firefox 4 the default browser and replaces the Rhythmbox music manager with the sleeker and more functional Banshee. Hit up the source link to download the 700MB ISO -- it's free and you can try it without installing, so what's there to lose?


VIA  Engadget
SOURCE  Ubuntu