GizmoScoop

Western Digital, the largest manufacturer of hard drives, will ship the industry first one terabyte hard drive.  For those of you who don’t know, one terabyte is equal to 1000GB.  That is more storage than you may ever need to digitally store everything in your lifetime, well sort of, if you don’t store movie files.  But with one terabyte on a 2.5″ mobile hard drive, laptop components’ abilities in terms of storage and speed, are becoming equivalent its desktop brethren.   Western Digital accomplished this task with the 333GB-per-platter technology, which stacked three platters on top each other in a 2.5-inch casing with the unconventional 12.5 mm form factor (height of the hard drive, conventional hard drives is  9.5mm).  Soon desktop computers will be reserved for industrial use and laptops will replace desktops in the consumer use environment.  As for pricing, it will be around $250.00.  Here is a copy of the announcement from Western Digital.

Panasonic just announced the release of  the Lumix DCM-FZ35 Camera by this September.  It includes advanced features like HD video recording with the ability to capture photos and video as a point and shoot camera. The Lumix DCM-FZ35 camera makes a great choice for a new or advanced user who wants a hybrid device that shoots high-quality still and motion images. It will feature an 18x zoom lens with equivalent focal length of 27-486mm, a 12.1 megapixel CCD sensor, and Panasonic’s Power O.I.S. optical image stabilization system.

On the back panel of the Lumix DCM-FZ35, it has a 2.7 inch LCD screen and  an electronic viewfinder. The Lumix FZ35 can record 720p HD video, which includes AVCHD Lite encoding for advanced compression of HD video with Dolby Digital audio recording. The Lumix DCM-FZ35 Camera also will come  with optical image stabilization and facial recognition.  In addition, a nice feature called “High Dynamic Mode” which can mimic HDR photography will also be in the Lumix DCM-FZ35.  So if you are in the market for an HD camcorder and a digital camera, this would be a great buy.

The HTC phone is out in the market, and it is deemed to be the champion to fight off against evil doers, well sort of.  The new HTC Hero set out to compete against the iPhone 3GS and others alike.  The HTC Hero is the third Android phone that has come out to the market so far.  The HTC Hero comes with an updated camera and a newly fashionable design compare to the HTC Touch Pro for Sprint last year.  Not only that, the HTC Hero comes with HTC Sense technology, which supposed to be intuitive and seamless user interface.  With the HTC Sense technology, content such as applications can be reach at a glance view where a selection of widgets that can be placed right on the home screen.  This feature is very useful, and comparable to creating shortcuts and place it on your desktop computer screen.  You have seen a lot lately that smartphones are trying to mimic the desktop computer environment; such as with the Palm Pre, you can run multiple applications at the same time through its deck card like feature.  The HTC Hero also has A-GPS, a digital compass and accelerometer for  instant access to local time, weather and maps when you go on a trip.

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The new Intel’s  25-M G2 SSD, code named Postville, may arrive by the end of this July.  The 320GB  X25-M G2 drives will be built on  the 34nm NAND flash .  Rumor has it that the  X25-M G2 SSD will be faster and cheaper;  you don’t see that go hand and hand much anymore these days.  Intel will offer three different capacities: 80GB, 160GB and 320GB.  The write speed of these drives will be around 90MB/s with AES 128-bit encryption, advanced NVQ features, status aggregration, and 32MB buffer to ease of the reading time.

As for pricing of the starter model – 80GB, it will be somewhere in the $270 range according to the net.  There is the server version that will be offered also, and it will be faster than the consumer version.  The prices of SSD are starting to creep down, and we would like to see in the near future that it would be near the conventional hard drive prices; 80GB for $270 is still very expensive in this economy.

It’s a bird, it’s a plane, no wait, it’s the jumbo 256GB USB thumb drive from Kingston.  Talk about Moore’s law in action, doubling the memory capacity almost every two years.  We’re pretty sure at some point in time that you might need 256GB of data storage.  Say like, when you need to copy a bunch of videos from your friend’s house or CAD drawing plans or 3D modeling project for a movie studio. At 256GB capacity, you can store over 50,000 images, 54 DVDs, or 365 CDs. The Kingston Data Traveler 300 can transfer data at a rate up to 20 MB/sec and read at 10 MB/sec.  At this speed, it is relatively slow compare to a typical 7200rpm desktop hard drive has a sustained “disk-to-buffer” data transfer rate of about 70 megabytes per second.  Too bad, this product is only available custom made in Europe and UK, and it will cost you a whopping $924 for each stick.  No thanks, we would rather stick to SSD drives with a portable enclosure.  The SSD drives not only have 10X faster transfer rate, but also cheaper at one fourth  the cost of the Kingston Data Traveler 300.  We’re guessing this is just a show model to see how much Kingston can push the technology.  Check out the full spec here Kingston Data Traveler 300.

Navigon is introducing the first professional navigation solution for the iPhone. The feature of user control allows simple and intuitive operating. The application includes the latest map material from the market leader NAVTEQ and can be used without an Internet connection at no extra charges are incurred when you need it to travel abroad. With MobileNavigator you can turn your iPhone into an equally handy and convenient route guidance system.  Check out the iPhone FAQ.

Here are the features and functions:

• 2D and 3D map displays
• Can be used in portrait and landscape format
• Precise voice announcements
• Intelligent address entry
• Reality View Pro (realistic display of motorway interchanges and exits)
• Lane Assistant Pro
• Real signpost display
• Speed Assistant with adjustable audio-visual warning
• Day and night mode for map display
• Direct access and navigation to contacts saved in the iPhone’s address book
• The latest NAVTEQ map material including more than two million (EU version) places of interest (POIs)
• Navigation is automatically resumed after an incoming phone call
• Quick access to user-defined POIs in the area and along the route
• Take Me Home function with a single click
• Automatic language selection to match the iPhone’s user language