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Loading ...Update: PIN your data key
A couple days back, I wrote about a USB data key from Corsair that’s secured by a personal identification number (PIN). I promised then to turn it over to our IT squad to see if they could extract data from the key without using the pin.
Well, they’ve had at ‘er for three days now, disassembling it, poking and probing, and it seems to be watertight (though not literally, like the Survivor USB key). It seems the key draws power from a battery within, not from the USB port on a computer, and it’s soldered in. They’ve concluded they can’t get at it without destroying the key. So chalk one up for Corsair.
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(Rate This Article) Loading ...Shocking news: Voice to text that works
If you’ve been to a trade show over the last five or six years, you must have seen the demos of software that promises to convert your spoken words into characters in a word processing program. With a little bit of “training” on a single voice, these programs were often capable of rendering prose that, while both surreal and erratically spelled, bore not a passing resemblance to what you said.
So Rogers Wireless’s announcement of a voice-mail-to-text-message service powered by SpinVox left me, shall we say, sceptical. If software that is actually trained to a voice is erratic, how can you expect a machine to recognize and transcribe any old stranger’s voice that leaves you a voice mail? Read the rest of this entry »
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(Rate This Article) Loading ...PIN your data key
Every once in a while here at Cool Tools Central, an oddly shaped package arrives, completely unsolicited. After listening very carefully to ensure it isn’t ticking, we open it it. It’s like Christmas every day, but without the socks.
Our latest little surprise came from the people at Corsair, who take USB memory keys and do things to the design that make you go, “I wish I’d thought of that.” A few weeks back, Corsair sent us the Survivor, a USB key housed in an aircraft-grade aluminium tube that gave us hours of entertainment trying to disprove its claims of indestructability.
The new package contained the Flash Padlock, an ingenious idea that protects your data with a PIN number. And if it’s half as secure as the FedEx package it came in, which took two strong men, a pair of scissors and about 15 minutes to open, then it’s, well, pretty secure.
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(1 votes, average: 8 out of 10) Loading ...A handset with a stunning feature
I was getting a little jaded with the mobile device scene this week. Nothing new, nothing original, nothing revolutionary. (It says something about the industry when you expect a revolution every week.) Nokia sent along the new 6070 handset, and though I haven’t given it thorough investigation — that’ll have to wait for next week — it just seems like a well-spec’d tri-band handset.
Yawn. We’ve come to expect new features every iteration of the mobi, and after messaging, integrating video cams, calendaring, Web browsing, e-mail, well, what’s left to jam into your cell phone?
Then, devoted technophile Kathleen Sibley brought my attention to this: The Stunster. Read the rest of this entry »
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(4 votes, average: 5.25 out of 10) Loading ...iPhone apps - taking care of business?
By Joaquim P. Menezes -
So many developers are still sore that they’re not permitted to write native apps for the iPhone.
Many continue to bemoan the very limited development potential that restricts them to creating Web apps running within Safari (Apple’s Web browser included on the iPhone).
All that’s understandable.
In fact when the “no native apps” announcement was made by Apple CEO, Steve Jobs, in June, many predicted this would severely limit the usefulness of the iPhone within the enterprise.
But now some software vendors are trying to make the best of (what at first blush appeared to be) a rather shoddy deal.
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(4 votes, average: 7.5 out of 10) Loading ...All-in-one or one for each?
I’m prepping for a trip to Anaheim, Calif., for Cisco Systems’ Networkers conference. At some point I have to face my stable of gadgetry and the George Carlinesque conundrum: Where am I gonna put all this stuff? (Link here, but coarse language alert.)
What do I take and what do I leave behind? The laptop is non-negotiable; if it stays home, so do I. MP3 player an absolute necessity for that length of time on a plane – an LTJ Bukem remix is just the prescription for jangled nerves. I could take the Mio GPS loaner, with the built-in media player and PDA. Need a camera, probably the HP, because it has a nice optical zoom. But there’s a camera in the Blackberry smartphone … Read the rest of this entry »
