Technology Effect

Remember that 9mm 2.5-inch GoFlex external HDD that Seagate teased us with back at CES? You're looking at it. The company has just gone official with the newly christened GoFlex Slim, a performance-oriented, multifaceted drive that's slimmer than your mother's last smartphone. The final product will boast USB 3.0 support, a 7200RPM drive (ours was 320GB), a three-year warranty and a price tag that's still being determined. By the numbers, you're looking at a pocketable drive weighing 0.356 pounds and measuring 4.91- x 3.07- x 0.354-inches, but due to the GoFlex attachment on the bottom, you'll need the special SuperSpeed USB cable that Seagate includes in order to make contact. In our testing, it managed to transfer files at upwards of 40MB/sec when attached to a USB 3.0 system, which ain't half bad for a drive that's powered via USB and slimmer than a pencil. It'll hit US retailers on August 5th, and at just $99, you know you'll b...

For anyone grasping tightly onto an Android 1.6+ device , you’re once again being treated with yet another tasteful update for Google Maps. Naturally, Google’s highly prized mobile platform is getting in with the latest version of Google Maps – and with this one, it’s now version 5.3 . Although some people might not be all that into “checking in” to various places, like Foursqaure, Google is nonetheless attempting to get its users to get on board with this trend. Specifically, the new update features things like the ability to check in at home once you’ve set the location in Google Latitude, adding specific feedback to certain places when you rate them, and access to your very own location history dashboard. With the location dashboard, it actually breaks down the amount of time you’re at work, home, or elsewhere – thus giving you a detailed look at what you do on a weekly basis. Definitely more focused on Latitude aspects more than anything, hopefully it’ll get use...

With all the advancements in the mobile arena, many people claim that we have reached our limits. “What else is left to be done?” they ask, and the truth is, over the last few years, we have taken giant steps forward. Having said that, there is always room for more. The mobile space will continue to move forward at an increased rate, both in terms of enhancements to the technology we already have, and the introduction of new and exciting technologies. Of course, these new technologies will benefit first and foremost the end user when it comes to how they interact with their phones. There is, however, another realm in which new mobile advancements will change the world. Mobile advertising is already a booming industry and advertisers are now realizing that spending their resources on traditional marketing such as newspapers or billboards, might not be as effective as reaching audiences on their mobile devices. Mobile advertising is already advancing at an extreme pace and ne...

Like Google's web search, Twitter started off life doing one single thing and doing it very well. And, just like Google, it's kept adding subtle little enhancements along its way to becoming a mature internet tool. Today, its own famously simplistic search functionality has take a turn through the makeover booth and has emerged shinier, happier, and much smarter on the other side. No longer do you need to have, for example, the specific names of your favorite smartphone jailbreak artists, you just search for the general term and Twitter will do some actual searching for you instead of merely matching your query to usernames. You can even step up to an advanced search, where adding the ":)" and ":(" operators determines whether you'll get happy or downbeat tweets on the topic. Come to think of it, that is pretty advanced. Yo Google, where are your emoticon operators? ...

  Remember Gmail Motion, the new feature that lets you use body gestures to compose and send emails in Gmail? It was obviously an April Fools’ joke, but now it’s also real, courtesy of the folks from the Institute of Creative Technologies. The technology is jokingly dubbed SLOOW – Software Library Optimizing Obligatory Waving – and it uses a Microsoft Kinect camera to control Gmail. The same team used the technology, which is actually called Flexible Action and Articulated Skeleton Toolkit (FAAST), to play World of Warcraft using only body motions in December 2010. Amazingly enough, it works pretty much as Google had intended: You can type text into Gmail by using body gestures, and send an email by “licking” the stamp and slapping it onto an imaginary envelope. Check out the video below for a demonstration.

email share email share   Maintaining an empty Gmail inbox should be classified as a superpower. It’s just not something that most humans can do. But the day when mere mortals master the task might be getting closer. ActiveInbox , a Gmail plugin five years in the making, launched a product this week that organizes emails into manageable projects and tasks. CEO Andy Mitchell based the product on David Allen’s “ Getting Things Done ” (GTD) productivity philosophy, which aims to “transform personal overwhelm and overload into an integrated system of stress-free productivity.” Its first iterations were hence named GTDGmail and (after a letter from Google’s legal team) GTDEmail. The first ActiveInbox product is a free plugin for Firefox and Chrome that adds a to-do list and project manager to the left sidebar of Gmail. Users can add items to the list using a task bar that appears at the top of each email. They can mark e-mails as “action,” “waiting on,” or “some day” and...

  Epsilon, the world’s largest permission-based email marketing services company that serves TiVo users and many more, reported a breach in its security Friday, and the list of companies affected keeps on growing. TiVo users had a rude awakening this morning, finding out the email address they’d given to TiVo as part of their account registration had been compromised. According to SecurityWeek , Epsilon is currently disclosing even more companies whose email marketing lists had been compromised. Noticing the problem first with grocery retailer Kroger, Epsilon continues releasing company names that were affected by the breach. Here’s the list gathered so far: Kroger TiVo US Bank JPMorgan Chase Capital One Citi McKinsey & Company Ritz-Carlton Rewards Marriott Rewards New York & Company Brookstone Walgreens The College Board (added 4/3 @8:20am) Home Shopping Network (HSN)(added 4/3 @10:22am) LL Bean (added 4/3 @1:20pm) Disney Destinati...