Startup Plans To Shrink Devices With Thin Chips

Start up, Vertical Circuits, has developed a technique for packing large amounts of flash memory into a tight space by using a patented ooze that creates electrical connections between chips. The company dribbles a silver-based epoxy over their chips, reducing the need for wires or bulky packages that group chips together. “The thing that has stunned me is how much a Dell or Apple will pay for thinness,” says Bill Watkins, former chief executive of Seagate and current Vertical Circuits board member. “There’s a big difference for them between 2mm and 1mm on some of this stuff.” Expect to see the technology being used in many handheld devices over the coming months.

Source: NYTime Bits Blog

Eye-Fi Card Identifies Camera Thief

Every now and then one of these stories pops up and it always amazes or amuses me. In this case, reported by Reuters and picked up by the Globe and Mail, a New York couple who's digital camera gear went missing on vacation in Florida returned home to find the photos they had taken along with photos of two employees of the restaurant from which the camera had been left, ended up on their photo sharing website. Luckily for the rightful owners, the camera was equipped with an Eye-Fi Card who's purpose is to automatically upload pictures to a home computer or photo-sharing service as soon as the user is linked to a familiar wireless network. In this case the restaurant employees passed an unsecured wireless network (90 feet is about the range outdoors - 45 feet indoors), whose factory-installed setting matched those of the home system of the camera's owners. I'd venture to say that this would never happen to me as I promptly change my wireless settings out of the box, but in this case the camera was returned to it's proper place and the two restaurant employees found themselves looking for a new job.

Footnote: The Eye-Fi Explore comes with a geotagging and hotspot access for a year, would be thieves beware!

Cleaning your flash drive, don't try this at home!

I'm in the habit of removing things from my pockets when I get home at the end of the day. After Taekwondo class last evening I began the ritual, but something was missing.

Cash - check;
Change accumulated during the day - check;
Cell phone - check;
Keys - check;
Flash drive - Flash drive? No Flash drive!

Retrace steps... Check office, no Flash drive. Check night table, nope. Check work clothes... where's my work clothes? Check hamper, no work clothes. Check washing machine... Flash Drive!

I don't recommend that you throw your flash drive in the washer! But if you do, let it dry 24 hours or so before inserting into your usb port and if you're lucky, like I was, it will still be shiny, clean, and functioning! I have a feeling the cell phone might not have been so lucky.

Dell adding a splash of colour

At an event in New York today, Dell announced the launch of a new line of Inspiron laptops available in 8 new colours: flamingo pink, sunshine yellow, alpine white, ruby red, jet black, midnight blue, and espresso. The company also announced it's first PC to use flash memory rather than a hard-disk drive, a laptop as well, the machine comes with 32 gigabytes of data storage. In addition Dell announced that the Dimension brand will be discontinued in favour of the Inspiron name, both laptops and desktops will now be branded as Inspiron. These moves are meant to pull Dell back on top after slipping below HP as worldwide leader in PC sales.