Drobo’s looking to foster a rich developer platform as they’ve released a beta SDK to the Drobo Developer Community (DDC) allowing programmers the ability to create applications for both the Drobo Robot as well as the DroboShare device.

For the DroboShare, developers will be able to develop applications such as:

• UPnP/DLNA (available now!)
• iTunes Music Server
• Rsync
• FTP
• Web
• AFP
• Squeeze Center support
• Eye-Fi support

For the Drobo, some application examples include:

• A Linux version of Drobo Dashboard (available now!)
• A utility to modify the usage of LEDs on Drobo
• A utility that allows Windows to show Drobo as its actual size (available now!)

[Check it out via Crave]

Technorati Tags: Drobo, Drobo Developer Community, SDK

Swiss Army knives just aren’t the same anymore. Take for example the SwissMemory Laser 2GB device which is far more than your standard blade. This “device” features:

• Built-in directional laser with a 70 foot visible range and a 300 foot visible range in complete darkness
• 2GB flash storage capacity
• Retractable ball point pen
• Blade
• Nail file with screwdriver
• Scissors
• Key Ring

The SwissMemory Laser 2GB is available for $148 and comes with a two year warranty on electronics. Don’t you miss a simple Swiss Army knife? I wonder what happens if you drop the SwissMemory into say.. water?

[Check it out via Ubergizmo]

Technorati Tags: Swiss Army, SwissMemory Laser 2GB

Are you looking to add a Blu-ray drive to your Mac system? Check out MCE Technologies new 6X Blu-ray Internal Recordable Drive for the Apple Mac Pro and Power Mac systems. This drive supports both 25GB single layer and 50GB dual layer Blu-ray discs - achieving 6X writing speeds for 25GB discs and 4X writing speeds for 50GB discs. Other features of this drive include:

• Support for all other DVD and CD recordable media formats
• Supports LightScribe technology
• 4MB buffer
• Built-in underrun protection

Now for a bit of irony. While the drive is completely compatible with OS X, you won’t be able to watch any Blu-ray movies because OS X has no built-in support for Blu-ray movie playback as of yet. Thus - you’ll have to boot into Windows to watch Blu-ray movies. If you want to burn data though, you’ll have no problems within OS X.

The MCE Technogies 6X Blu-ray drive goes for $499 and comes with a 25GB Blu-ray BD-RE rewritable disc. For $599, you’ll get the drive along with Toast 9 Titanium + Toast BD/HD plug-in software. Finally, for $1295.00, you’ll get the drive and Adobe Premiere Pro CS3.

[Check it out via  TUAW]

Technorati Tags: MCE Technologies new 6X Blu-ray Internal Recordable Drive, Mac Pro, Power Mac, MCE Technologies

OCZ Technology announces their latest addition to their Solid State Drive product line in the form of the OCZ Core Series SATA II 2.5 inch SSDs. OCZ claims these new SSDs cost 50% less per gigabyte than other high speed offerings in the market. Features of the Core Series SATA II 2.5 inch SSDs include:

• Durable lightweight alloy housing
• 1.5 million hour meantime before failure (MTBF)
• 120-143 MB/s read speeds and 80-93 MB/s write speeds
• seek times of less than 0.35 s

The MSRP for the new line is as follows. The 32 GB will cost $169, the 64GB $259, and the 128GB $479.

Technorati Tags: OCZ Technology, Solid State Drive, Core Series SATA II 2.5 inch

What’s a great way to distribute software to the masses? Distribute it with other products. That’s what Super Talent Technology is doing with the Ubuntu Linux OS. The company announced today that for a limited time, their line of MasterDrive MX SSD’s will come with a free CD containing both the Ubuntu Desktop Edition Linux OS and OpenOffice software.

The Ubuntu CD will be included with every MasterDrive MX device shipped from July 1st till September 30th, 2008. Models in the MasterDrive MX lineup include the 15GB FTM15GK18H, 30GB FTM30GK18H, 60GB FTM60GK18H, and 120GB FTM20GK18H.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Super Talent, MasterDrive MX SSD, Ubuntu Destop Edition Linux, OpenOffice

Notebook users aren’t the only ones blessed with new Samsung storage products. Enterprise users will be happy to hear that Samsung has announced mass production of their new Spinpoint F1 RAID class 3.5 inch SATA hard drives with  1TB of storage capacities. According to Samsung, the new F1R  hard drives are ideal for enterprise storage and surveillance application needs and come with a whopping seven year limited warranty.

Features of the new Spinpoint F1R drives include:

• Uses only three platters (334 GB per platter)
• 7200RPM speed
• MTBF of 1.2 million hours
• 16 or 32 MB cache
• SATA 3.0 Gbps interface
• 175 MB/s maximum media transfer rate
• NCQ for random I/O performance
• Optimized electronics and power saving modes reduce power consumption and reduce heat dissipation
• Rotational Vibration Controller for vibration tolerance
• System-on-Chip (SOC) controller

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Samsung, Spinpoint F1 RAID, F1R, SATA HDD

Samsung unveiled two new notebook hard drives today - the world’s largest capacity laptop hard drive in the form of the Spinpoint M6 and one of the world’s fastest laptop drives in the form of Spinpoint MP2. The M6 features a whopping 500GB of storage space while the MP2 features 250GB of space and a rotational speed of 7200RPM.

Features of the Spinpoint M6 include:

• 500GB of space made of three 167GB platters
• fits industry standard 9.5 mm height
• 5400 RPM
• 8MB cache
• 3 Gbps SATA interface
• Free-Fall sensor available as an optional feature
• Flying-on-Demand head technology for recording stability over changing temperature ranges

Features of the Spinpoint MP2 include:

• 250GB of space made of two 125GB platters
• 7200RPM
• SATA II 3.0 Gbps interface
• Native Command Queuing functions
• SilentSeek and NoiseGuard technologies
• Optional Free Fall Sensor
• 16MB buffer
• Available from 80GB to 250GB capacities

Both hard drive models are shipping now with the M6 priced at $299 and the MP2 at $199.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Samsung Spinpoint MP2, Spinpoint M6, laptop hard drive

Samsung is expanding their TruDirect line of optical disk drives with the introducing of the SE-T084M/RSWD - an external slim, slot-in drive. Samsung’s TruDirect technology allows users to create DVDs through PC’s without the need for a hard drive to act as a buffer. This basically means devices connected to your PC (such as a camcorder, or a digital camera) can now directly deliver data to a DVD burner without the need for an intermediate step thereby speeding up the burn process.

Key features and specs to the Samsung TruDirect SE-T084M include the following:

• Allows fast and real-time recording from most digital devices directly to DVD
• Eliminates pre-mastering, multiplexing or hard drive buffering
• USB 2.0 buffer
• 2 MB buffer
• Measures 6.41 x 1.96 x 9.13 inches
• Reads DVD-ROM, DVD-RAM, DVD+-R, DVD+-RW, DVD+-R DL, CD-ROM, CD-R, CD-RW, CD-DA
• Writes DVD-RAM, DVD+-R, DVD+-RW, DVD+R DL, DVD-R DL, CD-R
• Supports Lightscribe
• 20X writing speeds

The Samsung TruDirect SE-T084M will be available in July for an MSRP of $149.

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Samsung TruDirect SE-T084M, DVD burner

Need a small form factor external hard drive with lots of storage space? Check out the LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra (boy.. that name is begging for jokes if you ask me). The “Little Big” comes in 400GB, 500GB, and 1TB storage capacities and features a four interfaces - eSATA, FireWire 800, FireWire 400 and USB 2.0.  Other features include built-in RAID 0, firewire bus-powered, and heat sink aluminum design. This drive is compatible with PCs and Macs as well as Apple’s Time Machine application. The 400GB model sells for $429.99 (same price as the 500GB although the 400GB is a 7200RPM drive). The 1TB drive is $699.99.

[Check it out via Tech Digest]

Technorati Tags: LaCie Little Big Disk Quadra,

Toshiba also announced the addition of a 128GB Solid State Drive into their Portege R500-S5007V notebook making it the first and lightest system to feature a 128GB SSD. Oh yes.. it also happens to the world’s thinnest notebook to come with a 7mm DVD SuperMulti drive built into it.

The R500-S5007V features the following:

• 12.1 inch widescreen transreflective LED backlit 1280 x 800 display
• As thin as 0.77 inches
• More than 8 hours of battery life
• Toshiba EasyGuard technology which includes advanced encryption, multiple level passwords, and a fingerprint reader
• Windows Vista Business
• Intel Core 2 Duo processor U7700 running at 1.3 GHz
• 2 GB RAM
• Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 950
• Intel Wireless Wi-Fi Link 4965AGN
• Intel Gigabit Ethernet
• Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR

[Check it out]

Technorati Tags: Toshiba, Portege R500, 128GB SSD