Malaysia

SAMSUNG not only churns out amazingly thin TVs that deliver impressive visuals but also dabbles in flash memory pretty well. Its seven new models of SD and microSD cards are part of the High Speed or Plus Extreme Speed series. Regardless of the series, both offer up to 24MBps read speed on cards with at least 4GB capacity.

Such speeds mean you can send 1GB worth of images or videos from one device to the computer in under a minute, or 42 seconds to be exact.

The cards are durable, too — waterproof, shockproof and magnet-proof. You can leave them underwater for up to 24 hours, which is great for those who tend to forget checking the pockets of their pants before sending it to the laundry.

Both series come in a brushed metal design.

www.samsung.com

Software matters

THE LG Optimus 3-D was pretty much the attention-grabbing smartphone last year as it offered glasses-free 3-D. While the hardware was solid, the same couldn’t be said of its software.
LG is hoping to fix that with the Optimus 3-D Cube. Also a glasses-free 3-D smartphone, it sports a 4.3-inch IPS display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor and a 5-megapixel camera that not only shoots standard photos and videos but also in 3-D. You can preview the 3-D photos and videos on the spot without having to hook the device up to a large-screen TV back home.

If you intend to use the camera often, the 16GB internal memory may not be sufficient, so be sure to have backup solutions to store your ever-growing collection of 3-D videos and photos.

The phone ships with Android 2.3 Gingerbread out of the box. It would have been nice if it had been updated to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
No word on pricing or local availability at press time.

www.lgnewsroom.co.kr

Your crooning glory

ARE you into karaoke? Well, the USB Karaoke Microphone lets you sing your heart out, and more. You sing into what looks like a plunger. The sound is then sent to a microphone that’s plugged into an iOS-powered device such as the iPhone, iPod touch or iPad, which works in tandem with a Sega karaoke app.

Once your singing session is complete, the software will “stitch” the sound into a minus-one track. You will be able to listen to what you have just sung complete with music to determine if any adjustment needs to be made to your pitch for that perfect cover.

I don’t think you should share this US$93 (RM279) accessory with anyone, though, considering how personal it is.

www.japantrendshop.com

Big storage for small businesses

WITH faster broadband connections, hard drives are quickly being maxed out with downloaded content. Western Digital aims to meet the increasing demands of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) with the WD Sentinel DX4000 that comes with Windows Storage Server 2008 R2 Essentials operating system software and Intel D525 Dual Core Atom CPU.

This Sentinel functions as a centralised shared storage and automatic server-based backup and restore for up to 25 devices, regardless of whether they run on Windows or OS X. It is capable of offering complete data protection with built-in hardware and software redundancy for all connected devices within the network.

You can choose from two capacities to suit your needs (and budget, of course): 4TB (RM3,499) or 8TB (RM5,099).
In a nutshell, the WD Sentinel DX4000 small-office storage server doubles up as “on-premise cloud storage” for SMBs.
www.wdc.com/en/