Flea 2.0 USB Rechargeable Bike Lights

If you are looking for a lightweight lights for your bike and would rather not go through huge amounts of batteries riding back and fore to work each day. These tiny Flea 2.0 USB bike lights might well be worth a look.
Designed and created by Blackburn Designs these tiny cycle lights will provide 40 lumens of light from the front set of 4 super-bright white LEDs, that will run for 3 hours on steady or up to 5 hours flashing on a single charge. With the rear red lights will provide 6 hours steady and up to 12 hours flashing on a single charge.

Once flat the lights can simply be plugged into any USB port to fully charge again and usb comes with a solar charger if required. The Flea 2.0 lights weigh 17 grams and are available to buy for $30 directly from Blackburn Designs.

Apple Launching New Free MobileMe In April

We have been hearing for some time that Apple has been working on a new version of MobileMe, the last thing we heard was that Apple would be holding a special event in April to launch this new version of MobileMe.
Now iLounge are reporting that Apple will launch a free version of MobileMe next month, and it looks like it will be significantly different to the existing version of MobileMe.

The report says that Apple will support the existing version of MobileMe for up to 12 months from the date when the new one is available, this leads us to believe that the new one will have some major changes.usb
Recent reports have suggested that the revamped service will position it as a free online, cloud-based “locker” for content such as photos, videos, and music.
It will be interesting to see what Apple comes up with in the new version of MobileMe, the existing version does come with a lot of good features, although some areas could do with some work.

WiFi only Dell Streak 7 Gets WiFi Certified

I am a big tablet fan and have an iPad that I use. I am typically using the device at home so I can check out things like Facebook and surf the web while sitting on the couch with the kids watching some cartoon I care nothing about. I also use it to read more than anything and with my usage, getting the 3G version didn’t make sense.


If you are the same way and like the idea of the Dell Streak 7 MID, but you didn’t want or need the 3G that was inside enough to buy one, a new version is coming. A WiFi only Streak 7 with model number M02M002 surfaced today. The device surfaced thanks to Wi-fi.org when it was granted its WiFi certification.
We don’t have any pics of the device, but it would be a safe bet that it is exactly like the other Streak 7 sans the 3G radio inside. There is no official launch date or pricing to be had right now.
Via StreakSmart

Opinion: Why Dragon Age 2 Should Be RPG Enough For Any Old Guard Bioware Fan

By Catalin Alexandru on Saturday 19th March 2011 4:04 am in Gaming, Technology News

Having grown up suckling at the teat of Baldur’s Gate, Icewind Dale and Planescape Torment, booting up Dragon Age 2 for the first time doesn’t feel like coming full circle as much as missing the end of the circle and going off into a spiral. And while you sometimes miss the deceptive simplicity of a circle, spirals are pretty awesome because they have the potential to go on forever.

Taking a whiff and a sip reveals all the familiar flavors – darkspawn, templar, apostates and dragons are all quickly ticked off the checklist before you even have time to wonder what episode of Naruto you just dropped into when Hawke’s ninja animations start kicking in.
Bioware has also taken the top off their difficulty curve and pressed it further into the sand to the point where you’d get more challenge out of your average movie trailer than the Normal variety of this game. At this point, it’s easy enough to just dismiss the whole endeavor as the final nail in the coffin of the once-mighty western RPG tradition and just pronounce it well and truly consolified.
It took me about four hours of playing, or rather watching my Hawke et al annihilate several screens’ worth of opposition with one click before the thought of changing the difficulty level struck me. One step up the ladder and there’s our missing Normal difficulty level. They mislabeled it Hard for some reason.

Make no mistake, this is a precision engineered piece of software with a purpose as clear as daylight –take the western RPG to the console masses while keeping at least the slightest pinky hold on the old and grizzled fanbase. And I know full well what they meant to do here. The only thing is, RPG players don’t think of themselves as hardcore gamers, or at least not the kind who think finishing a game on a certain difficulty level is any kind of achievement.
Once you start pouring tens of millions of dollars in a game you can’t afford to alienate potential market of five million by catering exclusively to the few vocal thousand, even if they were the ones supporting your early efforts. I’ve heard it from Lead Designer Mike Laidlaw himself, if Bioware could profitably split the franchise in hardcore and action, they would, but the truth there are a lot less of us faithful than we think and the genre needs to adapt to survive.
If that means putting up with some streamlining and having to fiddle a bit with difficulty settings, so be it, as long as the bones of the gameplay and the sharp dialogue if not the rousing narrative are intact. To my mind, Dragon Age 2 is just a bit of medicine that us old coots need to swallow down if we’d like to see the genre prosper. And it’s a very rare medicine that can more often than not be mistaken for cake.

Technology

Main articles: Flash memory and USB

Flash memory combines a number of older technologies, with lower cost, lower power consumption and small size made possible by advances in microprocessor technology. The memory storage was based on earlier EPROM and EEPROM technologies. These had very limited capacity, were very slow for both reading and writing, required complex high-voltage drive circuitry, and could only be re-written after erasing the entire contents of the chip.
Hardware designers later developed EEPROMs with the erasure region broken up into smaller "fields" that could be erased individually without affecting the others. Altering the contents of a particular memory location involved copying the entire field into an off-chip buffer memory, erasing the field, modifying the data as required in the buffer, and re-writing it into the same field. This required considerable computer support, and PC-based EEPROM flash memory systems often carried their own dedicated microprocessor system. Flash drives are more or less a miniaturized version of this.
The development of high-speed serial data interfaces such as USB made semiconductor memory systems with serially accessed storage viable, and the simultaneous development of small, high-speed, low-power microprocessor systems allowed this to be incorporated into extremely compact systems. Serial access requires far fewer electrical connections for the memory chips than does parallel access, which has simplified the manufacture of multi-gigabyte drives.
Computers access modern^[update] flash memory systems very much like hard disk drives, where the controller system has full control over where information is actually stored. The actual EEPROM writing and erasure processes are, however, still very similar to the earlier systems described above.
Many low-cost MP3 players simply add extra software and a battery to a standard flash memory control microprocessor so it can also serve as a music playback decoder. Most of these players can also be used as a conventional flash drive, for storing files of any type.

A USB flash drive consists of a flash memory data storage device integrated with a USB (Universal Serial Bus) interface. USB flash drives are typically removable and rewritable, and physically much smaller than a floppy disk. Most weigh less than 30 g (1 oz).^[1] Storage capacities in 2010 can be as large as 256 GB^[2] with steady improvements in size and price per capacity expected. Some allow 1 million write or erase cycles^{[citation needed]} and have a 10-year data retention cycle.^[3][4]
USB flash drives are often used for the same purposes for which floppy disks or CD-ROMs were used. They are smaller, faster, have thousands of times more capacity, and are more durable and reliable because of their lack of moving parts. Until approximately 2005, most desktop and laptop computers were supplied with floppy disk drives, but most recent equipment has abandoned floppy disk drives in favor of USB ports.
USB Flash drives use the USB mass storage standard, supported natively by modern operating systems such as Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, and other Unix-like systems. USB drives with USB 2.0 support can store more data and transfer faster than a much larger optical disc drives like CD-RW or DVD-RW drives and can be read by many other systems such as the Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, DVD players and in some upcoming mobile smartphones.
Nothing moves mechanically in a flash drive; the term drive persists because computers read and write flash-drive data using the same system commands as for a mechanical disk drive, with the storage appearing to the computer operating system and user interface as just another drive. Flash drives are very robust mechanically.
A flash drive consists of a small printed circuit board carrying the circuit elements and a USB connector, insulated electrically and protected inside a plastic, metal, or rubberized case which can be carried in a pocket or on a key chain, for example. The USB connector may be protected by a removable cap or by retracting into the body of the drive, although it is not likely to be damaged if unprotected. Most flash drives use a standard type-A USB connection allowing plugging into a port on a personal computer, but drives for other interfaces also exist.
USB flash drives draw power from the computer via external USB connection. Some devices combine the functionality of a digital audio player with USB flash storage; they require a battery only when used to play music.

Lady Gaga Suing Baby Gaga

No milk today

Who’s Baby Gaga, you ask? Try: What’s Baby Gaga?
 
The Guardian reports that Baby Gaga is the name of a frozen treat made from breast milk. Yes, breast milk.

The controversial ice cream is being sold at Icecreamists in Covent Garden, London and as expected a certain pop icon is not happy that the parlour is riding on her coattails by using her name.

Icecreamists owner however explained his stand to the Guardian.

Said Matt O’Connor: “A global superstar has taken umbrage at what she describes as a ‘nausea-inducing’ product.”

“How can she possibly claim ownership of the word ‘gaga’, which since the dawn of time has been one of the first discernible phrases to come from a baby’s mouth?

“This from a woman with a penchant for wearing rotting cows’ flesh. At least our customers are still alive when they contribute to our ‘art’.”

Sick though the thought of breast milk ice cream is, O’Connor has a point. After all, Lady Gaga is said to have taken her moniker from Queen’s 1984 hit Radio Ga Ga.