A new revision to the already fast USB interface was announced this year at CES. With blazing speeds of 4.8Gb/s, you’ll be able to transfer full length movies from your desktop to a USB Thumb Drive or other device in just over 1 second. (4.8Gb/s = 600MB/s Avg. movie size ~750MB). It will also feature a smart power management utility that will regulate the amount of energy a device consumes, based on it’s current usage status. Unfortunately this technology will not be made available until 2010.

The 2008 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) was pretty fun this year, although most of the hype was around different displays from short throw projectors to the 150-Inch Plasma T.V., and even Alienware’s huge Curved Monitor. There was a lot of other stuff that we enjoyed quite a bit that sometimes got buried by the hype, so here’s our list of the top 5 favorite things and their pictures from C.E.S. 2008.

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SanDisk’s latest MicroSDHC card has a 12GB capacity. If you’ve ever held one of these cards, you’ll appreciate the true beauty of this article. If you haven’t, we’re talking small. MicroSD is a very small form factor, about the size of a small pinky nail. (The actual memory bank on the whole chip takes up about half the space.)

Currently you can buy the 8GB MicroSDHC cards for around $130. That’s about $16 per gig, and factor in the +$2 per gig on the next model up, we’re talking about $18 per gig on the 12GB model, totaling $216.00 USD is our guess at the price (SanDisk hasn’t released pricing info yet).

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1200FPS is high enough quality to watch something drop in a pool of water and watch every single droplet’s path, and effect on other objects not normally visible to the naked eye. This enables the average user to record super slow-mo clips (Like Myth Buster’s High-Speed camera, just not quite that fast) and play them back at 30-60FPS which can slow it down quite a lot (by a factor of 40 (1200/30=40)).

It can shoot in full resolution at 60FPS for stills, and 300, 600, or 1200 FPS for video. This is an amazing accomplishment for this price range, especially when you factor in the lens quality needed to support the exposure time, and the processing capabilities needed to handle 1,200 images every second.

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The LCD screen, which measures 52.9-inches high by 93.9-inches wide, is being manufactured at the new Kameyama plant in Japan. What’s interesting is this is the first plant to begin using eighth generation glass-substrates. The new substance allows manufacturers to make larger televisions at reduced prices, especially in comparison to the current sixth generation standard. (Sony and Samsung both use the Seventh generation, however, and plan to start using the new substrate soon). No pricing was announced during the CES conference. It’s the first prototype of this size to be shown.

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Everyone knows by now about the execution of analog, over-the-air television. The analog channels will go dark on February 19th, 2009. And as promised, the fed is issuing coupons worth $40 each to lessen the cost of the converter boxes (or digital tuners) that will convert your old TVs into new digital tuning TVs. Every household in the US qualifies to recieve up to two of them.

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The guys over at touchmods.net have proven it possible to use your iPod Touch as a phone - no lie. Using the iPod’s wifi it can connect to a free SIP- VoIP and make phone calls.. to anywhere. See their proof below.

What’s interesting? Well, aside from the obvious, the fact that it’s free is pretty cool. It’s almost like having the iPhone, but no service plans, and a cheaper device. It still seems a bit unpractical, but cool nonetheless.

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has released RIM’s (Research in Motion, makers of BlackBerry) latest patent which details their idea for a new keyboard. It features it’s keys at a 45° angle with a split directly down the middle. I know personally when typing up e-mails and SMS texts on the current keyboard design gives the user particularly sore thumbs and wrists.

The new design is ergonomic and fits the hand quite well. You won’t have to reach across the device or twist your thumbs/wrists to get to the next letter. It doesn’t appear that the key assignments will be much different, although there possibly will be 2 letters per key on most such as the BlackBerry Pearl. Which brings up another point, other then that small triangle in the middle, there doesn’t seem to be much room for the beloved trackball that we ‘CrackBerry’ owners have come to love.

Today, you traditionally get 21 gears to choose from on a mountain bike. Leonardo da Vinci, back in the 1400’s, sketched out a transmission system that utilizes ball bearings and discs to set an infinite amount of possible gear ratios. A knob at the handle bars controls the angle of the ball bearings within the wheel hub. You pedal to rotate one disc, and the other disc transfers power to the wheel. The bearings have a wide range of motion, which gives you very precise control over the energy being put in, and the speed coming out.

Within four years you can expect to see this technology in cars, wind turbines, or anything with need for a transmission system. It will dramatically decrease the amount of energy needed to be mobile, and will reduce wear and tear on engines (or bikers). The system is called NuVinci to credit the genius behind it all. Visit http://www.ellsworthbikes.com/ for more information on the bikes. Sketch of transmission after break.

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BlackBerry has always been a household name. Everyone knows if you have a BlackBerry, you’re obviously a business man/woman whose on top of things. But recently more and more people are making the purchase, whether it’s for office/business use or personal use.

Until recently, it wasn’t very common to see more then a handful of people with an RIM device, but if you look at a group of people now, regardless of profession, chances are at least one or more of them have a BlackBerry hanging off their hip. This is funny as well, since just a few weeks ago I received my first BlackBerry for free from Amazon, and I noticed other peers making the same move. As a result, RIM gained over 1,650,000 new subscriber accounts, and also shipped over 3.9 Million new devices. All this tallied up to a doubling in RIM’s earnings.

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