USB Telescope, One Small Leap for Man, One Giant Leap for Peeping Toms
While not as nefarious as the tiny spy digital cameras, Hammacher Schlemmer's Computer Display Telescope may take the crown for most dastardly abused invention ever. With a variable power turret eyepiece, HS's compact USB telescope should be able to see all the way to Uranus or your neighbor's. Rotating the eyepiece assembly allows you to ratchet up magnification up to an effective 15,000mm. That kind of power will let you zoom in on satellites close enough to find out if they are natural or artificial. While the Internet was almost certainly born to ferry unsavory photos to every corner of the world, it seemed for a minute like it might be taking a turn for the tasteful. This way too affordable USB Telescope comes ready equipped to act as a web-cam out of the box... you know... for science. The camera sensor only outputs 640x480 video, which is fine for chat-roulette but not great for peeling back the veil of the Universe. Just when you thought it was safe to go online again. All the (mostly) legitimate businesses and (almost) wholesome online meeting places and now every kid in your neighborhood can broadcast a live news show from just over your hedges. Sure there is an off chance that someone MIGHT use this for actual astronomy but you better draw your curtains a little more religiously now. The USB Telescope is available on sale for $69 (yes, really) CDN from Hammacher Schlemmer's online store.
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ASrock's Nifty XFast USB App to Boost USB 3.0 Speeds
While most manufacturers are still reeling over the whole P67 SATA bug debacle (and Intel putting aside $700 million to cover the ensuing RMAs), one company is not ready to give up the ghost yet! ASrock, the one-time subsidiary of ASUS and now a spun off full fledged company of their own, has announced a "new" technology to help boost its P67 Extreme4 motherboard's USB 3.0 speeds. They claim that the XFast USB program can boost performance of up to 97% over that of what is possible on other motherboards. For anyone who has ever used (or even just read out reviews), this "new" program looks suspiciously like Super Talent's speed boosting program (aptly named Turbo HDD) that accompanies certain USB 3.0 flash drives like the Express Drive... just in a different colour. If this is the case (ASRock is being mum on it, but the version numbers for both programs DO line up!) then what this means is this program is not much more than a customized driver loading program that over-rides the default Windows' USB Mass Storage Compliant Driver and uses its own. This certainly should give a performance boost to non-Super Talent drives, as in testing that program does work very well; but by the same token we doubt it will do much good for any USB 3.0 external drives which relies on its own custom drivers. There's an interesting YouTube video demo of the Xfast USB after the jump.
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