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Corning is now ready to make 3D Gorilla Glass for wearable devices
Corning's Gorilla Glass is useful for protecting the (mostly) flat screens of smartphones, but it's not a great fit for the curvy world of wearables. The company is prepared to change with the times, though, as it just announced that it can manufacture 3D-shaped Gorilla Glass. Its newly available technique conforms to unusual designs without adding bulk or losing strength. If all goes well, products using the 3D glass will be on store shelves sometime this year. Corning hasn't named customers, but we imagine that at least a few companies are interested in using the material for durable yet unconventional displays.
G-Tech G-Drive slim: stylish storage in a small package
I've been trying out the G-Tech G Drive slim portable hard drive for a few days and I'm quite impressed with it. The unit I tried was the 320 GB version, and in my "everyday user" tests, the drive performed remarkably well. Design The first thing you notice about the G Drive is that it looks like it was designed by Apple. As usual, that's a very good thing. And as a matter of fact, the G Drive website says that the external hard drive was made to mimic the look and feel of the MacBook Air. Perhaps it's the design of the G Drive that made Apple give this external their unofficial blessing. In a retail setting it's sold exclusively at Apple Stores and can usually be found hooked up to one of the MacBook Pros on display. The G Drive slim is made of a lightweight compact aluminum enclosure with a black rubber trim around the edges and features a single USB 2.0 port. The size of the enclosure is roughly 5"x3.2" and only 9.9mm thick. Best of all, it weighs only 0.33 pounds, so throwing it into your backpack, laptop case, or even a jacket pocket hardly adds any noticeable weight to your baggage. Usage Inside the G Drive slim you'll find a 2.5" 5400RPM Hitachi hard drive. Since the G Drive slim uses a USB interface, you've got a theoretical data transfer rate of 480 MB/s. But as to be expected, real-world usage is always slower. Still, transferring a 1 GB folder full of photos from my Mac to the drive took only about 38 seconds. That's not too bad for a consumer drive where design is clearly the most important element. Out of the box the G Drive slim is Mac-ready. It ships formatted for any Mac running OS X 10.5 of later. The drive is also Time Machine-compatible right out of the box. Also, for those of you with a Mac and PC household, though the drive is Mac-inspired and ready, you can still use it with any PC running Windows 2000/XP/Vista/7. Conclusion Nowadays a 320 GB USB drive doesn't sound like much, especially one that costs US$99. However, the target audience for this drive isn't one who wants to back up dozens and dozens of HD video files or use the drive as a scratch disk for video editing. It's for those people who want a quick, stylish, and easy way to store and transfer their photos, documents, and music. And most of the people in that group (including me) care more about design and portability than having the latest and greatest Thunderbolt devices. The 320 GB G Drive slim is available for US$99 at Apple retail stores, Apple Online, and on Amazon.com.
Hitachi GST's G-Drive Slim: world's thinnest 2.5-inch external hard drive
Not like we need our 2.5-inch external drives to get that much smaller, but who are we to kvetch about progress? Hitachi GST has just outed what it calls the thinnest 2.5-inch external hard drive in the world. The G-Drive Slim is encased in a 128.6- x 82- x 9.9mm aluminum enclosure, and tucked within is a slimmer-than-usual 7mm Travelstar Z5K320 hard drive. The USB-powered unit comes formatted for use with Macs, but a quick reformat on your Windows machine will have its mind changed in no time flat. For now, it's only available in a 320GB flavor for $99.99, and you'll only find it at your local Apple Store.
G-Tech kicks out Bluetooth-enabled iPod backpack
Similar to another company we're familiar with, G-Tech has hit it big by slapping iPod-compatibility onto an otherwise drab offering, and now the company has upped the ante by tossing in Bluetooth. Unveiled at CES, the self-proclaimed Next-Generation Messenger Bags with Bluetooth feature the same Eleksen ElekTex smart fabric controls right on the strap, but these controls now control the track / volume functions of your dock-connecting iPod as well as the volume / mute of your phone. The Bluetooth functionality simply allows users to easily mute their iPod to take an incoming call, and the built-in speaker can also pump out the jams (rather meekly, we assume) with any audio device that connects via a 3.5-millimeter cable. There's no word on price or availability, but if you're really dead set on owning an iPod-controlling pack, might we suggest one that doesn't look like an early '90s experiment gone awry?[Via Textually]
G-Tech kicks out iPod-controlling Messenger Bags with integrated speaker
'Tis the season for iPod controls on every piece of wearable kit possible? Apparently you stand a decent chance at being given some form of iPod-enabled clothing / gear this holiday season, as a swarm of manufacturers are jazzing up their apparel with built-in controls for Apple's cashcow. On deck is G-Tech's Messenger Bag, which sports your average selection of handy compartments in which to store your notebook, cellphone, PDA, or other portable gadget, as well as coming in black / chocolate brown colors. This knapsack boasts Eleksen's ElekTex smart fabric controls -- a "unique five-layer laminate of electrically conductive materials that transforms fabric into an electronic touchpad" -- to handle the play / pause, volume, and track operations of your dock-connected 'Pod. If that weren't geeky enough, the bag also sports an integrated speaker (no word on wattage) and a 3.5-millimeter "extension jack" in case removing your DAP from the snug confines of the Messenger Bag proves too time consuming. If Monster's iEZClick lacked that dual functionality you yearn for, G-Tech's shoulder bag / iPod boombox hybrid is available now for $129.[Via Playlist]
