Fabulous Phablet
The
ASUS Padfone X is a 5-inch full HD smartphone that activates a 9-inch full HD tablet when the phone is docked. It runs Android KitKat 4.4 and contains 16 GB memory and 2 GB RAM, plus a MicroSD card slot (up to 64 GB). The phone has a front 2-megapixel and rear 13-megapixel camera, while the pad has a front 1-megapixel camera. The phone has up to 20 hours of talk time; the phone plus docking station offer up to 54 hours of talk time. The unit has Bluetooth 4.0 and can serve as a mobile hot spot for up to five devices.
Disappearing Data
Logicube announced the ZX-Tower (a.k.a., ZX-T), an eight-target, hard drive wiper, which operates at 24 GB per minute and can wipe eight drives simultaneously. To ensure that sensitive data is completely removed, the tower provides a Secure Erase mode, a custom pass setting or a powerful seven-pass Department of Defense wipe mode. ZX-T offers built-in support for SAS and SATA hard drives. The ZX-T also supports USB enclosures with four USB 3.0 ports available. Optional adapters are also available to support other drive interfaces.
Energy Boost
Soofa, from MIT Media Lab spinoff
Changing Environments Inc., is a solar-powered bench that offers people free outdoor charging and location-based information, like air quality and noise level, by uploading environmental sensor data to soofa.co. The bench contains a solar panel, a battery and two USB slots. Users must supply a USB cord, but the company plans to introduce an inductive-charging version of the Soofa, so people can place their device on the Soofa surface to charge up. The company has begun placing Soofas around Boston and Cambridge, Mass.
Miriam Jones is a former chief copy editor of Government Technology, Governing, Public CIO and Emergency Management magazines.
