CES 2011, Las Vegas - One thing that we managed to get a glimpse of while out at CES this year was an interesting demo from Both Intel and Lucid. You remember Lucid; they are the company that has been working on an ALI/Crossfire alternative. We first saw them a couple of years ago at IDF.

At the time Lucid was hailed as the SLI/Crossfire Killer. Unfortunately it was never meant to be positioned in that way. Still we saw companies touting it as the end a replacement for multi-GPU technology. Now Lucid has dropped down a rung or two, not by their own doing but by the pedestal that the press put them on. They are often used as a method for getting more PCIe lanes or as nothing more than a way to run SLI on an AMD motherboard. In this capacity they are actually a good solution.

So, what was is about this demo that caught our eye? Well it was a new approach to multi-GPU technology. Currently to get Lucid to work you need to have a Lucid chip somewhere on your motherboard. Well not anymore, Lucid has found a way to virtualize what the Lucid IC does. Now before you get all misty eyed thinking of software SLI let me stop you. This new tech is something different. As it stands right now it will not be for dual high-end GPUs but to partner with Sandy Bridge. You see one of the issues with Sandy Bridge is that if you run a discrete GPU you lose the Quick Sync video performance as the GPU turns off.

Yesterday I talked about the next-gen iPad was getting a higher resolution display, well there are now more rumors that are pointing toward this actually happening. MacRumors is now saying that this might actually happen.

The fuel to this rumor is Apple's updated iBooks app at 1.1 accidentally included artwork for double the amount of pixels of the current iPad. The bookmark icon included art for the iPad, iPhone, iPhonex2 and iPadx2. The x2 versions are exactly double the resolution of the original versions.

This of course is not 100% proof of the claim that the next-gen iPad will have double the resolution, but it's evidence nonetheless.

Nintendo has been selling the Wii and the DS for years. Early in the life of the Wii, the console was just about impossible to get hands on for most gamers. The Wii was so scarce that people were paying hundreds more to get them on eBay than the MSRP and many stood in line and waited for a long time to get their own. The popularity of the Wii isn't what it once was, but it is still popular.

Nintendo has announced that it had the two top selling game consoles for 2010. The two consoles are the Wii and the DS portable. The DS was the top selling console for all of 2010 with over 8.5 million units sold and the Wii was tops in home consoles with over 7 million units sold. The numbers come from the NPD group that tracks such things.

A huge chunk of the sales for Nintendo consoles for the year came in December with the holidays. In December, Nintendo reports selling 2.5 million DS portables and 2.3 million Wii consoles. Nintendo also notes that since the DS launched it has sold more than 47 million of the portables and more than 34 million Wiis. Nintendo also had three of the top selling games for December 2010 with Just Dance 2 at number one, Donkey Kong Country Returns at number three, and Disney Epic Mickey at number four.

Growing up in the country riding dirt bikes all the time I can tell you that a pair of goggles is required if you like being able to see. A bunch of people that ride off-road and do other sports like skiing that wear goggles also want to show off their skills on video to their friends that weren't around. The catch is that it's hard to find a camera that can withstand off road use and is small enough that it's not a bother to the user.

Liquid image has unveiled a new set of goggles called the impact series that has a 1080p camcorder integrated into the frames. This same company makes the line of scuba masks that have video cameras inside. The Impact series comes in black or red colors and the video camera is in the center of the goggles right above the bridge of the nose for a perfect POV.

The field of view is 136-degrees to take in all that the rider sees. The camera will record 1080p resolution video at 30 fps and can record 60 fps video at 720p resolution. It can also take still shots at 12MP resolution. The video and photos are stored to a microSD card and the goggles ship with a 4GB card and support cards up to 32GB. Pricing and availability for the goggles is unknown at this time.

When it comes to standards and accountability for the storage of data by businesses, some of the most important and most controlled of all data is medical information. I bet some boxers were ruined at a radiology practice in New Hampshire called Seacoast Radiology this week when the admin of the server for the company found that it had been hacked.

The server in question held medical records on 230,000 patients seen by the practice. The admin of the server noticed the hack when it was discovered that bandwidth for the server was down. On investigation, the admin found that the hackers were using the server's bandwidth to host multiple player games of Black Ops.

The practice immediately called in an investigation team that somehow linked the hackers back to Scandinavia. The clinic and admins of the server have no idea how long the hackers had been inside the server and they note that the security breach that allowed the hackers to gain access has been plugged and the appropriate authorities have been notified of the breach.

Sony have put their balls on the line here, by claiming that the PSP2 is a high-end portable equivalent of the PS3. The games on the PSP2 are set to be a large step away from the current handheld games on Android and Apple devices.

Sony have come out and said to licensees that the PSP2 "is as powerful as the PlayStation 3." This is a bold statement and if Sony do make dreams come true, it's going to shake the handheld gaming upside down.

The company is set to reveal the first details on the PSP2 in Tokyo on January 27. This is an entire month before Nintendo launch the 3DS in Japan. Sony is making plans to reveal more details at GDC and E3 after the reveal on January 27. Sony is set to launch the PSP2 in Q4 2011, it will include a HD screen, twin-stick controls and possibly even phone functions - but it won't be it's main function as that's the job of the PlayStation Phone.

Back when I was a kid you could do things at school that you get you arrested and expelled today. Take for instance in kindergarten I once took my Swiss Army knife for show and tell. The teacher let me carry it all day and only asked after show and tell that I let her keep it until after school. Today carrying a knife to school would bring the swat team to class. One thing my knife lacked that modern Swiss army knives like the new Victorinox Secure SSD has is data storage.

Back in the early 80, we didn't know what an SSD was. My mom's office still had a big punch card machine they used. The cool knife has a knife blade naturally, a knife with scissors, a nail file/screwdriver and more. This is what MacGyver needed to smuggle files out of secure locations.

The SSD takes up most of the space in the knife and looks more like a normal flash drive than the SSDs I think of. It has 256GB of storage space and you can get it in smaller 64GB and 128GB flavors too. The drive even has an e-Paper display that lets you label the drive. Pricing for the line is unannounced; the 256GB version will not be cheap.

I like for as much of my stuff to be wireless as possible in most instances. I am not a big fan of wireless gear for gaming, but for just working on my work computer or for use with an HTPC machine in the living room, wireless is the way to go. The only thing that we generally need wires for no matter the brand is a video card. KFA2 has a new video card that cuts those wires that might be perfect for gaming away from your hot PC or in the living room.

The video card is the KFA2 GeForce GTX 460 and it has five antennas on the back of the card making it look more like an add-in WiFi card than a video card. Those antennas are responsible for shooting that video out to your PC screen rather than having to use a cable. The interesting part is that the card still supports all those important features the GTX 460 series is known for.

The card has 336 cores, a graphics clock of 675MHz, a processor clock or 1350MHz, and a memory clock of 1800MHz. The card has 1024MB of RAM and the memory interface is 256-bit. The card has SLI support and supports 3D vision as well. A WHDI receiver for connecting to your display is included.

NVIDIA has a lot of GPUs on the market in all sorts of categories form entry-level chips inside notebooks and netbooks to high-end GPUs that are aimed at the gaming market for desktop users. One of the things that all of the NVIDIA GPUs has in common is that NVIDIA designs the parts and TSMC builds them for NVIDIA.

NVIDIA and TSMC have announced today that they have shipped the one billionth GeForce graphics processor. I feel like that announcement should come with a photo of Dr. Evil with his pinky to his lips. NVIDIA reports that just about every major PC maker in the world uses its GPUs. It has taken big green 12 years to hit the billion shipped mark and the company is already looking forward to its second billion.

"Since inventing the GPU more than a decade ago, NVIDIA has driven innovation in these processors at a rate virtually unmatched in the technology industry," said Jen-Hsun Huang, president and chief executive officer, NVIDIA. "With our close partnership with TSMC, the complexity of these devices has increased more than 1000 times, enabling enormous progress in computers ranging from handhelds and PCs to workstations and data centers."

-CES 2011, Las Vegas- For those of you that dropped some serious coin on an iPad, you've probably been looking for some standout protection for your tablet investment. Enter NavJack, who are looking to take the iPad case market by storm with their high end, unique products. Jay from NavJack took us for a little tour of their two newest creations for the iPad.

Carbon fiber has long been known as one of the lightest materials out there; NavJack has weaved aerospace grade carbon fiber with fiberglass to give a thin, tough, and sleek look to the iPad with the Corium series. Built to be form fitting, there is also a slight lip around the edge to keep you from dragging the screen across a surface as well. Protection without the bulk is pretty sweet, but with the high end material comes a high end price; about $115.

For a more natural look, you could go with the Sylvan series. Using natural wood grain, you're guaranteed a unique case every time since no two pieces are alike. A soft, anti-scratch interior keeps the wood away from the device itself. It probably won't take quite the beating that the Corium will, but it would probably mix well with an outdoor trip. This one's a bit more cost effective at $90, both on Amazon.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - While visiting Kingston we learned quite a bit about the company's 2011 lineup. The big news for me was learning that Kingston will be rocking SandForce for their upper tier SSDs when the SF-2000 controller is ready.

Since the SF-2000 isn't quite ready yet the main attraction at the Kingston suite was the new MobiSX. To be fair the MobiSX isn't quite ready yet, Kingston is still hard at work with the software interface but other than a good polishing the product does what Kingston says it will do. Here we see the MobiSX next to an IPhone. The current case is translucent black and you can see a green and blue flashing light when the SSD / WiFi storage server / media transferer is activated. We are just making up words now since there isn't anything else like it on the market today but if I were to call it one thing is would be Wireless Storage Device.

After hitting the MobiSX through an IP address in your browser you get an interface for watching or listening to content. Everything is wireless but the MobiSX does have a USB 2.0 mini port for charging and most likely to aid in loading content to the drive. In the demo we actually had five devices connected and playing content at the same time. Two IPads and three IPhones, one TweakTown owner Cameron Wilmot's personal IPhone.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - Patriot's Javelin Series consists of two new NAS servers and runs DLNA. We all know that NAS appliances are great for storing data long term but few realize that with DLNA media files can be shared to all computers and consoles on the network. I run a similar network at home and it is great to be able to start a movie downstairs and then finish it in bed later that same night without moving a disk or thumb drive.

Here we see the Javelin starting line up. The new, larger S4 is on the left and the smaller, two drive version is on the right.

The Javelin S4 is the flagship model and uses 4 drives in RAID 0 or RAID 5. To keep your data protected I suggest running RAID 5. The NAS has blue LEDs for power and to show which bays are populated with drives. We can't wait to get our hands on a sample and to see what the cost is. As families get larger and more digital data is collected the need for purpose built "family NAS" appliances has increased. I couldn't imagine living without one and if you've ever lost precious data before you know exactly what I mean.

CES 2011, Las Vegas - All it takes is to say SandForce to get the blood flowing. In 2010 SandForce was like the magic word to get interest in a product and to erect attention.

Super Talent is ready to get a raise out of their growing USB 3.0 product line. Here we see a traditional size portable enclosure but instead of just holding a 2.5" drive the POD mini is the drive. Super Talent has removed the SATA II interface and replaced it with a mini USB 3.0 port.

If the tall blond didn't do it for you then the short, small figured brunette will. The Storage POD 500H is the same size as a traditional thumb drive (exactly the same size as the RAM Cache we are reviewing now) but it packs a SandForce SF-1200 controller and takes it deep, all the way to 500GB in capacity! Super Talent calls these affordable but we are thinking this one was picked up at The Wynn and not on the street corner.

QNAP devices are awesome-sauce. I run a TS-639Pro at home myself and could seriously, not live without it. Once you experience the amazing things that a great NAS can do, you'll never go back.

QNAP has announced it will be rolling out it's v3.4 firmware starting January 14. The firmware fill be for Intel-based NAS devices only at first with the other NAS devices getting their v3.4 rollout on January 30.

The new features of this firmware include real-time remote replication, older firmwares supported data backup to remote storage, an offsite server or an attached disk, but it had to be done on a periodic basis. With the v3.4 firmware, remote replication can be enable to automatically happen as soon as the files are modified.

OCZ has said hasta la vista to the memory market. After starting out in the memory market, they have expanded into other markets which has seen exponential growth.

OCZ's third quarter financial report has shown this, OCZ's SSD business have revenues that were up 325% over the same quarter last year for a total of $41.5 million. It was also 105% higher than the Q2 results.

The memory side of OCZ was not doing so well, reporting revenues of $6.26 million, a drop of over 50% compared to Q2 and a drop of 71% than the same quarter last year. This is largely a result of OCZ discontinuing all of their memory, apart from their high-performance gear.

Gaming notebooks are a lot of things and powerful is one of them. Power hungry is another thing they are famous for meaning that they often have really short battery life. The rigs also tend to be expensive. That said, a lot of gamers will still opt for a gaming notebook when it means lots of performance in a form factor that is easier to take with them to a LAN party than a desktop.

Eurocom as a really cool gaming notebook called the Panther 2.0. The rig has a big 17.3-inch screen with full 1080p resolution and can be fitted with a number of GPU and CPU options. Eurocom took one of the machines fitted with an AMD GPU and Intel CPU and used the rig to blow up some 3DMark2006 records.

The test machine has an Intel Core i7-980x extreme processor, 12GB of RAM, and a 500GB Seagate solid hybrid storage drive. The graphics on the machine was via a pair of AMD Radeon HD6970M GPUs. With the hardware onboard the Panther 2.0 scored 22669 points in 3DMark06, becoming the first notebook to hit such a high score.

Elder Scrolls Skyrim has a lot of ES fans licking their lips waiting for some screenshots or details, well, I have your fix right here. Check out a screenshot below of Skyrim!

Looks great, doesn't it? There's a bunch of details released on it too, these details involve the story, enemies, the graphics engine, combat and weaponary, magic, cities, levels and skills, NPC's, quests and the player.

I'll give you a bit of a tease and include "the story" and "the engine":

AMD has just announced that CEO Dirk Meyer has resigned. Currently there is no official reason for his resignation, except that he reached a "mutual agreement" with the company's board.

Current CFO, Thomas Seifert will be the temporary CEO whilst a new one is found. Bruce Claflin, Chairman of AMD's Board of Directors and head of the CEO Search Committee said "Dirk became CEO during difficult times. He successfully stabilized AMD while simultaneously concluding strategic initiatives including the launch of GlobalFoundries, the successful settlement of our litigation with Intel and delivering Fusion APUs to the market."

He also added "However, the Board believes we have the opportunity to create increased shareholder value over time. This will require the company to have significant growth, establish market leadership and generate superior financial returns. We believe a change in leadership at this time will accelerate the company's ability to accomplish these objectives."

Epson is more of a printer company than anything else in my mind. However, that's not all the firm is about. It makes a full line of projectors and other items that are used in businesses, homes, and the classroom all around the country. Epson has announced a new line of projectors aimed at the classroom that replaces the PowerLite 83V+, 83+, 84+, 85+ and 826W+ units on the market right now.

The new line of projectors includes the PowerLite PowerLite 92, 93, 95, and 96W. The PowerLite 92 and 93 projectors sell for $649 and $699 respectively and have 2400 lumens of white and color light output. The PowerLite 95 sells for $799 and has 2600 lumens of output. These three projectors offer XGA resolution.

The PowerLite 96W has 2700 lumens of light output and sells for $899 with WXGA resolution. The 93, 95, and 96W all have network connectivity and can be controlled remotely. The 95 and 96W can stream video over an IP network as well. All of the projectors have 1.2x optical zoom, HDMI connectivity, and more. The new line of projectors will ship in March.

Working on a notebook if you are used to working from a desktop can be difficult thanks in part to the small screen that you get even on larger notebooks. If you are like me and are used to large desktop screens moving around windows and constantly searching for things on your netbook or notebooks small screen gets old fast. If you have an iPad you take with you, DisplayLink has a new app that will turn the iPad into a secondary display.

The new app is called the DisplayLink App and it's not the first app I have seen to turn the iPad into a secondary display. This is the first one for wireless graphics heavy weight DisplayLink though. The app will work with Windows 7, Vista, and XP and works in Windows 7 Aero mode unlike other similar apps on the market.

Configuration of the app is done using the DisplayLink Windows Graphics utility. The display automatically repositions when connected or disconnected and it works with other DisplayLink USB devices. It's not spelled out, but the connectivity is apparently provided by the USB charge and sync cable the iPad ships with. The app is only $1.99 and is available right now.