Putting confidential data on a flash drive or external hard drive that lacks encryption is inviting disaster. A lost drive could leave personal and company records vulnerable if unencrypted.

Apricorn has announced that it has updated its external encrypted Aegis Padlock Pro HDD with more storage capacity. The drive is now available with 640GB of storage for $199. Data is encrypted on-the-fly with 256-bit encryption.

Verizon Wireless has unveiled a new platform that lets users of wireless device on its network pay for items using their cell phones. The new platform is called Charge Anywhere. It has nothing to do with charging the battery of the phone.

The Charge anywhere platform is a payment gateway that lets retailers accept direct payments via credit card using the customers mobile phone. The app required for the user’s phone is available on Android, Blackberry, and WinMo devices.

When you say Hercules, I immediately think of Kevin Sorbo, long hair, and video game controllers. Hercules offers all sorts of gear and has announced a new DJ controller that won’t break the bank.

The controller is called the Hercules DJ Console Mk4. The device will ship in June for $199.99 and is very portable. It connects to Mac or PC machines with a USB cable and lets you mix digital and analog music.

I know exactly what my wife would say if I were to bring home the Gearboard concept and try to hang it in the living room. She would say, “You’re not putting that ugly thing in my living room.” Apparently, having ovaries entitles you to ownership of the living room unless a picture needs to be hung or a spider squished.

The Gearboard is sort of cool with groves cut in it that accepts the little hooks of various shapes and sizes for hanging up your controllers. I think the concept would work well in a kid’s room or a game room where controllers are ok in the open.

Behold this fresh Pegatron home theater PC powered by the NVIDIA Tegra 2 chipset. The exterior suggests the glory days of Atari, which we like. There aren’t many details to be had, but we can tell you that this Pegatron HTPC includes HDMI, Ethernet, and microphone and speaker plugs in back.

It should handle 1080p and Flash video easily, running on either Android or Windows CE. No info on price or availability yet, but we’re thinking it has to be $100-$150.

We were asked to check out C.Crane’s Solar Battery Charger, so CableOrganizer.com sent us a review unit and all we needed to do was wait for some sun. Luckily for us, the sun is returning around these parts. So we rounded up a bunch of dead batteries and got to work.

This solar battery charger will charge AAA, AA, C and D size batteries and has a solar power meter on top which shows the charging rate. Just open the plastic cover and put some batteries in. At any one time, you can charge several batteries, a few AA or AAAs along with some Ds for instance.

The Wall Street Journal is running a piece on itself, quoting “a person familiar with the matter” who says that The WSJ plans to charge subscribers $17.99 per month for iPad subscriptions. That’s not a bad price, since the print version of the WSJ costs about $29 per month. But is it in line with what people want to pay for the content digitally?

Magazines are apparently ready to offer weekly or monthly editions from the start, not annual subscriptions. According to sources, the April issue of Esquire magazine will arrive in downloadable format without advertisements for only $2.99, which is $2 less than the newsstand price, and will include five music videos to show off the device’s multimedia. Then there’s a full iPad issue of Men’s Health that matches the $4.99 regular price.

Acer has outed a couple of new swanky notebooks in the Acer Aspire Ethos series. These sport some slick new design along with multimedia performance. The Acer Aspire Ethos 8943G and Aspire Ethos 5943G come with your choice of Intel Core i5 or i7 processors, 18-inch 1920 x 1080 and 15.6-inch 1366 x 768 displays, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD5000 graphics.

You’ll also get Dolby Home Theater surround support, with 5.1 output, and the Ethos 5943G as a full five speakers on its own. Storage is up to 1.28TB (two 640GB HDDs) and you can choose between DVD or a Blu-ray drive.

Philips is the latest company to out an HD PVR. The HDT8520 HD recorder is a sleek design and holds 500 GB of storage space. That’s 125 minutes of HD video. It can live pause TV and has a three hour buffer limit so you won’t miss your favorite TV shows.

Some other features include DD5.1 audio support, parental locking, 8-day EPG and a power consumption capacity of under 1W in standby mode. There’s 1080p HD up-scaling, and USB and Ethernet ports for enhanced connectivity. Philips has also introduced a slim receiver called the DTR5520, which offers superior sound and great quality picture.

These idiots who love to tailgate are so annoying. If only there was a way to back them up. Over in England, Colin Fruze has found a way to keep drivers at bay. The solution was simple and elegant. A flamethrower built into the tail of his scooter.

Anyone who dares to drive too close is flame broiled. At first, the flamethrower was installed on his BMX bike, but now it’s activated with the simple touch of a button on his scooter. The flames shoot out 12 feet behind the vehicle.

Anyone in a band knows that lugging around huge equipment like synths is a real hassle. There has to be an easier way, right? The Korg Monotron analog synthesizer may be the solution you’ve been looking for. It’s a fully-functioning synth that is also pocket-sized, making it all a breeze.

It doesn’t have many keys though, but you can figure it out I’m sure, being more musically inclined than myself. It should arrive in May for about $67.

Despite the name, the folks at Slacker are anything but. They’ve just announced that their Internet radio service will blossom into a full on-demand system, as subscribers can now have access to a new paid feature that will include the option of finding and playing specific songs, as well as creating their own playlists.

Unlike other services like Rhapsody, the radio feature can come into play even in this mode and will auto-create a playlist based on favorited songs and create a larger radio station out of a user-made playlist. You gain controls such as skipping back through songs.

Samsung’s N150 is now available in a wide range of colors, allowing you to taste the rainbow. The colors come in shades like Flamingo Pink, Bermuda Blue and Caribbean Yellow and many others. Under the hood everything else remains the same.

To refresh your memory, some of the specs include an Intel Atom N450 1.6GHz processor, a 250GB hard drive and 1GB of RAM. And if the color options are not to your liking, you can always go with for the regular black model.

Here’s a good April Fool’s Day gadget that will help you spook your family or friends. The TV Poltergeist can be programmed to mess with others by turning your TV on or off randomly every 5 to 20 minutes, and you can even leave it working that way all day long for weeks if you want them to buy a new TV.

It will drive people crazy, especially if they are a couch potato and love TV. It just needs to be hidden near the TV in line of sight to the LED’s. Only $12.99 for hours of fun.

We know that they cost a lot, but now we have some info regarding the battery life for Sony’s TDG-BR100 and TDG-BR50 active shutter 3D glasses. We are happy to report that they are rated at about 100 hours of use.

You can chalk that up to the fact that the glasses only kick in when they receive the 3D synchronization signal from the TV, otherwise they will be in standby mode. For the price at least they last awhile. At launch, Sony will release only battery powered glasses and apparently there are no induction-based models in the pipeline.