Brando has again upgraded their handy SATA HDD stage rack, this time adding a couple of USB ports and card readers on the front. The computer peripheral, now called the SATA HDD Multi-Function Dock, can connect to your computer through either USB 2.0 or eSATA port and will dock a 2.5″ or 3.5″ SATA hard drive.

The hard drive dock still works with PCs and Macs and continues to provide convenient alternative to cracking open your computer case or using a simple but often messy cable solution. In this model Brando decided to do away with the Firewire they had previously and just stick to the USB and eSATA connections.

After over three years of direct planning and ten months of traveling through space, NASA’s Phoenix Mars spacecraft today sent back signals that it has made a safe landing on the surface of Mars. The Phoenix spacecraft appears to have hit the intended target in the icy area of Mars’ arctic circle.

Signals sent from Phoenix were delayed by 15 minutes as they were routed through the Odyssey satellite currently orbiting Mars and back to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on Earth which caused the celebrations of steps of the landings to take place shortly after they actually happened on Mars.

Creative has launched a new addition to it’s line of portable speakers with the TravelSound for the iPod nano. This one-piece speaker attaches to the docking port of Apple’s nano and pumps out the sound to share with others. This new TravelSound speaker appears very similar to the TravelSound i50 that we saw last fall for the iPod nano, and the design is no doubt inspired by it.

The new TravelSound portable speaker is relatively small and lets the 3rd generation nano fit right into the design giving it an overall thickness of less than an inch with 3.9 inches in total height. It also comes with a little plastic stand, and if you can keep from losing it since it’s not attached, will provide a safer rest for the speaker with your iPod in it.

We’ve seen a number of waterproof solutions that allow you to take your iPod safely on the beach or in the shower but the Icebar V2 combination case may be the best one we’ve seen yet (and the most expensive). The case provides a waterproof housing for you iPod nano and built-in waterproof speakers for places where it’s inconvenient to use headphones.

The case does have a port for headphones if you’d rather keep your tunes personal, and also has a click-wheel membrane to give complete control of the iPod through the case. The body is made of a shatter-proof polycarbonate which allows you to easily see the iPod display, but just be case the case is shatterproof doesn’t mean the iPod you put inside is.

Google seems to always have something new coming out and this week Google Health is taking the spotlight. We had first heard about Google Health last October and until now the service has only been available to a select few.

The new service is now open to the public (in beta, of course) and is being offered as a free service to help store and manage all of your health related information in one central location, accessible from anywhere. The service allows you to log in with your Google account to build an online health profile, import medical records and prescriptions from hospitals and pharmacies, find education health resources, find doctors or hospitals in your area and provides connections with other online health services.

Nintendo must have had some great feedback about the Metallic Rose Nintendo DS that came in the Nintendogs bundle, or it just didn’t do well and they have a lot of extras without the paw print. Either way the company is launching metallic rose as another standalone color for the lineup of DS’s, not to be confuse with the standard pink.

Some celebs by the names of America Ferrera and Carrie Underwood are going to also help push the latest DS in some commercials starting May 19. No pricing has been released but we would guess this model would be priced the same as the other standalone DS hardware systems.

After much speculation and concern Microsoft has put out official word that the OLPC XO laptop will be made available with the Windows XP operation system. Nicholas Negroponte has been trying to work with Bill Gates and Microsoft for years to get the Windows OS for the laptop, but Microsoft had been reluctant due to the rival Linux OS running on the machine.

The writing was on the wall when Microsoft announced that they were going to keep the XP operating system around a little longer for use with Ultra Low Cost PC’s. Microsoft made a custom version of the OS for use with the XO laptop to work with its hardware. The laptop is expected to start shipping in late summer or early fall with the ability to dual boot with both Linux and Windows XP, letting the owner decide.

If you were hoping to somehow get your hands on that gun metal gray Metal Gear Solid 4 Playstation 3 bundle, here’s your chance. Konami has issued a press release showing that they exclusively will have a 40GB MGS4 PS3 bundle available for North American with the pre-sell starting on May 19th. This is not the same as the 80GB bundle we had talked about last month but a new offering available only from Konami.

The package comes with a Gun Metal Gray, 40GB Playstation 3, a matching wireless dualshock controller, Metal Gear Online, a Blu-ray disc with 2 hours of exclusive additional content and the Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots Limited Edition game. The bundle is priced at $599.99 and will only go while supplies last so if you want one of these you’ll want to keep on top of this offer. In fact, you can add it to your Wish List on the Konami site now to keep up with the offer.

For some reason it just seems nicer to me when I have some type of cradle, dock or stand to charge my gadgets with instead of just a cord and naturally we were excited to see this charging stand for the Nintendo DS Lite. Sure the docks take up more room on my desk and are difficult to take along when you travel, but with them each items has their own neat and special place.

This stand looks to take up a little less space then it could, holding the DS upright on its side instead of flat. It comes in colors of black or white to match the black and white DS’s, and is expected to be available from PlayAsia sometime yet this month for just under $17 USD.

Microsoft is touting some new statistics trying to gain some additional momentum for the Xbox 360 game console, stating that in the U.S. they have sold 10 million units. There is no refuting that this is quite an accomplishment, but Microsoft is trying to add some more significance to the 10 million unit mark.

“History has shown us that the first company to reach 10 million in console sales wins the generation battle. We are uniquely positioned to set a new benchmark for the industry, ” said Don Mattrick, senior vice president of the Interactive Entertainment Business in the Entertainment and Devices Division at Microsoft.

Aliph has just released a sequel to their popular Jawbone headset with a new Jawbone headset which has a slightly new look and improved noise canceling features from the original. The new Jawbone is currently available from the Jawbone website or from AT&T for $129.99 in black only, with more colors to come.

This new Jawbone looks to have a little softer look to it, doing away with the mesh metal grid look and replacing it with a metal diamond pattern. The ear hook also has a softer, stitched cover for a more comfortable look and feel.

The folks at Google Maps have recently released a pretty cool upgrade to the mapping service incorporating geo-coded photos, entries from Wikipedia and even some real estate listings from local and national real estate companies.

The next time you use Google Maps to look up a location you will notice a ‘More’ button next to the ‘Street View’ and ‘Traffic’ buttons on the map. Click the ‘More’ and you’ll have a couple of options for both photos and Wikipedia. Selecting the Photos check box brings in small geotagged photos from Panoramio right onto the map. Checking the Wikipedia box, just as you would expect, brings up little “W” icons representing geotagged Wikipedia entries. Clicking on the Wikipedia entries then brings up an excerpt of the article and a link.

Once Microsoft finally released Windows XP Service Pack 3 to the Automatic Update after a last minute delay you might think the worst is over, but for many it doesn’t look like that’s necessarily the case. As the release has been rolling out to computers around the world there have been a number of reports with problems as you might expect with any major service pack, but one issue seems to be quite a bit more prevalent than the others.

According to ComputerWorld there have been many reports of an “endless reboot” problem that has been flooding forums with no real specific reason or response from Microsoft. One of the theories is that computers running AMD processors with XP are the ones having the problem, but the issue is not exclusive to AMD. Microsoft has said that problem comes from computer makers who used the wrong XP images to load the OS on AMD machines. HP, who was not named specifically by Microsoft, fired back saying that SP3 added a driver that was not previously present which causes the problem.

Apple has put out an official announcement that Steve Jobs and a number of other suits from Apple will be kicking off the Worldwide Developers Conference this year in San Francisco. The press release says that this years conference will showcase both the OS X Leopard and the OS X iPhone, but we’re thinking there will be a new iPhone announcement, too.

The event meets the expected timeline for the launch of the 3G iPhone, the UK has run out of iPhone stock and we wouldn’t believe that Jobs would launch the 3G version overseas before launching it stateside first. WWDC 2008 runs for five days from June 9th to June 13th with the keynote from Jobs and crew on the 9th starting at 10am; we’ll be listening.

iTunes has officially started offering HBO series episodes available for download online through iTunes. This is a welcome announcement for many who would love to get episodes of the Sopranos, The Wire and Flight of the Conchords onto their PMP’s, but it comes at a price.

The price is actually what makes this announcement most interesting. Apple, who seems to have previously been with the belief that all series shows are priced equally, seems to have made a concession with HBO. The series episodes of the Sopranos is priced at $2.99 each, which is a whole dollar more than the usual $1.99 rate for a TV show.