A new startup company called iTwin has what they are touting as some simple hardware to connect remote computers together and share information. The iTwin device consists of two USB drives that start out hooked together, but then can be plugged into separate computers to allow instant sharing of files. The designers state they realized that many people understand how to use a USB drive, but small USB drives hold a limited amount of data and lack in security if you lose the drive.

A user of the iTwin drives can connect them to a single computer and drop some files into the drive, then disconnect the second USB drive. The second USB can then be taken to another computer somewhere else in the world and plugged in, giving instant and automatic access between the two computers. A number of hurdles immediately come to mind when thinking about how this could work with everything from individual computer firewalls and port security, to network firewalls, internet connections and authentication on both ends. But, according to the designers of iTwin it basically makes a connection between the two computers as if they have a “cable-less cable”. The file sharing is unlimited and encrypted, and by simply unplugging one end, the other end is left useless for any attempting hacking.

On Monday Google released a new online service to the public called Fast Flip on the companies experimental Google Labs site. The new tool is designed to allow users to see full pages of different magazines and newspapers more as if they were physically viewing them by allowing them to flip through the pages, which it kind of does.

The Fast Flip page is laid out into into sections of popularity, topics and even some particular sources. Static images of the pages of different articles are then shown for the section you are looking for that you can click on. Clicking them shows a larger static image on the page, but not necessarily all of it. You can then move back and forth to static pages of other articles on the subject, or click the source you are viewing again to actually get the web page.

The same folks at ifixit.com who tore down the newly released iPod nano from last week also got their hands on Apple’s newest version of the iPod touch and carefully broke it down as well. In doing this they found some interesting surprises.

In dismantling the iPod touch, they found a faster 802.11n Broadcom wireless chip, still inactive but bringing wireless-N in addition to the a,b and G in the touch. Chances are that some OS update, hopefully in the not too distant future, will enable this faster wireless connection.

We all know Facebook is continuously evolving, and just recently the social networking behemoth made some announcements that will likely make its popularity even larger, partly by making things smaller. On Thursday Facebook launched Facebook Lite, which is basically a scaled down version of the current Facebook site. Existing users can log onto Facebook Lite and it even uses the same cookies to recognize you if you are already logged in. All you friends are there and you can post messages, but it’s just got a little fewer “pieces of flare” about it.

The idea for Facebook Lite is to make a slimmer version of Facebook, not too unlike Twitter, that more people could use in places that have limited access to bandwidth, so the pages are not so “heavy” to load. So far the site is ironically only available in the U.S. and India, but I suppose they have to test it out somewhere. Chances are it will be rolling into some more obscure areas of the world soon.

Photos: ifixit.com

If you haven’t seen this yet, you’ll want to check it out. The folks over at iFixit.com have taken apart Apple’s new 5th Generation iPod nano with the camera, FM, etc., using some tools that are custom and some that you can find around the house. They have a whole mess of detailed step-by-step coverage and photos that are pretty interesting. See if you can find the typo on the battery warning!

It appears that with the recent release of iTunes 9, Apple has once again cut-off direct access for the Palm Pre’s iTunes support. We had seen it before with the release. It shouldn’t be too big of a surprise to Palm owners however, since Apple said the connectivity wouldn’t last long and they’ve thwarted Palm’s access in the past with iTunes iTunes 8.2.1.

It’s easy to see arguments on both sides of this issue, as frustrating as it might be for Palm owners. On one side Apple would like iTunes users to use Apple products to connect directly to iTunes, such as iPods or iPhones. But, they also have been a proponent of non-DRM music and are essentially making it difficult for other devices to get access to the music through their application.

It looks like Jobs and Apple have saved the best for last today as usual with the announcement of the new, updated 5th generation iPod nano. The new and improved nano has a host of new features including a not just a camera but a video camera, Genius mixes, FM radio with Live Pause, Voice Over and a Fitness pedometer that works with Nike.

Even with the tight-lipped Apple team we had heard the rumors that a camera was coming to the iPod and today it is finally here. Apple has implanted a video camera into the iPod nano that can record in either landscape or potrait and can record audio along with it so we’re not making silent movies here. You can then play back the video instantly and hear the audio through a built in speaker! It even comes with 15 cool-looking special effects that can be applied to the video such as Thermal, Mirror, X Ray and more.

The folks at Apple are making a number of announcements today and they keep getting better as we go. One of the latest is a drop in price for the iPod touch. The 8GB model, previously at $249, has been dropped to what Apple is calling a “magic” price point at $199.

They are offering the 32GB iPod touch for $299 doubling the storage, and they’ve added a 64GB capacity touch for $399. Nothing else has really changed with this device (no camera), but it will be able to run OpenGL 2.0, housing the same CPU as the iPhone 3GS.

In part of today’s announcements from Steve Jobs and Apple at the “It’s Only Rock and Roll” event, they’ve announced the latest version of iTunes – iTunes 9.

This new version (at first glance) most notably has a a new look to it, making navigation a little easier and get around (provided you aren’t too used to the old version). They’ve also added a way to preview from anywhere in the store instead of having to find the right place.

iTunes LP is something something new with iTunes version 9, bringing back some of the features we used to enjoy with LP’s that have been lost with online music, such as lyrics, notes, video, photos and apperently some other things that were not mentioned up front. Genius mixes are another enhanced feature in this new version, playing automatically generated …

For those of you who have been patiently waiting, Android has finally joined the ranks of handsets with a mobile version of Facebook available. Through some recently released information on Facebook’s “Facebook for Android” page, the app appears to have a fairly comprehensive set of features.

Android users can post status updates, view news feeds, friends’ walls and user info. Facebook for Android can also share photos from the phone and also can look up 125 friends’ phone numbers from the home screen, all from the home screen.

Deutsche Telekom’s T-Mobile and France Telcom’s Orange have announced Tuesday that they plan to merge the two mobile phone carriers, making them the largest carrier in the U.K. once combined. Currently T-Mobile and Orange are the 3rd and 4th largest mobile operations in Britain behind O2 and Vodafone. The merger would launch the combined companies into the number one spot with 28.4 million mobile phone users and a 37 percent market share, leaving O2 trailing with 27 percent and Vodafone 3rd with 25 percent of the mobile market in Britain.

The merger involves plans to maintain their own distinct brands for the first year and a half and then agree on one common brand which could be one of the two existing or something completely new. The two companies will also start streamlining their operations by eliminating overlapping administration, retail stores and base stations with lay-offs likely in the near future.

A U.S. district court judge in Texas ruled against Microsoft on Wednesday in a law suit over a patent infringement in the companies software product Word. The ruling takes affect in 60 days and would ban sales of Microsoft Word versions 2003 and 2007. It also hits the software giant with a $290 million fine in damages.

These versions of the Word product contain particular use of XML which infringes on a patent filed by i4i Ltd, a small firm in Canada. Microsoft states that they plan to appeal the patent citing that they “do not infringe” and that the i4i patent is not valid. Microsoft also has a new version of Word coming out next year as part of their Office 2010 suite, which does not contain the infringing XML component. Microsoft could also simply remove the particular XML portion of the existing Word applications to comply with the court ruling for future sales.

The folks from Sungale gave us a chance to check out their recently released 8″ touchscreen, WiFi digital photo frame and while we were initially excited by seeing the features we felt the actual implementation fell a little short of our expectations.

By reading through the features included in the picture frame we found that the designer was going for much more than just a picture frame, and we liked the direction they were heading. After all the list of functionality includes utilizing the WiFi connection to view weather, YouTube videos, Picasa photos, news, Gmail and internet radio. And of course you can view your photos as a slideshow on the device, but that’s the easy part, right? And this is all accessed through a touchscreen which for the most part usually makes this pretty intuitive and easy to navigate.

On Monday Google unveiled what they are calling a “next-generation infrastructure” for their web search, and they are asking the public to give it a try. The “secret” project has been underway for months according to a recent post on the Google Indexing blog, and is almost complete. According to the post, the new system “…will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions”.

Google has codenamed the new underlying search indexing “caffeine”, and is looking for the general public to give it a try and provide feedback in the way of differences between the new and old. The new indexing can be tried out at http://www2.sandbox.google.com/, where you can do a search and see if you can tell any difference in the results. According to the blog post from Google, they are only looking for feedback in differences at this time.

Running multiple monitors on a single computer is just plain cool. At least it is for us here at the ‘Brick, and the more the better. So, when we heard about HP’s USB graphics adapters which allow you to connect multiple monitors via USB, we had to try it out. HP says a single computer can run as many as six of them and we wanted to see just how well.

THE SETUP:
We ran our testing with some pretty standard equipment. We used an HP ultra-slim desktop PC running Windows Vista with 2GB of RAM and an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, along with six average 19″ displays and a single 20″ display. And of course six USB Graphics adapters (actually we had seven adapters but we’ll …