Acer, in contrast to what we'd heard before, has just said that they'll not be making a tablet to compete with the iPad, instead focusing on ultra-thin laptops. Acer sees these ultra-thins, including many that will run Google Chrome. Acer was cock-sure enough to mention that an iPad-like tablet "would not pose any technical challenges for Acer," but that that design just doesn't fit into their business model right now. Bet Apple's letting out a big old "phew!" in Cupertino about that one. [Digitimes via Engadget]

UK security agency MI5 has issued a warning regarding freebie flash drives and cameras. Apparently Chinese spies are handing them out to UK businessmen in hopes of infecting their computers with trojans and gaining access to corporate secrets.

Of course old-fashioned methods—sex and money—are still being used as well, but it seems that few people expect an innocent gadget gift to contain danger in the form of a trojan or malware. After all, why else would a security agency's 14-page report be focusing on this espionage approach more than it did on other tricks?

I guess it's time for me to become a bit more paranoid about the pile of flash drives I picked up at CES. [Times Online via IEEE]

Note: Pictured flash drive is not a known spy and belongs to Gadget_Guru

The WSJ says Google's launching an online store to sell software add-ons and bonus powers for Google Apps written by third-party developers—like more, um, secureness and other enterprise features—which Google's announcing in March.

At the beginning, it'll be just enterprise stuff that are add-ons for Gmail and Docs, etc., sold through a now conventional setup: Users buy the apps, written by other developers, through Google's store, and Google takes a cut. To be clear, it's a move intended to bulk up its assault on Microsoft Office with more features and capabilities, more than anything else. (Is extensive modularity and add-ons, which introduce more potential points of failure what businesses really want in their enterprise apps? Hmm.) But don't worry, Google wants to keep giving you, the normal person, their software for free, to make money on advertising. So click click click away. Google won't be selling you apps anytime soon. Probably, anyway. [WSJ]

Sixteen-year-old Alexander Kendrick has put together a low-frequency radio which allows for the transmission of text messages from caves nearly 1,000 feet underground. I still can't get a single bar of reception on the subway.

Aside from updating Twitter with messages of "It's dark in here" while spelunking, Kendrick's science fair-winning cave-texting device could actually help save lives. Underground rescues in caves or mines are time consuming and dangerous ventures because of the rescue teams' inability to communicate well—unless they lay down miles of telephone line as a rescue team in new Mexico once did. With this cave-texting system, rescuers would be able to maintain contact and potentially get medical aid where it's needed a heck of a lot faster.

Of course Kedrick's project isn't the first cave radio, but its test was actually "the deepest known underground digital communication ever to take place in the United States." I hope the text was "Hello World." [NPR via Slashdot via Make]

In today's Remainders: shouting! Fox News has been clamoring about Verizon and the iPad for a while, and today they kept on clamoring; an indie video game you control by screaming; a robot that listens for your commands; and more.

Fox Tales
Before the iPad's launch, Fox News Channel's Clayton Morris said that there would be two versions of Apple's tablet: one for AT&T and one for Verizon. According to Business Insider, Morris is still sayin' it. The information allegedly comes from a source in Verizon, and BI pretty much says that's good enough for them. Well you know what? It's not good enough for us. Fox News doesn't have the best track record with Apple rumors lately, so we remain skeptical on this one. [Business Insider]

Scream
If your video game habit really gets on the nerves of the people who live with you, show them this video and say, "see, things could be much, much worse." The game, presented recently at Sydney's Game Jam conference, makes yelling one of the primary controls. The louder the yell, the better you fare. Sure, your roommates might not appreciate your attempts to get to the blood-curdling bonus rounds, but if your gaming is provoking a lot of frustrated screaming already, this game might be one to keep an eye on. [CruchGearoarrrrr]

Hanging Out
Sure, this messy LED circuit chandelier gives your home decor a touch of the nerdiness that defines you. Then again, this messy LED circuit chandelier gives home decor a touch of the nerdiness that defines you. [Design Boom]

Atom and Eve
Fujisoft's Palro robot packs an Intel Atom brain, giving the little guy 1.6 GHz of processing power, Wi-Fi capabilities and a 3 megapixel on-board camera. All that hardware makes it a good worker, but it's an even better listener. Why? Because it also packs five microphones for powerful voice recognition ability. A video clip after the jump shows the Palro reacting to a woman's commands, though it's unclear exactly what she's commanding and thus unclear exactly how well it's taking those commands. The only downside to this pint-sized conversational companion is the price tag. To make Palro your robo pal,expect to dish out over $3000 when it's available in March. I think I'll just play some solitaire. [SlashGear]

Augmented reality is stupid as a marketing gimmick—hold a Pepsi can in front of your webcam and be underwhelmed!—but this use of it is both practical and amazing. As you drive, this system displays surrounding buildings as see-thru.

This system works by using two cameras. One is placed behind a blind corner, while the other is in a car pointed forward. By combining the two views and using shared landmarks to match the content, the system then projects the combined image with the transparent building on the windshield. The driver then sees the puppy running towards the street before its too late.

Obviously, a lot needs to happen for this sort of thing to become commonplace. For one, every blind spot will need a couple of cameras pointed on it from various viewpoints, and cars would then need to be able to tap into all of their feeds. But hey, we're already living in a world where CCTV cameras capture our ever move, so why not add a few more? [New Scientist via Boing Boing]

When I reviewed MotionX GPS Drive for iPhone, I said it offered the best value but had some UI issues. Newly redesigned, the app's 3.0 version is far better—with landscape view and a more logical user interface.

Yes, the landscape mode I was lamenting its lack of in the last edition is there, and it looks great. As you can see, even pulling up iPod controls doesn't hog the screen. Remember, naysayers, it's not that you need widescreen for the road ahead, you need it for extra info, and you need it because it fits on the windshield better.

Time till arrival, distance till arrival and estimated time of arrival still all scroll through to the right of the "upcoming turn" text. I would prefer that I could pick one (I'm an ETA man—though not the Basque nationalist kind), but you can't do that, yet.

The interface has a nice menu system that shows more priority to things I really use, and buries things like Compass and iPod where they need to be, on the periphery of my awareness. The only thing I'm missing still is the ability to navigate to a point on the map. That may be a trick, but one worth pulling off. There isn't a lot of custom routing options in there yet, but if you really care about prioritization of stops, you should buy something more elaborate anyway—perhaps a portable GPS unit.

As you can see, even in portrait mode, the menus are cleaner:

All in all, it's a palpable improvement for a worthwhile product, especially one so durned cheap. That's right, it's still just $1, with $3/month or $25/year turn-by-turn voice service. You may hate GPS navigators, you may even hate GPS apps, but if you are on vacation and you don't have this app—at the very minimum, that is—you are just crazy. [Motion X GPS Drive iTunes Link]

Sometimes, and only sometimes, a piece of geek jewelry can rise above being tacky and unwearable to become tacky and borderline wearable. Steve Wozniak's nixie tube watch is one such example. This ring with working microgears might be another.

The Gear Ring, designed by Kinekt Design, is made of stainless steel and is, of course, quite ugly. But seeing the gears rotate as the ring's outer rim is spun is actually pretty cool.

Is it enough to make me consider wearing a gear ring? No. Is it enough to make someone consider wearing the gear ring? Probably.

If you're that person, you can buy the Gear Ring from Kinekt for $165. [Kinekt Design via Technabob]

Seagate's BlackArmor PS110 USB3 drive kit brings USB3 to laptops without USB3. And your transfer speeds will be 3 times what they were through USB2. If you weren't excited about USB3 before, you should be.

The Price

$180

The Verdict

It's three times faster than USB2, which is a pretty good jump this early on in the life of the standard. In theory, you can get somewhere around ten times as fast, but you're then running into bottlenecks such as the actual drive itself and the computer you're transferring data to. But our biggest complaint is it's not OS X compatible.

Here's how we tested. The kit comes with an ExpressCard adapter that can drive any one USB3 port. However, the adapter does need to be plugged into a USB2 port for supplementary power. So we used a MacBook Pro (an older one with ExpressCard) booted into Windows 7 to test. We also used a CyberPower P55 tower with USB3, because we wanted a more powerful unit to make sure the bottleneck wasn't with the computer we were using. And we went with CyberPower, because they're one of the only OEMs now that are including USB3 on most (all) of their builds.

Here's CyberPower's test results first. Comparing the USB3 drive to a similar Seagate USB2 drive showed that direct transfer rates on big files are about 3 times faster. A bunch of smaller files evened up the match, since that's more dependent on the hard drive itself to seek the files rather than the actual data transfer. Even still, USB3 came out ahead.

Similar results came out when we tested on a MacBook Pro bootcamped to Windows 7, because the ExpressCard kit doesn't support OS X. The difference between USB3 and USB2 is less pronounced here—not quite twice as fast—because of the bottleneck with the machine, rather than the transfer. But it is faster, which is great if you're constantly moving large files around on the go.

Gripes

Beyond the fact that the kit doesn't support OS X at all, Seagate also brilliantly placed the drivers for the ExpressCard adapter on the USB3 drive itself. This is somewhat confusing, because they don't tell you that you don't have to use the adapter to access the data—you can plug the drive into a USB2 port, get the drivers off, install it, then plug the adapter in.

It's a good drive

This USB3 drive costs a little extra from Seagate, since the 1TB version of their USB2 drive goes for $150, and this is $170 with just 500GB, but does come with an ExpressCard adapter. But if you plan on getting a USB3-capable laptop (everyone will), you might as well future-proof yourself now. And if you're looking for a USB3-compatible PC, there's CyberPower, which has them on just about all their systems now. [Seagate, CyberPOwer]

Fast

Comes with an ExpressCard kit

ExpressCard kit needs a extra USB2 slot to power

Slightly pricey

Doesn't work with OS X

Do you know why this guy is singing? Because he's happy. And do you know why he is happy? Because he won an Apple iPad in our Apple Tablet Sweepstakes. His name is Christ Kratzer.

Like we said in the sweepstakes rules, we eliminated the questions that didn't have a clear answer. In some cases, like the screen size, we took the the closest answer as the correct one (10.1 inches is near enough 9.7 inches).

Only nine people out of 37,382 were right. We put those in a list sorted by date, and then run a random number generator, which gave us the number three. Chris was in that position.

Congratulations for Chris, and thank you all for playing.