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Sourcing material from the mecca of viral video has always been a bit iffy -- who knows which rabid Beyonce fan will bite back when you slice and dice their  Single Ladies  tribute video. However, YouTube's recent addition of the Creative Commons licensing option just made it a whole lot easier to make mashups without stepping on anyone's stiletto-sporting toes. Users are now given the option to choose between YouTube's standard license or the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license, which, when selected, automatically adds the video to a library of similarly appointed videos, now available for your cutting and captioning pleasure. An attribution is placed beneath any video sourcing material from the Creative Commons library. Among the more professional outfits adding their videos to the CC pool are  Al Jazeera  and  C-SPAN  -- who's ready to see Mittens the Kitten and Sarah Palin battle it out over tax cuts? You can now access the Creative Commons li...

Apple's iOS devices may lack native memory expansion, but PhotoFast has now come up with solution that just about bests the official camera connection kit. What you're looking at here is the i-FlashDrive, a memory dongle that sports both a USB plug and an Apple 30-pin dock connector, and it comes in three flavors starting from 8GB at $95 up to 32GB at $180. What's more, the drive also works with a free Cupertino-approved app that provides both external  and  internal file management (for music, photos, movies, and more), contact backup, and native MP3 playback. Want one? Then head over to Taiwan for a mid or late June launch, or watch out for its US debut shortly afterwards. Demo video after the break. PhotoFast i-FlashDrive does USB on one end, dock connector on the other Stone Ip

We're a few days out from E3, that magical place where dreams are made and fanboys and girls from all walks of life are simultaneously appeased and slightly disappointed. Surprises are expected from all of the big three this year -- particularly Nintendo. How will the gaming giant top last year's 3DS debut? All signs point to the announcement of a Wii followup, which we've heard alternately referred to as the "Wii HD" and "Project Cafe." Rumors, leaks, and the occasional bit of confirmed information have been rampant in the months and weeks leading up to the event. We've weaved it all together into one handy guidebook, to make sure that we're all on the same page, come Tuesday morning. Let's start with a genuine bit of information: back in April, the company's CEO, Satoru Iwata, confirmed that Nintendo is, in fact, working on an HD followup to the Wii that is most likely due out in 2012. A few days prior to that revelation, the requisi...

We first heard about the Eyez video recording glasses concept back in March, when those familiar black frames packed a 1080p camera, 16GB of flash memory, WiFi, and dual exawatt-class lasers (ok, we made that last part up). Named for the product's "utopic vision," ZionEyez now has a prototype with a more grounded spec list, including a 720p camera and 8GB of memory, along with micro-USB and Bluetooth connectivity for livecasting to Qik or LiveStream --  The Truman Show  style. Afraid you won't be able to pull off those high-tint lenses at night or in that top-secret (indoor) business meeting? You can swap out the removable sunglass lenses for clear versions, or throw in your prescription in daylight (tinted) or indoor flavors, since many optical stores stock appropriately sized lenses. Availability for these $199 HD Ray-Ban clones is currently slated for fall (assuming ZionEyez hits its funding target), but you can pre-order your pair for $...

Earlier this week the Eee Pad Transformer scored itself a sweet upgrade in the form of Android 3.1, and with it came USB host support. When we did our hands-on with the Honeycomb update we couldn't demo the feature because, well, the Xoom doesn't have any USB ports. But that Transformer keyboard dock has a pair of 2.0 jacks and someone was kind enough to post a YouTube vid of a PS3 controller and the ASUS tablet getting their game on. Theoretically, this should work with any USB gamepad, including those for the Xbox 360. The only drawback? You've got to be wired in -- no Bluetooth support here. Follow the break to see it in action and satisfy your Android-loving curiosity.  Update:  We managed to have a quick go on the same setup at Computex, and the tethered PS3 controller worked perfectly. Unsurprisingly though, we had no luck with the Bluetooth connection. Quick hands-on video after the break. HKtech ASUS UK (Twitter) ,  MrEverb...

We got a chance to spend some time with the lovely folks from OCZ here at Computex for a tour of their latest and greatest SSD products, the RevoDrive 3 X2 and RevoDrive Hybrid. Both are PCIe x4 cards featuring up to 4 SandForce SF-2200 controllers and RAID 0 (striping) for blazing performance. The RevoDrive 3 X2 is available in capacities from 240GB ($699) to 960GB and improves upon theRevoDrive X2 with TRIM support and double the performance. We were treated to a demo that achieved truly ludicrous speeds -- 1.5GBps reads and 1.2GBps writes -- the kind of numbers that'll perk up even the most jaded PC enthusiast. The RevoDrive Hybrid builds upon the same SSD technology as the RevoDrive 3 X2 to cache the contents of a 2.5-inch hard drive, with capacities starting at 500GB with a 60GB cache ($350). OCZ's demo showed a 20 times performance improvement going from a regular hard drive to the RevoDrive Hybrid. Both products are expected to ship in July, but we suggest yo...

While flying cars are still a pipe dream, other technologies are quickly transitioning from the stuff of sci-fi movies into the very tangible realm of  reality . This was definitely the case at the Qualcomm booth here at Computex where we got to experience two interesting new technologies -- zero shutter lag and the ultrasonic pen. What if when you pressed the shutter button on your phone the camera captured 2 frames before, one frame during, and 2 frames after that instant? That's the idea behind Scalado's zero shutter lag, which speeds up the process of taking pictures on a phone by letting the camera continuously sample images and allowing the user to create a composite shot from the content available in up to 5 frames. Also on display was Qualcomm's ultrasonic pen that  we already played with  at MWC. By using an ultrasonic transducer attached to a pen and a phone with 3 microphones (like the  MSM8660  Mobile Development Platform), the ultra...

Speed may be a relative thing, but whatever you choose to compare Micron's new RealSSD P320h series to, you'll probably find them pretty competitive. Coming in 350GB and 700GB capacities, these PCI Express solid state drives can process data at a rate of 3GB per second and write it at a no less impressive 2GBps. If you're more interested in input / output operations per second, the P320h clocks in at 750,000 IOPS when running Linux or 650,000 with Windows Server as the OS. You don't need us to tell you that both numbers represent screaming-fast performance. Such mighty feats are achieved with the use of 34nm SLC NAND flash memory and Micron's own controller chip. Samples of the P320h are trickling out now and mass production is coming in the third quarter of 2011, and while no pricing info has been offered yet, it's safe to say you'll be needing your company CFO's blessing before making any P320h purchases.  Micron

The Adobe-Apple Flash war used to be one of the juiciest catfights around, but, much like two aging boxers, both sides now appear willing to  act like adults  put it all behind them. Speaking at yesterday's D9 conference in Palos Verdes, California, Adobe head Shantanu Narayen confirmed that he and Steve Jobs have reached an unofficial armistice, bringing an end to their prolonged war of words. According to the CEO, Apple's Flash issues stemmed from the company's "business model," rather than any legitimate concerns over quality. "It's control over the app store that's at issue here," Narayen said, implying that Flash's wide-ranging platform compatibility may not have jibed with the Cupertino ethos. He went on to remind moderator Walt Mossberg that developers can still use Adobe's AIR software to get their products to the App Store, adding that his company is looking forward to the rise of HTML5 and "actively contributing" to i...

Sit back, relax and grab a cold one, because you're about to take an aerial tour of the Serengeti, courtesy of that flying drone you're staring at. Developed by Microdrones, this MD4-100 quadrotor was recently sent off to Kenya, where it gathered footage for a TV nature documentary produced by TBS Japan. By hovering over the terrain, the craft was able to get relatively up close and personal with zebras, elephants and other wildlife, without creating the same kind of disturbance that heavy duty, camera-laden trucks can wreak. Presumably, that's because the animals have no idea what to make of a flying robot, though part of us wants to believe there's some sort of full-circle, techno-evolutionary dynamic at work here, momentously bringing bot and beast together in some sort of pre-apocalyptic symbiosis. But that's just us. Hover past the break to see the video for yourself. IEEE Spectrum microdronesGMBH (YouTube)

We've seen quite a few devices designed to help hearing impaired users communicate via phone orcomputer, but Japan's NHK Science & Technology Research Laboratories has just announced a new animated translation system to help get important news to deaf viewers . While televised subtitles may work for those who understand the language, people who were born deaf and learned sign language from an early age can have significantly more difficulty. NHK's system, unveiled at Technology Open House 2011, bypasses this problem by automatically comparing Japanese text to sign language, converting equivalent words into animated onscreen gestures, and replacing differing words with appropriate synonyms. There are, however, a few kinks to work out. While comprehensible, the translations aren't exactly fluent and researchers have been forced to manually adjust some awkward transitions between words. The ultimate goal is to create a system that could be used during emergencies or n...

There are already plenty of keyboard and mouse sharing solutions out there, but alas, most are not foolproof nor affordable enough for the average Joe. As such, we fell in love with j5 Create's Wormhole KM Switch and Wormhole Station at Computex. The former, pictured above, is simply a cable sporting a USB dongle on each end; whereas the latter is an aluminum, externally powered expansion dock rod that comes with an intergrated KM switch, two USB 3.0 ports (which requires a USB 3.0 host for full potential, of course), a power button at the end, and card readers for microSD, SD, and MemoryStick. After the one-click setup using the built-in installer, you can set your preferred method to toggle the keyboard and mouse switching: either by clicking the middle mouse button, by clicking a user-defined hot area on the screen, or by simply moving the cursor off one side of the screen. As you'll see in our hands-on video after the break, the switching was seamless, and we had n...

We've already seen the BlackBerry Torch 2 in photos courtesy of Mr. Blurrycam, but a little birdie from Negri Electronics was kind enough to send over a pre-release device for us to get under our own glass for a little photo shoot. Though it has a virtually identical form factor to the original, the Torch 2 bumps the specs in almost every department from the camera to the RAM. Oh, and it's running the next-gen BB OS 7 -- which is really OS 6.1, and still lacks any QNX DNA. Read on past the break for a full preview of this yet-to-be-announced slider, and some glorious HD video if the beautious shots aren't enough to whet your BBM-hungry appetites. BlackBerry Torch 2 preview! The first thing you'll notice about the Torch 2 is the new gunmetal grey finish that encloses the entire device. It's not quite as shiny as the original, and we prefer the matte finish to the cheap-looking plastic of the original. We're also big fans of the new checkered silver back ...