usb

Streaming you the top Friday headlines with the latest in 2D technology:

Amazon scored a licensing deal with Warner Bros. to offer more shows for Prime streaming, including West Wing and Fringe. Amazon Prime continues to step up the competition with Netflix. Prime costs $79 a year, which works out to be less than a year's subscription of Netflix.

The fight between Viacom and DirecTV is finally over. The 20 million subscribers of DirecTV can now access 17 Viacom channels, including MTV, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. On July 10, DirecTV turned off 26 Viacom channels over a payment dispute … Read more

With the iPad Camera Connection Kit allowing users to connect a variety of unexpected USB devices (like a MIDI keyboard) to their iPads, the next logical question was, "Is there something similar for Android?"

Although it's not advertised or sold by any of the big Android phone manufacturers, the solution is a cheap cable called a USB On-The-Go adapter.

USB On-The-Go (Amazon link), or USB OTG, is essentially a female USB port that plugs into the Micro-USB port of a phone or tablet, allowing you to connect devices that use a standard USB 2.0 or … Read more

Apple has issued an update for its latest MacBook Air and MacBook Pro models that were released in 2012, which addresses a couple of issues where the system's processors unnecessarily use too much power and can drain battery lives, and also addresses compatibility issues with some USB devices.

The update is a 76.64MB download that includes new versions of I/O kernel extensions and frameworks, the Dock application, and some shared resources including desktop pictures, user icons, and system sounds. Apple recommends this update for all of its new systems, which may help address problems with USB devices … Read more

Kickstarter, the crowd-funding portal, has a lot of interesting "projects" that are seeking backing, but it isn't always easy to tell how unique or exceptional they truly are.

Take the just-launched ChargeCard. It's a USB-charging cable for iOS devices that's in the shape of a business card. The ChargeCard looks cool but I seem to remember seeing other devices kind of like it. So I dashed off an e-mail to Noah Dentzel, one of the two guys behind the project (Adam Miller is the other), asking him how it was different -- or better -- than I product I'd found on eBay . The product I'd dug up had a built-in rechargeable battery while the ChargeCard was just a cable. … Read more

USB drives are convenient for storage and for transferring data to other computers. This convenience also makes them a great delivery system for malware. If you're comfortable with the Windows Registry or know how to set Group Policies, you can lock down your PC's USB drives. A much simpler way is by using USB Disk Manager.

USB Disk Manager is a small Windows program that can help you manage the permissions of USB drives. The portable app doesn't need to be installed and can be run from a folder on your hard drive or from a USB … Read more

The AudioQuest DragonFly is a USB-powered (it doesn't use batteries or an external power supply) digital-to-analog converter. I usually need some time to get a handle on the sound of a component, but within minutes of plugging in the tiny $249 DAC I knew exactly what made it so special. It sounds clear and clean, so there's less standing between the music and my ears.

The DragonFly is a bona fide audio component, designed by Gordon Rankin, a man known in audiophile circles as a great tube electronics engineer, but Rankin is also a computer audio guy. He's one of the few DAC designers with equal depth of knowledge in analog and digital audio technology.… Read more

USB is perhaps one of the most convenient I/O technologies for computing systems, and supports a variety of different peripherals, including printers, mice and keyboards, audio interfaces, and storage options, among many others. When you connect a USB device, the system should recognize it and load a proper driver in a process called USB enumeration, but if this fails in OS X, then you might see little or no activity from the device and a repeated message in the OS X console that states the system was not able to enumerate the device.

USB enumeration is a fairly complex … Read more

The other day, as part of a bonus deal, I wondered aloud how long it would be before 32GB flash drives dipped below $10.

Not long, apparently. While supplies last, TigerDirect has the Patriot PSF32GFXUSB Xporter Flex 32GB Flash Drive for $9.97 shipped. That's your post-rebate price (PDF); it'll cost you $19.97 to get out the door.

Assuming you don't have a deep-seated hatred of rebates (many people do), that's an incredibly low price. It was scarcely six months ago that I was crowing about piddly 8GB drives for under $10.

The PSF32GFXUSB -- … Read more

I was shaken and stirred by the Bowers & Wilkins P5 on-ear headphones back in 2010. It set a new standard for sumptuous sound and build quality for very small, on-ear headphones. Designed with portable music players and phones in mind, the P5 was definitely a step up from most ear buds, and the sound was easy to listen to over the long haul. The P5 ($300) is still around, but B & W recently introduced a similar, but less expensive model, the P3 ($200).

When I unboxed the new one I decided to first judge it without directly comparing … Read more