Intel’s ultrafast Thunderbolt interface is going to get a lot faster in its next iteration.

The company announced today at the NAB conference that the new version of Thunderbolt will be able to send and receive data at 20 gigabits per second, Engadget reports. The existing version only runs at 10 Gbps (which is still faster than the 5 Gbps of its more ubiquitous competitor, USB 3.0).

All of the above speeds are merely theoretical maximums, but they’re decent indicators of how each interface compares to one another.

While faster speeds are always nice to see, the real upgrade with Intel’s new Thunderbolt interface — codenamed Falcon Ridge — is how it can transfer and display massive 4K video files simultaneously. That’s a lot of data, considering that 4K videos will be around four times as large as today’s 1080p HD files.

4K support makes the new Thunderbolt interface a useful upgrade as we move to 4K-capable displays and videos. Today’s Thunderbolt, developed together with Apple, is basically a faster alternative to the old Firewire standard for professionals (with the helpful addition of powering monitors as well). Most consumers are still fine with plain-old USB, and I suspect many don’t even take advantage of the speed benefits from USB 3.0.

Intel is set to begin production of the new Thunderbolt interface in 2014, and it will also be backward-compatible with existing Thunderbolt cables and devices.

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According to its designers, Phorce is a world first smart bag.

Created by serial entrepreneur and Kauffman Foundation scholar Marijn Berk with case designer James Jeffrey, the bag is designed to let you go mobile without worrying about power. Use it for your Macbook Air, and you’ve got an extra seven hours of computing. Or, charge up to three USB devices — your phone, speakers, or tablet — simultaneously. Phorce can charge your iPhone 5 over eight times — wow — or your Samsung Galaxy S III about six times.

The bag communicates with your smartphone via Bluetooth, telling you how much power you’ve got left and how many times Phorce can recharge your various devices, and it will remind you that it needs charging itself when it’s running low.

Even better, that Bluetooth connection warns you when your bag has been left behind in the coffee shop or office … so you’ll possibly never lose your bag again.

Creators Berk and Jeffery are looking to raise $150,000 on Kickstarter. The bag design appears to be basically finished, but this will help them, they say, go big and go international right away.

The bag will retail for $349, but Kickstarter supporters can get in at just $219. There are two versions: Phorce for USB, with three USB charging ports, and Phorce for Mac, with an additional MacBook power port for Magsafe-powered laptops. This version will retail for $449 but will be available on Kickstarter for $299.

The specs include:

• 54 Wh Battery capacity
• 3 USB charging ports
• Bluetooth
• Phorce app (iOS & Android).
• Weight:  3.7 lbs / 1.7 kg
• Dimensions:  W x D x D – 18 x 12 x 4 inch (+240 cubic inches when expanded)
• Padded laptop pocket fits most laptops up to 14-inch, and all MacBooks up to 15-inch.
• Includes high-speed compact wall charger that fully charges Phorce in 4 hours

Phorce is a pricey bag, no doubt. But it’s also a very cool, smart-looking, and smart-acting gadget bag. I haven’t handled one physically yet, but I plan to when it is released — at which point I’ll be able to offer a more definitive hands-on review.

I expect to see some of them at tech conferences in the coming months, assuming Phorce meets its funding goals.

Interested?

The Kickstarter campaign is going live this week.

Surveying more than 600 IT and security pros with an average 11 years of experience, the study found that 90 percent of organizations have leaked data or documents in the last 12 months. Almost 80 percent of organizations do not provide secure file sharing technologies for employees. And well over half of organizations believe that mobile access equals massive security risk.

With no secure file sharing technologies provided by the enterprise, staff unsurprisingly turn to readily available methods: Dropbox, USB drives, or that trusty old standby, email.

Unfortunately, those are three of the four most common methods of data loss.

The survey did turn up some good news, if you’re a chief financial officer. Even though customer and consumer data are at the most risk — 25 percent of IT pros were worried about them — sales, finance, and accounting information is much better protected.

That good news only lasts, unfortunately, until you notice that under Sarbanes/Oxley and other regulations, corporations are legally liable for data security.

Oops.

Here’s the infographic:

Image credit: Warren Goldswain/ShutterStock

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

Real power is finally coming to USB.

The USB 3.0 Promoter Group has approved a new standard for the ubiquitous port, which will deliver enough wattage to power and charge the average laptop computer.

While the current Universal Serial Bus 3.0 design can pump out 4.5 watts, the new USB Power Delivery specification far outperforms it, delivering a max of 100 watts of power over the same cables used today.

Brad Saunders, the chairman of the USB 3.0 Promoter Group, told VentureBeat that with the new standard, device manufacturers could one day all use the same, cross-compatible power cable — a major win for consumers.

“We envision that as a possibility, but it’s up to the manufacturers to see the benefits of it,” he said.

While USB originated as a data-transfer cable standard, it’s increasingly common to see it used to supply power to devices, thanks to its ability to deliver a few watts of power — more than enough to charge a phone, but far short of what’s needed for larger devices. That could change if manufacturers adopt the new standard.

Both the USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 Promoter Groups have approved the standard, the results of which could one day lead to a USB standard that’s as universal as its name implies.

As Saunders pointed out, cell phone manufacturers went through a similar process with the mass adoption of the microUSB standard. That move emerged as a result of pressure from a number of environmental and governmental bodies, and with the new USB standard, manufacturers of laptops, displays, and peripherals may undergo a similar shift.

But Saunders says he’s most jazzed about the new standard’s ability to send power in both directions, an ability that introduces a variety of new and exciting use models, including the ability to charge a laptop by plugging it into an external display.

While the new standard will be compatible with existing devices and cables, consumers looking to take advantage of the upgraded power capabilities will have to upgrade to the new cables, which will have a higher power rating.

Though the standard is already in its final development stages, Saunders doesn’t envision that consumers will see compatible devices until at least the middle of next year. For comparison, while USB 3.0 was formally approved in 2008, the first USB 3.0 consumer devices didn’t make an appearance until 2010. So don’t throw away your current charging cables just yet.

Photo: Flickr/Michael Napoleon

July 9-10, 2013
San Francisco, CA

Early Bird Tickets on Sale

The high-speed USB 3.0 standard will finally make its way to smartphones and tablets by the end of 2012, the organization behind USB standard said at the Consumer Electronics Show on Sunday.

In addition to the inevitable faster data transfer speeds, the USB 3.0 ports will also allow mobile devices to charge faster since they deliver more power, reports PC World.

In the battle for the next major high-speed data port, USB 3.0 will be contending with the Thunderbolt standard on mobile devices — a fight that will spill over into the mobile arena. Intel has said that it will push Thunderbolt for smartphones and tablets later this year as well, and there are signs that Apple will include it in future iOS devices. Luckily for consumers, many PCs that are equipped with Thunderbolt ports also have USB 3.0.

The USB 3.0 ports will likely get a MicroUSB version, similar to to the smaller ports currently on many cellphones, according to Rahman Ismail, CTO of the USB Implementers Forum. They will achieve theoretical speeds of around 800 megabits per second, significantly faster than the current USB 2.0 standard, which has a theoretical maximum speed of 480 Mbps (but in reality, performs but much slower).

“What takes 15 minutes [with USB 2.0] will roughly take 1 minute and 10 seconds,” Ismail said.
He also noted that mobile devices won’t be able to use the full power of the USB 3.0 standard — which can achieve theoretical speeds of around 5 gigabits per second on computers — because it would require them to draw too much power.

This gadget might seem familiar: It’s a dual-core computer on a USB drive, and its makers say it’s all about computing from any screen, anytime, anywhere.

The drive, called Cotton Candy, will turn any screen you connect it to into an Android station. You can plug it into a TV, a tablet, a laptop (PC or Mac) — you name it.

The device’s maker, FXI Technologies said in a statement that Cotton Candy was designed to “bring cloud computing to almost any screen.” In a word, it could help to make an “Internet of Things” more feasible than ever before.

In addition to giving consumers easy access to cloud-based games, files, documents and computing, Cotton Candy was also intended to speed up the adoption of smart screens, extend the lifetimes of common computing hardware, create a single point of content storage and decrease the overall cost of computing while increasing security.

It’s a tall order for such a tiny device:

Now, for the specs: The Cotton Candy prototype weighs just 21 grams and is equipped with an ARM Cortex-A9 (1.2GHz) CPU and an ARM Mali-400 MP (Quad-core) GPU. It has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth connectivity options, as well as an HDMI output for HD graphics on any screen. The computer can be controlled via mice, keyboards, smartphones and other USB peripheral gadgets.

It runs an Android OS (no word yet on version number; we expect to see Ice Cream Sandwich on final, mass-market devices due to its one-OS-fits-all premise) as well as Ubuntu, and it features virtualization software for Windows, Mac and Linux.

As for the name, LXI CEO Borgar Ljosland wrote in a blog post, “The reason is that it was the most similar existing object that describes somewhat what it is doing: a stick connecting a cloud to your hand!”

Right now, FXI Tech is giving prototypes to manufacturers in the TV, storage, PC, smartphone, auto and appliance industries, to name a few.

Expect to see Cotton Candy sticks floating around at retail outlets during the second half of 2012. Pricing hasn’t been set yet.

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The site points to some leaked specification lists and screenshots that list the Thunderbolt port. Instead of finding space for an entirely new port location on the Macbook Pros, it appears that the Thunderbolt port will replace the Mini DisplayPort connection on the laptops. That means the Thunderbolt connection will support high-speed data connections, as well as the ability to connect additional monitors to the Macbook Pro.

As VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi explains it, Intel originally proposed Light Peak as a fiber-optic connection to replace all of the cables that connect something to a computer. But initially, the usage for Light Peak looks more limited, and it will use copper wires instead of fiber-optic connections. The speed is faster than universal serial bus (USB) 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits a second in both directions at the same time. Sony is also expected to use Light Peak.

Given its speed and bandwidth capabilities, Light Peak was meant to serve as a single interface to juggle multiple functions. The protocol is smart enough to know what you’re intending to use it for — for example, it will function as a disk interface if you plug in a Light Peak-capable disk drive into your computer, but if you plug in a Light Peak monitor, it will instead function as a display interface.

The device lets users save content safely on USB hard drives connected to the Pogoplug device and is available from any Internet enabled device, including apps for the iPhone, Android, iPad, BlackBerry, and Palm (see below).

The new device has all the same features as the original, including searching across drives, create slideshows, photo timelines, share address books, and even playing movies, but now includes wireless capabilities, making it easy to place anywhere in the home or office.

Setup is easy, the company says. Plug the box into a regular power outlet, find a wireless connection and connect a hard drive or flash drive via a USB cable. 

The company has had a fair amount of activity over the past year since the launch of the original Pogoplug, including securing a second round of funding for $3 for a total of $6.25 to date. Several months ago, the company added two new features; streaming media and automatic back-up for files.

The San Francisco-based company, founded in 2007, plans to sell the new Pogoplug Pro at Best Buys and online for $99.