Before CES, we asked you to give us your predictions about what you thought would be at CES. The crazier the better, and whoever had the craziest one that came true would win a sweet prize package from SteelSeries. Well! We have a winner. Here it is, and no arguing now…

Pat predicted:

I bet there is a helicopter that can be remote controlled with your phone…(hmmm, amazing!)

Lo and behold, we got all kinds of hands-on with the AR Drone, which has a robust iPhone control interface. I’d say that’s close enough. Our runners-up were both “robo-wife” predictions, but those were at the porn expo so technically not CES. Congrats to the winner, I’ll be contacting you shortly!

Overview: With the dollar to terabyte ratio decreasing every day, there’s no excuse for not having adequate digital storage space. The new Iomega ix2-200 Network-Attached Storage (NAS) unit makes adding storage to your home or business network about as easy as it can get. Its a very powerful, versatile unit that is quite nearly plug-and-play.  Let’s take a closer look shall we?

The Hardware: First off, this thing feels like it could survive being run over by a tank. And if tanks can’t destroy your data, what do you have to fear? Inside the metal enclosure is a 1.0 GHz Marvel processor, 256MB of RAM, and two SATA II platters. The disks are set up in a RAID 1 mirror, although you can disable the RAID and run it as JBOD instead. All of this is controlled by a Linux OS, EMC LifeLine. You also have three USB 2.0 ports, one in front, two in the back. Gigabit Ethernet jack, power input, and one of those nifty security lock ports if you have problems with people walking off with your hard drives.

Getting Connected: The setup for this thing was a breeze. Plug in power, plug into router, run install disc and you’re ready to start storing data like its going out of style. Instead of having to install some sort of UI software, you’ll be greeted with the above page in your web browser. From this control interface you can have full administrator access from any machine on your network. You can see the list of various settings below. I’ll go through and hit the big stuff.

Backup and Restore: The ix2 makes backing up your drives almost a fully autonomous procedure. Using what Iomega calls “Copy Jobs”, you can set the source and destination of the files, put the job on a reoccurring schedule, even tell it to only import new and modified files. You can set up multiple Copy Jobs for different drives or for different locations. Want to backup another external drive every week? Not a problem. Do you want pictures to be saved in one folder, and important documents in another? Just a few clicks away. The ix2 also has full Time Machine and Retrospect support to back up your computer.

One of the cooler features of the ix2 is the QuikTransfer button. You can assign one Job to the QuikTransfer button located on the front of the device. Now you can activate that Job, even if you’re computer isn’t up and running. Its really useful for downloading any new files you need very quickly. Just pop a flash drive directly into the unit, press the button, and a few thousand revolutions later, you’re up to date.

Disks: Here you can change the RAID configuration of the unit. Default is the mirror-protection mode. Essentially writing your data twice, so that in the event of one disk failing, all your data is on the other disk. The downside is that you have half as much space to work with. The Disks menu also has the option to securely erase your data, making it unrecoverable. You know, for sensitive material.

Email Notification: Pretty self-explanatory, but useful. Should any problems arise, the ix2 will send an email to you detailing the problem.

Event Log: Another straightforward feature. This log keeps track of which users accessed which files, when they did so, any errors that occurred, etc. It all downloads as a text file for your convenience! Useful for making sure your employees aren’t using your network to seed the latest season of Dollhouse.

External Storage: You can attach up to three external storage devices, and ix2 will make them available on the network.

iSCSI: More for business users, the ix2 has iSCSI, iSNS, and Mutual CHAP capability. If you don’t know what those mean, don’t worry about it. You won’t be needing it.

Media Service: Here’s another place where the ix2 shows some pretty cool innovation. First, this device is a UPnP and DLNA certified media server, allowing for streaming music, videos, etc. all over your network. But you can also wire in up to 5 security cameras into the ix2 and turn it into a surveillance station. The video streams can be remotely viewed, or recorded.

Network Service: More technical jargon to throw at you. The ix2 supports multiple file sharing protocols including, AFP, Bluetooth, NFS, rsync, SNMP, and CIFS. Whew!

Power Management: Designed to suck as little power as possible, the ix2 only activates the fan when the internal temperature gets to a certain point. This not only reduces the amount of power used, it keeps the drive from sounding like a freaking jet engine on your desk.

Printers: Just like with external storage devices, you can plug in a standard, wired printer, and the ix2 magically makes it wireless! No way! Or at least available to the network. Plugged in my HP Photosmart, worked like a charm.

Remote Access: If you’re out on the road, but still need to access important files you left back home you’re options are usually limited. The ix2 has a unique URL that allows you to access it from any internet capable computer. I like this option better than having my files “in the cloud”, hosted by some 3rd party.

Security: This one is another very useful tool. When you assign others on your network a user ID and password, you can also set the level of access the have on the drive. You can set read or write privileges for each individual folder on the drive, giving you a lot of flexibility in your security options. Keeping your video tech out of the financial records and the like.

Torrent Download: Quite possilby my favorite feature of the ix2. It comes with its own torrent client built in. Meaning you can set torrents to either leech or seed, and you don’t need to leave your computer on to do so. The ix2 will automatically download or upload the data independently. Brilliant!

Concluson: Well, we made it to the end. As you can see, the ix2 has a lot to offer personal and small business consumers. If you haven’t started using external or network based storage yet, I highly recommend you start. The ix2-200 comes in 1 TB, 2TB, and 4TB flavors, at $269.99, $369.99, and $699.99 respectively. Plus, external drives are easier to ditch when the RIAA comes pounding down your door looking for all of your pirated legally obtained, and properly licensed media.

Darrell Huff, a 51-year-old automotive technician from Centreville, Md., wanted his quadriplegic son, Joshua, to be able to make calls on a cell phone. Unfortunately, all cell phones require button pushes, so Huff quickly thought of Bluetooth headsets as a solution.

Darrell Huff modified a BlueAnt V1 so it can be activated with a magnet.

(Credit: BlueAnt)

He was especially intrigued by the BlueAnt V1, which has a unique voice-control interface that lets you make and answer calls with voice alone–there’s even a voice-guided tutorial if you need some guidance. (The V1 is the predecessor to BlueAnt’s more recent BlueAnt Q1).

But even the BlueAnt V1 wasn’t 100 percent hands-free; you still needed to press the button to activate it. So Huff set out to find a way to activate the switch without the need for hands.

“I tried different things,” Huff said. “It occurred to me a mercury switch might work, but my research soon showed that mercury is all but banned in the U.S. and I also began to worry about the user’s perception… I tried using a roller ball-type tilt switch, but it is difficult to find one small enough and my experiments showed the connection with this type of switch was erratic.”

After a lot of trial and error, Huff finally decided to use a magnetic switch.

Darrell's son Joshua demonstrates the modified BlueAnt V1 with the flexible rod magnet.

(Credit: Darrell Huff)

“I opened the headset and replaced the push button switch with a magnetically controlled switch,” Huff explained. “The modified version of the headset has a switch that is closed when in the presence of a magnetic field. So when the headset is not near a magnet, the switch is open…If you move the headset near a magnet, then the switch closes–this is like pushing the button.”

In case you need to push and hold the button, you would just keep the headset near the magnet for a few more seconds. Huff is careful to note that the switch itself is not magnetized; it just responds to a magnetic field.

Now all Huff had to do was mount a magnet so his son could move his head conveniently to activate the headset. He created one that is on the end of a 29-inch long and flexible rod that can be mounted to a wheelchair. At last, Huff had created a genuinely “hands-free” Bluetooth headset.

…

We all remember the Power Glove as basically a broken promise. Well, here’s your chance to have that grip-control fantasy fulfilled: the AcceleGlove is a control interface that senses your fingers’ positions via accelerometers and uses them to control, say, that oversized Armatron they’ve got there in the video.

Remember Armatron?

Ah yeah.

Anyway, the AcceleGlove is, as you may guess from the guy’s spiel in the video, actually aimed at professional and military situations where a lightweight but precise control mechanism is needed for some basic navigational work with, say, a packbot. You probably won’t see it as an accessory any time soon, although the Peregrine Glove will be available soon if you feel the need to do some hand-based control.

The AcceleGlove, unfortunately, only detects things like bending your fingers, making a fist and so on, no waving or sign-language detection here. It comes with an open-source SDK, however, so you can always try hacking on some Wiimote parts.

[via OhGizmo and PC World]