Western Digital, the world's leader in external storage solutions and maker of the popular WD TV media player family, today unveils its first line of wireless home networking products, designed specifically to accelerate movies, video and gaming, delivering a premium high-definition entertainment experience. With the My Net family of powerful and easy-to-use home networking products, WD debuts its exclusive FasTrack technology that instantly detects entertainment traffic on the network and fast-forwards it to gaming consoles, media players, smart TVs, tablets, smartphones, computers and other Wi-Fi connected devices.

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"With so many people within the home simultaneously watching movies, playing games and browsing the Web via their iPad®, iPhone®, Xbox® and other devices, the network demands placed on today's connected home has grown exponentially," states Jim Welsh, executive vice president for WD's branded products and consumer electronics groups. "Our successes in creating Connected Home solutions with our WD TV media players and personal cloud products have given us valuable insights into the network-overload problems of home wireless users, and entering the wireless home networking market offers WD an exciting opportunity to strengthen our Connected Home offerings that are aimed at enhancing the home entertainment experience for consumers."

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PROMISE Technology Inc., a leader in providing high-performance storage solutions for the rich media market and the leader in designing cutting-edge Thunderbolt enabled devices today introduced the Pegasus J2, the world's fastest ultraportable Thunderbolt storage device, capable of delivering up to 750MB/s in a device the size of a smartphone. Pegasus J2 brings an unparalleled level of performance in a small form factor to the market enabling both consumers and media professionals to manage the explosion of unstructured data and digital assets critical to their creative projects. The J2 is the perfect complement for MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.

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Compatible with all Thunderbolt enabled Macs, the PROMISE Pegasus J2 is a pocket-sized, blazing fast external storage device that offers up to half a Terabyte of storage and is available in 256GB and 512GB capacities. The Pegasus J2 is flash-based making it the ideal solution for anyone who craves extreme performance in the consumer and professional post-production markets. This addition to its internationally award winning Pegasus line boasts a cutting edge, compact product design with an emphasis on reducing the footprint coupled with reduced environmental noise.

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The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the industry consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA) technology, today announced it has finalized a new version of its Universal Storage Module (USM) standard that enables consumers to simply and easily increase the storage capacity of their mobile devices. The USM Slim specification defines a thinner, 9mm dimension, making it an ideal storage solution for ultrabooks, tablets and other portable devices.

Demand for thinner, lighter mobile devices often results in decreased native storage capacities, limiting the amount of content consumers can carry with them. The USM Slim specification allows manufacturers to develop external storage offerings that seamlessly pair with these thin and light devices so that consumers can still have instant access to their music, movies, photos and other content at any time or place. The smaller form factor now makes it possible for thinner CE devices to integrate the USM host connector or slot to accept the 9mm module.

Like the original USM specification, which specified a 14.5 mm height, USM Slim defines how developers can design slots into their products that accept complete, powered, external storage devices with integrated SATA interfaces. These slots and storage devices enable consumers to instantly access their content from a variety of products and to seamlessly transfer that content between devices without the aid of additional power or cables. The integrated SATA interface supports transfer speeds up to 6 GB/s, offering users the same speed and reliability they’ve come to expect from their hard drives and other SATA-based devices.

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Creative Technology Ltd today announced the Sound BlasterAxx™, a whole new generation of Sound Blaster and a new genre of audio device that the world has not seen before. Specially designed and engineered to meet the audacious demand for simplicity and coolness by a whole new generation of networked mobile device users, the Sound BlasterAxx shifts to a new paradigm of literally producing great sound and becoming a great listener of sound while keeping everything amazingly simple. The sound produced by the flagship Sound BlasterAxx, a unique one-piece elegantly designed hexagonal device, simply blows people away, and yet mind-bogglingly, no power adapter is required.

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Besides seamlessly supporting the PCs and Macs, the Sound BlasterAxx is also designed to work intelligently with smart devices including the iPhone, iPad, Android phones and Android tablets, providing the best of all worlds. The Sound BlasterAxx leverages Creative's vast audio engineering expertise to provide best-in-class audio playback for music, movies, games and voice communications. To support the intelligent audio applications on these smart mobile devices, the Sound BlasterAxx also features advanced Bluetooth wireless audio connectivity and a high-quality dual-microphone array.

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VIA Labs, Inc., a leading supplier of USB 3.0 integrated circuit controllers, today announced its 3rd generation USB 3.0 hub controller, the VIA Labs VL812. The VL812 USB 3.0 Hub Controller utilizes a new low-power design and features an industry-first integrated 5V DC-DC switching regulator, offering a single-chip solution that achieves both high power efficiency and greater system integration for further reduced BOM.

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In typical configurations, the VIA Labs VL812 USB 3.0 Hub Controller consumes less than 0.5w under load, making it one of the market's low-power leaders. The low operational power consumption of the new VIA Labs VL812 USB 3.0 Hub allows users to attach an external 2.5" USB 3.0 hard drive, USB 2.0 Flash drive, and a USB Mouse simultaneously without the need for an AC adapter, when connected to a regular USB 3.0 port.

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Today at the National Association of Broadcasters Convention (NAB), mLogic LLC announced that the company’s mLink PCIe to Thunderbolt expansion chassis will be demonstrated on the trade show floor.

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mLink enables PCIe adapter cards (video capture cards, RAID controllers, host bus adapters, SSDs, etc.) to be attached to Thunderbolt-equipped computers. mLink brings the functionality of these add-in cards that formerly required a desktop system to all-in-one and portable computers like the iMac and MacBook Pro. Visit www.mlogic.com for a list of Thunderbolt-aware PCIe cards that are compatible with mLink.

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In order to provide a pure 2.5" to 3.5" SAS conversion, Icy Dock is proud to introduce the new MB982IP-1S-1 2.5" SAS/SATA to 3.5" SAS SSD & HDD Converter. The MB982IP-1S-1 is an addition to the already popular MB982 enterprise series, with an emphasis on industrial level SAS storage applications. The dimensions, connection locations, and mounting hole positions are carefully placed to mimic a standard 3.5" SAS drive or SSD.

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The MB982IP-1S-1 also utilizes a full metal design, thus creating the best environment to cool any 10K, 15K RPM mechanical or enterprise SAS solid state drive, meanwhile, the rock solid construction is ideal for industrial, enterprise, and military related applications. A completely standardized SAS connection is implemented to be fully compatible with various backplanes that may be used. The converter is designed specifically to be used for 2.5" SAS/SATA drives that are required in 3.5" SAS internal hard drive bays of tower and rack mount chassis, as well as with backplanes or hot swap modules.

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HighPoint Technologies, Inc., an industry leading Storage HBA and RAID solutions manufacturer, will unveil a new series of Thunderbolt based Storage Controller Boards at the NAB 2012 tradeshow. This ground-breaking new product series aggregates Intel’s revolutionary I/O technology, with HighPoint’s extensive SAS, SATA and USB 3.0 design and manufacturing expertise, delivering innovative, highly versatile development platforms for storage solution providers.

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Thunderbolt’s revolutionary connectivity technology, presents great opportunities for HighPoint and solution providers the world over. For 2012, we are expanding our comprehensive product portfolio to include a new series of Thunderbolt based Storage expansion and controller boards.

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Today LaCie announced the availability of the eSATA Hub Thunderbolt Series, its latest peripheral featuring Thunderbolt technology. This product delivers a solution for connecting eSATA hard drives to Thunderbolt-compatible Mac computers, making them backwards compatible. The eSATA Hub also boosts transfer speeds and allows users to daisy chain with other Thunderbolt peripherals.

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Consumers with new Macs who are interested in getting the best possible speeds with their existing multi-interface drives are no longer limited to USB or FireWire connections. In addition, businesses, photographers or other creative professionals who have upgraded their Macs to versions without ExpressCard/34 slots are now able to capitalize on their previous investment in eSATA hard drives.

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Addonics Technologies today announced the Addonics CipherUSB, a USB pass-through adapter that provides a simple, inexpensive way to encrypt data stored on flash drives, flash media, USB hard drives as well as Blu-ray, DVD or CD media.

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The CipherUSB is the size of a typical flash drive. Just plug the USB drive, flash drive or optical drive to the device end of the CipherUSB, and then plug the CipherUSB into your computer's USB port. The drive will appear on your computer in seconds and is ready for use like an ordinary USB drive. There is no password to remember or software or drivers to install. Data written to the USB drive or burnt onto Blu-ray, DVD or CD media is automatically encrypted on the fly with "Top Secret" level AES 256-bit hardware encryption. You can even mix encrypted/unencrypted burning sessions onto the same optical media. The encrypted drive is accessible on any computer with a USB port as long you have the matching CipherUSB.

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