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Explained: Science vs. Technology

June 6th, 2013

You don’t have to go “full tilt Foucault” to believe that words have great power, and when wrought and wielded in certain ways can utterly fail in their assigned tasks to explain and enlighten. We face that situation today with the words “science” and “technology”—two words often used quite interchangeably, even in places where people should take some care (colleges, laboratories, the media). So what is the difference? Is a MacBook a scientific breakthrough or a technological construction? Both? Neither? Something else entirely? Since it actually does matter, and will provide a foundation for further (real) understanding, let’s take about 500 words and a few minutes to go over some things.

Basic definitions = clear distinctions

Science is a systematized, evolving body (or “base”) of knowledge. Within a particular field, one can trust that following a series of steps will result in the outcome predicted. As evidence accumulates, an initial “hypothesis” or testable proposition becomes a “theory” of explanatory and predictive power. The various pursuits of knowledge employing this methodology are what we know as “the sciences”—physics, biology, geography, chemistry, physics, and so on. Some 44 years’ worth of advances in computer science, for example, are represented by CRE’s basic computer rental that’s thousands of times more powerful than the primitive contraption that took Americans to the moon in 1969.

Technology is another thing altogether, the application of knowledge (or science) to problem-solving and service provision, primarily via manmade tools and devices. If we allow that science is the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake, for the evolving knowledge base, then technology is the practical application of that knowledge to meet people’s needs and solve their problems. Energy science would lead to such technologies as solar panels, for instance, as well as other products built to use the supplied energy most efficiently for, say, light, heat, or power for the MacBook Pro rental you’re taking camping. Science explains, technology performs.

Aesthetics vs. theories

Science has analysis in mind, following which come generalizations, then the crafting of theories. Experiments are a way of controlling and defining discoveries, so excellence in science requires creativity, logical thinking, and the usual “x factor” that eludes definition, like Steve Jobs’ star quality and that of his game-changing iMac invention. And technology? It brings design to the mix, as well as invention, production, process, construction, testing and measurement, quality control, and synthesis—thus possibly beginning the cycle again with new ideas, even new science, then developing even newer technology, and on and on.

To summarize:

Science studies specific subjects, technology applies what is learned.
Science analyzes the data, technology synthesizes a design.
Science is theory, technology is process.

It’s really quite practical and sensible, this “science vs. technology” lesson, as they both conspire to do us good at every turn even when we misuse them for ill. When the human imagination conjures up positive new ideas to replace the old (like this, for instance), great things happen in science and technology.

For first-rate event production rentals and the hard-to-find post-production gear you need right now, great things happen with CRE. A call to (877) 266-7725 or a message will lead to the best possible answers to your unique challenges. If you know what you need, our Quick Rental Quote form is your ticket to an even swifter solution. When you’re ready, we’re here—tomorrow, tonight, and right now, too.

Office 2.0 Is, Er, What Exactly?

April 18th, 2013

One can find the beginnings of Web 2.0, that mythical/virtual world where Office 2.0 has its headquarters, all over the map of the high tech universe, as well as its timeline. In 1984, John Gage of Sun Microsystems said, “The network is the computer,” and suggested that joining that network, with yesterday’s PC or today’s iMac, further empowers us all. Such thinking, plus inevitable technological progress, was widely predicted to bring Web 2.0 to fruition, well, any minute now.

Office 2.0 … slowly but surely

“Web 2.0″ and “Office 2.0″ were long ago pressed into service as marketing terms, with great buzz potential but no standardized definitions. Clearly, however, they both seek to position the Internet as a computing, communications, and collaboration platform by leveraging emerging technologies. As these changes usher in a wealth of interactive tools and capabilities, the web is no longer a one-way street. With everything from smartphones to ipad rentals offering wi-fi today, the pioneers of network computing certainly appear vindicated.

Now, by using the Internet as a common platform; creating intimately responsive web pages for 3.5-inch phone screens and 30-inch Apple Cinema Display rentals; and providing more effective collaboration via social networking, wikis, and blogs, corporate managers with a Web 2.0 environment have more flexibility than ever to support the differing needs of “everyone in the office” (plus some who are not in the office) with Office 2.o approaches.

2.0 technologies – signs of the times

A simple example of Office 2.0 in use is the personal (and personalized) “start page,” an easy preference setting in any modern browser. (Outside the corporate environment, social networks like Facebook have taken over from independent start pages.) Another characteristic of “2.0″ technologies, devices, and operating systems is extensibility. This describes an architecture that is open enough now to accommodate existing needs (like allowing web access from your MacBook Pro rental in addition to your home computer) and amenable to adding new capabilities later.

From a simple starting point for searching and browsing, the early “start pages” have evolved to include widgets, apps, and feeds for keeping tabs on the weather, managing to-do lists, scheduling calendar events, watching the news (on a text or visual feed), and checking e-mail. More and more people are using start pages that are configured entirely to be “workspaces in the cloud” with Microsoft-compatible apps, as much as 10GB of storage, and first-rate security. Office 2.0 is meant to be all this, and more.

The benefits of Office 2.0

The positive things about Office 2.0 are quite clear after millions of hours and trillions of bytes, and include:

reduced support costs, since IT personnel won’t have 11, 32, or 1716 software upgrades to do, or 10 kinds of presentation programs to explain and troubleshoot;

increased productivity, where gains in productivity, some argued about and disputed, come from advantages both large and small of the shared environment, from ease of collaboration to new connections impossible within previous hierarchies; and

flexibility and independence, because the single central location for all files and applications, as well as e-mail and video-call connectivity, lets employees work (even be at work) in any location with web access.

Corporate users can choose any device, or several in several places, running any modern web browser. In fact, there’s no better way to inaugurate your own Office 2.0 transition than to rent laptops from CRE that are especially configured to put your team on your new platform.

The downside

The major drawback of Office 2.0 is security, but of a slightly different kind. A plumbing firm may be comfortable having its financial records on another company’s servers, but a bank might not be. Besides encryption solutions, some enterprising firms lease entire servers, the same way CRE rents Xserve RAID units. The leased servers are for organizations that prefer security under their own control. Other solutions, such as more and better cloud desktops, are coming every day.

Count on CRE to keep you updated! A call to (877) 266-7725 or a short message will put an expert Account Executive to work finding solutions for you. If you know what you need, visit our Quick Rental Quote form (and right now is fine).

TechLife Series: A Balanced View – at Work & Home

February 26th, 2013

The “balanced life” has been humankind’s never-ending quest. It may turn out that it can only be approached, not attained, making it a journey rather than a destination. However you characterize it, the pace of life at work and at home—Another OS update? A new iMac? Kids’ braces are how much?—can be brutal.

Add in the mental and emotional demands of the Cyber Age, says William F. Aicher, and it can be difficult to find that “balance between nature and technology within everyday life.” Aicher, web and marketing director for Musicnotes.com, admits to being a lifelong “lover of both,” and says that one important key to fulfillment is achieving that “equilibrium” between technology and nature.

From insights to action

Aicher speaks for many of us when he admits that he recognized his imbalance—the home space was alive and varied, the office not so much—before he took action. It wasn’t as if his work environment was furnished with office equipment rentals and hardware store calendars. Aicher brought his “feel” to the space with “family photos, Batman figurines [and] some old music press photos,” but gave short shrift “to the idea of balance.”

As he sought the elusive “balance between technology and nature,” Aicher began to realize that the goal was as broad as it was narrow. That is, he knew that the journey toward balance would result in a “healthy existence [for] myself as well as for humankind.” Instead of detouring from that, well, balanced goal, and trying to “save the world,” Aicher kept his focus on “fixing my own world.”

Bringing the Outside In

Aicher was spending most of his time at the office, so that was the priority. He tells the tale:

There simply was no life where I was working, and there was no positive flow of energy. So what I did was rearrange my office… situating my desk so my back was no longer to the door, incorporating some lush plants [and] setting up a small saltwater aquarium in an eight gallon biocube (a lot of work and patience, but absolutely worth it).

Aicher brought plants and created a new kind of space, one where he could “take a step away from my technological and Internet-focused day to zone out (some people might call it meditating).” You can use whatever props and devices you like to create your unique space—a MacBook for streaming tunes, ambient lighting (there’s an app for that!)—as we all need something different to achieve “equilibrium with life.” Of course, these things can’t replace the need to take breaks and get out of the office and into nature from time to time, but balancing your day-to-day environment fosters peaceful moments.

Whether you call it zoning out or meditating, it is in those peaceful moments, Aicher knows, that you will learn once again to feel “whole.” As we add more blogs to this “TechLife Series” we will consider specific problems and situations, as well as consider the positive impacts of technology on such world crises as hunger, illiteracy, war, energy, disease, and poverty. In doing so, we will build on a broad, inclusive statement of principle that, like the foregoing insights, comes courtesy of William F. Aicher: “Come back to nature once in a while.”

Whether it’s conference time or you’re jammed with post-production jobs, our decades of experience and first-rate inventory of trade show convention rentals and high-tech equipment promise a quick and solid solution. Call an Account Executive at (877) 266-7725, send us a message or visit our handy Quick Rental Quote page. We’re ready when you are!

Break Time: Techno Fun & Geek Games

February 19th, 2013

All things in moderation, goes one saying. Live a balanced life, advises another. Okay, then, in the midst of some serious recent blogs about new technologies and trends, let’s take a moment and look at some fun stuff and geeky goods. Think creatively enough and you might find other productive uses for some of these gizmos!

Boombox 2.0 – The company spells its name uncapitalized, with a macron (“long vowel” mark) atop the middle character: bēm. Okay, “beam,” so they make flashlights, right? Nope, we’re not talking photon beams (light) here, but sonic ones—bluetooth wireless, to be precise. The company’s latest brainstorm is the Outlet Speaker, a portable unit that plugs directly into standard electrical outlet. As a premier source of audio visual (AV) equipment rentals, CRE knows sound, and evidently so do the firm’s techies. They’ve managed to put a ton of it, crisp and clean at all volume levels, in a package half the size of a tissue box. With nothing but your smart phone and an Outlet Speaker, you can do everything from amplify streamed music to set up a little mini-PA system. Truly geekworthy.

Built Like a Brick Mug – A clever product from ThinkGeek, the Build-On Brick Mug holds 12 ounces of your favorite hot or cold beverage. More importantly, it gives you a surface on which you can use your own bricks (Lego, Mega Bloks, Kre-O, K’Nex) to spark the creative flames and 3D-doodle your way through problems. As we recently reported, some folks use mind-mapping software like Corkulous, but others do their planning and strategizing (say, figuring out how many and what kind of PC rental the new telemarketing team needs) while sketching, fiddling, or playing “fort”. With the Brick Mug, you won’t be thirsty no matter what you do.

Equation Occasions – Math makes the world go ’round. Or maybe it’s physics. Anyway, there are equations involved either way, and plenty of them are about telling time, which has to do with (1) the world going ’round and ’round and (2) the world going around the sun. The Equation Watch, nicely retro and analog with moving parts and everything, gets your brain cells moving, too, by replacing the hour marks with equations. They’re not particularly difficult, and once you solve them, the challenge is gone. But you can time the battery use on your MacBook Pro rental with the Equation Watch just as well as with any other, so what the heck? If you support numeracy as well as literacy, this gadget’s for you!

Is YouPotty Next? – Let’s wrap up our list with a little humor: A company named CTA caused a bit of a stir at the last CES with its iPotty, a children’s training toilet with an iPad stand attached. (Honest. Look.) CTA also sells the iPad Pedestal Stand, a stylish chrome device that holds your iPad (version 2 and up) and, if you so choose, a roll of TP. A 10-inch gooseneck lets you adjust the angle and orient the screen to just the right position on your throne.

Remember, you get royal service from CRE, too, where a single call or message puts an expert Account Executive on the job for you. Need render farms for that big job, or a full breakout session setup for an upcoming conference? If you know what you need, visit our Quick Rental Quote page and get what you need now!

Technifun: 4 Great Gadgets

November 6th, 2012

1. GAMER HEADSET

Two forms of entertainment have driven the Internet Era’s technological progress. Gaming is the one we can talk about in polite company. For today’s gamers there is an embarrassment of high-tech riches. But busy pros who are more likely to rent laptops than the latest multiplayer game don’t know amazing devices like this next one even exist.

With a name so long you have to stop and take a breath, Mad Catz’ Tritton Pro+ True 5.1 Surround Sound Headset is a $200 game console headset. Each earpiece has (get this) four separate drivers and its own individual subwoofer, making the sound from your Xbox or PS3 downright dangerous. You get an inline remote, and can monitor your own voice, too, so you can remind yourself not to blow out your eardrums.

2. GADGET ACCESSORY?

Musical Wine Glasses have markings that tell you just how much to pour to get the notes you want. The more glasses you buy (and, of course, the more wine you pour), the more musical variety you can muster up. It’s not high-tech, but here’s a plan: Get an iPad rental, download the Fireplace Log app, get the glasses and the vino, and invite your significant other to the living room for a romantic interlude.

3. STILL MIGHTIER THAN THE SWORD

Livescribe’s first “smartpen” was the Echo, which plugs into a PC’s USB port to facilitate recording and transcription. Now the technology goes wireless with the Sky Wi-Fi Pen. Your writing and drawing is digitized in real-time and saved wirelessly, and securely, to your free Evernote account. You can also record audio, continuously or intermittently, and later tap your notes anywhere to replay from that point in time.

Evernote stores everything in the cloud, so you can connect from anywhere on any Internet-connected device, from a desktop computer rental to an Android tablet or phone. You can use Livescribe Player to replay anything and everything stored in your Evernote account, or even share it with others, whether they’re across the room or across the ocean.

4. “WATCH ME” LOSE WEIGHT

The MIO Active Connect is a “weight-loss wristwatch” that just might be the first of its kind. It differs markedly from other fitness monitors on the market as it has been designed to do more than just keep an accurate record of the calories you burn daily and weekly. The Active Connect uses the data it acquires to figure out how you can lose more weight, more effectively.

It can plug into your MacBook, desktop Mac, Windows laptop, or PC, for uploading stats or linking to Twitter, Facebook, and other web services. You can also avail yourself of the web app MyFitnessPal, a free cloud-based diet diary and calorie-counting aid.

Need a range of trade show convention rentals or high-end gear for a post-production project? A single e-mail or call is all it takes. If time is of the essence, head to our Quick Rental Quote page right now, or give us a call at 877-266-7725!

Top 10 Tech Dreams that Came True, Part 2

October 4th, 2012

From our earliest days we humans have let our imaginations run wild. Of the dreams that have come true over the last few millennia, some are considered nightmares now (nuclear power, for instance). In Top 10 Tech Dreams that Came True, Part 1, we looked at such wonders as submarines, earbuds, and the modern office (as opposed to The Office, which no one could have predicted). But do you realize how far back the ideas for video chat, radar, and the iPad go? Read and learn! And remember, your dreams can come true, too.

Top 10 Tech Dreams that Came True, Part 2 (6-10)

6. Video Chat, 1911 – AT&T debuted its “Picturephone” at the 1964 New York World’s Fair. It didn’t catch on due to bulky equipment, user-unfriendly controls, and poor video resolution. Today, Skype and FaceTime (the videochat service on all Apple devices from iPhones to the iMac) offer simple, free, and crystal-clear connections.

7. The iPad, 1968 – It was Arthur C. Clarke, once again, who foresaw tablet PCs and e-readers. In 2001: A Space Odyssey, the astronauts used a small, handheld “newspad” to “scan the latest reports from Earth [in] the world’s major electronic papers.” After choosing what stories to read, a simple tap on each “postage-stamp-size rectangle would expand [it] until it nearly filled the screen.” Exactly!

8. Automatic Doors, 1899 – While today’s ecologically minded engineers focus on greening conventions and saving energy, labor-savers like automatic doors were once the height of futuristic fantasizing. Here’s Wells again, from When the Sleeper Wakes: “The two men…walked straight to the dead wall of the apartment… a long strip of this apparently solid wall rolled up with a snap, hung over the two retreating men and fell again.”

9. Tanks, 1903 – The first tank battle took place in 1916, although Leonardo Da Vinci designed various armored vehicles in the 15th century. Warfare changed in a big way during World War I, as the Industrial Revolution made previously unthinkable technology possible. Weapons systems were being developed as swiftly, and with as much public excitement, as high-tech gadgets are introduced today.

10. Radar, 1911 – Hugo Gernsback precisely described radar in his 12-part serial from 1911, Ralph 124C 41+. Guglielmo Marconi didn’t develop a device to detect remote objects by reflected signals until 1933, but would have recognized Gernsback’s description: Radio waves “can be reflected in the same manner as a light ray is reflected,” and when sent “back to the sending apparatus” will show the target’s speed and direction.

CRE will keep you, your projects, and your company moving forward with the right speed and direction, too. With everything from the best PC rentals to network attached storage, CRE is your one-stop shop for technology and trade shows. One call or e-mail, or a visit to the Quick Rental Quote page, is all it takes. Call, write or click now!

Top 10 Tech Dreams that Came True, Part 1

October 2nd, 2012

Recently, Mashable’s compilation of ”Astounding Sci-Fi Predictions that Came True,” developed with the help of the Science Fiction Research Association, prompted us to “mash up” their examples into concepts more meaningful to CRE’s mix of marketing, technical, and management professionals. To the fine crew at that site, a combo of props, hat tip, and shout-out is respectfully proffered.

Some technologies take years to gestate. It can be a decade or millennium between the first notion of a new thing and its first working prototype. In CRE’s blog archive you’ll discover years of postings about Apple’s latest products, which taken together constitute a great lesson on how dreams came true for two guys named Steve. Other postings bring you useful reviews of the tools you use – mobile apps, office software, render farms – along with marketing tips, greening strategies, and all the tech news you need to stay current.

Today we tie up the loose ends of history by linking 10 near-magical technologies appearing in the recent Mashable list to the distant dreams that gave birth to them. We present Part 1 with examples 1 through 5 now, while Part 2 will conclude Thursday with numbers 6 to 10.

Top 10 Tech Dreams that Came True, Part 1 (1-5)

1. Virtual Reality Games, 1956 – The first monochrome “video” game was played in 1958 on small monochrome CRTs, at a time when virtual reality games on huge plasma display rentals were still decades away. In The City and the Stars (1956), Arthur C. Clarke wrote that the most popular recreation in Diaspar took you into “phantom worlds with your friends…and as long as [it] lasted there was no way in which it could be distinguished from reality.”

2. The Submarine, 1869 – Jules Verne is among history’s great visionaries, although his Nautilus from Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea was modeled on the Confederacy’s ironclad Merrimac. Still, Verne used his powerful mind to “imagine how, in a more capable form, [submarines] might bear on social, political, scholarly, and even psychological matters,” according to Prof. Eric S. Rabkin, University of Michigan.

3. The Office Cubicle, 1909 – E.M. Forster wrote in The Machine Stops about hive-like modular office spaces, about 50 years before businesses adopted the model. (When they did, few firms went so far as to name their office a “hive.”) Although Forster predicted hexagons, the description is spot-on otherwise: “Imagine, if you can, a small room, hexagonal in shape, like the cell of a bee.” Now imagine all the busy bees. (Are you one of ‘em?)

4. The Atomic Bomb, 1914 – Although the term “atomic bomb” predates H.G. Wells, he began popularizing it and did come up with it independently. In The World Set Free he describes “the moment when [an] invisible speck of bismuth flashed into riving and rending energy” in a demonstration of radioactive potential.

5. Earbud Headphones, 1950 – Earbuds were popularized by the first Apple iPod in 2001. In Fahrenheit 451 (1950), Ray Bradbury tells of a woman who had “thimble radios tamped tight” in her ears, providing “an electronic ocean of sound.” Whether you carry a phone, rent laptops or use a tablet, you’ll find an earphone plug (mostly 3.5mm, some 2.5′s just to irritate you).

For expert tech advice – on everything from event production rentals to mass storage and high-powered post-production – one call or e-mail connects you with an expert CRE Account Executive. If you already know what you need, simply use the handy Quick Rental Quote form!

State of the Mac, 2012

September 13th, 2012

Tech giant Apple posted record-breaking numbers in Q1 2012, selling 15.4 million iPads, 15.4 million iPods, 37 million iPhones, and 5.2 million Macintosh computers for total sales of $46.33 billion. While scoring records for its other lines, the iPod number was down over 20% from Q1 2011. Through the next two quarters the Mac and iPhone figures dipped, too. In Q3 2012, sales were at 17 million iPads, 6.8 million iPods, 26 million iPhones, and 4 million Macs .

Changing times

Apple now sells about four times as many iPads as Macs each quarter. In fact, with the proliferation of iPad rental units and booming sales worldwide, the Cupertino firm sold more iOS devices in 2011 than it has sold Macintosh models, ever. Clearly, iOS is now Apple’s “money” platform, and the company is working to adapt the Mac OS to the iOS look, feel, and “vision.”

This has prompted speculation that future Macs will operate on a “converged” OS. This is unlikely. Despite declining Mac sales, the computer will be with us for at least another decade, though some say not much longer. As long as there are iMacs, of course, CRE will have iMac rentals, as well as this blog to keep you in the know.

Mac to the future

If we imagine the kind of computer that people will be using 10 or 15 years from now, it would doubtless be more of an iPad than a Mac. A simple, low-cost, touch-based tablet seems a good guess, although it wouldn’t replace a notebook or desktop PC rental for everyone. Video pros, engineers, audio recordists, graphic artists, and others will always need as much power as possible, plus graphics accelerators, large monitors, special plug-in cards, and so forth.

The market for high-end, premium computers has always been a niche, and will remain one. Apple definitely wants to continue as the go-to brand for creatives and geeks, and it will. The Mac isn’t going anywhere. Will it last another 30 years? Who knows? All indications suggest that it should be around for at least another 10, and probably 20 years. Expect Apple to anchor both of its platforms with iCloud, so that people can use any Apple device, with either OS, in a more synchronized, unified, seamless manner.

We shall see…

And yet, as long as its notebook and desktop models rely on trackpads and mice, not touchscreens, with different considerations for battery life, processing power, and application support, Apple will maintain two significantly different operating systems. Going forward, the iOS calls for continued simplicity and ease, while the Mac OS, currently at version 10.8, Mountain Lion, calls for more sophistication and power.

For now, a formal combination of the two into a hybrid OS doesn’t appear to be Apple’s plan. Bridging them together? That’s the ticket. As always, we’ll keep you posted!

For everything from event production rentals to post-production and massive amounts of high-speed storage, one call or e-mail connects you to an expert CRE Account Executive. If you already know what you need, just use the handy Quick Rental Quote form!

Invasion of the SSDs!

September 6th, 2012

The invasion of the SSDs (Solid State Drives) has begun. Although hard disk drives (HDDs) will likely survive – some contrarians even expect the 50-year-old technology to beat back the flash memory challenge – the fact is that SSDs are poised to sweep most HDDs into the dustbin of history. An SSD will no longer be just a high-end choice on a MacBook Pro rental or mobile device, either. Dropbox and Amazon are both deploying SSDs in their data centers now, and others companies big and small are jumping on the bandwagon. So what gives?

Time for a paradigm shift?

The veep that runs Intel’s Non-Volatile Memory Solutions Group, Rob Crooke, puts it succinctly: “We’re not talking 10, 20 percent improvement here. [SSDs] can be 10 times more reliable [and] a thousand times faster than a hard disk.” This means that web searches – on your desktop PC rental, smart phone, or tablet – return increasingly accurate results with every letter you type. The newer, cheaper, faster type of flash memory in today’s SSDs that makes all this progress possible is called NAND.

Industry analysts predict that shipments of NAND flash memory for SSDs will hit 16.3 billion gigabytes in 2015, an astonishing increase from the 1.6 billion in 2011. Intel’s Crooke says the growing capabilities of SSDs will increase demand and “disrupt” the computing industry in a big way. The new svelte PC “ultrabooks” (based on the trailblazing MacBook Air) demonstrate that disruption and exemplify the superior characteristics of SSDs:

speed and responsiveness,
cooler and quieter operation,
reduced power consumption,
greater reliability and
longer life.

The future is now

At its data centers, Intel has deployed some 80,000 SSDs. Company records show HDD failures of around 4 percent per year, but for SSDs it is a mere one-half of one percent. So why doesn’t everyone just convert right now? It’s more expensive, at least for now. But CRE’s iPad rental holds the answer: With Apple’s tablet as a top seller, and numerous competitors coming out of the woodwork, the Cupertino firm is a big part of the growth in SSDs. Even at today’s prices, many companies have demonstrated that the total cost of converting to SSDs gradually decreases over time as employees become more productive.

Samsung and Toshiba are Intel’s major competitors in this niche, but the dramatic growth in SSD demand has encouraged a lot more companies to enter the fray. Some target specific segments like server SSDs and “commodity SSDs” for widespread use in embedded systems. We will keep you posted on the progress of SSDs, as the scope of their influence ranges from enterprise storage and high-end computing to phones, gadgets, and tablet PC rentals. There will be few high-tech niches untouched by this future-is-now technology. Stay tuned!

CRE Account Executives can suggest the right plasma display rentals for your conference booth or the appropriate Xserve RAID configuration for your mass storage needs. One call or e-mail, or a visit to our Quick Rental Quote page, and you’ll have the right solution, right now!

Tech Goodies for Late Summer

August 30th, 2012

We like writing about gadgets every so often, if for no other reason than to balance the serious tech reading with a little bit of fun. Not everything we want to share today is a “gadget,” so we’re christening this one “Tech Goodies” (and you will see it again with a different month in the title, so keep an eye out).

• PlayStation Vita Power Grip by Nyko

Nyko Power Grip for PS Vita Nyko has carved out a niche for itself making accessories for gamers – custom control devices, portable console cases, special mice – and is especially adept at extending the life of infamously short-lived handheld game controllers. The company has such a sterling track record in this category, in fact, that none of the tech-and-testing sites doubted its PlayStation Vita Power Grip ($25) would perform as advertised, just about doubling effective battery life and gaming time. Plug a PlayStation Vita into our plasma display rentals if you want gaming on steroids!

• NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti

Gamers, digital AV pros, computer artists and geeks: These are the folks that need speed as well as clear, accurate monitors. The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 660 Ti, a new power-efficient graphics card in the $300 neighborhood, is some 10 to 15 percent faster than rival AMD’s Radeon 7870, motivating the HotHardware.com reviewers to conclude that NVIDIA does, in fact, have “another winner” on its hands. The consensus is that you can’t do better, today, for the price. A CRE Mac Pro rental – like your own if you’re fortunate to have this “ultimate Mac” – has expansion slots for upgrading the graphics card, and the 660 Ti uses the same components as current, Mac-compatible models. Looks like it should be a true cross-platform card.

• Instagram 3.0

Version 3.0 of Facebook’s newly acquired toy, Instagram, adds Photo Maps, infinite scrolling, and video speed improvements. For anyone wondering whether its acquisition would slow the pace of innovation, Instagram is answering that question with this release. The burgeoning photo-sharing network – available to every device with WiFi, from home computers and smart phones to tablet PC rentals and iPads – is now almost 80 million users strong, and at the core of its latest user interface overhaul is geolocation capability. The benefits of geotagging, and the usefulness of tagged photos for supporting archives and galleries, is evidenced by the new Photo Maps view, which places maps beneath photos for a more informative, “in context” look. Whatever you see will be at a given point on Earth – and Instagram 3.0 gives you that point, while scoring a lot of them with this latest upgrade.

From convention rentals to high-end post-production gear, your solutions are just a single call or e-mail away. Just connect with one of CRE’s experienced Account Executives and we will help you strategize, schedule, and succeed with whatever support you need! Know what you need? Just visit our Quick Rental Quote page and be in and out in a matter of minutes.

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