Future Gadget: Nook eBook Reade 0

Bookstore giant Barnes & Noble just announced today the release of their future eBook reader known as the Nook, and they are already taking orders. Priced competitively at $259, the Nook costs pretty much the same as the once popular Kindle, but offers a whole lot more. Check out some of the coolest specs the Nook has to offer:

• Color Touch Screen – Unlike the other eBooks which are pure black and white
• Screen Display – No glare or backlight with adjustable text size
• Share Books – You can share books you have purchased with your friends and family for free
• Huge Selection – There are over 1,000,000 available books (twice as many as the Kindle)
• Wi-fi Capable – Connect to the internet with local hotspots
• Media Slot – Supports Micro SD cards for extra storage space of up to 17,500 books
• 3G Network – Offered by AT&T so you can buy books from almost anywhere
• Customization – You can get custom covers with different colors as well as upload photos
• Free books – There are over 1,000 free books offered to Nook buyers
• Hands-on Demos – You can test out the Nook before buying at any of the Barnes & Noble stores

Barnes and Noble has chosen a very strategized release date, which comes right before the heavy holiday shopping. For those of you who have held off on buying a Kindle, your patience has just paid off. The Nook will make the perfect holiday gift to those who love to read and travel quite frequently. Additionally, you may find consumer product reviews of eReaders on the Consupo website.

Future Car: Eco-Friendly Porsche 918 Spyder 0

Most people wouldn’t expect a car that can go from 0-60 in under 3.2 seconds to be eco-friendly in the least, but the Porsche automakers beg to differ. This future car concept, the 918 Spyder, is supposed to be one of the fastest (if not the fastest) hybrid electric car on the market. This one-of-a-kind ride can teach tops speeds of 200 mph and gets a whopping 78 miles per gallon – double the amount most compact cars achieve on a good day.

This speed demon is charged by a 3.4 liter V8 engine which comes equipped with a lithium ion battery pack that can be charged from almost anywhere, not to mention whenever you hit the brakes as well.  No word yet on the pricing but you can safely assume it will be in the 6 digit field (estimates have been set near the $500,000 mark), and is not expected to be listed for sale on the market for at least another year, probably closer to 2012 or 2013. The bad news is that you probably never will own one of these babies, or anything close to it, but the good news is that future cars will benefit from these technological break-throughs and the overall quality of regular day-to-day cars will be enhanced. Way to go Porsche!

Seagate goes green with latest Barracuda Green hard drive 0

As you can tell by its name, the latest Seagate Barracuda Green hard drive has a heart for our environment. Yes, years after the hard drive industry has added countless toxins to Mother Nature, Seagate has recently developed a conscience that delivers technology without resulting in Greenpeace activists protesting outside of their offices. OK, so we’re kidding about that part, but you do get the point, right?

The Seagate Barracuda Green hard drive is the industry’s highest performance eco-friendly 3.5-inch desktop drive that is meant for low-power personal computers, multi-drive home networking systems and external PC storage. Apart from offering environmental improvements in power consumption and material usage, these drives will also be among the first hard drives from Seagate that come with SmartAlign technology.

The Barracuda Green hard drive is also known as the Barracuda LP if you were to have a sense of continuity, where it will merge the industry’s highest spin speed (5900 RPM) with Seagate’s aforementioned SmartAlign technology, delivering best-in-class performance. Just what does SmartAlign technology offer? Well, it enables all the benefits of the new 4K sector standard while simplifying drive installation, doing away with the need for utilities that are more often than not required to ensure optimum drive performance. Not only that, being cool-running, this lower-power Barracuda Green hard drive will be pleasant on your ears by delivering whisper-quiet acoustics while reducing system costs associated with the fans and power supply devices often required for power-hungry systems.

Over 70 percent of the materials used to build the drive can be recycled – now how green is that? In addition, all Barracuda Green drives will utilize low halogen components to further reduce the negative environmental impacts related to these substances. There is no word on pricing as at press time, but if you’re interested in picking up this puppy while doing your bit for the environment, it will come in 1TB, 1.5TB and 2TB capacities.