storage

Not necessarily hardcore pro gear, but gear that pros will definitely use.

Actually, this is pro tool: a 640MB portable raid from the highly respected folks at Sonnet. It's built on 2 2.5 in drives for a crazy small size: 5.9 x 6.2 x 0.72 inches! This is insane, in a good way. Also runs at TWICE the speed of FW arrays.

Iogear makes a number of products that may already be part of your kit, but here's a new one that REALLY caught my eye: a KVM switch with 2 DVI ports! AFAIK, this is the first product like this, allowing two Macs to share a single keyboard, video monitor and mouse (the K, V, and M). I use mine to share a single monitor, kbd and mouse between my desktop and laptop, and absolutely love it.

But this one is ideal for sharing a single Cinema Display or other DVI monitor between your desktop and laptop without resorting to that nasty VGA connector.

This one also has crazy additional features that I've also never seen. Switching a single set of speakers betwen two computers is pretty common, but the one from Iogear allows you to listen to speakers from ONE computer while working on the OTHER. It's called asymmetrical switching, and is one example of KVM switches I've never seen before.

Mine doesn't have anywhere close to all of this. If I'd seen this one first, I'd have bought it in a trice.

The newest news: our friends at G-Technology have been acquired by Fabrik Inc. They're a California company whose previous offerings were in the consumer space, but who were interested in G-Technology for their Mac and professional content creation orientation.

G-Tech also announced the world's first 500 GB 2.5" external drive -- bus powered over FW, no less. (It also supports USB 2.0.) They also have an update to the G-RAID mini line, now up to 1TB, also a triple interface device (FW 400 and 800, USB). The details aren't up yet, but we can assume it's in more or less the 9x5x3-ish inch form factor as the current mini.

We've known founder Roger Mabon -- now a VP at Fabrik -- since before there was a G-Tech and before there was a Cow. Along with his father Stuart, Roger was part of Medea, the storage company that opened up all kinds of new markets and new possibilities for video production. If you weren't around at the time, it's hard to describe how big a deal this was. We were proud to be the first in line to champion Medea, and we we're happy to be first in line (or close enough) to wish Roger and G-Tech all the best in their new home.

Hey Fabrik! Welcome to the Cow!

In more teensy storage news, LaCie and Samsung announced Little Drive, a 1.3-inch hard disk in 30GB or 40GB versions, as well as an update of their USB Key Max, Crazy man, crazy.

I mentioned earlier Sonnet's new Fusion F2, 640 MB of ridiculously fast, ridiculously small storage: roughly 6x6x POINT SEVEN TWO inches. It's designed for use with the Sonnet Tempo™ SATA ExpressCard/34 adapter for the MacBook® Pro and Windows notebooks, and -- get this -- even in RAID 1 mirrored mode, can still capture directly to Pro Res HQ HD through the AJA Io HD. You can read more details here.

(Speaking of the Io, we have a review of that here.)

I've saved for last the product that I think may well have the biggest impact of any MW announcement I've heard yet --  GridIron Flow.

The context you've most often heard GridIron mentioned in is background rendering for After Effects, but that's only one feature in a toolset designed to manage a wide range of After Effects workflow: pre-comp proxies, improve cache management, optimize performance, preview comps while building them, and on and on. A workflow tool

The short version of Flow is that it's a real-time asset tracking technology that automatically builds workflow maps.

Wake up! I'm talking to you here!

Basically, it understands file formats from virtually all creative professional applications, including those from Apple and Adobe, and maintains the relationships between stills, movies, sound clips, fonts, plug-ins, and color swatches on all local, network, and removable storage devices. 

Awake now?

Hey, and anybody with a public beta is already aces in my book. And they do. So they are. 

This is big.