New Wi-Fi Direct to Connect Gadgets Without Routers [Wireless]

Coming mid-2010 there will be a new Wi-Fi standard that will allow any Wi-Fi gadget to connect wirelessly with each other without having to go through a wireless router. The best thing: It will only require a software update.
The new standard is called Wi-Fi Direct and—unlike Bluetooth—the technology will enjoy exactly the same speed and range as Wi-Fi. The Wi-Fi Alliance—which includes Intel, Microsoft, and Apple—says that it will automatically detect and hitch any device equipped with Wi-Fi within a 300 feet range, from computers to cameras to TVs to printers to anything in between. All peer-to-peer.
The Wi-Fi Alliance and everyone else—including myself—are pretty excited about this. So excited that they are planning a big advertising campaign to make people move to it. And since it will only require a downloadable software patch, you can expect the technology to become ubiquitous pretty fast.
Farewell, Bluetooth. It was not a pleasure to meet you. [Gizmodo via Wi-Fi Alliance]

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mSATA: It's Like SATA But Smaller [Standards]

You've heard of SATA. It's the technology used for the majority of today's hard drives and people generally like it. But SATA wasn't designed for tiny portables. That's why the guys behind SATA are introducing mini-SATA, or mSATA for short.
Supporting 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s transfer rates (peaking at half the speed of existing SATA), mSATA is intended for drives that are roughly the size of a business card.
Check out that lead shot. On the left, you see a small Toshiba drive using a traditional SATA connector. On the right, you see a Toshiba drive using the mSATA standard. (Incidentally, Toshiba will be offering that flash drive in 30 and 62GB sizes with 180MB/s read speeds and 50MB/s writes.) The end products aren't really so different in terms of size, but the mSATA connection itself is, what, half the footprint of SATA?
Sounds good to us. [mSATA and Toshiba via Engadget]