Cisco today unveiled a new line of Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers with app enabled capabilities for consumers to power and enjoy their connected homes of today and tomorrow. The three new Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers offer exceptional wireless performance and maximum throughput, as well as support for Cisco Connect Cloud, the next generation of Cisco Connect software, which provides simple anytime, anywhere management of multiple home networks. Cisco also announced it is working with top device manufacturers to simplify their networked products, (such as TVs, entertainment devices and home appliances) enabling new consumer experiences in the future.

"The proliferation of wireless devices and the explosion of video streaming have redefined the importance of the home network. Today's connected consumer has high expectations for reliability, simplicity, and software and apps that grow with them over time," said Brett Wingo, vice president and general manager, Cisco Home Networking. "Our new Linksys Smart Wi-Fi Routers are game-changing products that put intelligence into the home network so consumers have a platform that makes it easy to manage and optimize their devices, and enjoy apps that deliver great new experiences."

inXtron showed off its newest small-business NAS server at Intel Storage Forum, the Akitio MyCloud Pro. As the venue might suggest, this 2-bay desktop NAS is powered by Intel x86 architecture. inXtron even put is logic board for display, which revealed it to be driven by an Intel Atom D425 single-core (HTT-enabled) processor, with its usual NM10 chipset. The board also revealed several interesting components, such as two 2-port USB 3.0 controllers, giving out two ports on the rear panel and two for the front-panel, via a standard header.

The primary storage controller is the Intel NM10 chipset itself, the NAS uses a USB DOM (disk-on-module) it boots from, to hold its operating system. The primary network interface is a 1 GbE, driven by a Realtek-made PHY. Interestingly, the board has a vacant mini-PCIe slot, on which WLAN cards can be installed. The MyCloud Pro supports two SATA 3 Gb/s hard drives in the 3.5" form-factor. It supports all modern NAS features, such as UPnP-AV, NFS, FTP, Samba, but DLNA wasn't mentioned. The OS also includes a Bit-torrent client, and Apple iTunes-compatible music server. inXtron has apps for Android and iOS smartphones, with which you can use the phone to control the NAS. inXtron is targeting a sweet price-point under US $200, with the Akitio MyCloud Pro NAS.

Lenovo and SugarSync today announced Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync, the first Cloud storage service to be integrated as an out-of-box experience broadly on Lenovo's PCs and tablets. Lenovo and SugarSync are working together to offer an industry-leading cloud service so consumers can access, sync and backup their files, photos, music and movies across their devices. Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync will be available on new Lenovo ThinkPad and IdeaPad laptops and Android tablet products worldwide outside of China starting in April. The ability to download Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync is available beginning today.

Lenovo Cloud Storage by SugarSync gives users a free 5 GB account to instantly auto-sync their files, photos, videos and music to the Cloud from their Lenovo PC, tablet or any mobile device so their content is always available when they start using their device. Upgrades for additional storage capability are available for a fee.

Fujitsu today launches the new PRIMERGY CX400 S1 multi-node Cloud eXtension server. This innovative technology requires only half the space of a standard rack server to provide enterprises with cost-effective, energy-efficient access to smart scale-out capabilities for deployments such as private cloud, high-performance computing (HPC) and large-scale virtualization.

Enterprise customers of all sizes are increasingly looking for improved energy efficiency, higher platform density and better management effectiveness when realizing their cloud computing, high performance computing, virtualization, hosting, or virtual-client computing strategies.

NEC Corporation of America (NEC), a leading provider of innovative IT, communications, and biometrics solutions, today announced the launch of NEC's new generation of servers based on the new Intel Xeon E5-2600 product family supporting ProgrammableFlow networking.

The new generation of Express5800 E5 Generation Series servers will benefit from the performance boost and energy-efficiency of the new Intel Xeon processor E5 family combined with NEC's own innovations for higher manageability, energy efficiency and higher scalability. Combined with NEC's new ProgrammableFlow support, these new features will become an important factor to help accelerate cloud computing by maximizing the effectiveness of operational expenditure, especially business critical applications and database consolidation at corporate data centers. The Express5800/R120d-2M and R120d-1M family of platforms will be powered by these innovative features.

Western Digital, the world's leader in digital storage solutions, has announced that it is offering to customers of its WD Sentinel DX4000 storage server an offsite data storage service that improves data protection for the small business owners who rely on WD Sentinel to protect their precious business information. WD partnered with KeepVault, which was recently added to the AuthenTec line of services, to serve WD's Sentinel small office storage server customers.

Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced memory technology, today announced test results for servers utilizing the world's first 20 nanometer (nm) class Green Memory that were conducted at the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) in Munich. A system based on Samsung's 20 nm-class DDR3 memory and solid state drives (SSDs) together with Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V proved to be twice as fast as current memory configurations for servers setting up virtual machine instances and recovering data in private cloud environments. These advanced configurations also consumed as much as 50 percent less power per server.

Power Quotient International (PQI), a member of the Foxlink Group, successfully unveiled the Wi-Fi enabled PQI Air Drive during the 2012 International CES to much fanfare. The product was well-received and widely praised, and is officially available for purchase in countries around the world beginning today.

The PQI Air Drive is rooted in the concept of sharing and emphasizes a patented small, lightweight circuit design and the incorporation of the latest Wi-Fi technology. It offers a solution for users of smart phones, tablets, and other handheld devices who often run into the problem of limited memory expansion when the built-in memory becomes inadequate.

Google is going to monetize its ocean of data storage and bandwidth by starting a new service that will rival the likes of DropBox. Called Google Drive, the service could allow people to make use of their G-Mail storage quota (like G-Mail Drive once did) for free, and probably offer additional storage at a cost. According to Wall Street Journal, the service is expected to be launched "soon" (in the next few weeks or months). To compete with other similar service providers, Google could come up with attractive prices. Unlike services such as MegaUpload, Google Drive would be strictly personal storage. The Drive service will be inter-twined with Google Docs, and facilitate better remote collaboration between co-workers.

LucidLogix (Lucid) today announced Virtual Graphics Ware (VGWare), its new cloud graphics software that enables high-performance, AAA-quality gaming on all levels of CE devices. In addition to cloud gaming, VGWare allows for remote graphics rendering that improves the performance of a variety of client/server applications.

The Lucid VGWare Cloud based infrastructure is an adaptive client-server remote graphics engine, which consists of massively scalable software that allows multiple concurrent applications, such as games, to run on a remote server in the Cloud or data center. This server is then able to stream these applications to client devices such as tablets, internet ready TVs, smartphones and more.

Online storage adopters may be interested to know that Pogoplug has just released a new 'cloud expansion device' which allows local storage to be added to an existing Pogoplug cloud.

By default, the Pogoplug Cloud service offers 5 GB of online storage space for free, but the product released today, which is officially called Pogoplug Series 4, can expand available capacity. To do that the user just has to connect the Pogoplug Series 4 to the internet via the built-in Gigabit Ethernet port, and then hook up to the device an external storage solution like a Seagate GoFlex drive, or any other USB-connected HDD/SSD. You can even put in an SD card.

The Pogoplug Series 4 includes one USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0 ports, and one 2.5-inch SATA/USM (Universal Storage Module) connector, and is available in the US for $99.95 (+ shipping).

Razer, the technology leader in gaming user interfaces, brings you the next innovation in gaming peripherals by unveiling the all-new Razer Synapse 2.0, the world's first application for storing your personalized peripheral settings in the cloud, making your settings for gaming available anytime, anywhere.

In 2006, Razer invented Synapse, the world's first onboard memory feature for gaming peripherals, which allowed the user to store gaming macros, key binds, and profiles directly to their Razer devices, and enabled gamers to bring their personalized settings with them on the go. Onboard memory for gaming devices, pioneered by Razer, has quickly become an industry standard for gaming peripherals all over the world.

LaCie announced the first implementation of hybrid storage technology by combining the best of local and secure online storage - LaCie CloudBox. When you store data on the CloudBox, it is also backed up in the Cloud - ensuring your data is always safe, secure and accessible.

With the CloudBox you don't have to worry about backing up in multiple places, it has double protection built-in. The CloudBox ensures your data is backed up on a local hard drive and again in the cloud. Having double protection means you no longer have to worry about your data.