Lexar Media announced that it has increased the performance of its popular Professional 8GB CompactFlash memory card to 133X. This performance improves the digital imaging workflow for both professional and advanced amateur photographers working with and managing large files. Lexar’s new card is capable of a minimum sustained data write speed of 20MB per second and is currently available in CompactFlash Type I flash memory card format, the most popular format for today’s digital SLR cameras.

Sinar Bron Imaging announced that it has inked an agreement with Calumet Photographic to add the major photo retailer to its dealer network. Five Calumet stores in Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco will begin carrying a full line of high-end Sinar cameras and camera backs, Broncolor professional lighting equipment, and Foba camera and lighting accessories. The sixth Calumet store in Cambridge, MA, will be added after January 1, 2007.

Hamrick Software, developer of VueScan, has announced changes resulting in a 50% increase in the speed of processing. In addition to this, the user interface has been totally overhauled, with new icons replacing words. The whole look and feel is more friendly, easy to use and will appeal to a wider base of consumers.

Dell plans to offer home users a new, faster version of wireless networking in their notebooks that has yet to be completely finalized by a wireless standards body. The draft specification for the next-generation 802.11n standard has been completed, but final ratification isn’t expected until next year. Wireless networking vendors, however, have already started offering routers and access points based on the draft version of the technology, and Dell will now allow some notebook customers to purchase 802.11n cards bundled into their PCs.

Lexar Media announced that it has increased the performance of its popular Professional 8GB CompactFlash memory card to 133X. This performance improves the digital imaging workflow for both professional and advanced amateur photographers working with and managing large files. Lexar’s new card is capable of a minimum sustained data write speed of 20MB per second and is currently available in CompactFlash Type I flash memory card format, the most popular format for today’s digital SLR cameras.

If you still have questions about Zinedine Zidane’s World Cup head butt, be careful where you look for answers on the Web. Miscreants are using the incident in the final of the soccer World Cup as bait to install malicious code onto the PCs of unwitting sports fans, Websense Security Labs warned on Friday.

The University Hospital Cincinnati chose Palm TX handhelds as well as Palm LifeDrive mobile managers and Palm Treo smartphones to increase efficiency and provide patients the highest quality of care. Using Palm TX handhelds and LifeDrive mobile managers, physicians can take advantage of the hospital’s Wi-Fi network for fast, remote wireless access. In addition to numerous healthcare applications running on more than 500 Palm devices to reference medical information, physicians have access to patient records, lab results, x-ray reports, vital signs and email, all in a form factor that fits comfortably in a lab-coat pocket.

Olathe Unified School District in Olathe, KS, added 2,300 Palm TX handhelds and an equal number of keyboards to its high schools, Palm announced. The purchase nearly doubles the district’s investment in Palm handhelds. Considered one of the most technologically progressive school districts in the state, Olathe is providing 1,400 Palm TX handhelds to Olathe Northwest High School, the first school in the district to get Palm handhelds three years ago. Nine hundred more will go to Olathe East High School.

What the world needs now, according to a Japanese research group, is a low-cost programmable robot. To spur more development of robots at the hobbyist level, Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology is promoting a humanoid creature named HRP-2m Choromet. One problem with current robots, AIST says, is that they tend to be little more than remote-controlled devices. Another is that getting beyond that evolutionary stage tends to take a lot of cash. Choromet, which bears a striking resemblance to the Transformers character Optimus Prime, comes with programmable software that runs on Linux.

SanDisk has introduced a 4-gigabyte SD High Capacity card. The new cards, which support capacities of 4GB and higher, are rated Class 2 for speed and performance and can store more than 2,000 high-resolution pictures, more than 1,000 digital songs or up to 8 hours of MPEG 4 video 2. The 4GB SDHC card will be bundled with the MicroMate USB 2.0 reader at no extra charge. These new readers work with both SDHC and SD cards. SDHC cards require an SDHC-compatible reader.