First, man made the analog clock. Then he made the digital clock. Then, just because he could, he made the funky cross between the two that looks like a digital clock but has moving mechanical parts like an analog one. Art Lebedev, the patron saint of cool concepts that will never be manufactured as real products, has applied his unique genius to the world of timekeeping. The result is Segmentus, a clock that uses swinging plastic segments to replicate LCD-style numbers

Don’t expect to read a book on ‘em, but Western Digital’s latest My Passport Studio hard drives feature a customizable e-paper display that stays on even when the drive is unplugged. (e-paper is all the rage in external drives lately, and we’ve already seen Western Digital make the upgrade in their larger externals .) Aside from the display, the My Passport Studios are preformatted for Macs (though they’ll run just fine on a PC with a reformat), connect over USB or FireWire 800 and range in price from $150 (for 320GB) to $200 (for 640GB). They’re available now. [ Western Digital ] WD(R) Introduces New My Passport(TM) Studio(TM) Portable Drives, Delivering Super-Fast, Go-Anywhere Performance for Mac(R) Computers E-Label Smart Display Helps Creative Professionals Organize Their Storage LAKE FOREST, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — WD® (NYSE: WDC), the world’s leader in external storage solutions, today introduced its new My Passport™ Studio™ portable drives featuring the super-fast FireWire® 800 interface and a customizable e-label that’s always visible, even when the drive is unplugged.

Just because you didn’t make it into the police force, it doesn’t mean you have to go through life with a naked belt. Strap Brando’s camera belt lock on for size, and feel the testosterone course through your veins. You can unlock it in just a second according to Brando, so that all-important kingfisher shot is never missed, and then to secure it safely you just push it down again on the lock. They don’t specify compatibility with manufacturers, but judging from the photo it looks like Canon 350D owners are sorted—and for only $14, too.

Looks like all that GSM code-cracking is progressing faster than we thought. Soon after the discovery of the 64-bit A5/1 GSM encryption flaw last month, the geniuses at Israel’s Weizmann Institute of Science went ahead and cracked the KASUMI system — a 128-bit A5/3 algorithm implemented across 3G networks — in less than two hours. If you must know, the method applied is dubbed ‘related-key sandwich attack’ where multiple values of known differentials are processed through the first seven rounds of KASUMI, then using resulting quartets that are identified sharing key differences, subkey materials can be obtained in round eight to build up the 128-bit key. Sure, it’s hardly snooping-on-the-go at this speed, but worryingly this was only an ‘unoptimized implementation… on a single PC.’ At the same time, the paper condemns the presumably red-faced GSM Association for moving from MISTY — a more computationally-expensive but much stronger predecessor algorithm — to KASUMI. Guess we’ll just have to stick with Skype

If you were ever curious to know how fast our lives are becoming saturated with digital technology, get a load of this graph. In 2004 we were in the kiddie pool and by 2007 we were drowning. Citing the Census Bureau’s recent Statistical Abstract of the United States, Fast Company notes that an estimated 110 billion text messages were sent on cellphones in December 2008—more than double the previous year. Retail sales also soared from $24 billion when the decade began to $128 billion in 2007. So where are we now? It’s probably safe to assume that the Cracken has dragged our lifeless corpse to Davy Jones’ locker.

Because of its super-compact size, DLP Pico projectors are ideal to cram into all kinds of gadgets. Texas Instruments is doing just that by applying it’s new Pico WVGA resolution chipset into everything from cellphones to digital cameras. It’s not the first digital camera with a projector , but the prototype developed by TI and Asia Optical could mean a significant bump in performance with DLP. Other notable new Pico technologies include: a snap on Pico accessory for the LG Expo mobile phone from AT&T ($179), a followup to the pico-enabled W7900 from Samsung and the Brightboxe gaming projector ($199). Texas Instruments’ DLP® Pico™ Technology Enables More Than a Dozen New Pico Products From World’s Leading Brands New WVGA DLP Pico ™ chipset delivers incredible, native DVD images from the palm of your hand Las Vegas, NV – Jan. 6, 2010, 11:00 a.m.

So, what is it about the number 100 today? To celebrate 90 years in the business, Rollei is bringing out the Flexline 100, a very minimalist digital camera that looks a bit smartphone-esque once you flip it over. The backside slightly resembles a smartphone that’s been covered in that fantastic plastic with the leather wrinkles that was all over cameras in the Fifties and Sixties. And, despite the slightly twee Disney-esque icons, you’ve still got to admit it’s a bit of a looker – as long as you don’t go for either the blue or pink options. So that’ll be the black, Modom.

I’m sure the model holding the new Samsung Digital Photo Frame 700Z 7-inch OLED photo frame at CES2010 will have a lot less clothing than this one. The frame comes with 4GB of memory and Bluetooth support. [ DA via Oled-Display ]

The DECE, or Digital Entertainment Content Ecosystem, is made up of movie studios and tech companies, and is trying to create a way to effectively charge for digital movies. They revealed some future plans today, and they’re, um, interesting. The idea is that when you buy a movie, your rights are digitally stored in a “rights locker,” which should theoretically allow you to play your purchased movie on any hardware that supports the DECE standard. Considering that Sony, Microsoft, Cisco, Intel, Best Buy, Nokia, Toshiba, HP and Motorola—but not Disney or Apple—are all on board (and today they added several new members), that could mean a wide range of devices, from set-top boxes to TVs to mobiles—but not iPhones.

Did you know that the vast majority of calls carried out on the 3.5 billion GSM connections in the world today are protected by a 21-year old 64-bit encryption algorithm? You should now, given that the A5/1 privacy algorithm, devised in 1988, has been deciphered by German computer engineer Karsten Nohl and published as a torrent for fellow code cracking enthusiasts and less benevolent forces to exploit. Worryingly, Karsten and his crew of merry men obtained the binary codes by simple brute force — they fed enough random strings of numbers in to effectively guess the password. The GSM Association — which has had a 128-bit A5/3 key available since 2007, but found little takeup from operators — has responded by having a whinge about Mr. Nohl’s intentions and stating that operators could just modify the existing code to re-secure their networks. Right, only a modified 64-bit code is just as vulnerable to cracking as the one that just got cracked.