Well, that didn’t take to long; aptly named Flickr user, nakedmac has taken the plastic white goodness from off of his Time Capsule, so we can all have a look under its panties. Things we have learnt; 1). There is a fan to get Time Capsule’s cool on. 2). Nakedmac was one of those kids that destroyed his toys two minutes after getting them. Nakedmac, this is exactly why your not allowed nice things. Tsk. Checkout the gallery by hitting the link, and be sure to drop anything we have missed in the comments after the jump. [Flickr; Thanks Bobby]

We know, we’re getting tired of Apple Blu-ray rumors as well — they’re right up there with refreshed Cinema Displays in terms of rumor persistence — but until Steve and the gang actually shove a drive into a machine we’re stuck with them. The latest says that Apple is actively pressing Sony for slot-loading BD-R drives but quality control issues are gumming up the plan. Reportedly, this latest ho-hum MacBook Pro refresh was to feature BD-R drives, but all Sony could muster up were Blu-ray / DVD±RW drives, which Apple refused. That seems a little odd, frankly — now that the format war is over and the competition’s already shipping mid-range laptops with slot-load BD-R drives, you’d think Apple would want to cash in that Blu-ray Disc Association membership card with whoever can supply the drives. As always, we’ll see when we see — it’s gotta happen sometime, right?[Image courtesy of dadako.com]

Okay, so we’ve got our Time Capsule up and running here — we’ll be back with a full review once our full 516GB backup is completed, but here are some quick first impressions:

• You can definitely hear the disks spin up and access. It also sounds like there’s a fan in there, but there are no obvious vents for one and we can’t feel any air coming out, so the drives might just be that loud.
• The top is getting quite warm during the backup — we’ll see if it cools down once we stop hitting the drive this hard, but if there really isn’t a fan we’re a little concerned. Hope those server-grade hard drives like being cooked.
• You can’t transfer an existing Time Machine backup to Time Capsule. Sure, it’s easy enough to switch back and get at your old data, but it’s still a pain — and now we have a 1TB drive sitting here with months of backups on it that we can’t erase and reuse.
• Time Machine doesn’t prioritize network activity on your machine, so it’s slamming our network connection right now as it backs up. That’s not a huge problem since we’re backing up over Ethernet, but we’ll see what happens when we try this over WiFi later.
• We tried to back up a second machine while the first was in progress, and not much happened — it created the disk image and got to “Preparing…” and then did nothing. We’re assuming these can only happen one at a time.
• The wireless side of things is basically the same as the Airport Extreme, nothing shocking there, although the setup assistant has been substantially revised to make things easier.
• The setup assistant now asks if you already have a 2.4GHz network and offers to create a 5GHz secondary network, which is interesting.

That’s about it for now — there’s not much we can try out while this backup is in progress. Anything else you guys want to know?

Yeah, companies have been trumpeting their ability to crank out discs that will last long after Martians come and evaporate our minds here on Earth for some time, but for archive junkies out there, more is always better. On deck today is Mitsubishi’s ARLEDIA DVD-Rs, which reportedly feature corrosion-resistant coatings made from gold and silver. ‘Course, you can only write to these at 8x, but they are expected to last about twice as long as traditional recordable discs. Not like you’ll be around to prove ‘em wrong, though.

[Via Impress]

Right at the buzzer, Apple shipped us a Time Capsule — and just like we remembered, it’s a bigger than you’d expect. We’re about to set it up in our WiFi torture chamber of an apartment building, we’ll let you know how it goes — unboxing in the gallery below.

Gallery: Time Capsule unboxing

USB Pottery Wheel - video powered by Metacafe. Remember that romantic scene from Ghost with the wet pottery and the steamy groping? This USB pottery wheel mod will never, under any circumstances, recreate such an intense moment by the side of your computer. But it is pretty entertaining to watch a hard drive coupled with sweaty finger create asymmetrically clay shot glasses. [via everythingusb]

Here’s a first look at the Time Capsule in its packaging. It just arrived at our door, but we’ll do our best to get you our impressions ASAP, so stay tuned. [Time Capsule on Giz]

Our feminist theory classes in college left us in the mindset that lady-tailored devices can probably do better than pink, but hey, if you’re looking for something retractable with U3 and 8GB of storage, SanDisk just added this new $80 Cruzer Fleur to their lineup.

Don’t worry, you’re not losing it — yet, anyway. Corsair has indeed already launched a 16GB (and 32GB, for that matter) Voyager flash drive, but its forthcoming Voyager GT promises access speeds “up to four times faster” than standard USB 2.0 drives. Furthermore, this one comes housed in a water and shock resistant all-rubber casing, and could be entirely more appealing if that keyring slot were expanded to open bottles. Nevertheless, Corsair’s hoping that you’ll find enough to love to drop $169.99 after it debuts at CeBIT in just a few days.

While we think you should wait to buy a standalone Blu-ray player until the 2.0 (”full profile”) spec hits to get interactivity and picture-in-picture, there’s no reason to wait for a PC drive, except for the price to drop. Newegg has a 12X Blu-ray drive from Lite-on for a pretty cheapo $130. Just remember you need a vid card w/ HDCP support (copy protection BS) and a fairly beefy machine. [Newegg via Crave]