Screaming along at 1Gb/sec throughput…gimme, gimme, gimme.

Sadly, these new SSD’s from Mircron Technology Inc. will be aimed at the high end market and won’t be available for some time yet (”within the next year” is the best estimate we have so far). Note; high end normally means ‘expensive’ but when you selling a device that has a throughput speed four times faster than Intel’s newest SSD, the X25-E, you can afford charge through the nose.

Joe Jeddeloh, director of the vendor’s Advanced Storage Technology Center demonstrated the technology in a video where a readout showed the SSD throughput reaching 800MB/sec. The SDD card was connected to a PCI Express slot which bypasses the SATA/SAS interfaces that are normally be used effectively limiting it to 3Gbit/sec. throughput.

Micron has stated that they are already testing the new technology with a select group but are currently looking for more testers.

According to Micron, these new SSD’s use “multiple channels” and have builtin interleaving 64 NAND chips to achieve its high throughput.

Don’t expect to see this tech in your laptop anytime soon; the initial target is, for example, high end apps that run fibre chacnnel SAN’s i.e. transactional DB’s.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Following on the heels of Sandisk, Toshiba has announced a new SDHG card, the SD-ME016GA, which will be released in Japan in January next year. The card is due to to go on sale for about $200.

Sandisk released their 16Gb cards in September so Toshiba has a little catching up to do but the pricing looks favourable…then again, it’s a big market with plenty of space for competitors.

Toshiba also announced two SDHC cards. The SD-C16GT6 holds 16GB and will cost $200 when it hits Japanese stores in April next year. An 8GB model (SD-C08GT6) will be available in Japan for around $100 next month.

There are no dates for expected availability outside of Japan!

Popularity: 35% [?]

The latest rage in camcorder technology seems to be the so-called ‘YouTube-friendly mini camcorders’ with the likes of Kodak and RCA touting their wares on the market. So, with those manufacturers in mind, it wasn’t surprising to hear that Pure Digital Technologies (they make Flip Video mini camcorders) announced a model of their own.

According to PDT, the Flip Mino HD is the “world’s smallest HD camcorder,” - I’m not taking any bets on this one considering the official figures show it weighing only 3 ounces! The Flip Mino HD looks nearly identical to the standard-definition Flip Mino but manages to cram in 720p resolution and 4GB of memory which equals about 60 minutes of recording time.

According to the press release, the Flip Mino HD features “all-new built-in FlipShare software for easy saving, organizing and sharing of video from your computer.” Which is kind of what the current Mino does, isn’t it? When more info is released we’ll update this post with the details.

Like the standard Mino, you’ll can customise the Mino HD at theflip.com/store (if you’re in the UK, just buy it from Amazon - it’s cheaper and quicker). Starting prices for the Flip Mino are about £113.93 on Amazon - there’s a link at the bottom of this post.

Other competitors in the HD mini-camcorder market, such as Kodak’s Zi6, haven’t faired so well. Cnet had this to say about the Zi6 - The Kodak Zi6 is technically an HD camcorder the way a tomato is technically a fruit: it meets the definition, but doesn’t deliver the experience. True, the Zi6 records video in 1,280×720-pixel resolution at both 30 frames per second and 60fps–720p resolution–which technically qualifies it as an HD camcorder, but a lot of factors go into creating an image, not just a CMOS sensor capable of capturing an image at a certain resolution and frame rate.”

PDT have managed to stay ahead of the field with their mini camcorders so maybe they have produced a killer product. I’ll guess we’ll see once we have a review!

For anyone interested, here’s the link to the original Flip Mino at Amazon - Flip Mino

Popularity: 29% [?]

It’s hard to believe the ASUS Eee PC is only a year old especially when you consider the netbook that spawned a new genre in mobile computing has sold around 4 million units to date. Asus are reportedly hoping to push this figure to 5 million by the end of 2008. Jerry Shen, CEO of Asus, doesn’t appear to be too worried about competition from the likes of Samsung, Lenovo and Dell and who can disagree with him? Every time we think the netbook market is getting jaded Asus launches an even more exciting device such as the Asus Eee PC 101.

Probably the biggest news on the Asus horizon is the launch of a touchscreen Eee PC. This netbook is expected to be with us early 2009 but Shen wasn’t prepared to give away too much information. Another noteworthy statement is that Asus will never ship their netbooks running Microsoft Vista. Shen stated that Asus will continue to ship Linux and Windows XP devices moving to Windows 7 sometime in 2009 - good to see Asus keeping the memory hog at bay!

Interestingly, it would appear that Asus has no ambition to go large just yet so it appears that 10″ screens will be the largest netbook to ship. Shen believes that by putting bigger screens on these devices they’ll then slip into the notebook market which Asus is keen not to do.

Unfortunately, Asus don’t really seemed to have pushed the EeeBox - the low cost desktop. The target figure for sales has only been a few hundred thousand units. Expect Asus to start eating into that market once the Eee PC dominates.

Asus has been blazing a trail for some time now. The key to their success has been low prices with reasonable performance. Until competing vendors can match these offerings expect Asus to stay on top.

Popularity: 39% [?]

…wheel nuts. Ok, the title is a little bit misleading but it caught your eye. The American car manufacturer has announced the rollout of a range of new features that allow parents to control aspects of their cars. They’ll be able to set speed limits, control the maximum volume of the stereo and send continuous audible alerts if a seatbelt is undone.

The speed limit set on the US version of the system will be 80 miles per hour - this takes differences in state regulated speed limits into consideration. Additionally, audible chimes can be set if the car exceeds 45, 55 or 65 Mph. The technology, called MyKey, will initially launch on a range of cars and trucks in the US but we’ve no doubt it will quickly make the leap across the pond.

Fords market research shows that around 75% of parents like the idea but their kids aren’t so happy - “I wouldn’t want my parents to have that much control over how I’m driving,” said 16-year-old Danisha Williams. “If your parents are holding your hand, you’re never going to learn.” A valid point from the youth of the US but the system isn’t aimed at sensible drivers but rather the reckless idiots who think it fun to drive at outrageous speeds and kill and maim. Because of the few fools, many will suffer!

Popularity: 21% [?]

…almost eveyone.

As you probably know, the Android based G1 has officially seen the light of day and, so far, it’s getting a big thumbs up. Well, apart from Ulf Washbusch, (ex-Product Marketing Manager for Google Mobile). Ulf has created a blog post which criticises the G1:

It’s funny - but the first time I heard about Android was about 2.5 years ago, when Eric Schmidt told me about the device at Stanford after I got a job offer from Google (yet before I accepted it!). Since then I have seen many iterations of the software. The software. Not the device itself, because sadly it hasn’t changed in many years. The reason many people see the phone as ugly and old-fashioned is simply… because it IS! It’s a design unchanged for at least two years, without iterations on it besides color schemas (it’s now available in Zune-brown along with white and black) and the silly ‘with Google’ description on the back. Don’t ask me what ‘with Google’ means. I didn’t understand it back then and still don’t understand it today.

So I guess he doesn’t want to work for Google ever again! There are a couple of points that Ulf raised that seem to be a common cry amongst people who have seen the G1 - ‘Where do I plug in my headphones?’ and ‘No video player?’. For some strange reason, the powers that be have seen no to include a 3.5mm headphone jack or built-in video file support! That’s fine, I’ll play YouTube media at full volume on a ‘low cost data plan’! Come on Google/T-Mobile, you’ll have to do better than that.

Some valid points Ulf but I’m not sure how well your current employers, MySpace, will view these comments considering their recent collaboration with Google on Open Social!

Popularity: 27% [?]

The end of the joys of driving?

There’s not a day goes by without our glorious government attempting to ruin our lives and turn us into mindless automatons. Maybe I’m being a little harsh here. After all, just because the speed limiter trials have been hailed a success it doesn’t mean they’ll be fitted in our cars. But then again, what would be the point of testing them?

The Department for Transport has stated they will will now work with vehicle manufacturers, local authorities, insurance companies and others to “…consider what steps should be taken to support the future availability of the technology.” Sounds ominous!

The speed limiter system has three working modes:

The first warns the driver when they are breaking the speed limit on a current stretch of a road. The second mode will apply the brakes automatically when the vehicle is speeding (this mode is voluntary) and the third mode is mandatory; no speeding will be allowed at all.

It’s hoped that, by implementing the system, a large number of the current deaths and injuries on the roads will be avoided.

An obvious shortcoming of the mandatory system is the need to accelerate out of danger - the system would stop you breaking the speed limit which seems dangerous in itself!

Whilst I applaud the attempt to reduce car related deaths and injuries this probably isn’t the way forward. How will the DoT police cars that aren’t fitted with the device? What about boy racer who decides to circumvent the device?

Here’s a final thought; who will be responsible in the event of a speed limiter malfunction that causes death or injury? I bet that event will send our elected morons running for legal cover!

Popularity: 17% [?]

The end of tagging by hand

Looking back, it would seem that Picasa was just left hanging by Google. That’s all set to change on Monday with the launch of facial recognition which should you identify friends and family in your pictures without requiring you to tag them by-hand each time you see them.

The new feature works by suggesting tags for people based on the similarity between their face in the picture and the tags you already put in place for them. This new technology is courtesy of Googles acquistion of Neven Vision, a company specialising in matching facial details with images already stored in a central database.

As yet there’s no guarantee the tech will work but there is a setback - the system works best when users directly face the camera but has problems if they’re not.

It’s a start, now let’s see who gets matched to my ‘horses arse’ photo!

Popularity: 17% [?]

4.5% growth, according to Gartner

Doom and gloom in the world economy, unless you work in IT. Gartner has suggested that Worldwide IT spending could increase by nearly five per cent from last year’s figures.

Two of reasons for this predicted growth centre around emerging regions of world prosperity and the shelving of obsolete systems.

According to Gartner analyst Jim Tully, “Organisations are switching from company-owned hardware and software assets to per-use service-based models,” - now you can see why SaaS is such a big thing.

Software and IT services will probably account for the largest amount of IT spend. Hardware sales growth is highest in the PC market,  representing around 60 per cent of the total hardware spend.Guess it’s time to get your learning cap on and buy into the whole IT thing!

Popularity: 15% [?]

Not a scratch on Google…

…but what do you really expect? Ok, the founders of Cuil are ex-Google employees but remember ther early days of Google search results? I do - they were crap!

I’ve had a look at Cuil and all I can say right now is that it’s ‘ok’ - not great but I’m sure that a little more time and money may just make this a real competitor for the Goog!

As a search technology, the Cuil results don’t really match up to Google or even Yahoo in some respects - there’s no image search for a start and I REALLY like pictures, so much easier than reading! However, Cuil do state that they have indexed over 120 billion web pages which leaves Google trailing on a paltry 40 billion. I’ve done some testing here and I would like to know where those pages are coming from as I searched for a couple of well known sites that have a high number of inbound links using a specific anchor text….err, nothing! I’m not suggesting that the Cuil front page is lying but I’d expect to see at least a couple of hits for the searches I entered.

Ok, so Cuil could eventually knock Google of the search top spot but they some serious cash injections if they are to catch up in other areas i.e GMail, Google Apps, YouTube, Knol…. the list goes on.

All interesting news, I’ll leave you with a well thought out and deliverd quote echoed by many of the search engine users community, “…it’s crap.”

Popularity: 14% [?]