Tech Status Quo

In the world of hard drives, Seagate reigns king;  the newest edition to their repertoire is a 2 terabyte hard drive with a July 2008 launch date.  A 2 terabyte drive would store roughly 500,000 songs or 1300 full length DVDs, plenty of space for 99% of the population.

Seagate is also venturing into the SSD market, solid state drives that have instant boot and access time because they are flash memory rather than spinning disks.  From the CEO of Seagate Bill Watkins,

“SSDs are not price-competitive yet,” Watkins said. The storage market is driven by cost per gigabyte, and though SSDs provide benefits such as power savings, they won’t be in laptops in the next few years, Watkins said. Low-power consumption capabilities and high speeds make SSDs useful for laptops, but the cost per gigabyte won’t come down at least for the next few years, Watkins said.

“If the cost per gigabyte comes down to 10 cents, maybe,” Seagate will focus on SSD storage for consumers, Watkins said.

As of the writing of this article, SSD cost per gigabyte is approximately $3.58 compared to $0.37 for standard hard drives.  As the technology for making flash memory imporves and the degradation factor of flash memory decreases, SSD memory will become the standard and Seagate will domiante the market once again.

Projected date of SSD cost per gigabyte to hit $0.10: July 1st, 2010.

Tag this at Technorati: 2 terabyte, flash memory, seagate, solid state, SSD, terbyate, western digital

Joe Anderson is running a critique on Google - not the search aspect, gmail, or Reader - and the failure of many of its applications.  He discusses the dismal ‘Google Answers’ and even less popular ‘Google Video’, but missed what I believe are the most “use-less” Google applications.  When I use the term “use-less”, I do not mean that the applications are poorly designed or implemented, they just are not as useful as the competition.

1. Google Product Search - The description of this application is, “Search for stuff to buy.”  Great, a second search engine that crawls the same websites as Google itself.  I am yet to find a use for this.
2. Google Finance - Come on, we already have Fidelity, E*Trade, CNN Money, and a myriad of other financial repositories;  stay out of this are Google.
3. Google Health - No matter what anyone tells you, putting medical records online is an awful idea.  For that matter, medical records should not even be on your computer where they are easily accessible by anyone with computer knowledge.

What Google application is the most “use-less” to you?  Which is the most “use-ful”?

Tag this at Technorati: applications, Google, google answers, google finance, google health, google reader

As the world drills deeper and deeper for black gold, StatoilHydro is taking a different approach. Partnered with MIT researchers and Technip, StatoilHydro plans on constructing a 65 meter tall turbine with 40 meter long blades.

The turbine will sit on a type of concrete that floats, and will be attached to the sea floor in three places - called anchor points - that will hold it to a certain section of the sea.

Compared to normal wind turbines, the new HyWind turbine will produce consistent electricity due to a constant strong wind rather than the intermittent wind that occurs inland.

Once finished, the HyWind will be shipped 6.2 miles off the coast of Norway.

“If we succeed, then we will have taken a major step in moving the wind power industry offshore. Floating wind turbines can make a major contribution to providing the world with clean power, but there are major technical and commercial challenges that need to be resolved. If we are to succeed, we will need to cooperate closely with the authorities. As with other technologies for renewable energy, floating wind power will be dependent on incentive schemes to be viable,” says Alexandra Bech Gjørv.

Tag this at Technorati: alternative energy, black gold, floating concrete, MIT, oil, turbine, wind power

Update: Check this story out on Slashdot!

A few days ago I talked about Twing, a new search engine that crawls the internet looking for forum posts and spits them back in relevant order. After doing a bit more searching, an even better “forum search engine” popped up, Omgili.

Now Omgili does make some powerful claims, namely to be the best search engine in the known universe. I don’t know if I agree with that, but so far it seems damn good. A description of Omgili from the about page:

Omgili is your way to find “subjective information”. As opposed to traditional search engines, which search for sites and pages, Omgili finds consumer opinions, debates, discussions, personal experiences, answers and solutions. Most of the questions have already been answered - find the answers through Omgili. Most of the technical problems have been solved - find the solutions through Omgili. Most of the experiences have already been described - Find these descriptions through Omgili.

Omgili claims to crawl over 100,000 forums on a regular basis, cataloging millions of forum posts in their search database.

Probably the coolest thing about Omgili is the Buzz Graph that shows up on every search page denoting how frequently that search term is talked about on the internet. Below is an example of a Buzz Graph with Google and Microsoft on it:

Overall, Omgili is a good resource for finding opinions and extremely obscure facts. For general knowledge searches, turn to one of the big three.

Tag this at Technorati: Buzz Graph, Google, microsoft, omgili, search engine, twitter

The ultimate wallet for you little-bit-nerdy people out there, the Qwerty Wallet. The Qwerty Wallet comes in both bi-fold and tri-fold design and features a vinyl keyboard on the front with green and navy interior.

The first section of the wallet has a spot for your papermoney behind a vinyl pocket with a clear pocket for you to insert business cards,IDs, or pictures. It also features a sturdy zippered change pocket!

The second section has five slots for cards/IDs (with a pocket behind it) and a place to keep your checkbook, more money, more pictures, more IDs, more cards or … just, more. Except your PDA.

The Qwerty Wallet won’t set you back very far compared to leather wallets, coming in at only $28.

Also at Etsy are the Legend of Zelda HAND-PAINTED shoes. These things are absolutely beautiful (if you like Zelda), and are only $42 for a completely custom pair.

Relive Link’s adventures when you wear these wonderful shoes. Styled after Legend of Zelda from the original Nintendo Entertainment System. Each order is hand drawn with permanent ink and Scotch guarded for extra protection. Who knows, maybe wearing these shows will help you beat the original NES Zelda. Man that game was hard.

Tag this at Technorati: cool toys, gadget, hand painted, nerdy, pda, qwerty wallet, zelda shoes