Haibane.info

it’s even got it’s own gravitational field:

The new Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB HDD is 50 percent larger than the 1TB desktop drives available today, while the 500GB Momentus drives (available in 5400rpm and 7200rpm flavors) are 56 percent larger than the current high-capacity 320GB 2.5″ laptop drives.
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The main difference between the new 1.5TB drive and the 1TB ST31000340AS already available is their platter density. Both disks are four-platter designs, but the 1TB drive uses four 250GB platters, while the new 1.5TB is apparently using four 375GB platters.
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We could see modest increases through the end of the year, but 2TB before 2009 is a toss-up. 500GB platters are probably still a ways away, and while a 5×400GB platter configuration would do the trick, the first generation 1TB five platter drives tended to run hotter and noisier than the units that the followed.

I am fully aware that in five years someone will link to this post and guffaw at what a rube we all were for being impressed by this. I think Ars is being conservative here - someone is sure to roll out a 2TB drive (on 5 platters) before the end of the year. If not Seagate, then Hitachi.

While the desktop drive is noteworthy for its sheer size, the laptop drive doesn’t impress me at all, however. The future of laptop drives is SSD and SSD alone (I say this without irony, even though I just bought a 250 GB drive for my own laptop a few months ago). The far more important news on that front is that Samsung is opening the flood gates of volume production:

Seoul, Korea – July 9, 2008: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 1.8- and 2.5-inch multi-level cell (MLC)-based solid state drives (SSD) with a 128 Gigabyte (GB) storage capacity. Mass production of the Samsung MLC-based 64GB SSD also began this month.
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Power consumption for the Samsung SSD is exceptionally low in standby mode at approximately 0.2 watts and in active mode at 0.5 watts. The Samsung MLC-based SSD has a write speed of 70MB/s and a read speed of 90MB/s.

Somehow I don’t think SSDs will ever supplant 3.5″ on the desktop, though I do think that eventually 2.5″ will become desktop standard. So the progress by Seagate on pushing the envelope on the notebook drive capacity is still relevant.

This is our second week in Madison and already one difference between here and Marshfield is readiy apparent: this place takes more than 5 minutes to drive across. It’s been particularly difficult for my wife who has to drive to several different clinics across town for her resident duties, so we finally decided to buy a GPS unit in lieu of having her call me throughout the day for quick Google Maps consultations. We picked up a Garmin Nuvi 260 at WalMart (mainly because they had a no-restock-fee return policy) to evaluate and I have to admit it’s been pretty useful thus far. For her, it’s handy because it helps her get to where she needs to go, when she doesn’t know how to get there. For me, it’s let me attempt an unfamiliar route to a place I do know how to get to already. I confess to having been skeptical at first, but I can see the value-add even though I largely pride myself on my independent sense of direction. To be honest, the GPS hasn’t actually given me any new information in terms of a better route anywhere, but it was still nice to have just in case.

I am planning to return the Nuvi 260 to WalMart though - for the price, we can get a much better deal on a Nuvi 360 at Amazon, which adds mp3 playback and bluetooth for hands-free dialing. I think that this will be very useful later on in the year when we take various trips such as to Indianapolis for a conference, or elsewhere. My main concern was that I don’t become dependent on it and let my own navigating skills atrophy, but now that we’ve played with the 260 a bit I can see that this won’t happen. It’s an information multiplier, not a crutch.

Steve Gillmor celebrates Independence Day by heralding the arrival of the Enterprise iPhone (or ePhone) by Apple. I guess I was wrong, the Singularity and Transhumanism really are here after all.

I love this concept:

The Napkin PC design closely resembles a Napkin holder, combining multiple touchscreen devices within a collaborative network. Digital pens allow users to draw on these touchscreens just like they would on a napkin.

The design talks about collaborative work, but imagine instead if these were used in a single-user context instead. It’s almost the complete deconstruction of the PC into slices. One could imagine each being powerful enough to run a couple of web apps, so you might have one set aside on your fridge to rotate photos from Flickr, and another with an alarm clock and email app, for next to your bed. Another in the shower for watching streaming video or NPR audio, and one on your desk for notetaking. Manufacture the “napkins” cheaply enough and you have ubiquitous computing.

Our old Samsung DVD player had been acting up of late - half the discs we inserted got a “no disc inserted” error and skipping had become a major problem, even on discs with no discernible scratches. So, I picked up a Philips DVP 5990 from Walmart yesterday evening, with an eye towards using it with the HDTV we will eventually buy. Note that Walmart is offering $100 gift cards for anyone buying a Blu-ray player (including the PS3) until next Sunday, but we didn’t want to spend that kind of money, so a regular upconverting DVD player seemed like the most reasonable choice.

The 5990 is a 1080p upconverting player, which makes it future-proof. There is a hack available to make it fully region-free, which is nice in theory but in practice something I am unlikely to need unless I buy DVDs abroad. More useful is the unit’s DIVX support, and the USB2 port on the front. This means I can load up video files that I’ve dowloaded onto a USB flash drive and play them on my TV.

Of course, my TV is still the analog set I’ve had for over ten years, so none of this will look as good as it does on my laptop screen, but eventually when we do go HDTV I am looking forward to having the convenience.

A while back, I mentioned the coast-to-coast Burrito Tunnel. Now comes word of a new tunnel, the Telectroscope, connecting New York and London:

The telectroscope, a looking-glass tunnel connecting New York and London has been completed at last, over 100 years after it was abandoned. The tunnel, which starts in Brooklyn, was designed and partly executed by late 1800s inventor Alexander Stanhope St. George. A series of mirrors, cameras and a large underground tunnel, connects the two cities.

More details at the New York Times (seriously). The telectroscope goes live on June 15th. Some photos of the terminal ends in London and New York:

TG Daily has a review of DisplayLink, which lets you connect monitors via USB cable. This is pretty impressive technology, though there is a steep cost in terms of CPU power required. As far as video quality, only heavy-duty gaming apps suffered, while DVD playback and ordinary use had no problem at all.

oh, well:

Although Asustek Computer’s CEO said in January that the company planned to integrate WiMax technology into its next generation Eee PCs, recently it has decided to make WiMAX available only as an option to contract customers, according to industry sources.

I can understand this decision to drop WiMax from the upcoming Asus EEE, since WiMax adoption probably won’t be widespread until next year. If Asus wants its successor EEE model to really dominate the market the way the current generation have, they need to drop the excess baggage and keep the price near $500. WiMax can wait, though if they were to add Bluetooth in its stead, that would be pretty awesome.

This is an idea that is long overdue - a USB device server:

IOGEAR today announced the release of its USB Net ShareStation, which enables network sharing of USB devices, including speakers and webcams.

The ShareStation (GUIP201) has a single USB 2.0 port, but can be connected to an AC powered four-port USB hub to support up to four devices. Devices supported include hard and flash drives, memory card readers, multifunction printers in addition to webcams and USB speakers.

This is a game-changer in terms of home network layout. Now, you can conceivably have a single network closet with your router, printer, external hard drives, etc and access them all freely iwth any laptop. There are various ways to do the same thing with other methods, such as printer sharing on a windows workgroup, a print server, a NAS, etc but this new device lets you do it all much mroe easily and with existing hardware.

This is amazing - a photographer wanted the perfect photo of a sunset framed by a long pier. So, using math and information from websites like Google Maps and the US Naval Observatory, he calculated what day the Sun would appear at the ideal angle to catch the shot. And here’s the result:

Brilliant. This is the essence of Geek. See the original post for full details of the calculation.