Don’t ask us how they know, but SanDisk claims that its new 128Mb Write Once, Read Many times (WORM) SD memory card will store data for up to 100 years. If true and they’re on pretty safe ground from warranty claims — that’s a definite improvement on current technology. Data on rewritable cards and drives can start to deteriorate in as little as 5 years, though most manufacturers reckon they’re good for between 10 to 25 years.
Potential applications for the new WORM card includes storing evidential data used in police investigations, medical data, company records and so on. WORM cards can also be used for archiving photographs and home videos, in fact anything that you would like still to be around in 100 years time, though the big question with all these things is, will there be anything that can read SD cards in just 10 years, let alone in 2108…
This is certainly the day for announcements made by Sony. In addition to revealing a video rental service designed for the PlayStation 3, the company is also launching a few other initiatives that are designed to make its gaming console more attractive to other demographics than the “hardcore” gamer. The social aspect of the PlayStation Network is brought into focus in an effort to compete with the Xbox Live service from Microsoft.
While mentioning that the PlayStation 3 has so far shipped more than 12 million units all over the world, Kaz Hirai, President of Sony Computer Entertainment, revealed that this number is past the critical stage at which the company begins to focus on providing more content to its users rather than on extending the installed base at an accelerated rate. Additional content is intended to create loyalty amongst the player base. Read the rest of this entry »
Undoubtedly, we are heading towards a future that resembles what you might have seen in countless Sci-Fi movies. It’s clear that this is happening because technology tends to advance at a very high paced rate. Speaking of which, Intel, the leading manufacturer of computer processors, is working on a video search technology that it hopes will improve the quality of our video search. The company also intends to bring it to its future multimedia platforms.
The technology is being developed at Intel labs in the US and China and is said to cut down videos frame-by-frame, and then use image and face recognition applications in order to recognize faces, objects, voices, locations and movements. According to Intel, the frames are aftwerwards patched together in order to allow video search. Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s one way to find out, a small freeware program called, you guessed it, IsMylcdOK. It’s a simple LCD monitor checker program that displays a series of solid colours, gradients and horizontal and vertical lines that will show up most of the common faults on flat screen monitors. These include dead or ‘hot’ (always on) pixels, faulty backlights and incorrect video phase setting. The program download is tiny, around 15kb, and it doesn’t even need to be installed, it runs from the zip/exe file, or from a pen drive. It is really easy to use; though watch out for the intro screen, it’s in German, so click the English button to continue (unless you are, or speak German, of course). Read the rest of this entry »
Here’s a quick heads-up on the next craze, probably… It’s called Flip Video, from Pure Digital and on the other side of the pond they’ve sold a million of them in the past few weeks. It’s a tiny pocket camcorder, around the size of a cellphone, so far so ordinary, but it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. First it’s cheap, prices in the US start at around $99 or roughly £50. It has a built-in USB connector, so there’s no faffing around with cables, when you want to watch and download your videos to your Windows or Mac PC. Flip Video stores around an hour’s worth of video at quite reasonable quality, and you can upload directly to You Tube or edit the movie. Power comes from a couple of AA batteries and it has a built-in 1.5-inch display screen. Read the rest of this entry »
Don’t ask us how they know, but SanDisk claims that its new 128Mb Write Once, Read Many times (WORM) SD memory card will store data for up to 100 years. If true and they’re on pretty safe ground from warranty claims — that’s a definite improvement on current technology. Data on rewritable cards and drives can start to deteriorate in as little as 5 years, though most manufacturers reckon they’re good for between 10 to 25 years.
