From time to time, I buy hard disks, the biggest size I recently bought was in fact 80GBs. I had a bunch of disks of that size for my office, naturally, I was surprised to find out that typical drives these days are about 160GBs of space, and in fact, I was offered one with 320GBs for about $100. I ordered two drives, instead, of the smaller kind. And to think, my first hard drive was 80MBs of space running Windows 3.1 in 1995. Things have come along way.

But this report in the BBC NEWS | Technology | Drive advance fuels terabyte era suggests that far bigger drives are just around the corner…

Drive advance fuels terabyte eraHard diskHard drives currently have a one terabyte limitA single hard drive with four terabytes of storage (4TB) could be a reality by 2011, thanks to a nanotechnology breakthrough by Japanese firm Hitachi.The company has successfully managed to shrink the read-write head of a hard drive to two thousand times smaller than the width of a human hair.The smaller head can read greater densities of data stored on the disk.

Looks like we’ll have lots of space to store all those pictures, audio and movies! I think we’re going to need it!

But I do have an odd question: what do you do with still functional hard drives that you have pulled out of your computer for various reasons. I have two portable drives right now, but now I have an extra 20GB disk drive that I don’t quite know what to do with. Suggestions?

Blogged with Flock

Firefox was quite a development in its own right, but with its origins in OpenSource, it has spurred some interesting developments of its own. First there was Flock and now there is SongBird. Read about them.

Flock is a browser based on Mozilla technology. It is a web browser for Social Web Era, with support for RSS feeds inbuilt, photos, videos, blogging, uploading, etc. Currently version 0.9.1.2 is available. Of course, as with FF, it’s multi-platform, multi-language, with versions in many languages, and support for Windows, Mac, Linux. Like FF, it is also extensible, skinnable and can work online and offline. I’m particularly interested in versions for my new CRUZER!

The second is SongBird which relies on Mozilla technology, but follows the same principles using, the developers at SongBird have created a browser as a “desktop Web player, a digital jukebox and Web browser mash-up. Like Winamp, it supports extensions and skins feathers.” Like FF and Flock, it is multi-platform and will, likely, be multi-language, but it hasn’t been released except as a ‘developer’s version.’ Its expected launch date is 2008.

Are you aware of any other Browser developments? How is Firefox or Mozilla being used to develop new products? Comments, please…

I have already done my Christmas shopping for myself . 😀

I recently lost my Kodak Camera C360 with batteries and New 2GB SD ram card… so with the holidays approaching, and no way to take pictures for my family or my blog readers or for my students, I was faced with a difficult choice: keep looking or give up and buy a new one!

Today, I’m announcing that for me Christmas has come early : with my purchase of a Panasonic Lumix DMC. I’d have used a Panasonic coupon code to buy one from CouponChief.com, but I was dumb. I didn’t really think about doing that. Instead I ran out to the store, asked an attendant who wasn’t so well informed, didn’t manage to get extra batteries, either; and didn’t get a discount!

Instead, I could have got a FREE SDRam card with 256MB or 512MB of space for those shots. Or I could have checked out the Sony Store with the Sony deals and got upto 15% off some deals on their camera products.

Consider that I paid nearly $300 for my camera, either of these deals would have been quite sweet. In one case, I might have saved nearly $45 for use on other presents! So, if you are a cautious spender at Christmas, then checking out CouponChief before swiping might be a good way to ease your Christmas burden, find good presents, and all without leaving your computer!