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A decade ago a 500 megabyte (MB) photo collection was something to boast about. Nowadays it is more likely be a collection measured in the gigabytes.

But as our appetite for storage continues to grow thankfully so does the capacity of our hard drives.

Hitachi has unveiled a drive which has reached the new heights of one terabyte (TB). Its drive looks like any other, but uses perpendicular magnetic recording to make space for all that data.

"The previous generation of recording technology was called longitudinal and it basically recorded the bits laying down, now we're recording the bits standing up," said Kelly O'Sullivan from Hitachi.

"So if you think of it that way, you're stacking a lot more data in a shorter area, therefore you get a terabyte."

With so much data being written to the hard drive, wear and tear is inevitably a concern. So the Hybrid Storage Alliance is promoting a new laptop unit with a built in flash chip that stores all the data you are currently calling on.

That reduces disk spinning time, increases longevity and has other benefits.

"A hybrid solution will extend your battery life. If you're on a plane for two or three hours and you don't want to stop working on a project you want to keep going - so battery is really important in a laptop PC," said Joni Clark, chair of the Hybrid Storage Alliance.

Flash memory

Some storage firms, such as SanDisk, are doing away with the mechanical hard drive completely and are opting for an all flash solution. Its flash drive is due out in Spring.

Using flash memory has many advantages. A modified laptop using only flash memory can start up faster than an ordinary one; is less of a drain on battery power and is far less likely to suffer data loss when dropped.

However, the biggest it can currently get is 32GB which says something about its target market.

"If you look at my kid, he will never use it as he is downloading movies every day," said Amos Marom, general manager of SanDisk Corporation's Computer Solutions Division.

"But if you look at myself I am a road warrior, I work in airports, in aeroplanes, on trains and in hotel rooms. I am consuming about 20GB today, that's all.

Another advantage of this little device is that it helps alleviate burnt knee syndrome in laptops. Flash hard drives stay cool.

Gadget friendly SD flash memory cards are also advancing in leaps and bounds. They come in high-capacity varieties up to a staggering 8GB hence SDHC - as in Higher Capacity.

Those planning to use them should be aware that they run at a variety of speeds and can only be used in compatible SDHC hardware.

For reliability and endurance, optical storage is considered one of the best options. Holographic disks start at 300GB capacity and store data all the way through the disk rather than just on the surface.

Data is written using a split laser beam which creates holograms in the light sensitive material of the disk at the point of intersection.

But even if you wanted to buy a holographic burning kit you cannot - at least not in the shops.

"The reason that it's not entering the consumer market initially is because of fairly high pricing," said Elizabeth Murphy of holographic storage maker InPhase Technologies.

"The drive will be $18,000 (£9,135) list price, so that's a little bit outside the average consumer's price range. And then the media will be $180 for one disk.

"That's quite a bit of money, but on a cost per gigabyte perspective it's very, very attractive."

Still the cheapest is the traditional hard drive, which now comes in a new form - this is an external Serial ATA drive - the same kind that sits inside your PC.

This is an improvement because it does not use the slower types of connections your computer supports

"USB really was made for keyboards and mice and it's not really made for storage, neither was Firewire," said Conrad Maxwell, chairman of the SATA-IO Marketing Work Group.

"They both require protocol translations to make them work and the drives come out with SATA, so direct SATA is faster and you get six times faster performance."

While hard drive advances are impressive, losing 1TB of data is not likely to be much fun in the future. That is why devices built around a technology known by the fearsome name of Redundant Array of Independent Disks (RAID) are becoming more popular. One such is Seagate's 1.5TB device that is actually made up of two 750GB drives.

A continuous backup is created by the same data being written to both drives simultaneously. It might well save your life. Well, your digital one.

Info from http://news.bbc.co.uk/
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Amateur astronomer William Bianco doesn't huddle over a backyard telescope to hunt for undiscovered planets. He logs onto his computer.

Bianco, who was mesmerized by the intricacies of the universe as a young boy, is part of a growing online community that sifts through mountains of data collected by professional scientists in search of other worlds.

While Bianco has yet to make a landmark discovery, he savors the rush of teetering on the cutting edge of research.

Never before have amateur astronomers had so much unfettered access to celestial data once available only to scientists with huge telescopes. In the latest frontier of astronomy, professionals are increasingly enlisting the aid of novices with personal computers to help pore through images and data — all in pursuit of the next great breakthrough.

"We're in the golden age of astronomy," said Bianco, who keeps his day job as a political science professor at Indiana University.

Thanks to technology, novices are effectively turning from lonely skywatchers to research assistants. Even before the rise of virtual astronomy, amateurs did everything from tracking asteroids to detecting supernova explosions to eyeing new comets.

In 1995, neophyte stargazer Thomas Bopp gained fame for co-discovering what would be known as Comet Hale-Bopp. Two years ago, in what was billed as the first such find by an amateur in 65 years, Jay McNeil of Kentucky took a picture of a new nebula — an illuminated cloud of gas and dust lit by what is believed to be a newborn star.

Since the late 1990s, virtual astronomy has boomed. One of the earliest online citizen scientist projects was SETI(at)home, which distributed software that created a virtual supercomputer by harnessing idle, Web-connected PCs to search for alien radio transmissions.

While the SETI project hums in the background as a screen saver, the newer efforts require more human thought.

Bianco belongs to an Internet project called Systemic, which boasts 750 amateur planet hunters. Astronomers have already discovered more than 200 planets in far-off solar systems using traditional methods, yet there are likely more out there.

Participants download software and rifle through data that measure the tiny gravitational wobble in a star's motions in search planets that orbit stars other than our sun. Users also try to decode simulated data of planetary systems invented by the project managers — a task that will help the professionals better understand real extrasolar planets.

To participate, users select a star — real or simulated — and adjust other variables such a planet's mass and orbital period by moving a slider back and forth on the screen. The goal is to design a planetary system that best fits the data and then publish the answer online.

So far, online users have pinpointed hundreds of potential candidates, but only about five might actually be real, said Systemic project head Greg Laughlin, an astronomer at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

"It's not an aimless game," he said.

Although the Systemic Web site provides the search tools, it doesn't promote any of the discoveries, Laughlin said. Amateurs who want to publicize their find need to look for another outlet, such as a scientific journal to get credit.

Laughlin is no stranger to Web-based astronomy. He helped start another project in which amateurs point their telescopes at potential extrasolar planetary systems and look at dimming starlight to learn about a planet's size and composition. Unlike Systemic, users have to buy expensive equipment — including telescopes and cameras — to participate.

Before Internet-based astronomy, it took a long time for novices to report their discoveries. High-speed, always-on Internet access has blurred the line between the professionals and amateurs, said Terry Mann, president of the Astronomical League, made up of over 240 U.S. amateur astronomy clubs.

Last year, Mann signed up to analyze a repository of online images of the first-ever microscopic grains of star dust brought back to Earth by a
NASA spacecraft.

The work is painstaking. Mann and her fellow 25,000 volunteers eye hundreds of thousands of digital images in search of minuscule carrot-shaped trails left by the capture of star dust, believed to be the leftovers from stellar explosions.

Mann has submitted 40 possible examples of star dust in the images. If correct, amateurs can get their names published in scientific papers written by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, which manages the Stardust(at)home project.

"Amateurs can do real science. We can actually help," Mann said.

Andrew Westphal, associate director of the Space Sciences Laboratory at Berkeley, praised amateurs — it would probably take his whole life to find all the dust sprinklings, he said.

"It's stunning how good they are. I think they're better at this than we are," Westphal said.

The Internet has also benefited professional astronomers, who often have to fight for scarce telescope time at major research observatories.

Since 2001, the National Science Foundation has funded a $10 million project to create a "national virtual observatory" that compiles data from ground and space-based telescopes — including dazzling images from the
Hubble Space Telescope and X-ray data from the Chandra Observatory. The project, which is still under development, is primarily used by professionals who want to go to one source to mine archival images. High school and college students are increasingly tapping into the Web site as well, said project manager Robert Hanisch of the Space Telescope Science Institute.

As far as amateur astronomer Bianco is concerned, the more people teasing out the mysteries of the cosmos, the better.

"It's going to take some time and collective effort to find what's out there," he said.
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The People’s Flight Service Consumer Coalition (KRKJP) will sue Adam Air for the tragedy of Adam aircraft which has been missing since January 1. The citizen law suit from several state-owned enterprise (SOE) trade unions and air transportation trade unions will be served at the West Jakarta District Court tomorrow (10/1).

KRKJP Coordinator, F.X. Arief Puyuono, said the suit is asking the judge to state that Adam Air violated the law. In addition, they asked the airline compensation of Rp1 billion for every Adam Air victim, totaling 102. Adam Air is asked to apologize to the victims’ families.

Arief said that there is a violation against Article 7-B of Decree no.8/1999 on Consumer Protection, that consumer protection is ignored due to the cheap fare policy enacted by the company. He indicated that cheap fares are available because aircraft maintenance cost is reduced. This violates the Civil Aviation Safety Regulation (CASR). “CASR is valid universally, so there is a suspicion that for efficiency, Adam Air committed violated the case,” he said.

The coalition’s legal advisor, Habiburahman, said the suit was brought by the coalition posing itself as a group that has a legal standing. The suit, he said, is not related to the conflict between SOE and private airlines. “We only want to uphold consumers’ rights. It is not automatic that every lost cost carrier flight can ignore passenger’s safety,” he said.

This suit is the second for Adam Air. Now the South Jakarta District Court is preparing a civil suit filed by 17 pilots of that airline. In addition to the employment matter, the suit questions Adam aircraft’s safety caused by the management.

In response to KRKJP suit, Adam Air Commercial Director, Gugi Pringwa Saputra, said he is ready to be processed to the court if he is found guilty. “But, to prove that we’re guilty or not depends on the investigation,” he said yesterday. “If the suit doesn’t have a basis, who do they want to sue?”

The National Police (Polri) HQ investigation team will only start after receiving the technical investigation by the National Committee for Transportation Safety.

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From Outside, the noodles apartment of Yung Kim did not appear to be different to other blocs in the Seoul City.
But Kim's residence not the apartment unit at random.
The building was built by the second electronics company biggest Korea, LG, that was supplemented with sophisticated technology.
Many ease that were obtained by Kim from his new high-rise flat.
Kim still need not very busy walked up and down when arranging homework.

From a main control panel that was installed in the wall, he could arrange all equipment of domestic electronics, from the refrigerator, the washing machine, television, to the implement of the room cooler.
Kim became the new standard "guinea pig" of equipment of domestic electronics from South Korea that was mentioned HomeNet.
This standard enabled equipment to be able to be controlled from one panel in the wall.

From the main panel, from time to time Kim could see consumption of Korean energy of supplies of the electricity company, Yung noodles.
Then, from the main panel that connect to the Internet, Kim could at once pay monthly electricity.
From the panel also, Kim could send the message of the video to his neighbours.
Not only that.When Kim and his son that were 10 years old, Jae Won, the arrival of the guest when watching the TV, Kim need not very busy craned him neck saw whoever came.
The TV will at once put forward the face the guest who was arrested the camera so that Kim could decide the further step.
He could open the door if that came to carry food or continue to inside while pretending to be not in the place, if that came would collect the debt.

Not only electronics equipment, household goods could be also connected with this panel.Some for example to be the artificial LG refrigerator product the make of GR-D267 DTU. this Refrigerator was supplemented with the screen touched LCD and speaker audio that connect to the Internet.

While gulping cold soda from the cooler, we could arun the Internet and checked the box the message of the electronics letter while enjoying fresh songs MP3 that was turned by the refrigerator.
His weakness of course was available.

This could restrict the choice of equipment of domestic electronics that was bought by Kim because not all of them filled the standard HomeNet, although in the future possibly the smart house will like this be easier was found.His article, not only LG that was attracted by this field.


In Japan, Sharp, Toshiba, and Hitachi agreed to unite to make the standard for equipment of domestic electronics that could connect in a network of the data.
Microsoft also already in this field, in a gathered manner in a group that promoted the development of domestic equipment that connect to a network, that is the Home Appliances Internet.
There, the manufacturer's companies of kitchen equipment, the software company, and the gathered hardware company sharpened the brain to make Kim's life to more was easy. Read more......!