Hard drive gets all flashy

ElectronicsWeekly.com Reports

A hybrid memory system, combining a hard drive and flash memory, has been demonstrated by Samsung and Microsoft.
The aim is to combine the fast read/write access times of NAND flash with the storage capacity of a rotating hard drive.
By using the 1Gbit flash as a cache for the hard drive, the drive does not need to spin continuously. When the write buffer is full, the drive is spun up and data written to magnetic storage.
Boot up times can also be reduced, claimed the firms, by using the flash as a boot buffer during shut-down.
Microsoft calls the device a hybrid hard drive (HHD). It is designed to work with Longhorn, the next generation of Windows.
"Hybrid drive architecture... is an advancement that will improve the performance and reliability of any computer using the Windows Longhorn operating system," said Tom Phillips, general manager of Microsoft's Windows group.

I, ROBOT

Spooner (Detective):
"Can a robot write a symphony?" "Can a robot take a blank canvas and turn it into a masterpiece?"

Sonny (Robot):
"Can you?"

I, Robot

YagooHoogle...!

With YagooHoogle, you can search the two best search engines at once, saving you time and effort.

Another Blog...

I am starting a new blog (http://jokesblog.blogspot.com) dedicated for Jokes and humor contents which I receive via Email. I think I will update this blog frequently since I get a whole lot of them daily. Hope you will enjoy it...

Ten reasons why I am Blogging

Tim Bray from Sun Microsystems posts ten reasons why blogging is good for your career.

1. You have to get noticed to get promoted.
2. You have to get noticed to get hired.
3. It really impresses people when you say “Oh, I’ve written about that, just google for XXX and I’m on the top page” or “Oh, just google my name.”
4. No matter how great you are, your career depends on communicating. The way to get better at anything, including communication, is by practicing. Blogging is good practice.
5. Bloggers are better-informed than non-bloggers. Knowing more is a career advantage.
6. Knowing more also means you’re more likely to hear about interesting jobs coming open.
7. Networking is good for your career. Blogging is a good way to meet people.
8. If you’re an engineer, blogging puts you in intimate contact with a worse-is-better 80/20 success story. Understanding this mode of technology adoption can only help you.
9. If you’re in marketing, you’ll need to understand how its rules are changing as a result of the current whirlwind, which nobody does, but bloggers are at least somewhat less baffled.
10. It’s a lot harder to fire someone who has a public voice, because it will be noticed.

So go ahead... start your own blog. Try Google's blogger.com or MSN’s spaces.msn.com

(For those of you who don't know, Tim Bray is the father/co-inventor of XML.)

.NET

I stepped into the .NET arena completing my first "Hello World" project using vb.net. It is a sales order, purchase order processing and validating programme which is of the ideal size for a beginner. It took nearly a week (using my spare time) to complete but two days work for a veteran. At first, it was a nightmare to switch from VB6 to .net since the gap between the two was wider than I thought. But later on, when I got used to it, I felt that .NET is really cool and a powerful environment where you can do virtually anything you like. Well, I think, finally vb programmers will get some respect & recognition which they deserve since older days.

I didnt see much difference between VB.NET & C#.NET other than the syntax. The structure is the same and share a common set of libraries. Since I have some C++ & Delphi experience, it is not a bad idea to do the same project using C#. Now, where do I want to go today?

No more Spam...!

I was using Spartacus Spam Guard to filter spam mail with Outlook but it was successful somewhere around 80%. In otherwords, I get 10-15 spams everyday no matter how hard I trained Spartacus to diagnose them. I tried Spambayes a couple of days ago and the results were AMAZING... not a single spam in my Inbox. It's a FREE tool but does not support Outlook Express (sigh for most of you, I know).

Bye bye CDs.... & DVDs...??

DVD was introduced to the market in late nineties replacing CDs simply because of the storage capacity. (4.7GB single layer and 8GB double layer). Now the same thing is going to happen to DVD because of the latest revolutionary product in optical storage devices.

Blue-ray also known as Blue-ray Disk (BD) is the next generation optical disk format which can hold up to 27GB of data (single layer) and 57GB in double layer. BD players support CD & DVD as well. The best thing is it can write while reading…

Google Browser

Hoooreh.... Google is going to develop a web browser . Seems to be its more or less like FireFox. Anyway, it's Google....

FireFox…. Sets fire

OK folks… once again I switched my Browser… It’s Mozilla FireFox this time. (Hope this is the last one). I was using Opera for the last two months but some web sites didn’t appear well specially GMail which I use heavily. I had to use IE & Opera side by side which is irritating sometimes.

FireFox is good in every aspect when compared with Opera. It has almost all the features of Opera and more than that. (IE is not worth to mention even) Tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, integrated search, adding extensions, lovely themes and it is FREE…

The other reason I hate IE is, its vulnerability to spyware and adware. Both FireFox and Opera are free from those malicious software.

Tsunami… What next?

Everybody is more concerned about natural disasters these days. We see a lot of new faces in media lecturing about Tsunamis, Earthquakes, Hurricanes, inside out. Thanks to them, now we can sit even for a PhD examination. But, I didn’t hear much about what measures we must take before, during and after an earthquake. I doubt the awareness of these things among the general public. I found this earthquake safety guidebook which is distributed in schools at California and why shouldn’t we? We must act before something happens.

Meanwhile, some predict earthquakes using occult methods (scientifically, no one is successful in predicting earthquakes). Last week, a person gave a call to our office saying that he predicts an earthquake in this month. He has come to this conclusion by examining soil taken from various places in the country. He wanted to put his predictions on a web page. My boss explained him the procedure he must go through in order to create a web site but he was in a hurry to put his information right that moment. There was no any other option than putting it on someone else’s web site and my boss asked me whether I can put it in my blog.

But I had other ideas. We created a new blog for him and posted the first entry just like he wanted. For some reason, he didn’t give us the exact date or a place where it might happen which made his information utter useless rubbish.

Prince of Persia – Warrior Within…!

The newest in the Prince of Persia series, Warrior Within, with more blood, more gore than ever. I still remember how I played Prince of Persia V1.0 in my XT (8086 processor) with 640kb RAM, low density Floppy (no hard disk), sound came from PC speaker but it ran without a glitch. That was a long time back, early nineties. It took me more than three moths to complete the whole mission of saving the Princess. Then came Prince of Persia 2, Prince of Persia 3D, Prince of Persia the Sands of Time. Warrior Within is the latest. It needs GeForce 4FX Graphics and lots of processing power, surely has come a long way.

The story line is deviated from saving the princess to eliminate Dhaka, an immortal power. And the prince is more acrobatic and can handle two weapons at the same time but easy to control, what they call “Free form Combat”.

Don’t know much about the game yet, still in the first two levels. Got to go now… Have to kill the bad guys….!

Tsunami…!

12/26, 9.0, the mass destruction in the history…. you name it… Lucky to be in one piece. On that day, I was at Galle (my home town), fortunately, at a safer distance. I was lucky enough not to suffer from any losses to my family members or close relatives but I know, thousands of people are not that fortunate. We were stranded at Galle b’cos there was no fuel and to make it worse, food supplies were scarce. This was nothing to be compared with what happened to the other people. So I leave this note in memory of all those lives we lost. May you all attain 'Nirvana' and rest in peace.

GMail Invitations...!

At last... GMail granted me 6 invitations to redistribute. If anyone interested, send me an EMail .

Browser war, which one?

Tired of using IE? Try Opera ...It’s a feature rich sophisticated web browser with pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing, integrated searches, POP E-mail, IRC chat and protection against ad-ware, spy-ware and viruses. When I first open the program, I was stunned by its cool, professional appearance. Now I can open so many browser windows without cluttering the task bar, thanks to the tabbed windows. It remembers the current session so that I can continue browsing on the following day. (pretty cool eh?)


For the con side, the free version includes a banner ad up on top which is practically unnoticeable. (I’ve got a serial number for the registered version, if anyone interested, throw an E-mail this way...)

Though, it’s too early to make a decision, I feel, this is the browser for me. (at least until Google develop a web browser...)

Google AdSense makes sense (cents?)

Mmmm… not a bad idea to have some Google Ads in my page, since I’m paid when you click on them. So, go ahead, make me rich… (Sshhh…. It’s illegal to ask someone to click on ads though...)

Friends…!

Ever since I started this blog, I used to post technical stuff. (mostly, its about Google gadgets…). I know what you are thinking… I am a technical junkie…ehh?… Well… in a way, it’s true… but I believe there’s some humanity left inside me… Therefore, I would like to dedicate this post to ALL MY GOOOOD FRIENDS…

o Friendship isn’t a big thing….It’s a million little things.
o Friends are for keeps… and for keeping in touch.
o Sometimes a friend can make it “All Better” just by being near.
o Friendships are made up of little stories… with happy endings
o Life’s journey is easier when you hear a friend’s footsteps beside you.

And my dear friends…
The way you live each moment, giving, laughing, & caring so deeply, I wonder if you ever realize the moment of joy you bring into other people’s life…You are truly indispensable…

The latest entrant to the Web Search Arena…Microsoft!

I extracted the following from a Yahoo News article, therefore, credit goes to the original author.

Microsoft Corp. finally debuted its own web Search technology hoping to challenge Google’s long dominance of the field. Google signaled that it is ready for a fight, doubling the search index to 8 billion web sites.

Redmond-based Microsoft has long offered a search engine on its MSN Web site, but the technology behind was powered by subsidiaries of Yahoo Inc

The Microsoft search engine, offered in 11 languages, will initially be available on a special "test" site. (Google Search offers more than 90 languages including Sinhalese)



A feature called "Search Near Me" guesses where users are located based on their Internet connections and seeks to provide results nearby. Another feature promises to answer plain-language questions such as "What is the capital of Germany?" by culling through Encarta.

Google also offers a localized search function, with users telling the search engine where they are. And it has a "Google Answers" site, where researchers provide data for a minimum fee of $2.50. Microsoft's version is free but not as tailored.

Microsoft also plans to offer by year's end a test version of its hotly anticipated technology for quickly locating e-mail, Web pages and other files on desktop computers. Google launched a similar product last month. .

You can find MSN Search here.


What I can see is, MSN Search is an EXACT COPY of Google Search with a couple of additives here and there. Shame on you Microsoft…

Google…. The Mathematician!

Do you know everything about Google search? Have you ever come across that the Google has a built in calculator? Checkout the following;

Formula
5*3+2
sqrt(2^15)

Complex Numbers
(8+5i)*(7-2i)
sqrt(-10)

And more…
100 miles in kilometers
1000 meters*10 newtons in kilojoules
speed of light in miles per hour

Cool…. eh?

Don’t forget to check the other features in Google. (Hmmm.. Google should pay me for this…)

“Google, search My Documents in My Computer...!”

How long will it take to find a word document in your machine using the Search facility in windows? Well, it depends on how many files you have in the hard disk and sure it will take more than a couple of minutes. How about a tool which can search for a given word not only in the word documents, but also in power point, excel, e-mail or even in chat conversations in less than a second?



Google Desktop Search (Yes, another innovative product from Google) can do the above in a flash. To my surprise, the downloaded program (it's the PC versiona of the Google search engine) is tiny as 400kb but according to Google, it demands 500MB or more hard disk space for indexing purposes. (Who cares about the hard disk space these days….) I was really amazed by the searching speed which is not uncommon in all the Google products. Although it is still in the Beta version, it has gone a long way.


In an earlier post, I’ve mentioned that I’m not a MS-Addict, but, to my surprise, I am becoming a Google-Addict.