Another year another Terabyte, Seagate 4TB external announced
Posted Thursday, September 8, 2011 at 8:09 am by Jason Cartwright
It was only 12 months ago when hard drive manufacturers brought out 3TB drives. Now Seagate have announced the world first 4TB SATA drive. It does come in an external drive case, so if your eyeing it with the thought of adding it to your RAID array, you’ll need to crack open the case first.
Despite launching a year ago, most of us don’t own 3TB drives, as the price point at the top of the market isn’t usually good value for money. Take the 4TB drive for instance, to achieve the same amount of storage, 2x2TB drives will be much better value for a long time to come. There are of course specific use cases where having the largest drive available makes sense.
Take a storage server for example, or home-built WHS, data-hungry households or business will need as much storage capacity as they can. With only limited drive bays available, it makes sense that each drive is as big as you can go, remembering this will come at a premium.
One important point for those WHS users, the maximum drive size supported by the likes of a HP MediaSmart Server is 2TB. This means your 4 bays top out at 8TB max, however this is an external drive, you may be able to connect it via eSata or USB and make use of the extra storage. Without having done this personally, I’d be checking for pioneers online that have walked that road before you, prior to dropping the cash on the new 4TB drive.
Expect WHS2011 and other storage systems like Drobo to support the drives, with more modern, or updated operating systems and storage controllers being aware larger drives exist. Naturally with that much data, you’ll need a way to transfer huge volumes of data quickly, so the drive supports USB3.0. On the Mac side the story isn’t so great. Nope this isn’t a thunderbolt drive, as such uses USB2.0 or Firewire800 instead.
Klout offers first Australian Perk
Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2011 at 11:21 am by Jason Cartwright
Social ranking service Klout has just begun offering Perks to social influencers in Australia. Klout Perks work by companies partnering with Klout to offer deals to individuals who have a Klout score (or influence ranking) over a specific value. The idea is that those of us who are very social active, like to discuss things. By putting product or services in the hands of influential people, its likely those people will discuss the experience with their audience, therefore resulting in a social recommendation rather than a traditional marketing message.
This is big business. One of the reasons for Facebook’s enormous valuation is this same reason. Recommendations from a friend or someone you trust is multiple times more likely to result in a sale than any other type of advertising.
Until now, Klout perks had been reserved for those in the US, well today Australians get their first Klout perk from Red Bull.
Perk Details
Red Bull MOBILE is giving key Australian influencers a fully loaded SIM card. The top 10 people will have a chance to win a Red Bull MOBILE handset and exclusive access to the World of Red Bull events and activities. For one month these 10 people will share their Red Bull experiences for a chance to win a VIP trip for two to the 2012 Australian F1 Grand Prix.
The specific Klout score required to earn this Red Bull SIM card isn’t specified, but I can tell you that K64 was enough for me.
More information @ Klout
Crucial launches 8GB Memory Modules for PC and Laptops
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2011 at 11:30 am by Bryce Wilson
Consumer computing has extended far beyond machines designed to do “just enough”, with many computers running 64 bit versions of Windows and optimising high end CPU’s and RAM.
Well Crucial has pushed the bill one step further following the announcement of their new 8GB DDR3 RAM modules. The 1333Mhz sticks are designed and optimised for Intel’s i5 and i7 processors, allowing users access to high density memory in a low-form factor design. In addition to their higher density, the 8GB SODIMM modules will run at 1.35 volts as opposed to the standard 1.5 volts.
“We’re seeing the total maximum density of desktop and laptop system memory grow as a direct result of the size and complexity in software applications,” said Michael Moreland, Crucial’s DRAM Product Manager when speaking on the introduction and announcement of the server quality modules.
“The new Apple® iMac®, for example, can utilise up to 32GB of system memory, enabling intense computing power for applications such as video, photo, or music editing software,” Moreland continued, “High-density memory isn’t just for servers anymore; consumers also want to get the most performance out of their system.”
Portal: No Escape video sweeping the internet by storm.
Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2011 at 9:12 am by Jason Cartwright
Created by Dan Trachtenberg of Totally Rad show fame, a new video titled Portal: No Escape is sweeping the internet by storm. This just got posted and has only 302 views right now.. expect this to grow extremely fast over the next few days.
Update
There is a bug with the YouTube view count which is making the number inaccurate.
It’s recommended you view this one in HD kids, so if your internet isn’t up to it, let it buffer, then enjoy.
About.me adds personalised email, powered by AOL
Posted Wednesday, August 17, 2011 at 8:24 pm by Jason Cartwright
Graphically beautiful profile page service About.me is adding personalised emails. Previously reserved for staff members, About.me are now selecting a few lucky beta testers to try out the new service. So after you complete you’ve updated your resume with a link to your About.me site (complete with all your account links), now you can use your about.me email right along with it.
The email backend is run by AOL, once setup you can
- Send and receive email with your new @about.me email address.
- See all your latest messages in your about.me Dashboard.
- Access your email from anywhere with IMAP and POP integration.
- Make your email work for you with your about.me profile in your signature.
NineMSN refresh goes live to 9.7 Million readers
Posted Monday, August 1, 2011 at 10:31 am by Jason Cartwright
While some of you may have trialled the new NineMSN UI over the past month or so, today is the day they flicked the switch to confirm the new look. The update looks clean a slick, complete with a new NineMSN logo. The new design also allows user-customisations, essentially you choose shortcuts for the bar at the top.
There’s refreshes to sections like breaking news and polls, while Bing-powered search is front and centre. Unfortunately the new UI doesn’t (yet)
extend across all NineMSN properties or sub sites, so jumping to sites from the navigation can be a little jarring.
The image led new look is based on 18 months of audience research, readership analytics and thinking patterns of users.
“There is a lot of science and research behind the new homepage. We recieved feedback from hundreds of our users and the changes to the homepage are based on these insights” says Director of Content & Audience Experience, Todd Forest.
NineMSN has more than 9.7 Million users, 2.2 Million every day, so what do you think of the new design ?
More @ http://ninemsn.com.au.
