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storage

Pocket a 4GB flash drive for $17.49 shipped

You young'uns won't remember this, but there was a time when a 4GB flash drive cost hundreds of dollars. Literally hundreds! Now you can scoop one up for a mere $17.49, and you won't even have to pay for shipping.

As you can see from the photo, the PQI 4GB Cool Drive comes in pink--nothing a can of spray paint can't fix (unless, of course, you like pink). PQI supplies a bunch of preloaded mobile software, including unnamed browser, "doc," and e-mail applications. (Obviously you can ditch this stuff if it turns out … Read more

Is Omnidrive down for good?

We got an e-mail earlier today from a Webware reader and Omnidrive user who told us the online storage service has been out since early this morning. We sleuthed around a little and tried to get in touch with Omnidrive CEO Nik Cubrilovic, whose personal blog is also down, although we've heard nothing back yet. As of publishing this, the service is still down.

Last month Read/WriteWeb broke a story about the online storage service heading to the mythical Internet deadpool after picking up on a flurry of unresolved technical difficulties that had been listed in the official … Read more

Digital gifts that keep on giving

Care should be taken when plugging holiday gift gadgets into your personal computer and laptop, said security researchers at Sans.org, Microsoft, and Kaspersky in recent blog posts. Reports of strange files being found on USB storage devices increased over the holiday season. Reporting Monday on the SANS' Internet Storm Center blog, director Marcus Sachs said, "In years past this would have been limited to iPods and USB memory sticks, but now it includes digital photo frames, GPS devices, external hard drives, and of course digital cameras."

The unofficial Sans.org investigation started on Christmas after researcher David … Read more

Seagate, Toshiba, Netgear tout consumer storage

Innumerable technology companies are trying to grab their share of consumer gadget spending, and storage makers are no exception. On Monday, Seagate, Toshiba, and Netgear all unveiled new products for the market at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

One of the bolder products, in my opinion, is from Netgear, which moved its ReadyNAS line, acquired from start-up InFrant, more in the consumer direction with the introduction of the ReadyNAS Duo 500GB, 750GB, and 1TB network-attached storage (NAS) devices.

These systems attach to computers over a local network rather than a USB, Firewire, or eSATA port, meaning that multiple … Read more

Netgear brings NAS to you, the home user

Netgear's ReadyNAS line of network-attached storage devices has probably sounded like a good idea to home users looking for an easy and secure way to back up and access their files over their home network, but the drives' high prices have probably scared off many would-be purchasers. With its new ReadyNAS Duo line, Netgear is wooing home users. The company announced three ReadyNAS Duo models at CES: ReadyNAS Duo 500GB (RND2150), ReadyNAS Duo 750GB (RND2175), and ReadyNAS Duo 1TB (RND2110).

The drives feature only two SATA drive bays to the four bays found in Netgear's ReadyNAS NV+ line … Read more

Mozilla gunning for universal bookmarks and browsing history with project Weave

Mozilla's new project called Weave is an exciting new add-on to Mozilla's popular browser Firefox. While in its infancy, the service plans to be a way for users to save and access their personal browsing information across multiple machines. It's a little bit like Google's Web history, del.icio.us, and a Web password saver all wrapped up into one.

Some use cases for Weave (as listed by Mozilla) include: accessing your history and bookmarks from your home version of Firefox on your mobile Firefox browser, shared/collaborative bookmarking, and personalization tools to let you log … Read more

Venture stores solar power with molten salt

A newly created company called SolarReserve intends to commercialize a solar power plant capable of generating electricity and storing it in molten salt.

The venture was created by investment firm US Renewables Group, which has licensed technology from Hamilton Sundstrand, a subsidiary of United Technologies. A plant will be capable of generating 500 megawatts of peak power, the size of a typical power plant.

Solar thermal technology, which uses heat intensified by lenses and mirrors to create electricity, is being pursued by utilities because it is relatively cost-effective. It is also called concentrated solar power (CSP).

But because the sun'… Read more

Encryption consolidation may benefit the industry

There was a relatively small acquisition on Tuesday: nCipher, a U.K.-based encryption specialist, purchased storage encryption appliance vendor NeoScale Systems. This could be looked at as basic industry consolidation, but the impact could ripple further.

Encryption and, more specifically, key management really needs a set of standards to prosper and grow. Key management standards must include standard ways to connect encrypting devices to key managers, key managers to key managers, and so on. There are a few nascent standards efforts in this area, but nothing concrete.

Here's how this niche merger could impact the stalemate. nCipher has … Read more

Gspace, Gmail Drive, and those Gdrive rumors

The Gdrive, the mythical, hypothetical Google-provided and free Web-based storage drive, took a giant step toward reality earlier this week. As most of America waddled out of its tryptophan-induced haze on Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the myth could become real within a few months.

However, you don't have to wait that long to get free storage from Google. Thanks to Gspace and Gmail Drive, you can start using your five-gigabyte-plus of Gmail storage as a virtual drive right now. This second, even.

… Read more