flash

Trust me--I know procrastination. But this one really takes the cake.

JibJab, as you probably know already, made a name for itself by creating corny (yet socially relevant) musical skits that superimposed the heads of politicians and celebrities onto cartoon bodies. Now that user-generated content is nothing new, it almost seems overdue that JibJab would introduce a "make your own" feature. But now, at long last, here it is: "JibJab Starring You!"

The concept, at least according to the creators, is to JibJab yourself by uploading a photo, easily crop it with the Flash-based tools … Read more

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Flash memory will take over the world, if the laws of physics don't get it first, according to one of the technology's biggest backers.

On one hand, NAND flash--the kind of flash found inside digital cameras and MP3 players--is crushing the competition, Eli Harari, CEO of SanDisk, said on Wednesday at the Flash Memory Summit here.

NAND has made 1-inch hard drives obsolete. Then it's on to 1.8-inch hard drives and possibly larger 2.5-inch notebook hard drives, Harari said.

"The next big market will be video. You should expect next … Read more

I've seen a few good flash mobs in my day. San Francisco lends itself to the strange, including the simultaneous zombie mob and Critical Mass bike ride, which was chronicled by CNET's Declan McCullagh a few months ago. But what if you don't feel like riding a bike, or eating brains? Do sandwiches and potato salad sound better? Picnicmob is a new site full of questions like that--30 in fact. Answering them will help the service figure out where to sit you, in a virtual grid of picnic goers in an upcoming mass picnic flash mob, taking … Read more

Apple's long shadow over the flash-memory market might help it avoid serious problems in the wake of Samsung's production outage.

The second half of the year was already shaping up to be tight, as flash-memory companies switch over to new manufacturing technologies. But, of all things, a power outage in South Korea Friday could really make things difficult for companies that are depending on flash memory chips from Samsung this holiday season.

Analysts estimated that 15 percent of Samsung's output in the third quarter could have been lost because of the power outage. Not only will Samsung … Read more

Those familiar with PQI's U510 USB Card Drives already know the deal: they're 3 millimeters thin--thin enough to slide in your wallet as you would a credit card--and they pack an unbelievable amount of flash storage in that sleek frame.

The storage device even has a sliding USB dongle that folds into the Card Drive, eliminating the presence of an awkward cable dangling out of your billfold.

Past models offered a whopping 16GB of storage, and now PQI has upped the ante to an incredible 32GB with its latest model. That's perfect for lugging around your favorite … Read more

PALO ALTO, Calif.--A number of companies have been toiling away for years on a replacement for flash memory.

Nanochip, a relatively small company that has received VC funds from Intel, among others, says it will come out with a device in 2010 that will hold eight times as much data as flash. Additionally, the device's cost per gigabyte will be two to four times less, says Nanochip CEO Gordon Knight.

Many solutions have been proposed for replacing flash--phase change memory, spintronics, silicon nanocrystals--and so far no clear winner has emerged. Phase change memory, which involves heating microscopic points … Read more

Splice Music, a Flash-based online sequencing tool, opened to the broad Internet public about a year ago. It's free, although registration is required, and filled with thousands of sound samples and remixable songs, all licensed under various Creative Commons licenses, meaning that they're available for you to recombine. It's a fun place to start for old-school analog musicians who've never played with a sequencing program before. (And who don't have a Mac with Garage Band preinstalled.)

Remixing other users' songs is one way to learn how the tool works, but if you're like me … Read more

With the HDC-SD1 barely out of diapers--it was only released in February--and the ink on my review barely dry, Panasonic already plans to ship its replacement in September. Given some of the issues I had with the SD1 I won't be sorry to see it go, but it's not clear that the SD5 addresses some of the problems.

On one hand, it's smaller--always a plus--and Panasonic adds an upsweep toward the back of the unit to improve its grippability over the tube-shaped SD1. I got a chance to shoot with the SD5 at the press briefing, and … Read more

I have to hand it to the Discovery Channel. They're one of the few TV networks out there whose sweeps week involves one animal, and an absolute onslaught of programming about it. I'm speaking of course about Shark Week, an annual TV event that's been around since the late '80s.

One of the more amusing marketing tools I've run into this week is their Shark Week video remixer, which is a somewhat stripped-down version of Adobe's Flash video-editing tool containing various clips of sharks swimming, attacking, and messing about with divers. Users can string together … Read more