Update at 1:30 p.m. PDT July 3, with additional comments from Micron Technology (at bottom).
Has the image of solid state drives as power misers been shattered? A recent review would seem to dispel the notion that these devices are more power efficient than the hard disk drives used in laptops.
In an article at Tom's Hardware titled "The SSD Power Consumption Hoax", the authors state: "We have discovered that the power savings aren't there: in fact, battery runtimes actually decrease if you use a flash (solid state drive)."
(Note: Tom's Hardware has posted a correction to its original report here.)
One of the key selling points of solid state drives has been that they use less power than hard disk drives. The claim has seemed plausible because solid state drives have no moving parts, while hard disk drives have a number of moving components.
The Tom's Hardware review, however, says: "While conventional hard drives may operate at relatively low power when little movement is required...flash based drives do not. They will draw their maximum power level constantly when in use, and as a consequence, simply spend more total time drawing maximum power than conventional drives."
The review goes on to test four solid state drives (SSDs) from Crucial (Micron Technology), Memoright, Sandisk, and Mtron. For example, in evaluating the Crucial CT32GBFAB0 32GB drive, the review states, "Users who purchase this drive because of Crucial's statements such as 'low power consumption' and the product being ideal for 'users who want longer battery life' will most likely be disappointed."
Though Intel's drives were not tested in the review, the chipmaker stated Wednesday that SSDs "can be architected to improve battery life." Intel is expected to bring out drives ranging in capacity from 80GB to 160GB later this year.
... Read moreFlash has not been easily searchable until now, but Adobe Systems is working with leading search engines Google and Yahoo to solve the problem. CNET News.com Editor in Chief Dan Farber and reporter Elinor Mills discuss the impact of making Flash pages more visible to search engines. One question is whether Microsoft, which developed Silverlight, a competitor to Flash, will also index Flash files in its search engine.
See also:
Adobe released on Tuesday the first Reader application to bake movies and animation into the Portable Document Format.
With Adobe Reader 9, users can play Flash movies, Shockwave animation, and other rich media content without needing to open a third-party player.
With Reader 9, one click would play a Flash movie embedded in the PDF shown here.
(Credit: CNET Networks)PDFs are reaching new levels of interactivity with this release. Past versions of the nearly ubiquitous and free application, by contrast, have enabled dynamic forms but served largely to open print-ready PDFs.
The update is supposed to load more quickly than version 8, addressing the gripes of many users who felt that Reader slowed down Web surfing.
Adobe has described this release as potentially leading to a one-size-fits-all media player. Acrobat 9, released in June at between $299 to $699, will embed video and animation within PDFs.
Acrobat 9 document-creation software can embed videos and animation as well as custom-developed applications alongside maps that preserve geospatial data, 3D models, images, word processing documents, spreadsheets, and presentations in common formats. The priciest, Pro Extended flavor of Acrobat can convert multiple video formats into Flash.
Security enhancements to the refresh of Acrobat and Reader include support for digital signatures and 256-bit AES encryption.
Adobe's launch of an online word processor and conferencing tool via Acrobat.com in June enables users to comment and collaborate simultaneously on documents, and to convert documents to PDFs.
The Adobe Reader 9 download for Windows and Macs requires at least 128MB of RAM on either a Windows 2000 SP4 or newer system, or an Apple Mac G4 or newer running OS 10.4.11 or higher, respectively.
Adobe announced late Monday night that it was providing optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to Google and Yahoo to help them better index dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications that include the Shockwave Flash file (SWF) format.
It sounds exciting, but what exactly does it mean for Web searchers, Webmasters, and Flash creators? CNET News.com asked Adobe, Google, and Yahoo and got some answers.
Q: What is Adobe doing?
A: Adobe is providing Google and Yahoo with optimized Adobe Flash Player technology so that their search engine spiders will be able to find and index SWF content, including Flash "gadgets" such as buttons or menus and self-contained Flash Web sites.
Q: How does this work?
A: When a search engine spider hits a normal HTML page and encounters Flash content it will load it in an optimized Flash player on the search engine server. Google has developed an algorithm that explores Flash files in the same way a person would, such as by clicking on buttons and entering input. The algorithm then indexes all the text it encounters through the navigation.
Q: How will the search experience change as a result?
A: The text that people see when they interact with Flash files, such as captions and introductions, will now be used when Google generates a snippet that appears below the URL on the search results page. The words that appear in the Flash files can now be used to match query terms in Google searches. In addition, the URLs that appear in Flash files will be fed into Google's crawling system and be indexed.
Overall, more content will be indexed and search engine result rankings will change to reflect the additional content and its relevance. The snippets will give better information about the page on the search results. You can also expect search engine optimizers to figure out ways to improve rankings of Flash-based Web sites just like they do with HTML-based sites.
Q: Why is this necessary?
A: More than 98 percent of the Internet-connected desktops have Flash Player installed and Flash is hugely popular. Until now, the search engines were able to index some static text and links within SWF files, but much of the content was not getting indexed because of the dynamic aspect of the rich media files. Currently, all that content that was essentially invisible to the search engines will appear in the search results and the small amount of content that gets indexed appears on the search results page in jumbled words and code that are of no use to the Web searcher.
"Now, you are losing all the context of what content was near each other and running at the same time," says Justin Everett-Church, a senior product manager for Adobe Flash Player. He likened the impact to the difference between reading the index of a book and reading the contents of the book.
This screen shot shows what results look like on Google for Flash content that is indexed without optimization with the new Adobe Flash Player Technology.
(Credit: Google)Q: Do Flash developers or Web masters have to do anything differently?
A: No. However, blog site Search Engine Land suggested that Flash developers should still spend time on search engine optimization and create distinct URLs for each piece of content.
Q: Will searchers be able to see more Flash-based content composed only of images and video as a result of this optimization?
A: Not at this time. Only text and hyperlinks will be indexed. However, Everett-Church said "there is no reason why images and video can't be supported in the future. It's up to our search partners if and when they choose to do that, but it is a possibility." A Google representative declined to comment on any future plans.
Q: Any other limitations?
A: Yes. Google doesn't crawl all types of JavaScript, which is used to execute most of the Flash content on the Internet. Google won't specify which types of JavaScript are executed, but said the company was working on executing all types. Adobe's Everett-Church says: "This is our initial implementation... I think there will be some areas to expand on there, as well."
In addition, text in all languages is supported with the Flash optimization, except for bi-directional languages such as Hebrew and Arabic.
Q: When will Web searchers see the impact of these changes?
A: Google has already started rolling out the changes. Yahoo expects to offer improved Web search capabilities for SWF content in a future Yahoo Search update, but could not specify when that might come.
Q: Will this optimization mean Web surfers will see more Flash pages?
A: "This will change the way sites are designed," Everett-Church says. "It will allow more creative ways of interacting with the browser...and sites won't have to sacrifice searchability."
Q: Can Google users disable the optimization if they don't want to see more Flash results?
A: Sort of. Google users can go into Advanced Search Features and put a minus sign for "filetype:swf." But this will only eliminate pages that are SWF extensions and not necessarily all pages with Flash embedded in them.
Q: Will Adobe be providing the technology to Microsoft for use on Live Search?
A: An Adobe spokesman said the company couldn't comment on its work with other vendors, but said it is exploring ways to make the technology more broadly available. Microsoft has a competing technology to Flash, called Silverlight. A Microsoft spokesman was attempting to get comment about the company's plans on Tuesday.
More information about the effort is available on Adobe's Web site and through Google's Webmaster Central Blog.
Adobe Systems is helping Google and Yahoo to uncover Web content that was previously "invisible" to Web searches.
Both companies have been given optimized Adobe Flash Player technology to help them better index dynamic Web content and rich Internet applications that include the Flash file format, or Shockwave Flash, Adobe said in a statement. Search engines already index static text and links within Shockwave Flash files, but rich Internet applications and dynamic Web content are elusive to search engines because of their changing states, Adobe noted.
Adobe's technology means that millions of pre-existing RIAs that use Flash technology, including content that loads at runtime, are immediately searchable without alteration by companies or developers, Adobe said. Google has already added the optimized Flash Player to its search engine, while Yahoo plans to add the technology to a future update of Yahoo Search.
"Designers and Web developers have long been frustrated that search engines couldn't better access the information within their content created with Flash technology. It's great to see Adobe and the search engines working directly together to improve the situation," Danny Sullivan, editor in chief of SearchEngineLand.com, said in a statement. "The changes should help unlock information that's previously been 'invisible' and will likely result in a better experience for searchers."
Adobe on Wednesday released a revamped version of its Acrobat document creation software that includes built-in support for Flash and multimedia content.
Acrobat 9 lets users convert MOV and WMV files to Flash content that can be embedded within PDFs alongside audio content and even 3D models. The free Acrobat Reader 9 will play the movies, eliminating the need to open other media players.
Adobe released a beta test version of Acrobat 9 earlier this month, along with a new online service called Acrobat.com that includes a Web-based word processor, conferencing and remote access, PDF creation, and 5 gigabytes of file storage.
In combination with the Acrobat.com service, Acrobat 9 lets multiple users collaborate in real-time online to share documents.
The new PDF Portfolios feature in Acrobat 9 lets users drag and drop documents and multimedia content into a single PDF document, then choose from myriad layout and presentation options.
Acrobat Pro Extended 9 will enable maps to be marked up, preserving latitude and longitude.
(Credit: CNET Networks)Mapping features only in Acrobat Pro Extended 9 preserve geospatial coordinates and enable users to mark locations and measure distances.
The new Acrobat will take snapshots of Web pages and convert entire pages or chunks of them to a PDF that preserves links and animation.
Developers can tweak layouts with Flex Builder 3 or Flash CS3.
Acrobat 9 comes in three flavors: Standard at $299 (or $99 to upgrade), Pro for $449 (or $159 to upgrade), and Pro Extended for $699 (or $229 to upgrade). Pro Extended also comes with Adobe Presenter, which plugs into Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 for adding interactivity to presentations.
Adobe said that Adobe Reader 9, the free PDF document reader, will be available early next month.
CNET's Elsa Wenzel contributed to this report.
A post earlier this year by CNET News.com's Stephen Shankland pondering how he should store photos while traveling got me thinking about the same question.
I can't claim to have come up with "the answer," but I've thought about the issues, read through some discussions about what people consider best practices, and have tried to roughly quantify relative failure rates. What's right for you will depend on priorities and circumstances, but hopefully the following will offer some food for thought.
Real-world failure rates are hard to come by. However, having been the owner of a variety of laptops and other devices with hard disk drives, a 1:100 drive failure rate in a portable device over the course of a month's vacation doesn't seem out of line. Flash memory fails too. Anecdotal information from a couple of dealers (based on product returns) suggests that a 1:1000 rate is a reasonable stake in the ground--10x the reliability of disk. Further complicating the story is that some errors are recoverable, but you'd probably better stop using the card when you have a problem.
That's the hardware. Then there's the wetware--i.e. you.
This one's even harder to quantify. However, speaking for myself, I'm always misplacing loose memory cards. Furthermore, procedures that involve a lot of multi-step copying, editing, and so forth offer lots of potential to erase something that you thought you backed up or for an operation to otherwise fail without your knowledge. Or you might, like me, sometimes just do something really dumb. Also, consider theft and other forms of loss beyond your control.
Add it all up and my guess is that, for most people, minimizing the possibility of human error is more important than incrementally reducing the impact of a potential hardware failure.
With those reliability estimates and human realities as a baseline, here are my thoughts for some reasonable practices:
- If at all economically feasible, carry enough flash memory to hold all your photos. Flash has a good 10x the reliability of hard disks, more when you consider that it's probably going to be OK even if you drop it or run it through the washing machine.
- Common wisdom is that name brands are, in the aggregate, more reliable, and some higher-end cards also come with data recovery software. This seems reasonable. However, I've never seen actual data to bolster this belief--only random stories about crappy off-brand cards purchased on eBay. One data recover company notes that differences in build quality are indeed part of the reliability story but goes on to say it doesn't correlate in any consistent way to brand.
- Because photos can sometimes be recovered from memory cards after they've had a problem, it's a good idea to have at least one backup card. That way, if there's a problem, you can take the card out of the camera and work on it when you get home. Messing with it in the field is a recipe for losing data that could otherwise have been retrieved.
- A lot of people advocate putting fewer eggs in one basket. That is, they suggest using multiple smaller cards rather than one or two larger ones. This is hard to argue against so long as you develop a good system to ensure you don't lose the spare cards or accidentally erase or otherwise mess something up while you're swapping them around. Given overall flash reliability, I don't see this as a particular win--and may even be a net loss if taken to the extreme of some complicated scheme of rotating cards in and out of the camera.
- Although I tend not to bother, making a periodic hard disk backup of your memory cards is good belt-and-suspenders practice. If you're traveling with other people, a hard disk is also a good way to trade pictures. A computer is one possibility. Hard disk-based media players or portable devices specifically designed for the purpose are others.
- If you can't keep everything on flash, then you obviously need to copy it somewhere. Based on the numbers I threw out above, I wouldn't trust a single hard disk backup as my only copy of anything I really cared about. In this case, I'd want either a second hard disk or a way to burn a copy to DVD. (One advantage of making DVDs is that you can potentially mail a copy to yourself at home. (Laptop and DVDs were the solutions that Shankland eventually decided on.) If you have a bunch of spare thumb drives of reasonable capacity laying around, that may be another possibility.
- Cameras break too--maybe more so than any of the other parts we're talking about here, especially if you're in harsh conditions. I'm not sure of the final digital camera mortality rate on the Grand Canyon boating trip I took a couple of years back, but a fair number bit the dust. So definitely consider a backup camera. Sharing memory card format and/or batteries between main and backup is nice, if feasible.
Ultimately, it's all a matter of playing the odds of hardware failure, while keeping in mind all the dumb things that we can do to sabotage ourselves.
Apple, continuing its reliance on open-source technologies, is using an open-source project called SproutCore to provide rich Internet applications like its new MobileMe service.
The idea is to use to keep Apple from being "locked into the browser plug-ins for...one particular standard."
What is SproutCore? From the SproutCore Web site:
SproutCore is a framework for building applications in JavaScript with remarkably little amounts of code. It can help you build full "thick" client applications in the Web browser that can create and modify data, often completely independent of your Web server, communicating with your server via Ajax only when they need to save or load data.
SproutCore gives Apple a way to enrich its Web experience without locking itself into any other vendor's technology, as the SproutCore site notes:
... Read moreAdobe Systems is updating and expanding its LiveCycle software for building business-oriented Web applications.
The company on Tuesday is expected to announce LiveCycle Enterprise Suite Update 1, which adds new content management features along with tools to more quickly build financial services and government applications.
LiveCycle is one of the primary products in Adobe's enterprise business. The product is designed for applications that involve document exchanges inside and outside of organizations, such as government Web sites that require people to fill out and process claims. It uses Adobe's PDF and Flex software to create paperless, Web-based applications.
The new release also includes two new components: LiveCycle Content Services ES, and LiveCycle PDF Generator 3D ES.
The Content Services component, developed in conjunction with Alfresco Software, lets companies build a process or application linked to existing enterprise content. For instance, companies can use the tool to create a system for connecting manufacturers to parts suppliers, or for linking hospitals to insurers.
The PDF Generator 3D ES component is targeted at the manufacturing industry and allows companies to share two- and three-dimensional models in PDF format. The component works with more than 40 CAD applications, according to Adobe.
LiveCycle ES Update 1 will be available next month, Adobe said.
Is MRAM better than flash memory? That's a question a new venture business will try to answer.
Freescale MRAM chip
(Credit: Freescale Semiconductor)Former Motorola chip unit Freescale Semiconductor announced Monday that it has joined with several venture capital firms to form an independent company focused on MRAM (Magnetoresistive Random Access Memory).
The new company, EverSpin Technologies, will "expand its current portfolio of standalone MRAM and related magnetic-based products," the companies said in a statement.
MRAM uses magnetic materials combined with conventional silicon circuitry to deliver a high-performance permanent storage device.
But MRAM must compete with quickly evolving technologies like flash memory-based solid state drives. Flash memory is gaining ground because companies like Samsung, Toshiba, and Intel keep developing faster and higher-capacity devices.
(For more information on MRAM see MRAM-info. For an in-depth explanation of technologies used in MRAM see this explanation of electron spin and so-called spintronics.)
Freescale will transfer the MRAM technology, related intellectual property, and products to EverSpin Technologies and will retain an equity position in the new venture, the companies said. EverSpin is backed by venture firms New Venture Partners, Sigma Partners, Lux Capital, Draper Fisher Jurvetson, and Epic Ventures.
"The decision to form a new company is intended to accelerate the adoption of MRAM," Lisa Su, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Freescale Semiconductor, said in a statement.
"Current Freescale MRAM products have strong traction in the market," Steve Socolof, managing partner of New Venture Partners, said in a statement.
As part of the agreement, EverSpin Technologies will take ownership of the MRAM manufacturing assets and will be based in Chandler, Ariz.
EverSpin will continue to supply products to Freescale's existing standalone MRAM customers. In addition, EverSpin will be a supplier to Freescale of MRAM technology for use in Freescale's embedded products.
