Care to get up close and personal with Niihau? How's about an overview of Tuvalu? Surely you need a helicopter shot of Pakatoa Island to get your morning started right, yeah? If so, and you're too lazy to hit up the World Wide Web, there's a better-than-average chance that an older
National Geographic magazine has exactly the elixir you're searching for. Problem is, sifting through every single issue since 1888 takes a fair bit of time -- time you'd rather be spending in an obnoxiously long security line as you await your flight to Ushuaia. Thanks to "modern technology" and "storage innovations," said quandary can now be resolved quite simply. Nat Geo is offering every last piece of information it has ever published on a portable 160GB
HDD, and amazingly 100GB is free for you to manually add to the collection. Too bad this $199.95 device wasn't available
before Christmas, but hey, at least you've now got something to blow those Santa Bucks on.
posted December 30th 2009 3:10AM
kewl
@CowBell
Is it just me or does "kewl" as the first post look as stupid as just saying "first"? If you're going to leave a comment at least make it viable
That's about 35GB of boobs right there.
@(Unverified), well, I just read the Natl Geogr site and this thing takes up about 60GB of the 160GB drive. After subtracting the volcanoes, maps (that they better have a complete collection of!), articles and assorted other stuff, I doubt there'll be more than a few MB of boobs. Sorry.
What I'd like to know before using any Santa bucks is whether this stuff is DRM'd. I don't want to rely on their USB drive and would prefer to dump everything onto my firewire external drive. Also, just read their FAQs and while it might be the standard disclaimer-driven blurb...
"Question:
My National Geographic Hard Drive is making clicking noises. What could be happening?"
@CowBell
"Answer:
it's probably the natives at Pakatoa and their 1-hr bongos set"
@(Unverified) I'm the lead dev for the product. And can verify that searching for b00bies only yields results for the bird, not the mammal. Not that we didn't try, but our image recognition skillz are only so good ... ;)
@DariaMorgendorffer Actually, I used to live on the island next to Pakatoa, I would go to visit a mate who lived there and the only bongos would likely be coming from the tourist resort who put loudspeakers in the palm trees to pipe muzak 24x7... Ugh.
intriguing.. slightly tempting, in-fact. although i do not know why
@glenskey This is pretty genius actually, to put it all into one, compared to buying lots and lots of cds.
@glenskey
This might be a pretty good model for large knowledge-bases like NatGeo.
I'm thinking that the Encyclopaedia Britannica could distribute annually this way, too.
Cant wait to buy this. (see you in 2011)
W/ Sony selling it's movies on flash drives this makes a lot of sense. You get the content and a brand new drive; it's a great deal! Thanks Graphic.
Robert Scoble was talking about this on TWiT the other day.
Sounds interesting... I'll be sure to pick one up at a garage sale in 20 years.
@Vexorg Assuming you live that long.
@(Unverified) Assuming we actually use hard drives in 20 years; if the world hasn't been blown up by the god damn Mayans that is.
I think the $60 DVD-Rom set makes more sence.
@(Unverified), I agree!
@(Unverified), question is would Handbrake work for the rip?
@(Unverified)
I don't know man.
DVD's don't make much cents to me anymore. I'm only willing to put my hard earned dollars and sense to new technology!
@arboreal snowman
You mean sense not cents.
@(Unverified)
I agree. Why put this on a hard disk when it could have been delivered on a small format CD and copied to my, faster, internal hard disk.
MAkes no sense to sell it this way. Also if they had offered it as a download, they would sell many more. Well, until it got made into a Torrent. But that's gonna happen anyway.
@ZeRoCo0L
Twas the joke, my friend.
@(Unverified) >> "I agree. Why put this on a hard disk when it could have been delivered on a small format CD and copied to my, faster, internal hard disk."
It's also available on 6 DVDs for $60. There ya go.
But I think they made this hard drive version for ease of use for the average NatGeo reader... not Engadget readers.
*You* might be able to copy each DVD to your hard drive and probably make it work. Although the DVD version will expect the DVD to be in the drive, and you'd probably have to use Deamon Tools or whatever to make it all work seamlessly.
Other people will just buy the hard drive version.
NatGeo did a good thing here... they gave us choice. But who cares... you'll just torrent it anyway.
@arboreal snowman
and what if its in a blu-ray xD ?
@ZeRoCo0L
Nothing gets by you does it?
@Michael Scrip
You can copy it onto your hard drive. They are supposed to create a program to do this, but you just need to copy the DVD folders into a cache file. National Geographic has even posted instructions:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/completeng/faqs.html
@(Unverified)
Ba bing!
http://shop.nationalgeographic.com/ngs/browse/productDetail.jsp?productId=1076013
@(Unverified)
I think a single 60GB Blu-Ray disc makes even more sense. Good luck using search function on a dozen DVDs to find that one article you cant remember the date of.
With that in mind, I think a HDD was a wise choice, just remember to back it up.
@barCODE Actually, the search functionality will search the whole catalog (DB is installed to disk) regardless of which DVD is installed. You also can specify a custom search range or limit results to the currently installed DVD.
this is pretty neat.
Does this include downloadable updates for 2009~? Seems like any 'complete' collection will obsolete itself within a month unless they kill off the magazine.
@Muu
lol but I just (yesterday) bought a subsciption for one year ... lol
I want that hard drive now ... but in german -,-
@Muu
From their website:
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/completeng/faqs.html
When, and how will The Complete National Geographic update the digital archive?
Content updates for The Complete National Geographic will be available after the print editions of the previous year have been published. The 2009 content update will be available for purchase and download via the Internet in the spring of 2010.
i still have the cd-rom collection when it came out in 95. the issues were in horrible resolution and used proprietary software. hopefully this will be better
@darth vader, good point. The site says, "digitally reproduced in stunning high resolution" but I'll hold off on this till we know for sure. Come to think about it, a few years ago I bought some encyclopedia software for my kid and it had shit resolution also.
@darth vader
well 1995 -> 2010
hope they bought a better scanner ^o^
cant wait to torrent this...
though this is something worth supporting, so i might just buy it xD
@vlad the inhaler I'm sure you can't wait for those maps of Georgia
@NikolaiKachorosky I'm sure he knows Georgia pretty well by now
@vlad the inhaler
I was just about to say: This will be one big torrent file!
fathers day comn up
This is worth it for the amazing pictures alone. That's perfect for most of us because who reads? Pfff, just give me pictures.
Maybe popup pictures. National Geographic should go popup. I said it.
@roflcopters
Pop up is the porn man's 3d.
@arboreal snowman
I meant "poor"
I guess you all know what I'm doing in the other tab =D
@arboreal snowman
exactly! And since we are in a recession, pop up would be perfect. I mean, we can't all be like James Cameron making 3D epicness, so the poor mans 3D would be a nice fit. And National Geographic in IMAX 3D sounds lame.
@arboreal snowman
link ? ...... :p
This just leaves three major questions unanswered:
DRM free?
File format (pdf, ebook, jpeg...)
clear definition of 'high resolution'
until then the actual magazine will suffice.
This, plus pivot collection...
...equals probably one of the most incredible experiences.
iWant !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!