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Mac.com updates with more storage, new tips on using iLife '08
Attention all those waiting for .Mac to receive some much-needed attention, your wish (or at least some of your wishes) have been granted. Apple's press event is still wrapping up as I write this, but the mac.com site has already updated with the changes Steve Jobs announced today, along with some tips on how to use a few of iLife '08's new features (as of this writing, however, the iLife site has not updated yet). One of the biggest changes to .Mac is a 10x storage increase for individual accounts from 1GB total for .Mac mail, iDisk and websites to a whopping 10GB. While total monthly bandwidth transfer was previously at 250GB, I haven't seen any details on whether that has increased (though I assume - or at least hope - it has). As a nice bonus, the attachment size limit on inbound/outbound .Mac email messages has doubled from 10MB to 20, bringing it up to par with Gmail and other services.[Update: Woops, my bad. Previously, .Mac members had 25GB of monthly transfer, which has now been raised to 100GB.][Update 2: I just signed into my .Mac account online to see the new storage is already available to me. Since I previously paid for extra storage, I now have 20 GB available to split between Mail and my iDisk. At least one commenter has confirmed this as well, but users might still see this get rolled out slowly until the 14th like Apple originally specified.]While iLife '08 is shipping today (though no word yet on availability in brick and mortar stores), .Mac storage will be increased for all users by August 14th. Until then, you can enjoy some of the new tips being published on how to leverage the new iLife and .Mac features, such as publishing iWeb sites to your own personal domain and publishing photos from the new iPhoto to the hot new Web Galleries. You can be sure we're all getting our hands on copies of iLife '08 as soon as possible, and reviews of all the new features will be coming as fast as we can write them.
David Chartier08.07.2007
Lanner rolls out four-bay NS04-3100 NAS server
While there's not a great deal to distinguish it from the multitude of other NAS servers out there, Lanner's new NS04-3100 looks like it should easily satisfy those with hefty storage appetites, offering four bays for some SATA drives of your choosing. Otherwise, you'll get just about all the features you'd expect from a high-end NAS, including built-in WiFi, UPnP AV media server capabilities, iTunes server and DLNA support, and support for RAID 0, 1, 5 and JBOD configurations. Lanner is also promising "ultra-quiet operation" and minimal power draw from the server's Marvel 88F5281 processor. No word on price, but it's apparently available immediately for "sampling."[Via Akihabara News]
Donald Melanson08.04.2007
Game Chamber is perfect for storing carts, punishing children
The Game Chamber is a storage case with a twist -- well, two twists, really: 1) It's a lot bulkier than most other solutions, but more durable as a result, and 2) You can't take a game out without putting one back in.Why would Daze Products purposefully implement a prohibitive feature like this? According to the company's press release, the design "[teaches] kids how to take responsibility for their personal belongings." The locking mechanism helps prevent children from doing whatever they seem to always be doing to lose their games, by forcing the little brats to keep their cartridges organized and accounted for.Daze Products has the Game Chamber available in three different colors at its site -- silver, blue, and pink -- selling them for $14.95 each. Rotate and locate the embedded video demonstration past the post break.
Eric Caoili08.03.2007
Apple TV finally hacked for USB storage expansion
Enterprising Apple TV users have been putting that USB port to good use for ages now, for every hack but the most obvious one: media playback. So far you haven't been able to make a cheap, external USB drive into your primary storage device for kosher Apple TV media, but no longer. The Apple TV Hacks folks have finally figured out a method, and though some Terminal chops and an Intel-based *nix machine (like Mac OS X) are required to run the hack, and it's unclear if it'll work with updated YouTube-enabled Apple TVs running the 1.1 patch, at least it's a start for the storage space-starved.[Thanks, Luck K]
Paul Miller07.28.2007
DreamHost offers free year of Bandwagon iTunes backup and sync service
It sure has been getting easier lately to use an account with web hosting behemoth DreamHost to back up your Mac. We found some good ideas for this back in April, but now DreamHost has gone one step further and partnered up with Bandwagon, a web-based iTunes backup service we found in March. In one of their annoyingly lengthy blog posts (scroll to the end of it), DreamHost unveiled that they are now offering a free one-year membership to Bandwagon's DIY services to all DreamHost customers, available through the end of July. This is a great deal, especially if you have both an expanding iTunes library and a massive chunk of storage at DreamHost just waiting for something to do.To access the offer, current DreamHost customers need only to go to the new Partners Page in the DreamHost control panel, then click on the Bandwagon logo to be taken to the Bandwagon signup page with the coupon code already inserted. The rest of the setup is pretty straight-forward, though I think I should share the solution I developed for a slight snag I ran into: For whatever reason, Bandwagon's FTP client couldn't log into my DreamHost account to begin uploading my iTunes library until I created a brand new FTP user. I don't know if this will hold true for everyone, but it's probably a good idea from a security standpoint anyway, take that advise how you will.So far, after finally signing up for Bandwagon and getting everything going, I'm pretty happy with the service. Bandwagon's account manager can display statistics of what kinds of data and how many you have stored online. I'll have to see how the rest of the upload process on my 6396 item iTunes library fares before I say much more, but until then this sounds like a great deal that DreamHost customers shouldn't pass up.
David Chartier07.04.2007
Can't get enough format war? Wait for Blu-ray vs HD DVD enterprise storage!
We just know no one ever tires of discussion about the format war between HD DVD and Blu-ray, so why should something as obscure as enterprise storage get overlooked? Top Tech News has a short intro piece on archival storage and how the two formats are attempting to get ingrained there, with Blu-ray touting its larger layer size, and HD DVD showing off its perceived lower cost to switch from DVD or other optical formats. We've certainly heard these arguments before when it comes to video storage (although thankfully codecs don't matter here!), but the article mentions that with the costs of disk- and network-based storage being so low, might business even notice which side "wins?"
Erik Hanson06.26.2007
Panasonic has a 7-millimeter thick DVD burner
If you were wondering who's responsible for the super-slim burner that allows Toshiba's waifish Portege R500 sub-notebook to sport an optical drive in such a small enclosure -- and who wasn't, really? -- it seems that Akihabara News has solved this non-mystery by outing Panasonic's seven-millimeter thick DVD writer as the guilty party. At only 99 grams heavy as well, the unnamed spinner reportedly stomps all over the previous record holder for slimmest notebook drive, which measured a relatively-bloated 9.5 millimeters from top to bottom. You'll probably be seeing this model all over the place soon enough; in fact, we wouldn't be surprised (well, maybe we would) if Samsung stuffs one into the first revision of the Q1 Ultra. or Mr. Hawkins employs it to add some value to the critically-panned Foleo.
Evan Blass06.06.2007
Ritek gets green light for rewritable BD and HD DVD discs
In great news for torrent freaks worldwide, Taiwanese optical disc giant Ritek has announced its accreditation to manufacture rewritable versions of both HD DVD and Blu-ray discs, meaning that pricing on the still-rare media should begin to drop once production ramps up in the third quarter. According to a company spokesperson, archiving all those TV shows and movies onto 20GB HD DVD-RE and 25GB BD-RE discs will set you back around $10-per-platter, though you are getting either quadruple or quintuple the capacity, respectively, of a regular DVD-RW. No matter, we'll be tossing these things around like cheap CD's in no time anyway. [Via Gadget Lab]
Evan Blass05.22.2007
Jimi Game Shells wrap your babies in recycled goods
Every now and then, someone produces a product that just makes sense, and the Jimi Game Shell is a great example. We already know that DS games are incredibly tiny; in fact, so much of our media these days comes, like dynamite, in small packages. SD cards, memory sticks for the other guys, and our own games, and we're always looking for great new storage solutions. So when the folks behind the Jimi Game Shells offered to send us a couple of samples for a test drive, we jumped on it.The idea of a small, separate case designed just for our DS games is nothing new; some cases include storage space for games, and there are a variety of retail solutions. They're also great fodder for preorder swag, and there's always the DIY route. But what makes the Jimi shells so interesting is that they're designed to hold a variety of media ... and they're made from eco-friendly (well, friendlier) recycled polypropylene.
Alisha Karabinus05.18.2007
Samsung develops 8GB microSD card
Wow, it seems like we were just marveling over the introduction of the world's first 8GB SD card a few moons back. Ah, that's right, we were. Alas, Samsung took it to heart that SD doesn't cut it for your average cellphone (they run a bumpin' mobile business, after all), announcing that it has managed to pack a full eight gigabytes into the microSD form factor for mid-2008 production. That's particularly timely considering that 4GB examples haven't even gotten into widespread circulation yet -- "8GB" just has a nicer ring to it -- not to mention that the new card handily surpasses SDHC guidelines with 16MB/s reads and 6MB/s writes. For the record, a microSD card rocks a little over 20 percent of the surface area of its SD counterpart, so does this mean we can expect 40GB SD cards, like, now? Not quite.
Chris Ziegler05.16.2007
Brando's WeDock: A $19 box
If you've ever considered yourself a person of class, a member of the gaming bourgeoisie if you will, you'd turn your nose up at the idea of keeping your controllers in a plastic bin or wicker basket. That's the sort of practice you'd rather leave to those of lesser fortune and breeding, right?No, your discriminating tastes demand more sophisticated storage solutions. You require something like Brando's WeDock, a product that does very little for its $19 price tag, but does it quite stylishly. The small locker's clean, white design matches your Nintendo Wii along with any Apple sensibilities you might have. Its one-touch, "springboard" slots fit up to two remotes and nunchucks.When guests ask if the WeDock recharges your remotes' batteries, you'll laugh in their faces until they bow their heads in shame. Of course it doesn't. Jump past the post break for more product shots.
Eric Caoili05.15.2007
The Drobo "storage robot"
There's been a lot of buzz the last few days about Drobo, the "storage robot" from Data Robotics. The best way to get a sense of what it can do is to watch this promotional video. Basically, the Drobo, which has four SATA drive bays, plugs into your Mac via USB and looks to the Mac just like a large USB mass storage device. According to our blog compadres over at Engadget (who have the full skinny), it "uses pooled virtualized storage" (not RAID) to create what looks to your Mac like a single drive, but which has data protection and redundancy features. Best of all, the hard drives are hot swappable. You can add and remove hard drives on the fly without corrupting your data either because of hard drive failure or merely to add more storage space. All of this is transparent to the host computer, which never notices anything has happened.All of this storage robotics coolness is expensive, however. The Drobo sells for $699 without any drives. You'll need to install at least two SATA hard drives in the Drobo and it handles all the rest. [Via UNEASYsilence]
Mat Lu04.11.2007
Drobo, the "world's first storage robot"
Managing all of your data can be a little intimidating, especially if you need to keep adding more and more storage capacity without breaking the bank or running into technical snags. Well the engineers over at Data Robotics figure the solution to all of your storage needs is, of course, a storage robot. Affectionately named Drobo, the four drive array connects via USB and employs "intelligent" software to handle all of the data management and disk swapping: one drive goes down? No problem, Drobo's already on it. Wanna swap out drives while you listen to music? Drobo keeps the tunes going even when you're down to one disk. At $700 it is a little steep -- especially considering the lack of any "starter" drives bundled in -- but we suppose that in the long run, that's a small price to pay if it truly does deliver the data management nirvana we've been seeking[Via eHomeUpgrade]
Evan Blass04.09.2007
Iomega announces Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive with 2TB of storage
If your current drives are just stuffed the the gills with 10 megapixel photos you never resized and episodes of Still Standing that you forgot to erase, Iomega's got a new RAID array that'll bulk up your storage by two terabytes and let you continue living your carefree, digital pack rat lifestyle. With four independent, lockable 500GB drives, though, you could just as easily shift the Power Pro Desktop Hard Drive into RAID 1 and make sure that your 1TB of never-used files are doubly secure; RAID status plus free space, fan speed, and temperature are all displayed on the built-in LED. Connectivity options are also plentiful here, with the PPDHD offering both the 400 and 800 flavors of Firewire and, of course, USB 2.0 as well. Mac and Windows compatible, this one will set you back $1,700 when it hits on April 10th.[Via Macworld]
Evan Blass03.29.2007
Mempile shows off "TeraDisc" DVD-sized optical storage
Somehow, in a world of 300GB holographic discs being packaged with cereal boxes -- OK, maybe we're not quite there yet -- a 1TB optical disc doesn't sound too terribly far fetched. However, Mempile's upcoming TeraDisc technology deserves no scoffing, with its 100 virtual layers for storage at a "fraction of the price" of other storage solutions on the market. Currently the disc can store 500GB in a transparent disc the thickness of a DVD, but future optimizations will allow for 200 layers of data, with 5GB on each layer, for a whole terabyte of good times. The capacity improvements come from the fact that the disc is transparent, so the laser doesn't have to bounce off of anything, it just goes right through. Right now the technology is still in development, but "strategic agreements" are already in place with media and device manufacturers, so all we've got to worry about is where to store all these cute kitten pics of ours while we're waiting for these discs to hit shelves.
Paul Miller03.28.2007
Cablevision loses networked DVR case
Cablevision once had dreams of keeping all your recorded shows on a network-based DVR system, which would have kept them from having to send boxes to all their subscribers. Then Hollywood and the TV networks stepped in with the lawyers last May, and here we are today, with a ruling that this would have broken copyright rules by effectively "rebroadcasting" the programs. The cable operator is considering an appeal, although Scientific Atlanta, Motorola, TiVo, and other DVR manufacturers are likely relieved that their revenue streams are firmly intact.
Erik Hanson03.23.2007
Korean researchers build first eight-nanometer NAND chip
Reports of advances in memory storage densities aren't all that surprising anymore -- after all, storage devices have continually gotten both smaller and more capacious since IBM kicked out the first hard drive in 1956 -- but it's still nice to learn that the NAND flash used in our DAPs, cellphones, and soon laptops and desktops will break the terabyte barrier within the next decade. Researchers at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and the National Nano Fab Center are claiming success in building the world's first NAND flash chip using an 8nm fabrication process, which could eventually lead to capacities as large as one terabyte in a package 1/25th the size of Samsung's 40nm 32GB unit. The breakthrough was realized by merging nanowires with silicon-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon technology, and although it might seem like huge iPods are right around the corner, the research team still faces problems such as shrinking the area where data is saved. In other words, your gear isn't out of date quite yet, but you can rest assured that it will be soon. [Via China View]
Evan Blass03.14.2007
Free iSCSI initiator for OS X now available
You'd think, judging on the name alone, that iSCSI was an Apple product -- perhaps an easier-to-use, shiny, beveled version of the original SCSI? If wishing made it so: sadly, it's only an implementation of SCSI over IP, allowing hosts to connect to remote drives, RAIDs, SANs or tape libraries over standard Ethernet connections. While early iSCSI gear was noticeably slow compared to Fibre Channel and other storage fabric connections, the latest stuff is quite snappy, especially when combined with 10G Ethernet connectivity.Up until now, the only iSCSI initiators (drivers) available for Mac OS X were paid affairs, usually bundled with hardware or management tools. Now, in advance of the anticipated inclusion of iSCSI with Leopard, the good people at Studio Network Solutions have proffered up a free-as-in-beer version of the globalSAN iSCSI initiator for OS X. No support offered, so download and deploy with caution.[via MacTech]
Michael Rose03.13.2007Panasonic announces five new Japanese DVRs
Panasonic has announced five new high definition digital video recorder units for the Japanese market, with all models sporting hard drives from 250 GB (DMR-XP11 and DMR-XP21V) to 500 GB (DMR-XW31 and DMR-XW41V) to 1 TB (DMR-XW51) and DVD drives for burning archives or placeshifting content. Two of them (the V-series) also include VHS recorders for converting that old pile of Miami Vice episodes you've got lying around. The largest of the models has the one terabyte drive, which should get you, what, at least half of American Idol this season? Each of the five recorders has HDMI output, with the DMR-XW51 model using progressive scan 1080p, and all include S-Video and composite inputs for recording other sources. We'd imagine this makes them upscaling DVD players as well, but that isn't mentioned in the release. Most include an ethernet jack for getting program guides and downloading track data from the online Gracenote music database when recording CD audio onto the drives. They utilize a quick-start power-saving mode that allows them to begin recording in three seconds from standby. Because these are Japan-specific recorders, they include BS/110 CS digital or analog tuners, with the VHS-less models freeing up room for two tuners instead of one. They will be released in April and May with prices ranging from ¥80k to ¥200k ($669 to $1,688).
Erik Hanson03.01.2007
Apple-styled HD Enclosure
Wikidesign tracked down this hard disk drive enclosure which offers you some of very Apple-ish aesthetics. It's a standard 3.5" IDE/(P)ATA enclosure with USB 2.0 and 1394 support. The holes on the back are needed because it's a fan-free enclosure--which you need to take into account because this thing needs good ventilation. The aluminum materials used in the unit should help with heat dissipation but it's probably not very stacking friendly. At £39.99, it's a bit pricey--especially since it doesn't come with an actual disk. You're just buying the enclosure. Still, it's pretty good looking, isn't it? [via WikiDesign]
Erica Sadun02.27.2007