Currently they are rolling out SSD s in my workplace and the considerable amount of appreciative buzz created around made me very interested in it. The little thing could lessen build time of my code by 80%! Amazing is what my reaction to this would be
What is an SSD?
SSD is a memory unit type called Solid State Drives . These are to replace our conventional Hard Disk Drives. The basic difference between the two is the fact that HDDs have magnetic disks rotating on spindles and the SSDs are built completely out of semiconductors. This would give a more complete explanation.
Why say yes to SSDs?
So you have a Personal machine complete with decent configuration of hardware. A 4Gb RAM, eons of CPU , this should promise decent performance right? But still an IDE , local server and firefox running on your system is enough to make it sluggish. The fact of the matter is that we infact do not perform CPU intensive tasks (translated complex analysis and math) on our personal machines as much as we do disk transfers (use Dreamweaver or such s/w handling large amounts of data). Fetch and write using a magnetic disk is definitely slower as the read write head has to move to the particular disk on your HDD to perform every CRUD operation on your data. But without any moving parts whatsoever an SSD can get read your data almost instantly and write most of the time with same speed too.
Moreover , the absence of rotating motors means less power consumption (ideal for portable machines) . Plus no moving parts equals more robust hardware.
The simple boot of your PC can be so much faster!
Why some are saying no?
The number one reason for low adoption is the price of an SSD. If a hard disk would cost almost as much as the PC itself then indeed some would prefer not to have the extra speed.
Even if you are ready to shell out the extra bucks SSDs did not promise good storage capacities until very recently as PC World shows. Even then 256Gb seems to be the maximum and then you would have to resort to external drives.
They are still not tried and tested and doubts still arise over the claims of power consumption and robustness over long durations.This would be a good place to start.
Doubts still linger but I cant wait to try them out on my own and give a first hand perspective.
If you are looking to buy one then you can start looking from here.
And if you are already using one then please do share your experience.
After all the rants and complaints web-gurus were making about Facebook and its privacy policies and information monopoly, the social giant has decided it will take measures in what is deemed as the “right” direction. If you have not paid attention to complex privacy related ethical and moral issues, then you must have noticed that common user had one complaint that any update appeared on the news page of all their friends! We may have gotten used to grumbling about it and the alternative would be to not publish your uploaded stuff to your wall and instead update your friends by word of mouth. Hmmm.. Now thats not how a site exclusively for social interaction must work right?? So in an announcement yesterday, Zuckerberg has posted this on the Facebook blog showcasing some new features.
New Changes In Facebook
Groups – The video suggests this feature will definitely make lives on Facebook easier and selectively private. Uploads and conversations can be shared with only a particular group of people. The photos of the party you had last night need not be viewed by your parents That update ranting about your office can be shared only to your buddies and not your boss. I for one see many uses for this feature.
Download your Data - Over 5 million users interact on Facebook posting photos , videos , text, updating status , throwing comments and what nots. Accusations had started floating around that Facebook is monopolizing all this information about its users, these accusations have only grown stronger as the Facebook ads are being preferred by many more advertisers as Facebook already knows what color you like, what your cuisines are and the place you live and the type of books you read; thus very naturally, Facebook is able to show targeted ads in your profile and bag higher conversions rates and at the same time is making a lots of money from advertisers . Well , as a first step towards betterment, users can apparently download their all their data in web compatible formats. Now thats a breather!
Application Manager – If you have had to uninstall an application you must have gone through all kind of hell, and you definitely must have googled to find out as to how to remove a Facebook app. But now, this feature is implemented to show a list of all the applications you have added to your account and keep a close watch on the activity they are doing and data they are accessing. This too I’m sure will soothe a lot many worries.
So go ahead and try them out. Only downside is; that I need to wait for these features to percolate to my Mobile app!
As the demo shows BlindType claims to let you type on a touchscreen phone without looking at the screen. Android users are rubbing thier hands in anticipation for the coming updates to Froyo (2.2) if it promises these enhancements. As it happens; typing only with the keyboard on a touchscreen is a most painful process throwing off most people from intense browsing, text-messaging, micro-blogging and updating social network status’ on their phones.
The Swype
While Swype is brilliant, they have been too slow in bringing out their product and the latest beta has already expired. But again, Swype’s strength lies in its ability to identify and match various gestures that go via different characters but make up a single word. Just for example, the word ‘imagination’ could be drawn with a gesture on the touch pad with a continuous stroke that varies in shape. Swype has algorithms smart enough to understand that all these gestures are same and gives you the word that you intended to type magically.
Shapewriter and others are just poor imitations of what Swype can do. Swype’s proven ability to predict what you type on the visible keyboard seems trumped by BlindType’s claim to predict typing intent outside keyboard area. While obviously seeming to have a very intelligent algorithm to correct severe spelling mistakes, it seems to almost read your mind. I trust Apple to retaliate to such competition very soon but meanwhile any other OS on touchscreen seems doomed in this area of innovation once this is patented. If the learning curve proves to be short then this is indeed a good addition to android touch devices. Google’s need to monopolize such technology shows a rising trend in the acquisitions they’ve made. BlindType itself has expressed happiness over the take-over. Regardless,if you’re an Android user then indeed you can’t complain!
