flash

Toshiba's 3D memory, fuel-cell TV and Cell processors for PCs

CHIBA, Japan--BiCS. It's the acronym that could extend Moore's Law.

BiCS, which stands for Bit Cost Memory, is a three-dimensional flash memory chip developed by Toshiba in which transistors can be stacked vertically. Stacking vertically, ideally, will allow engineers to continue to add more transistors to a chip at a steady pace, which in turn means continual, steady improvement in electronics. Cost goes down, performance goes up, and everyone can continue to sell new products to willing customers.

The company has created working samples and discussed the technology at academic conferences, but is showing the concept for the … Read more

Episode 573: Hard out there for a PMP

Adobe expands online services, woos designers with Thermo

CHICAGO--Adobe Systems, one of the largest providers of packaged software, is aggressively expanding into online services as it seeks to garner more revenue from the Web.

At its Max developer conference here on Tuesday, company executives detailed collaboration and document workflow Web services scheduled for release in the next year.

The company also showed off Thermo, the code name for a new tool aimed at letting designers, rather than programmers, build rich Internet applications.

Adobe's strategy is to introduce services as complements to its existing desktop and server applications. It is still experimenting with different business models to charge for services, which could include shared revenue from advertising or subscriptions, executives said.

"We're looking at how monetization of software in the services world changes and Adobe needs to change with that," said Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch on Monday.

During a keynote on Tuesday, Lynch said that Adobe is still "in the early days" of offering services but the company intends to offer more. … Read more

Adobe's AIR: Niche or the future of desktop development?

CHICAGO--The crux of Adobe Systems' platform strategy is in AIR.

AIR, or Adobe Integrated Runtime, is a download that lets Web applications run on a desktop. With AIR applications, people can work offline and drag and drop items like graphics or text between Web and desktop applications.

AIR is still in beta, but Adobe and many other software developers are already building applications on it. For Adobe's platform business, AIR gives the company a way to extend its investments in Web documents and Web development tools onto desktops across different operating systems.

Rather than compete head-on against Microsoft and Java vendors for developer interest, Adobe's focus is on Web technologies and services, chief software architect Kevin Lynch said Monday at the company's Max conference here.

Adobe opens up tech warchest in fight with Microsoft

CHICAGO--Adobe Systems detailed a number of technology projects and products at its Max 2007 developer conference on Monday and gave glimpse of how it intends to make more money from online services.

During a morning keynote, Chief Software Architect Kevin Lynch announced the acquisition of the online word processor Buzzword and showed a number of applications from partners written to take advantage of AIR, the Adobe Runtime Environment. AIR, still in beta, is a download that enables Web applications to act like desktop applications.

The company also gave a few peeks other technologies aimed at developers and designers. Adobe's … Read more

Preorder your 'Halo' USB drive

If you love Halo 3 but hate staying up till midnight to attend over-the-top launch parties, there's hope for you yet.

Mimoco has announced its line of Halo-themed Mimobot USB flash drives, so you can now experience Halo without all that gameplay. The drives are available for preorder on Mimoco's Web site.

The thumbdrives are available in three styles: the Master Chief Mimobot, the Blue Spartan Mimobot, and the Red Spartan Mimobot. Irregardless of the style, all three USB devices look like they're stuck head-first in your USB port when you're using them.

They're pretty … Read more

FixMyMovie saves your woefully bad digicam films

FixMyMovie is a new service that takes your pixelated digital video clips and does its best to fix them. The technology stems from MotionDSP's processing technology, which is similar to what's used in government intelligence operations to improve those dark and grainy security films--like you see in movies.

The entire process is fairly straightforward: Just upload and tag a supported movie file, and the service will crunch it on its servers. You get a note by e-mail when it's done. Once it's finished you can preview the first 10 seconds of the enhanced version, as well as compare before and after results live, by pressing the "compare" button. What's even cooler is a stills mode that lets you compare the before and after with an easy-to-use slider that follows your mouse. Whatever's on the left of the slider is the old, with the new on the right.

To grab the improved film, there are download options for multiple formats, including iPod-formatted H.264, Adobe Flash, and Windows Media. You can also grab quick embed code to stick it in any blog, which I've done after the break.

I tried out the service on several video clips this morning and got improved results on every single one of them. The most dramatic improvement of all was with text, which managed to turn almost unreadable pixelated words into legible sentences. Just be wary, though: The service can only handle clips up to 352x288 in resolution, which means the VGA videos from your digital camera aren't going to cut it. Older cameras, on the other hand, are fine.

FixMyMovie is launching in beta at this morning's DEMOfall conference in San Diego with $25 worth of free processing for everyone while still in its beta period. Eventually, FixMyMovie plans to charge users for the option to enhance video and still images, which can also be captured manually by users within the Flash player. I can see this service being hugely popular, as everyone wants better looking video clips, and ways to improve older, lower resolution clips.

Update: It's worth noting you need the latest beta of Adobe Flash 9 to view videos on the service (which makes the neat, live before and after feature possible). You can pick it up here, or just get a feel for what it can do with the screenshot below.… Read more

Hybrid hard drives: Why they are failing

SANTA CLARA, Calif.--Back in 2005, Samsung and Microsoft announced something that got the storage fans in the world excited: they had designed a hard drive with a bit of flash memory in it that would serve as a data cache.

The hybrid hard drive would cut down power consumption, increase battery life, and, most importantly, whack boot-up time, the companies said.

But so far, you don't see a lot of them on store shelves and the benefits are somewhat disappointing, said hard drive executives at Diskcon 2007, taking place in Santa Clara this week.

"The initial versions … Read more

'Astro,' 'Moxie' and AIR on display at Adobe Flash confab

BOSTON--Adobe Systems' chief software architect, Kevin Lynch, gave a glimpse of a few goodies for developers and designers meant to make media-rich Web sites run faster.

At the company's FlashForward conference on Wednesday, Lynch said that the next version of the Flash Player, code-named Astro, will have "significant performance improvements" for people making video-rich Web applications. That includes better manipulation of three-dimensional images, he said during a keynote presentation of the Flash developer conference.

After his talk, Lynch declined to give a date for when Astro will ship, but said he'll be providing more details at … Read more

A new approach to securing USB flash drives

USB Flash drives are great. Securing them, however, is not so great. They are easily lost and the more you use one, the more likely it will contain files you consider sensitive. Corsair recently came out with a product that takes an entirely new approach to securing flash drives.

Seeing as this is a Defensive Computing blog, it goes without saying that my personal flash drives are secure. I use a free, open-source program called TrueCrypt. There are however, three problems with this approach:

The hassle of installing TrueCrypt and learning how to use it. There is a portable version … Read more