Listing entries tagged with hard_drive

the march of technology   09.14.2006, 12:57 PM

Sept. 13, 1956

IBM's 5MegaByte hard drive, is the size of two refrigerators and costs $50,000.

Feb. 13, 2006

Seagate's 12GigaByte hard drive, will fit in your cell phone.

Sept. 13, 2006

50 years later: 200 times more storage than the IBM drive on something smaller than a postage stamp. (Size: 11mm widex 15mm long x 1mm tall).

(thanks to endgadget)

Posted by jesse wilbur at 12:57 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
tags: IBM , compactflash , hard_drive , kingston , seagate

google: i'll be your mirror   03.07.2006, 5:25 PM

From notes accidentally published on Google's website, leaked into the blogosphere (though here from the BBC): plans for the GDrive, a mirror of users' hard drives.

With infinite storage, we can house all user files, including e-mails, web history, pictures, bookmarks, etc; and make it accessible from anywhere (any device, any platform, etc).

I just got a shiver -- a keyhole glimpse of where this is headed. Google's stock made a shocking dip last week after its Chief Financial Officer warned investors that growth of its search and advertising business would eventually slow down. The sudden panicked thought: how will Google realize its manifest destiny? You know: "organizing the world's information and making it universally accessible (China notwithstanding) and useful"? How will it continue to feed itself?

Simple: storage.

Google, as it has already begun to do (Gmail, get off my back!), wants to organize our information and make it universally accessible and useful to us. No more worries about backing up data -- Google's got your back. No worries about saving correspondences -- Google's got those. They've got your shoebox of photographs, your file cabinet of old college papers, your bank records, your tax returns. All nicely organized and made incredibly useful.

But as we prepare for the upload of our lives, we might pause to ask: exactly how useful do we want to become?

Posted by ben vershbow at 05:25 PM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
tags: Libraries, Search and the Web , Online , google , hard_drive , mirror , privacy , search