SAN

Upscale Drobo announces 8- and 12-drive storage

Nigel Tufnel's amp goes up to 11, but Drobo's newest storage system outdoes the Spinal Tap guitarist with a new 12-drive model.

The new Drobo Elite B1200i, geared for small businesses, is a central storage system that connects to people's computers via the iSCSI technology for building a storage area network. It's matched by a similar 8-bay iSCSI model, the B800i, and a related network-attached file storage model, the B800fs.

The models are a new high-water mark for Drobo, a company that got its start with much smaller desktop storage systems that attached to personal computers … Read more

SanDisk claims 45MBps write speeds for new SDHC

Announced about a year ago, the SD Card Association's SD 3.0 specification has yet to gain much traction. Panasonic and Toshiba both announced UHS-I SDHC products last September, with Toshiba claiming ultrafast write speeds of up to 80MB per second. But those cards have yet to materialize. At CES 2011, Kingston announced a new series of UHS-I cards, unfortunately dubbed UltimateXX, with a claimed 35MBps write speed, which are slated to be available this month. SanDisk now ups the ante, expanding its Extreme Pro line of flash cards from CompactFlash to SDHC, with the momentarily fastest spec of … Read more

CES: SanDisk debuts mammoth, costly 128GB flash card

When it comes to flash memory cards, large capacity and high data-transfer speeds usually are somewhat mutually exclusive advantages--if nothing else, to keep the costs down. But what happens when you give the product development folks an opportunity to indulge their fantasies?

SanDisk's new Extreme Pro CompactFlash card unveiled at CES, that's what.

This card from one of the premier brands in flash memory products has three superlative attributes: a 128GB capacity, a data-writing speed of "up to" 100 megabytes per second via a UDMA-7 interface, and a price tag one penny shy of $1,500. … Read more

AT&T ramping up public Wi-Fi access in NY, SF

AT&T is expanding Wi-Fi access in New York and San Francisco where customers have run into trouble with the carrier's overcrowded celluar network, according to the Associated Press.

The company is due to announce today that it will expand its Wi-Fi hot zone this week in New York City's Times Square, which launched in May. "Hot zone" is a term for a large, outdoor, public area covered by multiple hot spots.

AT&T is also eyeing new hot zones around New York's Rockefeller Center and St. Patrick's Cathedral areas, according to … Read more

Sprint to add 4G in SF on December 28

We knew it was coming, but Sprint confirmed today that its 4G WiMax network would go live in the San Francisco Bay Area on December 28. Sprint customers should be able to access the fast data speeds in most urban regions surrounding the bay including San Francisco, Oakland, and San Jose.

Though the carrier has been testing WiMax in the region since September--we've already used it in the CNET offices in San Francisco--the official launch date means the service is ready for commercial use. Also, the International Telecommunication Union recently classified WiMax as an official 4G technology.

Indeed, … Read more

Last of the storage independents

A recent frenzy of storage acquisitions--with 3PAR going to HP, Isilon to EMC, and now Compellent to Dell--brings storage full-circle. Your next enterprise storage purchase? Almost guaranteed to be from a leviathan.

One of the once-amazing changes in the computer business was the birth of independent storage vendors. For decades there've been a few odd after-market and third-party storage vendors. But they were mere pilot fish congregating around the truly big, important swimmers: systems vendors. When you bought storage, it generally came from the same company that made your computer. That was the natural order.

But in the 1990s, … Read more

A tour of SF Bay's hidden military fortifications

SAN FRANCISCO--If you've ever taken Lincoln Boulevard through the Presidio here, you almost certainly didn't know that you passed within feet of one of the best-preserved World War II-era anti-aircraft machine gun nests in the country.

In fact, all around the Presidio are dozens of these original trenches and fox holes, most of which are completely grown over with weeds and other vegetation, but many of which still have the pillars on which Army crews once mounted their .50 caliber guns in preparation for an aerial or sea-based attack that, thankfully, never came.

As part of my Road Trip at Home … Read more

Powering San Francisco's cable cars

SAN FRANCISCO--For almost anyone who's visited Baghdad by the Bay, a ride on one of the city's iconic cable cars is pretty much a must.

What most people don't know, however, is that, once upon a time, these wooden vehicles, which are pulled along their routes by thick, heavy, metal cables, could be found in cities all over the world.

From Paris to Melbourne to Bogota and elsewhere, the cable car was once seen as a fantastic alternative to having horses pull cars of people around. But when electric power made trolley cars efficient, most cities made … Read more

The 404 700: Where you vote yes on prop 404 (podcast)

Voting day is finally upon us, so don't forget to get out there and punch in your ballot or you will turn into that creature above! We're clearly experiencing technically difficulties while Jeff is away, so apologies to everyone watching today's video because I'm hulking out all episode! By the way, if you need help finding your nearest polling station, you can head over to Google Maps' voter info page, enter in the home address where you're registered, and Google does the work for you.

An artist here in New York has started a new project that literally integrates technology into the city. Aram Bartholl's "Dead Drops" is a public file-sharing network that places USB flash drives into buildings, walls, and curbs that are accessible to anyone with a computer and a willingness to share.

Each flash drive, distributed in five locations throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn, contains a readme.txt file that explains the project and invites users to openly share their digital lives, but The 404 knows how low the Internet will go, and this doesn't bode well for the Dead Drops. The chat room has its own NSFW name for the USB keys, but we won't spoil it in the blog, so be sure to listen to the show to get all the filthy details.

A few weeks ago we showed you what OK Cupid tells us about the real Stuff White People (and other people) Like, but a new TED talk from David McCandless called "The beauty of data visualizations" shows what Facebook tells us about trends in breaking up.

The graph shows that the biggest peak in breakups is right before spring break, specifically on Mondays, which means that people like to party with other singles in the spring and summer months. Another peak happens right before Christmas, which could be attributed to penny pinching or perhaps the desire to get a fresh start for the new year. Thankfully, the lowest amount of breakups throughout the year happens on Christmas Day, so have a great holiday!

Episode 700 Subscribe in iTunes audio | Suscribe to iTunes (video) | Subscribe in RSS Audio | Subscribe in RSS Video… Read more