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LG Optimus Big leaked image reveals 4.3-inch Nova touch screen

An image of the LG Optimus Big has leaked, along with some specs. As befits its charmingly blunt name, this smartphone is a whopper, sporting a 4.3-inch touch screen. That's it above, making the 3.5-inch display on the old iPhone 3GS feel all inadequate.

The Optimus Big Boy will also have a 1GHz single-core processor, Korean site XportsNews reports, rather than the dual-core processor that's now cropping up in handsets such as the Optimus 2X and Motorola Atrix.

Other specs are thin on the ground, but we'll chop our ears off and saute them with a little onion and garlic if the Optimus Big doesn't end up running Android.

IBM takes aim at Smarter Commerce

IBM is putting its expertise in data analysis and business process to work under a new initiative called "Smarter Commerce" to help make sense of what consumers want and help vendors to better target offers.

"Smarter Commerce" is a reaction to the shift in the dynamics of commerce as a whole, with the customer leading the path to sales, according to Yuchun Lee, VP of enterprise commerce for IBM. The newly packaged offerings are designed to help businesses engage customers with a higher level of relevancy, putting the customer back to the center of the business … Read more

Military commissions cheetah, humanoid robots

Don't believe in Skynet? Well, the U.S. military has reportedly commissioned the production of bipedal soldiers and quadruped robots that can outrun human beings.

Boston Dynamics, known for its BigDog canine bot, is working to develop a humanoid robot called Atlas and an animal-like running robot called Cheetah. The robo-cat is due to arrive in 20 months.

The company's efforts are part of multimillion-dollar contracts with DARPA over a four-year period, according to a Boston Herald report.

Initially, Cheetah is supposed to achieve speeds of up to 30 mph. Presumably it will be a lot stealthier than the noisy BigDog, seen in the vid below. No word yet on whether it will fold into a cassette tape like the old-school Decepticon Ravage of Transformers fame.

"There's no fundamental reason why it can't go as fast as the animals (60 to 70 mph), but it will take a while to get there," Boston Dynamics President Marc Raibert was quoted as saying in Boston Herald report. … Read more

LaCie announces Thunderbolt external hard drive

Intel announced a completely new I/O peripheral protocol today called Thunderbolt, which had previously gone by the code name Light Peak. In a nutshell, Thunderbolt is a superfast peripheral standard with the speed of 10Gbps (1.25GBps) and almost no overhead. This means devices can be connected at a real-word throughput speed of around 1.25GBps. Thunderbolt is compatible with DisplayPort 1.1 and later.

Currently, the technology is available only in Apple's new MacBook Pro (which comes with one Thunderbolt port) and can be used only with DisplayPort devices, such as Apple's Cinema display. But that will change soon.

Today, LaCie announced an external hard drive, the LaCie Little Big Disk, that will be one of the first storage devices to support Thunderbolt technology. A prototype of the drive was used at the Intel demo today. The Little Big Disk has two solid-state drives inside.

The drive comes with two Thunderbolt ports and can be used to daisy-chain with other Thunderbolt-enabled devices, such as a display or additional storage device.… Read more

What IBM's Watson says to storage systems developers

IBM's Watson debuted for a national prime time TV audience last night on CBS' Jeopardy. Well, to be accurate, his avatar glowed behind his center-stage podium. He did however have a real button to push when he was ready to tee up a Jeopardy-formatted question-as-answer. The button was activated by a specially designed application running within his offstage IBM POWER7 server cluster, complete with IBM Scale-Out NAS (SONAS) storage.

From my perspective Watson was truly amazing during the first 15 minutes of the show, giving responses and choosing the next question category with blinding speed. Human contestants Brad Rutter … Read more

Cloud computing's killer applications

The year 2010 will probably be remembered at the year that cloud computing "shaped" itself into a tangible concept, at least amongst those of us who care. 2011, on the other hand, will likely be the year in which IT figures out how to actually use cloud concepts.

Of course there are success stories dating back two or more years, but what is happening so far in 2011 is a growing body of businesses, data, and applications that were born and cultivated in the cloud. Add to that the online and conference communities forming around cloud and new … Read more

Will you still watch TV at home in 10 years?

Twenty years ago, most people listened to music at home. They'd pop on an LP or put in a CD and listen to music on their hi-fis or home theater systems. Sure, they also had music in their cars, and maybe some sort of portable tape or disc music player, but home-bound music listening was still pretty common. If you asked me in 1991, "Will people always listen to music at home?" I could not have imagined what would change that. I knew the technology would continue to evolve, but what could possibly replace music at home? … Read more

Shared storage in a 'shared nothing' environment

The computing industry is seeing dramatic growth in the use of "shared nothing" database architectures where each node functions independently of one another and is self-sufficient (Hadoop Distributed File System for example). For the sake of performance, contention among nodes for shared disk resources (SAN and NAS) is one of the things these architectures avoid by dedicating storage resources to each node, i.e. no shared disk.

While these computing architectures are best-known in the context of Web-based applications and development activities, they are no longer confined to the Web. EMC Greenplum, IBM Netezza, and ParAccel are all … Read more

Which 'big data' are you talking about?

Late last year I posted a blog item about big data and if/when it would present opportunities for storage vendors. I concluded by saying that, while it was a bit early for next-year prognostications, I expected to see the number of storage devices aimed at analytics applications blossom in 2011 with more storage vendors pursuing the opportunity.

It's now 2011 and I stand by that prediction. However, at least three definitions of big data have blossomed since that posting:

Big-data storage: systems that store really big (as in humongous) amounts of data Big-data analytics: systems that use new … Read more

LittleBigPlanet 2: Redefining replay value

After a minor delay that pushed it out of the holiday release window, LittleBigPlanet 2 is finally among us, offering up a clever story mode, robust level creation tools, and a fleshed-out online community that ensures that players see the best of the best when it comes to user level design.

Jeff: LittleBigPlanet 2 redefines replay value. Sure, the same thing could be said for its predecessor, but LittleBigPlanet 2 is so many light-years ahead of its younger brother in terms of potential, it's like rediscovering the concept of user-generated content for the first time.

What separates the first game from the sequel is the ability to create a variety of games within the LittleBigPlanet universe. Gone are the limitations of linear level design; LittleBigPlanet 2 allows gamers to create shooters, button-mashers, matching games, and more.

At first, game and level design is a bit intimidating--we'd recommend sitting through the various tutorials--but soon enough we found ourselves appreciating a whole new understanding of game design.

The story mode is well crafted and definitely worth a play-through--especially if your heart is set on level design. The expert creativity here surely can't be taught, but it serves as an excellent source of inspiration for would-be game and level designers.… Read more

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