Sandisk, Sony, and Nikon propose 500MBps memory card with more than 2TB capacity

While the CompactFlash Association scoots along at a maximum transfer rate of 167MB per second under its just released CF6.0 specification, Sandisk, Sony, and Nikon are already looking to the future. The trio have just officially proposed a new memory card format that switches from PATA to the PCI Express serial interface to achieve data transfer rates of up to 500 megabytes per second with a potential to extend maximum storage capacities beyond 2 terabytes. The proposed set of specifications hints at the high performance requirements we'll soon face as DSLRs and camcorders are updated to capture continuous burst shooting of massive RAW images and ever higher definition video. Naturally, the spec also enables photogs to transfer their troves of data more quickly to computers for post processing and combines high-speed transfer with a scaling system to extend battery life. The CompactFlash Association has already announced a new workgroup to study the proposal. Canon's Shigeto Kanda, CFA chairman of the board, had this to say about the proposal:

Future professional photography and video applications will require memory cards with faster read/write speeds. The development of a new high-performance card standard with a serial interface will meet the needs of the professional imaging industry for years to come and open the door for exciting new applications.

Sounds like tacit approval to us. And really, anything that brings Sony and Sandisk together on a future storage format should be seen as a positive step. Unless, of course, you're the SD Card Association or anyone who recently purchased a CFast card.

Continue reading Sandisk, Sony, and Nikon propose 500MBps memory card with more than 2TB capacity

Sandisk, Sony, and Nikon propose 500MBps memory card with more than 2TB capacity originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 01:40:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Star shows up again, flexes its Tegra 2 muscle for the camera

That high-end Android smartphone from LG seemingly destined for release early next year has made another appearance -- and this time, the UI's in full view and showing us a few tricks. Looks like the so-called Star will be running a variant of LG's usual Android skin, for better or worse, and the particular device shown off in Phandroid's forums here is loaded with Froyo -- a strange choice for a 4-inch beast launching in 2011 with Gingerbread around the corner, perhaps, but we certainly wouldn't put it past 'em. The owner (who actually claims to have two in his possession) was kind enough to run it through Quadrant, producing a score of 1759 -- fantastic for a stock device, and a score that'll undoubtedly go through the roof once hackers get their hands on these things and start trimming the fat. Between this, the LU3000, and that unnamed LTE device for Verizon, these guys could be a serious Android force in '11, couldn't they?

LG Star shows up again, flexes its Tegra 2 muscle for the camera originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 02:33:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Cowon 3D is the 1080p-playing, 4.8-inch PMP that just jumps out at you

As far as 3D goes, we can still take it or leave it, but what's really got us intrigued about Cowon's latest effort is the promise of full 1080p video playback. Ally that to a HDMI output and up to 64GB of flash storage and you've got yourself a pretty potent portable media station. The Cowon 3D PMP offers an 800 x 480 resolution on its own 4.8-inch display -- which is touted as the world's first 3D visualizer on a PMP that doesn't require glasses -- plus a battery rated to last for 10 hours of video, 45 hours of audio and up to 300 hours on standby. And, in an upgrade from the recent X7, this new device also has WiFi connectivity! Launch is scheduled for December 10th in Cowon's backyard of South Korea, with prices coming in at KRW499,000 ($431) for the 32GB-equipped 3D PMP and KRW589,000 ($509) for the 64GB version.

[Thanks, Kunal]

Cowon 3D is the 1080p-playing, 4.8-inch PMP that just jumps out at you originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 03:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple forces PhotoFast to abandon 256GB upgrade kit for MacBook Airs

Remember that peppy aftermarket 256GB SSD upgrade from PhotoFast that easily smoked (on paper anyway) the SSD found in Apple's latest MacBook Air? It's been halted upon Apple's request before it ever went on sale, similarly to those HyperMac batteries before it. 9to5Mac first reported the news based on a source close to the company and we just confirmed it directly with the PhotoFast GM2_SFV1_Air product manager. The risk of losing access to Apple's product licensing program was just too grave a threat to ignore. So, enjoy your 160MBps max SSD transfer rate and 128GB top-end capacity MBA 11 owners, you'll get that storage and 250MBps sequential read/write speed bump only when Apple's good and ready to provide it themselves -- possibly sooner, we're told, if PhotoFast is given the green light to start sales after Toshiba's SSD modules (Apple's MBA partner) are available for purchase.

Apple forces PhotoFast to abandon 256GB upgrade kit for MacBook Airs originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 30 Nov 2010 04:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Curated.by Launches Public Beta, Brings Collaborative Curation to the Web

Curated.by - a collaborative curation tool that helps users organize anything and everything with a link, from Wikipedia to Tweets to this here blog post - announced the launch of its public beta today.

The space is heating up, with Storify and Keepstream both making their own efforts, and it will be interesting to see how Curated.by's latest incarnation (it was previously a tool to curate Tweets) pans out in the burgeoning realm of content curation.

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Curated.by offered an introduction to the public beta on its blog today:

If you joined us early during our beta, you will notice that many things are different today. Not only did we changed our UI but also the way you collect, organize & discover content on curated.by.

The idea behind curated.by, remains the same. We are a growing collection of topics and interests, edited, organized and curated by everyone. A place that makes it easy to follow a specific topic or an evolving story, something that is still very difficult today.

Now, instead of dragging and dropping Tweets onto the Curated.by page, you tag content by bookmarklet or using a Chrome extension. Curated.by Founder Bastian Lehmann told The Next Web of the old "Bundler" tool that "Most people didn't like it, it was too much work".

We got in touch with Jim England, co-founder of Keepstream, who explained in an email that Curated.by, Keepstream and Storify are all "carving out unique niches on the manual curation front." Curation, he told us, is a space that is "definitely heating up", because as time goes on, users will start following more and more people until it becomes unbearable.

"There will reach a 'breaking point'", wrote England, "where many people will become frustrated with the amount of content they are missing from the firehose and will look to curated sources on particular topics to keep up-to-date."

Both Keepstream and Curated.by started out as social media curation tools, with the differentiation that Keepstream was more personal, while Curated.by was more collaborative. The most recent change - wherein Curated.by changed its focus to links - could be a step backwards.

"Our vision of curation is to connect to actions you are already doing on your social networks (favoriting, retweeting, and liking).  We think that these actions are already curation... individuals are screening and sharing only the best content with their networks, so why don't we take advantage of that?" wrote England, adding "Copying and pasting links is good for stuff you miss, but I don't think it should be the primary input method."

For us, the new incarnation of Curated.by reminds us of a Web we once knew, where content, including websites and not just tweets and Facebook "Likes", were organized into categories for browsing.

What do you think - will a more generalized form of curation, such as the one offered by Curated.by today, take off? Or should we stand atop the shoulders of Twitter and Facebook and go on with our curation from there?

The point may be as moot as whether or not curation is an inherently solo or collaborative effort. Perhaps there is room for both.

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