ICANN has just rolled out a video about its going forward in making non-Latin web addresses possible in 2010. People around the world who are using keyboard that has non-Latin words, speak non-Latin languages, and so on can be better connected online through non-Latin web addresses. Local businesses can display non-Latin web addresses so their customers can remember the web addresses easier. I think ICANN is right on the money, and you can expect the world wide web will be a vastly different one than what we know of it today.
An open source content management system Drupal has just got a big boost since the White House announces that the website for White House is now using Drupal. Everyone knows that Drupal is hugely popular as it has a large pool of developers, and the community that is building around this open source content management system is huge. Drupal is also free to use and it can be freely download at drupal.org. The latest release is Drupal 6.14. Looks like the Obama’s administration is taking a like of open source more than we have thought by implementing open source software. What ya think? Source.
Flash memory is dominating the non-volatile computer storage market for now, but phase-change memory may change all that when it be ready for the market. Intel and Numonyx are the two companies that focus on flash memory announce that they are creating a new prototype of phase-change memory. Maybe in the future, flash memory will be no more and phase-change memory will take flash memory’s place.
Why phase-change memory but not flash? The idea of phase-change memory has been around since 1970, but there were problems of material quality and power consumption that prevented the idea of phase-change memory to materialize. Recently, those problems are no more as those have been overcome by Intel. To be brief, phase-change memory could be shrink even smaller than flash memory could, and so this means capacity for phase-change memory is bigger. Imagine a same size USB flash drive but using phase-change memory technology can have a much bigger memory capacity. Phase-change memory is not susceptible to degradation by radiation as easy as flash memory. Phase-change memory could last longer than flash memory. Keeping phase-change memory at the right temperature (85°C), the data using phase-change memory could be around for at least 300 years. Since phase-change memory is non-volatile type of memory as flash memory, this means phase-change memory does not lose data when power is turned off. With bigger capacity but smaller in size means there is less power consumption, and so phase-change memory is not wasting power as much as flash memory. Phase-change memory can also be faster than flash memory. Quoting from Wikipedia:
PRAM can offer much higher performance in applications where writing quickly is important, both because the memory element can be switched more quickly, and also because single bits may be changed to either 1 or 0 without needing to first erase an entire block of cells. PRAM’s high performance, thousands of times quicker than conventional hard drives, make it particularly interesting in nonvolatile memory roles that are currently performance-limited by memory access timing.
It’s great to hear Intel is in progress of making phase-change memory becomes a reality. Source: Cnet and Wikipedia.
Twitter is so popular now that there is a device on sale that allows a device user to check for tweets. The device is called TwitterPeek made by Peek. Peek is a company that is making single purpose devices such as email checking device. TwitterPeek can be bought on Amazon. Amazon lists TwitterPeek with 6 months of service will cost you $99.95, and the one that has a lifetime service will cost you $199.95. I guess the lifetime service will allow you to check for Twitter for the life of the device without paying monthly fee for Internet connection and the bandwidth data for incoming and outgoing data between your device and Twitter. Will this device be hot as Twitter? Twitter is that necessary for some people that they need a TwitterPeek? Source.
In my opinion, everyday web surfers do not need TwitterPeek, because these people don’t even need to be on Twitter that often. Some people are on Twitter often since they have to check tweets from the people that they are following. For an example, a famous celebrity is tweeting about a new role in a new film, this celebrity’s followers are definitely going to be all buzzy up about this new tweet. Another use of Twitter is for the writers who have blogs and books and articles and websites, because the writers need to tweet about their new blog posts, articles, and so on, and on the same page their followers will know about the new content. I can see TwitterPeek is useful for the people who have agenda for using Twitter, but in a sense you can sort of putting these people in the category of fanatic.
People who are using Twitter for news must have hated the long form content of the news, and so they prefer to read the headlines or a very short form content of the news such as in tweets. I can see TwitterPeek be useful in this sense for everyday people, but news is hardly something that everyday people get excite over enough to go out and buy TwitterPeek. They must have hated the long form content of the news — such as CNN on TV, articles on magazines, articles on newspapers, blog posts on blogs, and news articles on Internet — to a point that TwitterPeek is a must for them. One good thing about TwitterPeek is its on-the-go as it’s very convenient to have it everywhere and even if you’re stuck in a toilet in a mall. Still, one can never foretell how a fad goes, and so only TwitterPeek’s future can tell if TwitterPeek is a good idea; besides iPhone and other smart phones and other gadgets and laptops and desktops, Twitter now has one more device to be bragging about its presence on. Twitter should be proud, because this time this gadget is exclusively for Twitter only!
Have you wait long enough for Motorola Droid? Wait no more! Droid will be available for buyers on November 6th for $200, and you can buy it at Verizon’s website. Even though the price is kinda expensive, but if you look at the specification of the hardware and the software (Android 2.0) and the applications this new smart phone got, you probably are totally going to get it. Oh ya, this baby also has a slide-out keyboard that can make you look like a real hacker (Die Hard 4 – Live Free or Die Hard). Check out the specifications and the applications for Droid at Gizmodo.
Google Voice from Google allows you to bind the free voice mail service to your existing mobile phone number, or you can get a new phone number from Google. Google Voice has many cool features! To name a few — listen to your voice messages on computer and on your mobile phone, voice messages are automatically converted to text messages so you can read them in your email inbox and on your mobile phone, you get to save your voice messages as long as you like, voice messages can be searched easily, customize different voice greetings for different friends and family members, and when you move your mobile phone service to a different phone company, your voice messages will move with you.
This is an awesome service and it’s free, but you need an invite from someone who has a Google Voice account in order to use Google Voice yourself. I suspect this is only a temporary limitation as Google is still enhancing the service and testing to see how reliable the service is, according to the number of the accounts. When Google gets everything nail down, Google Voice may allow just about anyone to sign up for the service. Will there be ads on Google Voice’s free accounts? Only Google would have known the answer to that, but I suspect that Google may push ads onto Google Voice for free account holders.
Apparently, in mid 2010, ICANN (Internet Corporation that has the authority to assign the domain names and numbers) perhaps roll out an entirely new Internet system that allows domain names to be in languages other than the languages that are using Latin alphabet. Apparently there is more than half of the worldwide Internet users are speaking and writing and typing in languages that are not base on Latin alphabet. This is big, because this new Internet system will allow gazillion more domain names to be purchased. Popular countries like China and Japan and Korea and Vietnam and others may see spikes in domain name sales, and just like anything new, good domain names may be gone in a flash. This move may make domain registrars get richer and the web becomes a more confusing place. What you think? Source.
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