Monday, May 24, 2010

Steve Jobs will be front and center at WWDC 2010 for keynote duties

Just in case you were wondering if Steve Jobs would manage to show up to WWDC 2010 and totally party on the Apple faithful... yes. As you would expect, Steve will be rocking the keynote address on Monday, June 7th at 10AM Pacific. Afterwards you'll be wondering where you're going to find the money for thatnew iPhone. Full PR after the break.

DVDs Could Hold 1,000x Capacity of Blu-rays With New Japanese Research

DVDs Could Hold 1,000x Capacity of Blu-rays With New Japanese ResearchWhile we're waiting for the Blu-ray Disc Association toupgrade discs to 128GB capacity, Japanese scientists have found a way to increase DVD capacity by 1,000 times—using just a slick of metal material over each disc.

According to Shin-ichy Ohkoshi, the chemistry professor at the University of Tokyo leading the project, painting a variant of titanium oxide onto a DVD will conduct electricity when put under light, but when taken away from light it turns back into black metal.

Although it's unlikely to hit the market—at least, not anytime before the BDA launches those new discs—the Japanese team's claims of the DVDs holding 1,000 more data than a Blu-ray certainly are impressive.

Blu-rays hold about five times the data of DVDs currently (25GB per single-layered disc and 50GB for dual-layered discs, compared to 4.7GB for single-layered DVDs or 8.5GB for double-layered), and despite millions each year buying a Blu-ray player, plenty more still own DVD players and have no plans to upgrade. [PhysOrg]

Seagate pairs 7200RPM HDD with 4GB of NAND in 2.5-inch Momentus XT hybrid drive

Just as we surmised, Seagate is taking the wraps off its new hybrid drive, with OEM shipments of the Momentus XT starting today. Hailed as the fastest 2.5-inch laptop drive on the planet, this here device marries a 7200RPM hard drive (250/320/500GB) with 4GB of SLC NAND flash memory and 32MB of cache, and the company's Adaptive Memory technology allows it to store frequently used information on the latter for ultra-speedy access. It can boot up to 100 percent faster than a conventional 5400RPM hard drive, and thankfully for us all, it utilizes a standard 9.5mm-high form factor that the vast majority of laptops use. Seagate also affirms that the drive "operates independently of the operating system and the motherboard chipset," but we're going to hold tight until we see the first real benchmarks (it'll soon be an option in ASUS' ROG J73Jh gaming laptop) before getting all hyped up. In related news, the outfit also announced the world's highest capacity 7200RPM drive at 750GB, with the Momentus 750GB boasting SATA 3Gbps support, an NCQ interface, 16MB of cache and "silent acoustics." No price is mentioned, but you can bet a hefty premium will placed on something this capacious. The full presser, another image and a specs sheet awaits you beyond the break.

Update: The reviews are already pouring in, and at just $155 for the 500 gigger, it's receiving a fair amount of praise.