IBM's Racetrack memory

I like IBM for its old fashioned steady slogging ways. Not for it the glamorous proxy wars, wasting tons of money to buy dying assets. Let Microsoft waste its time and energy to buyout an indecisive Yahoo, forgetting its own enterprise software expertise and in the process ceding some precious market share as well.

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IBM has its priorities cut out - like new tech research. This is ultimate digital storage revolution. Imagine how expensive data storage used to be just a few short decades ago? In a few years, the volume of digital entertainment we'll carry in our pocket will start taxing our capability to consume it. But that's the promise of a new digital storage technology - "racetrack" memory - being developed by IBM. It uses the spin of electrons to store data in a system that's much faster, cheaper, consumes far less power and more reliable than today's flash memory. An iPod or similar device powered by racetrack memory would likely hold a half-million songs or 3,500 feature-length films, while holding charge for over a week.

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"The promise of racetrack memory -- for example, the ability to carry massive amounts of information in your pocket -- could unleash creativity leading to devices and applications that nobody has imagined yet," said Stuart Parkin, the IBM fellow who led the research. IBM says the technology should be out in about 10 years, so start assembling that monster media collection :-)

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"Guess, where I am"

Starting next week and over the next few months, several United States airlines will test Internet service on their planes – News.

That's progress, but as usual, there's a price. As many people as there are who are enthusiastic about keeping their connections aloft, surely there must be an equal number who appreciated the brief hours of electronic abstinence imposed by airline travel, the enforced opportunity to put the keyboard away and do something analog, like reading one of those low-tech paper books, or pondering the questions of the universe, or even something as bold as emptying the brain and quieting the mind. Sure, you'll still have the choice to unplug; you just won't have the built-in excuse. Still, these pilot programs are the leading edge of an inevitability.

Can’t imagine someone sending IMs up to the cockpit saying stuff like, "I'm in ur cabin, messing with ur frequencies."

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