Previously SanDisk offered its Ultra SSD to the business sector, but on Tuesday the company revealed that it’s now offering the drive to consumers. Unfortunately, it’s not packed with the SandForce SF-2200 controller or a SATA 6 Gbps interface, so don’t expect blazing fast speeds in the 500 MB/s realm. But considering its price, the Ultra SSD offers a cheap way to replace the standard HDD and boost performance without having to sell body parts on the black market.

“Replacing a computer’s hard disk drive with the SanDisk Ultra SSD is more cost effective than buying a new PC,” said Kent Perry, director, product marketing, SanDisk. “Our new SSD delivers greater speed and reliability than a hard disk drive at an affordable price.”

According to the specs, the 2.5-inch Ultra SSD features sustained sequential read speeds up to 280 MB/s and write speeds up to 270 MB/s. SanDisk claims that the 60 GB Ultra SSD can withstand at least 40 terabytes of data written to it over lifetime, while the 120 GB and 240 GB drives can withstand at least 80 terabytes and 120 terabytes of data written, respectively.

The SanDisk Ultra SSD is now available here in the States over on Newegg, costing $129.99 for the 60 GB model, $219.99 for the 120 GB model and a meatier $449.99 for the 240 GB model (although currently the 120 GB model is the only one listed). Additional retailers are expected to be revealed shortly.

On Monday, Mozilla, the developer behind the popular Firefox web browser, revealed preliminary plans for a universal-platform mobile OS called Boot to Gecko (or B2G). It will feature the Linux-based Android kernel and device drivers beneath a custom user interface and application stack based on Gecko, the Firefox and Thunderbird HTML rendering engine.

Although the team already has a demo up and running, the project is still in its “infancy” as Mozilla research engineer Andreas Gal states – bits and pieces still remain in their heads, others aren’t fully explored. That said, don’t expect to see the new OS anytime soon, and don’t expect it to be a Firefox-themed OS either.

“We want to take a bigger step now, and find the gaps that keep web developers from being able to build apps that are — in every way — the equals of native apps built for the iPhone, Android, and WP7,” Gal said.

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Last week blogger BirdAbroad made a huge splash with pictures of a fake Apple store in Kunming, China. However, it seems there were some unhappy customers following the revelation that the shop was a not a legitimate Apple store. Reuters reports that customers were Friday ‘berating staff and demanding refunds’ following the news coverage.

“When I heard the news I rushed here immediately to get the receipt, I am so upset,” one customer told Reuters. “With a store this big, it looks so believable who would have thought it was fake?”

The customer in question was sold a 13-inch MacBook Pro and iPhone 3G by the staff at the store. However, she was never given a receipt, but told to come back and collect it later. An employee spoke to Reuters, complaining about the unfair portrayal of the store in the media.

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Research In Motion has announced that it will lose more than 10 percent of its workforce as a result of plans to hand out pink slips to 2,000 employees. Reuters reports that the major reduction in staff represents the first time in a decade that RIM has reduced its staff. Axed employees will be notified later this week but RIM offered no indication as to which departments will be affected by the cuts.

A plan to reduce headcount was not the only thing RIM announced today. According to the Associated Press, the Waterloo, Canada-based company also revealed that its chief operating officer, Don Morrison, will retire. The AP reports that Thorsten Heins will take on his duties as part of an expanded role of COO, product and sales while Jim Rowan will become COO, operations.

Last week, Ryan Bidan, senior product manager for the BlackBerry PlayBook, confirmed that he was leaving his role at the company to take up the position of Director of Product Marketing at Samsung. The news arrived amid speculation that RIM was preparing to discontinue the WiFi version of the BlackBerry PlayBook. At the moment, there is no 3G model. The PlayBook launched to tepid reviews from critics in April of this year.

SOURCE via Reuters

We already know what DICE is focusing on the PC as the primary platform for its upcoming shooter, Battlefield 3. But recently DICE revealed some of the differences between the PC version and the version planned for the consoles, and they’re enough to fill any PC gamer with pride (finally).

“The biggest difference between the PC and console version of Battlefield 3 is that we have 64 players on PC and 24 players maximum on console,” said DICE boss Patrick Bach. “The rest is more or less the same: we use the same engine, the same technology, the same animation system, the same lighting system. Our aim is to give the player the exact same experience and not try to dumb down the console version.”

OK, so maybe the differences aren’t that drastic. But then Bach started to elaborate on the “more or less” aspect, admitting that the team tried to squeeze more players into the console version but realized it required the team to scale down all the graphics, scale down all the destructibility, and in some cases scale down the map sizes.

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Architects Craig Hodges and HsinMing Fung joined forces in 1984 to create their agency HplusF. Since then, the pair have gone on to apply their stylistic skill to the UCLA library, Hollywood Bowl, Egyptian Theater and a number of other works of architectural art. HplusF also tackles unique installations and showpieces, one of which involves the now-departed Hummer brand.

What could easily be a luxury apartment in the video game Fallout 3 is in fact HplusF’s HummerHaus. Eight identical Hummer body shells wrap around a a steel skeleton to form a living space like no other.

Of course, this is merely a concept, but it’s a rather interesting one. Could old vehicles be rehabbed into affordable living spaces? Sounds like a beggar.

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