Intel’s SSD 320 series offer some great storage solutions for enthusiasts. For those with the budget, getting 600GB in solid state is quite impressive – of course, that is until it fails and reports itself as a cry-worthy 8MB.

A bug that afflicts the entire 320 line can cause an SSD to revert to 8MB following a crash or power failure. The Register quotes a couple of users from the PC Review forum:

“Be wary of the new Intel SSD 320 series. Currently, there’s a bug in the controller that can cause the device to revert to 8MB during a power failure,” wrote one user. “AFAIK they have not yet publicly announced it, and won’t have a firmware fix ready for release until the end of July.”

Another posted, “I just had this happen to me. Had the 600G model for a month. Then the drive crashed and now DISKPART shows 8MB for that drive. SMART attributes are gone… The drive worked great for a month!”

Fortunately, Intel did eventually acknowledge that it is aware of these “customer sightings” on the 320 SSD series. Intel isn’t yet revealing more about the nature of the bug, or when a fix is coming.

If you have a 320 SSD, we recommend that you backup all of your data ASAP. They may be SSD, but you still need to backup them from time to time.

In the near future, we won’t have tablets, netbooks and notebooks. Well, at least that’s what Intel says. But what will we humans be using? Or maybe, Skynet has already taken over the world?

During his keynote address at the SEMICON West conference in San Francisco, vice president of Intel’s architecture group Rama Skukla said that the lines between a netbook, laptop and tablet are disappearing faster than today’s designers can even realize. That said, it’s quite possible that these form factors will be gone within ten years.

“It’s going to be very difficult to see where one device goes and the next one takes off,” he told the audience. Even today, the concept of PCs is already outdated. He added that future PCs will probably serve as “personal companions” instead of bulky devices, synchronizing around the owner in an individual cloud of information that users will be able to share with others or keep private. Read more…

Alert system designed to help you keep a safe distance from the driver ahead of you in times when visibility gets bad, might also prove fun in racing.

SafetyDistance is an innovative road lighting concept that is designed to run along the outer edge of highways and freeways. At night, these signs provide an extra source of light for nighttime visibility in order to assist in keeping the roads safe. Each lighting post is equipped with a solar panel that charges and powers the device. With three different light signs to indicate driving distances, SafetyDistance keeps drivers informed of the safe distance of any vehicles in front of them.

When the lamp glows a bright red, it indicates that the driver is dangerously close to the car in front. Yellow indicates a close distance while green indicates a safe one. While no cars are detected, the signs shut off to save energy. Although it may be fairly easy for a driver to identify whether or not he is dangerously close to another vehicle, this self-sustainable concept is great for harsh weather conditions such as a snow storm or heavy fog.

OCZ has officially launched its RevoDrive 3 and RevoDrive 3 X2 PCI-Express SSDs, but don’t go and rush to take out your credit card just yet, as we’ve got the pricing list, and I tell you, it’s mad!!!

Wednesday OCZ launched its new “workstation class” RevoDrive 3 and RevoDrive 3 X2 lineup of PCI Express-based SSDs. These “drives” offer users monster performance, designed with the company’s proprietary Virtualized Controller Architecture (VCA) technology to deliver maximum throughput in multithreaded applications.

“OCZ RevoDrive 3 PCIe SSDs use our VCA 2.0 technology to deliver superior performance and functionality for everything from scientific computing to high availability clustering,” said Daryl Lang, Vice President of Product Management of OCZ Technology. “This exciting new workstation-class storage product accelerates application performance and takes full advantage of today’s multithreaded processors and software, providing customers with greater throughput in an easy-to-deploy, single card solution.” Read more…

With the dust from its Microsoft partnership having somewhat settled, Nokia is reportedly looking to kick off its forthcoming line of Windows Phones with a major marketing campaign. As we’ve seen with their latest marketing strategy on their latest N9, it seemed that Nokia will be heading the Apple method of advertising.

According to Marketing Magazine, Nokia have already devoted some £80 million to the six-month ad endeavour, which is expected to launch in October. And yet we though the WP7 Nokia handsets will only come in 2012.

Considering all the job cuts and downwardly revised corporate forecasts, an advertising refresh would seem like a logical way for Nokia to embark on a new era. Cut some skin from there and mend it here, a common strategy in business’s logic. But the company is remaining rather mum on the subject, saying, “We are excited about the Nokia with Windows phone, but it’s not our policy to comment on specific campaigns for unannounced products.” Awkwardly executed “leaks,” on the other hand, are an entirely different matter.

SOURCE via Marketing Magazine

Did you know that your second-gen Apple TV has a Bluetooth radio hidden inside it? Wait, scrap that, did you know your second-gen Apple TV in fact can run 1080p contents? Right, let’s get back at the Bluetooth radio issue. Until now, the only way to access it was with a little jailbreaking and some command line chops. That could all be changing though, with the release of iOS 5 this fall. 9to5Mac pulled some interesting code from the latest developer beta of iOS indicating that support for Bluetooth keyboards is coming to the Apple TV and, potentially, the ability pairs other devices as well. In addition to making search without the iPhone remote app far less painful, a keyboard is an essential part of bringing apps to the tiny media box — something that has been rumored would happen for quite some time. It’s possible these capabilities will only be unlocked on some unannounced third-gen streaming device, but we’re hoping this will bring a little life to our still reasonably new iTunes boxes.

SOURCE via 9to5mac

It’s been a long journey for RIM, and that journey has been extremely tough lately, but they’ve finally made it – the ‘One Billion Downloads’ for their app market. It took a smidge over two years for the company to claim the milestone, if you count both smartphone and PlayBook tablet purchases. Android Market took about the same amount of time to reach the mark, but has soared to greater heights since, while Apple has averaged nearly a billion downloads per month in each of the last six months. A number of factors have likely led to the relative snail’s pace in the BB storefront, including the outfit’s rocky relationship with developers. In what can be seen as a morale booster, the company has begun a video series that allows seasoned RIM aficionados to offer their rationale for working with the mobile OS. Perhaps this will, in theory, help expedite the milestone conquering — only time will tell.

SOURCE via BlackBerry