Jason’s Random Thoughts

Blue-Ray has certainly pushed our perceptions of what a 5.25″ optical disc can hold, but a new technology from an Israeli company is about to dwarf the current 50-GB limit.

Mempile says it’s able to fit an astonishing 1 TeraByte onto a disc the same size as existing CDs and DVDs.  This is 20 times that of the largest Blue-Ray discs available.  The capacity is achieved using a new technology employing 200 five-gigabyte layers, each only a few microns apart.  The discs are completely transparent to the red lasers which are used in the necessary recorder.

The prototype has already been made to hold a whopping 800 GigaBytes of data, and Mempile says they will break the 1TB barrier before moving on to bigger projects.  These discs will come with an expected lifespan of 50 years, and could be available to consumers before 2012.

“TeraDisc is made of a material which is highly responsive to two-photon writing and reading.  This allows us to write anywhere in that we can focus a red laser onto the disc, e.g. multiple layers.

When a red laser is focused to a small spot inside the TeraDisc, we can choose if we probe the state of this material (reading , low power) or alter it (writing at higher power). This is very similar to the way a regular CDR works, except for the fact that this is now done in 3D.”

- Dr Beth Erez, Mempile CMO

It’s hard to imagine the disc being used by regular consumers, but considering the amount of data being placed on our home computers, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine these discs being used for un-attended backups or put into digital jukeboxes and read by any computer on the network.

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There are quite a few blogs out there that are consistently positive and well written, but none are quite like the one I found today at Karl Blog.

The blog is written by Karl Moore, one of the world’s top developers and the CEO of US-based media group White Cliff.  He’s also the author of two VB.net books (Visual Basic.NET: The Tutorials and The Ultimate VB.NET and ASP.NET Code Book) and, as chance would have it, I own them both.

Despite his incredible knowledge of software development, and the various projects he works on, Karl Blog does not focus on technology.  Instead, we’re treated to some inspirational messages designed to help people in their spiritual growth, without discussing any particular religion or faith.  On Mondays we’re treated to Random Act of Kindness, with many of these being so insanely simple it makes me wonder why I haven’t done these things more often, and on Friday we get a Factoid.  I particularly enjoyed his commentary on the interrobang, as I had seen the symbol a few times in life but never knew what it was called or the language it was supposed to belong to.

With all the negativity on the interwebs, it’s nice to know that a site like Karl’s exists.  It’s already made it into my Top 10 daily reads, and I encourage everyone to check it out.

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How often does this happen?  You’re using your computer, either at home or work, and you need to share what’s on screen with someone on the other end of the phone.  Quite often, this results in lost productivity as you try and describe or read everything displayed on screen, but it doesn’t have to be this way.

Remote desktop software has been around for a while, and while many of the solutions work alright when you’re just trying to access a computer from somewhere else, they fail at being effective in sharing a single desktop with multiple users.  Luckily, RemotePC offers a solution for this and a few other common problems with remote access software.

I would have liked to have known about this program a few years ago when I first started supporting the software at my previous employer.  Quite often I would get phone calls with users generally describing an error, but not telling me the things I needed to know in order to properly diagnose and fix the problem.  If I could have logged into their machine without kicking them off the system, it would have saved quite a bit of time and hassle on both our parts.

RemotePC would also make remote training sessions a snap.  Several users from all over the continent could be connected to a single desktop and we could go through the steps of how to use something, and any questions could be answered in the group, rather than individually.

Another great feature of this application is the ability to easily move files between the host computer, and the one you’re using.  I’ve been using Windows’ built-in remote desktop solution for a few years, but one of the biggest hassles I’ve had has always been moving files between the two computers.  With RemotePC this is a simple drag and drop process.

You can try RemotePC for 30 days free, and I’d certainly recommend it if you’re tired of dealing with the limitations of Windows Remote Desktop.  This software will work on Windows Vista, XP, 2000 (with SP4) and Windows Server 2003.  In my tests, I’ve found it has a very light resource requirement and can run in the background completely unnoticed.

This is a sponsored post paid for by RemotePC.

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What would you do if you won $500?  That’s the question being asked by the folks over at John Cow right now, where they always show us how we could be making money online.

Following up with a similar contest held last month, John Cow has worked something out with their web hosting provider, Micfo.com, to offer yet another contest with a high cash payout.  What’s great about this type of contest is that the payment is in cash, rather than some electronic voucher that can only be used at a particular retailer.

I’m not sure what I would do if I won.  I would likely buy something nice for my wife, or perhaps take her family out for a great dinner … perhaps both.  I’ve been accepted as a member of their family, and everyone has been genuinely welcoming and accepting, so this would be a great opportunity to say “thank you” while also earning brownie points
If anything was left over, I would put the rest into a “new web host” fund.  My provider has been alright for the last few days, but I’ve become quite tired of the consistent downtimes over the last few months.  Perhaps I could jump ship to Micfo when my contract is up for renewal
Head over to John Cow’s $500 Cash Giveaway and write about it on your own blog.  Who knows, perhaps you’ll be the next person to make some moooney from The Cow.

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How anonymous are we on the web?  Would you believe that almost anyone could pinpoint where you live within a few kilometers based on a set of numbers reported by your computer?  Depending on how powerful our lawyers are, we could then take those numbers and get more information about you such as exact address, credit information and a whole lot more.

Every web page we visit, email we send, and file we download can be tracked back to us through an IP address.  A unique series of numbers that millions of electronic devices use in order to identify and communicate with each other over most computer networks, including the internet.  I’ve spoken to quite a few people that don’t like this fact, and often become quite defensive about their privacy.

I don’t blame them.

There have been ways to get around this problem for years, but it hasn’t been too easy for the everyday user.  Luckily, there are now ways for almost everyone to hide IP addresses.  Using a customized version of FireFox from Hide-My-IP-Address.com, users can feel secure in the knowledge that their web surfing will be anonymous to every site visited.

This works by routing all your surfing through an anonymous proxy server, which not only masks your location, but your identity and even browsing history.  What I find quite interesting is that this will even work from a USB stick.  One huge advantage here is the ability to surf effortlessly from work.  If the administrator at your employer is blocking sites through some kind of firewall, you could be able to bypass these security measures since you would be accessing the sites through anonymous proxies.  If I had known about this program several months ago, it would have saved quite a bit of time and hassle every time I needed to browse the MSDN libraries.

With the above screenshots, we can see how the tool works.  The image on the left represents browsing without Hide-My-IP, and the image on the right is with the custom FireFox browser.  The first image shows that with our IP, we can pinpoint it to a city.  The second shows that the GeoLocation software available can’t identify where we are.

If you’re concerned about people collecting information about your online habits, this might just be the solution for you.

Download Hide-My-IP Address here.

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