Archive for May, 2008

Going to the Book Expo America in LA

May 27, 2008

It’s that time of the year again when the book industry gathers to get a read on itself. Book Expo America is the book industry’s premier trade show with attendees including publishers, retailers, authors, librarians, agents and consultants. This year, BEA, i.e Book Expo America, not to be confused with the software company, is being held in Los Angeles. Harish and I will be there all four days. If you plan to go, send us an email and we can meet at the expo.

I will be speaking on the panel titled Social Networking for Authors and Publishers. It is scheduled for 2:30 - 3:30 on Friday (May 30th) and is being moderated by Jerome Kramer of Rosetta Solutions. I plan to talk about iRead as an efficient and highly-effective marketing platform for authors and publishers. If there are any specific points you’d like me to touch upon, please leave those in comments. I’ll try my best to include them.

Tags:, , , , ,
Posted in Books | No Comments »

WOW! Coming soon… a 256GB 200MB/s SSD

May 26, 2008

Samsung 256GB SSDSamsung is coming out with a 256GB solid-state drive that is billed as the world’s fastest and largest SSD. How soon? Gizmodo says mass production will begin by the end of this year! This is great news.

For the uninitiated, this ZDNet article explains why SSD is something we should all be excited about. SSDs do not have moving parts, like the conventional hard disks. This translates to faster reads, lower power consumption, thinner profile, and most noticeably, no sound.

So why is it that I still don’t own one? Because of the cost. A 64GB SSD upgrade (on the Apple Macbook Air) costs upwards of $1000! While I am selectively cheap, I have happily paid early-adopter prices for many gadgets in the past - bought the first generation iPod, one of the first hand-held GPS devices, an eBook reader. The SSD is just too expensive. And turns out it doesn’t quite live up to the hype. This Computerworld matchup shows that SSD drives are only marginally better than HDD ones, and only for certain types of use cases.

This much-awaited announcement from Samsung changes the equation. The prices of SSD drives will fall significantly and reads will be twice as fast making them more compelling. Really exciting. What will be even more exciting is to see how the world of desktop software takes advantage of this technology and what types of new, innovative apps it produces.

Tags:, ,
Posted in Gadgets | No Comments »