Tom’s Hardware has published an article that establishes that SSDs (Solid state Drives) are not saving battery life (that was already confirmed during the Macbook air tests) or increasing performance. To explain quickly, conventional wisdom would say that SSD drives should be faster because there are no moving parts (faster access time) and they should consume less because they don’t have a motor that spins at several thousand rounds per minute.

While it seems logical to blame the drives themselves for failing to deliver on the hype, there is a need to understand that it’s everything around them that needs to be improved. That means the disk interface, but most importantly the software. Today’s SSDs are built to look just like a mechanical drive to the operating system (OS), and therefore the OS manages it in a sub-optimum manner. That partially explains why SSD drive aren’t as cool as they are supposed to be.

The bottom-line is that today, they are expensive, and for many reasons, you don’t get the benefits that you thought you had paid for. Stay tuned as we will keep an eye on this problem, but we can certainly say that it will take many years before SSD can deliver on its promises.

There is a rumor on the NGOHQ forum saying that someone has been able to modify (“mod”) a set of ATI drivers to run NVIDIA’s GPU-accelerated PhysX code on older (pre-4800) ATI cards. At the moment, there is no proof that the claim is true, as the author of the forum post did no release the modified material for others to try. That seems pretty fish to me, as it seems to be a long shot to “port” (rewrite) PhysX over ATI without rewriting the CUDA driver and also parts of the ATI graphics driver that would access CUDA data. All that without the most recent top-secret ATI driver source code. Of course, “in theory” everything is possible, but “in theory” all the traffic from Google could also be diverted to this blog by accident… (and that would make us very happy)

PS: if the guy could actually do it, I’d like to order a DX10 driver for Windows XP, that would be far more useful…

Piper Jaffray & Company have conducted a limited internet survey (344 respondents) that concluded that roughly two-thirds would not buy an e-book, even if the price was low. Although any limited survey has to be interpreted with caution, this is not surprising by any means. The bottom line is that the perceived goal of e-books, which is emulating the paper reading experience, is far from being fulfilled. It is true. Additionally, content has not yet reached a critical mass and the delivery system is still primitive. What can be done now is to expose as much consumers as possible to current e-books because the idea of “electronic paper” is really cool, but we need color, better resolution, better design, better content…

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Amazon Kindle Hands-On

Nokia already had a large stake in Symbian, the entity that produces the operating system (OS) for its phones. Now, the company bought the rest of the shares for $410M and announced that phone makers would not have to pay to use the Symbian OS anymore. By doing this, Nokia hopes to boost the market share of the Symbian OS. Just like Google with its Android mobile platform, Nokia is trying to gain mindshare and influence in a world where software is more and more where the value is, because it defines the user experience more than the hardware. As an example, just compare the Samsung OMNIA and the iPhone 3G, similar specifications, but very different user experience.

Also, Nokia has invested a lot of efforts in developing applications for Symbian OS, and wants to make sure that its investment stays relevant as the company goes from phone maker to platform and content provider and distributor. When you control the platform, you can (try to) shape the industry to your own image (for a time, at least)… ask Microsoft, they would know something about it.

When Havok/Intel and AMD work together to make physics simulation run faster on CPUs, one could say that “the enemy of my enemy is my friend”, right? In case you don’t know, Havok is owned by Intel and provides a good physics library for game developers. CPU makers are saying that physics is critical to games and that gameplay related physics should run on the CPU, because the AI (artificial intelligence) needs to know what’s happening in the virtual world.

Of course, these comments are aimed at NVIDIA’s vision of computing physics on the GPU. They have recently bough AGEIA that has its own “PhysX” library for developers. So, should physics run on CPUs or GPUs? Answer: Both. Game-related physics on the CPU uses simple and less numerous bodies, while “eye-candy” physics can run on the GPU at rates that CPUs just can’t match. Can’t we just all leave in peace?

Looks like a pair of underpants isn't just meant to keep your privates in place anymore these days, as scientists have come up with a rather novel method of sensing your blood pressure, by including a blood pressure sensing system in a pair of underpants. These sensors are sewn into the waistband of the person's underpants, and will get to work detecting the wearer's "pulse wave velocity" which is closely linked to blood pressure. This enables the garment to calculate the blood pressure continuously as long as it is worn. No idea when this idea will be commercialized though.

Kit Eaton at Gizmodo had an interesting post about “How many TBs is Enough”? The author lists that storage devices that he has and says:

“at comes to a grand total of 2010 GB, so around 2 TB. That seems a ridiculous amount,”… “that's 3,195 days worth of music… That seems like plenty, but maybe I'm wrong”

Well, you’re right – it is plenty, but the reason why storage needs will continue to grow is not linked to “how we consume” the file stored, it is linked to our storage habits or the lack of. Storage requirements grow exponentially simply because most people don’t sort the “stuff” that they keep on their drives. It’s the “it might be useful” kind of thinking.

Worse (not really), now people backup more than they used to – thanks to software like Time Machine. In the end, it comes down to “cheap storage”. It takes time (and therefore cost money to sort yout crap out), so if storage is cheap, why would you sort and discard your files? Hence, you’ll keep stashing files and you’ll keep buying more capacity.

The Italy iPhone launch might signal a change in policy at Apple. As of now, Apple chose one carrier per country to which it gave exclusive rights to commercialize the iPhone. The idea is that carriers enter a bidding process during which they bid more royalties to Apple to get the coveted contract. Of course, there are many variables like the customer base and so on. So far AT&T has been fairly happy with the deal.

The Italian “La Repubblica” believes that this will come to an end soon and that Apple will switch to a more open model that involves several (or all) carriers. We can only speculate on this and our opinion is that the exclusivity tactic is a powerful demonstration for all carriers: they can make more money, even after sharing the subscription fees with Apple. However, this tactic has the drawback of locking out legions of customers trapped in their current contracts.

By becoming less exclusive, Apple will likely increase their total available market – which they need to continue to grow quickly.

(Video in the full post - click on the link below)

Our friends from TeleRead have posted a link to this cool video of the Readius Rollable E-Book that also has a cellular wireless functionality. Now I wouldn’t call this a “cellphone ebook”, but I think that some might like the idea. There is a crowd of consumers that prefer the Readius device for its portability, compared to the Amazon Kindle, and it’s true, it is much more portable.

But in my opinion, e-books are far from ready for mass consumption. For one, they aren’t “good enough” from a technical standpoint. We need colors and faster refresh at least. Secondly, getting the content is still somewhat of a hassle and the choice is limited. Finally, it’s just too expensive. I would love to have the “perfect ebook”, but it’s just not there, yet. (Video in the full post)

For those who don’t know Carrefour, it’s huge retailer, much like a WalMart (except that they sell all kinds of food as well). They started out in France but Carrefour retail stores can be found in many countries. For example, there are around 10 Carrefour stores in Beijing. Anyhow, when you see a company like that going into the Movie Download business, it means a few things:

• The technology behind the business is a commodity. Sure, it can be improved, but it is no an edge anymore.
• Margins are going to get thin. I doubt that Carrefour will compete on user-interface or user-experience. They will compete on price. It’s their DNA.
• Expect more companies to jump in, as the technology behind it can probably be “bought” as a white label service.

We know that India is very attractive to the Social Networking moguls since 44% of Indian online traffic uses the Internet just for social networking (according to JuxtConsult, April 2007 survey). Today, MySpace has decided to go head to head with Google whose Orkut, the most popular social networking site in India, has a 64% market share there.

According to Compete, in 2007, MySpace growth was negative by -1% and Facebook traffic increased by 77%. We can easily understand why MySpace is looking for new areas of growth and India is the best place to try it. India is also one of the largest film producer in the world with Bollywood, which gives MySpace an edge.

Getting ahead of the competition by leveraging the recent partnership agreements with the entertainment industry is an obvious strategy for MySpace: read the interview of Chris DeWolfe by Laura Locke on Wired.

AT&T is working on a web browser (currently for Windows) called Pogo which is in private beta. One of the highlights is that tabbed browsing will be replaced by “snapshots”. Bookmarks and history are also handled with fancy graphics and a lot of eye-candy.

However, it is reportedly a resource hog and while it would makes the CPU and Graphics vendors happy, it’s not clear if it create a truly better user experience. Time will tell, but this is not anew struggle. For years, people have tried to go beyond the 2D interface and after a decade, we’ve got to Vista and OS X animated icons… that’s not so far. The folks at Ars Technica have an in-depth review. Here’s a say that my friends will recognize: “if you can’t make it good, make it shiny”, hopefully Pogo will turn out good and shiny ;)

Nokia’s handset market share rose to 39% from 36%, thanks to a very strong positioning in emerging countries, but average selling prices are down. These gains are partly due to Motorola giving up on competing using price cuts (Nokia’s low-end phones are much better anyhow). However, in the U.S, the number of Nokia handsets sold has diminished by a good margin, and I personally find that worrisome.

Nokia has already warned that the average selling price (ASP) for its handsets went down to 79 Euros (from 83 Euros last quarter) and this is probably not over. To be fair, half of Nokia’s revenues are in dollars, so the currency situation is damaging but (to me,) the loss of share in the U.S is a sign that the company has issues competing on handset design and software. The question is: what happens when the volume in emerging countries decreases?

Related
Future of Nokia Smartphones, Will the iPhone Continue to Dominate?

You might wonder why Blockbuster wants to buy Circuit City for a billion dollars. Here’s the insight provided by Jim Keyes, Blockbuster’s CEO: "We would seek to differentiate products in both Blockbuster and Circuit City stores by offering exclusive content and content-enabled devices.”.

This might sound like a good idea, but in my opinion, it is doomed to fail because:

• Blockbuster continues to be a disc-rental company and the proximity is the main reason why customers go there.
• Electronic delivery and (instant) on-demand movie rental is the future.
• Others will have better “movie boxes”, namely Vudu (review) and Apple. Even Windows Media Center PCs might become one in the future.
• Blockbuster isnot likely to get enough exclusive movies

The shareholders are not optimistic: Blockbuster shares are down 16.61% (BBI). But to be fair, they have to try “something”, but I don’t think that this will work.