Seagate Invests Nearly $100 Million A Year In Flash Technologies

December 11, 2008

Early next year, Seagate is preparing a major push in Flash-based drives – also known as SSDs – and home entertainment devices.

The Scotts Valley, Calif., company said it is investing between $80 to $90 million a year in Flash technologies that will first be used in enterprise storage products.

“The enterprise is a good place to put SSDs where they are able to take advantage of the better performance. But that’s going to be only 5% to 10% of our enterprise market,” confided Seagate CEO Bill Watkins during a meeting with financial analysts this week.

Flash drives will be slow to take off

However, the world’s largest drive maker does not see Flash drives to make any real inroads in the more “conventional” notebook and desktop businesses, where PC makers want drive with capacities from 160GB to 300 GB and growing.

“Today Flash drives can not match the $40 or 50$ that we ask for a 300GB drive,” added Watkins who criticized Samsung’s upcoming 64G-byte three-bit MLC SSD in the first half of 2009 for being less reliable and less performance than previous generations of SSDs.

Although Seagate sees a significant volume opportunity in the netbook category, which more often than not are shipping with an embedded hard disk drive and not a Flash drive, extreme low prices are the major factor for staying away from this sector.

Whereas hybrid drives, that combine a traditional magnetic drive with some Flash memory on board that increase significantly a machine’s boot up time, could well take off before Flash-only drives if only the technology was better supported by operating systems vendors like Microsoft or Apple.

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Posted by TechPulse 360

Sun Takes On Adobe’s Flash, Microsoft’s Silverlight With JavaFX

December 4, 2008

Sun Microsystems released its competitor to Adobe System’s popular Flash and Microsoft’s Silverlight on Thursday, trying to edge its way into already heavily contested market.

Sun stresses JavaFXs ability to run on multiple screens

Sun stresses JavaFX's ability to run on multiple screens

The computer maker began shipping JavaFX, a software technology began talking about 18 months ago and which came out in a preview version in July.

JavaFX runs on top of Java and is intended to let developers build applications using multimedia and graphical content in Java. This new functionality would have required Flash or another software in the past.

With the commercial release, Java users will have to upgrade their runtime with a download.

Sun says a version for mobile devices will ship in 2009 – probably earlier in the year than later. Future development will bring JavaFX to the television.

JavaFX will come up against some powerful competitors in Adobe’s ubiquitous Flash, Microsoft’s budding Silverlight and the Web technologies in Google’s new Chrome browser.

Sun says JavaFX and the Java environment has a leg up over Flash. First, they can more readily be used to link an application to the business applications, or “business logic,” and data sources running behind a corporate Web site. They also are more tailored to run with mobile screens, televisions, routers and desktop application independent of a browser.

Flash has begun an ambitious initiative to better run on mobile phones.

“We’ve solved the hard problem first,” says Jeet Kaul, senior vice president of Java engineering at Sun, referring to the ability to run on screens and devices beyond the PC. “We have solved the embedded story really well.”

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Blip.tv Ends YouTube Monopoly On iPhone; But No Flash, Never

November 25, 2008

YouTube competitor Blip.tv made its newest videos available for the iPhone.

To accomplish such a feat, the New York-based company is now allowing video publishers to encode videos with the iPhone friendly QuickTime format.

However, video creators will have to go back to their old videos and manually update them to support iPhone viewing.

Last month, Blip.tv raised $5.2 million in a second round of funding led by Bain Capital Ventures; also an investor in  LinkedIn, Thumbplay, or LaLa Media. The company that has streamed 51 million video views last  September equally splits its advertising revenue – also viewable on the iPhone – with content publishers.

Competitors (DailyMotion et al): Emulate Blip.tv or die

The Blip.tv workaround was necessary because the iPhone can not playback videos using Adobe’s Flash format, and probably never will. Adobe Flash is a development platform of its own and Apple would totally loose its grip over what applications can run on its phone if the Flash player is ever to become available on the iPhone.

However, I wonder if Apple would allow a Flash player that would *just* playback videos and not run applications – which are mostly written in Adobe’s Flex language. But even with a diminish Flash product, Apple would certainly prefer video creators to simply move to QuickTime like Blip.tv!

Here’s the link to the Blip.tv video that shows how their new iPod-friendly system works.

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Spansion Files Suit Against Samsung Over 10 Flash-Memory Patents; Could Halt Sales Of iPod/iPhone, Blackberry Phones

November 17, 2008
Silicon Valley chip maker Spansion wants to set an example with its suit against Samsung

Silicon Valley chip maker Spansion wants to set an example with its suit against Samsung

Later today, Flash memory-maker Spansion filed a lawsuit against Samsung Electronics seeking to block U.S. imports of over 100 million hit products using the Korean company memory, including iPods, iPhones, BlackBerrys and Sony Ericsson mobile phones.

The Spansion patents named in these lawsuits are related to floating gate technology, which is the foundation for approximately 90 percent of the Flash memory market and a charge-trapping technology, which is expected to replace floating gate technology in the future.

Flash memory companies including Samsung have publicly announced their plans to transition to charge-trapping type technologies for their future generation products.

“Samsung treated Spansion the same way they treated SanDisk – they suddenly stopped negotiating with them.  Must be a new tactic!
Spansion’s response was to look at some key Samsung parts to look for infringement of Spansion patents. They claim to have found several. They now plan to make an example out of Samsung to help other prospective licensees to understand the wisdom of working out a fair deal,” explains Jim Handy, a market researcher at the firm Objective Analysis.

But the odds that the Sunnyvale, Calif., chip maker suit will affect this year’s holiday sales are slim as it will take several months before any decision, especially on an import ban, to take into effect.

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Adobe’s Flash Hopes To Turn The Table On Microsoft’s Silverlight With GPU Acceleration

November 17, 2008

Adobe Systems emphasized Monday that Flash 10, the latest version of its multimedia software, harnesses the power of graphics processors to present images.

The improvement now gives Flash a capability Microosft’s competing Silverlight already has. The intent is to keep software developers from favoring this rival.

Adobe Chief Technology Officer Kevin Lynch said at the Adobe Max conference in San Francisco that the aim is to take advantage of the GPU to more quickly render video and images on computer screens. Graphics processors are faster and use less power than general purpose computer chips, he said.

The challenge is that there are numerous graphics processors in the market and Adobe has to make sure Flash works well with each one.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Adobe Max Conference: AIR 1.5 Released, Flash Player 10 For Smartphones And 64-Bits Linux

November 17, 2008
MAX conference is the place to be to learn about anything Adobe/Flash

MAX conference is the place to be to learn about anything Adobe/Flash

MAX kicked-off this morning in San Francisco. The developers’ conference is Adobe‘s largest ever with over 5,000 registered attendees.

The San Jose, Calif., company released the latest 1.5 version of Adobe AIR for Windows and Mac. AIR runs Web browser-based rich Internet applications (RIA) natively on a desktop PC for speedier and offline experience like the eBay desktop.

Adobe also “pre-released” on its Adobe Labs site a 64-bit Linux version of its Flash Player 10 that removes the need for a 32-bit emulation. The Silicon Valley company’s decision was based on the fact that the Linux operating system is far ahead of Windows and Mac in terms of 64-bits support.

To tackle the growing number of mobile devices, Adobe is also porting Flash Player 10 software to smartphones and will be demonstrating an early implementation for Windows Mobile.

According to research firm comScore, Flash is the number one format for video on the Web with 81 percent of worldwide online videos encoded in Flash. Adobe’s Flash Player software is now installed on 98 percent of all Internet-connected desktops.

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ARM Strikes Back At Intel With Efforts To Bring Flash And Linux To ARM Processors; Company Sees ARM-Based Netbooks In 2009

November 16, 2008
ARM sends broadside at Intel

ARM sends broadside at Intel

ARM said Monday it will take a big step to improve the ability of ARM processors to use Adobe Systems’ Flash online video technology, hoping to defang an argument Intel has used to push its rival Atom chip.

The Cambridge, England,-based chip-technology company also said it will work to bring Ubuntu Linux to the ARM environment, an operating system widely used in netbooks, or low-priced notebooks. The company’s efforts are a clear two-pronged attack at Intel and its campaign to promote Atom as an alternative to ARM chips.

ARM said it plans supports the latest Flash 10 software – used widely on the Internet – by the second half of 2009. It also hopes to support Adobe Air in the future.

ARM also said it’s partnership with open-source publisher Canonical would enable it to port Ubuntu Linux to its processors by April 2009.

Intel has sought to promote its new Atom chip for small laptops and portable Internet devices by claiming it works better than ARM processors with the most common Internet technologies.

The ARM news on Flash “really blows away that argument,” said Kerry McGuire, director of strategic software alliances at ARM. “With this support, you will get the full (Internet) experience.”

She added that with Ubuntu there will be a full desktop software package for ARM. “Our OEM partners will now be able to compete head-to-head with netbooks powered by Intel’s Atom chip,” she said

Up to now, ARM devices have only supported a more limited Flash Lite technology that enables them to display YouTube videos, for instance, but not handle more complicated Flash applications.

McGuire said he expects the first ARM-based netbooks to ship by tne end of 2009.

ARM’s customers presently use its technology to design chips for cell phones, portable Web devices, set-top boxes, televisions, media players and cars. The new Flash support is expected in the ARM11 and Cortex processors.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

New Revolution In Broadcasting: Put The Web On TV And Kill The Remote, Says Netflix CEO

November 13, 2008
Look for it at CES, says Reed Hasting

Look for it at CES, says Reed Hasting

The next revolution in broadcasting will come from putting the Internet on TV, Reed Hasting, CEO of Netflix, said Thursday.

Speaking at the NewTeeVee conference in San Francisco, Hasting said it is time to replace the standard television remote with an on-screen pointing device and use a browser to navigate beyond the bounds of the traditional television network.

“Then you’ve got the beginnings of the next revolution where you’ve got the Web on television,” Hasting said during a keynote address.

Until then, the spread of video on the Internet will continue at a steady pace, he said, nurtured by the large installed base of personal computers, where video is primarily viewed today.

“There is no big inflection point,” he said. “Available content will just increase every year.”

A breakthrough will require finding a standard way of broadcasting video content from the large number of Web sites streaming it to the myriad devices people will want to use to view it. That standard is the Internet, he said, and technologies such Adobe’s Flash or Microsoft’s Silverlight could play a role.

The concept behind this standard can be thought of as the Safari browser from Apple wedded to the Wii game machine from Nintendo with its motion interface, he said.

With a browser inside each machine, the remote can be replaced by a pointing device. People will point and click.

“I think you will see this next year starting at CES,” he said referring to the annual Consumer Electronics Trade show held in January. “Now the time is right for the Web to be on TV.”

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Posted by Mark Boslet

Adobe CTO Unveils AIR 1.5 Update, Ichabod and HTML 5 Video Tag; Hopes to Merge AIR and Flash Lite

October 21, 2008

Busy very early morning – 7 AM! – for Adobe’s CTO Kevin Lynch.

During his keynote at the AjaxWorld conference in San Jose, Calif., Lynch unveiled version 1.5 of AIR (Adobe Integrated Runtime), codenamed Cosmo; Ichabod, a technology that helps search engines index Flash-based content and an upcoming HTML 5 video tag.

First, Cosmo is expected in the next few weeks and will include SquirrelFish JavaScript virtual machine into the Webkit HTML engine, support for new languages and Flash Player 10 integration amongst others. Adobe also clarified its mobile strategy with AIR being the client of choice for desktops and smartphones and Flash Lite for entry-level phones.

“Flash is very ressource intensive. So you need a powerful mobile phone like a smartphone to run it. But ultimately, we are looking to merge Flash Lite and AIR”, confirms James Ward, a Flash/Flex technical evangelist at Adobe.

In his talk in front of a standing room, Lynch also mentioned the Ichabod technology, a name inspired by the fictional character Ichabod Crane.

“Unlike HTML, search engines like Google or Yahoo, can not read inside SWF files used by the Flash player to read its content. What we announced a few months ago is that we are working with Google and Yahoo in a technology that will allow them to execute the SWF file, push buttons, etc… to read its content and add it to their index”, explains the Adobe evangelist.

Finally, Lynch pointed to the upcoming release of some open source code associated with HTML 5′s video tag that let developers put videos on a Web page easily. Find and early implementation here by Mike Chambers, principal product manager for developer relations for Adobe AIR.

“Although the HTML 5 tag makes it easy to add a video on a Web page, it doesn’t specify the video format or where to play it. Our code, which will be a mix of HTML and Javascript, will specify to run the video using the Flash player which is ubiquitous on desktops today”, adds James Ward.

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Battle Continues For The Multimedia Net: Microsoft Rolls Out Silverlight 2 To Counter Google, Adobe

October 13, 2008
Microsoft Strikes With Silverlight 2

Microsoft Strikes With Silverlight 2

The software giant hoped to outflank Google’s Chrome browser Monday by showing off Silverlight 2, a software tool for creating complex Web pages.

Microsoft also boasted that one in four consumers has access to a computer with Silverlight installed, though penetration and use far trails Adobe’s Flash technology and the reach of Google products, such as online search.

Last month, Google unveiled its Chrome browser with an emphasis on using JavaScript for the next generation of advanced Web pages with video and other complicated audio and animated features.

The move was an obvious bid to draw developer interested away from Flash – which is installed on about 98 percent of PCs connected to the Internet – and Silverlight.

On Monday, Microsoft said it has enhanced Silverlight with streaming video capabilities, an ability to customize applications and a feature to zoom in on high-resolution imagery. The technology has come a long way in a year, when it was introduced just for video playback, the company said.

It will be available for download on Tuesday.

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Posted by Mark Boslet

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