For the price of a low-end PC plus a monthly fee you’ll soon be able to play ultra-high-end games like Borderlands, Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed 2, and Crysis. According to VentureBeat, the service, dubbed OnLive, will launch in June after eight years of research and development, offer up to 720p-caliber high-def gameplay, and cost $14.95 a month.
Billed as a games-on-demand service, OnLive handles all the intensive game processing on the server side, so your local computer doesn’t have to. What you see is tantamount to a “screen-scrape” video feed send to your client device. All the intensive computing that might normally convert the insides of your homebrew rig into a mini-bake oven renders instead in the cloud.
It’s an ancient concept in computing terms–the model’s existed since mainframes and green-screens, in fact–but until recently, no one’s come up with a system to transfer high-bandwidth video with low enough latency to pass muster with gamers.
a (very) tiny BitTorrent client on a (very) tiny USB
µTorrent for USB combines a special edition of the world’s most popular BitTorrent client on a tiny microSD powered USB for ultimate portability and convenience.
No installation required
μTorrent for USB is a pre-installed special edition of µTorrent that runs directly from the USB. There’s no installation or administrative privileges required to use the client.
Self contained downloads
All application files (µTorrent executable, configuration files, temporary files) and file downloads (torrents, data files) stay on the USB, not on the host PC. In addition, there are no leftovers on the local hard drive or the Windows registry.
Transportable
µTorrent for USB is a fully portable torrent client that enables torrenting anywhere you go. Stop your download at any time and take the USB with you. Next time you are at a PC, just insert the USB and pick up where you left off. With µTorrent for USB, take your torrents anywhere you go – home, school, cafe, work.
Available NOW in 8GB or 16GB
Choose the size of USB that fits your lifestyle. Each USB is fully functional as a traditional storage drive with the added convenience of microSD. Downloaded content can be copied or backed-up to other disk and USB flash memory or its microSD card is compatible with many TVs, STBs, and mobile phones.
Product contents
USB Flash Memory drive adaptor
microSD flash memory card (8GB or 16GB)
Pre-installed µTorrent for USB application and configuration files
System Requirements
Windows XP, Vista or 7
For Macintosh, µTorrent will not work. You can use as USB memory.
1 TB of Memory in 1 Minute with 1 Command – By Eric Hammond on October 27, 2009 1:38 AM
Amazon Web Services just announced the release of two new instance types for EC2. These new types have 34.2 GB and 68.4 GB of RAM with a decent amount of CPU capacity on modern CPUs to go along with it.
But when it comes to flexing the raw power at my fingertips with AWS, sometimes I can’t help myself. So…
sitting on my couch with my laptop watching an episode of “Lie to me” on TiVo I just typed:
ec2-run-instances \
–instance-type m2.4xlarge \
–key KEYPAIR \
–instance-count 19 \
ami-e6f6158f
and in under a minute and about $45 later, I had ssh access to well over 1 TB (1,000 GB) of free memory. To be sure, it was spread over 19 Ubuntu servers, but still, there’s gotta be something I can do with that, no?
The development of DHT has reached a stage where a tracker is no longer needed to use a torrent. DHT (combined with PEX) is highly effective in finding peers without the need for a centralized service. If you run uTorrent you might have noticed in the tracker tab of your torrents that the [Peer Exchange] (PEX) row is often reporting a lot more peers than the trackers you might have for that torrent. These peers all came to you without the use of a central tracker service! This is what we consider to be the future. Faster and more stability for the users because there is no central point to rely upon.
Now that the decentralized system for finding peers is so well developed, TPB has decided that there is no need to run a tracker anymore, so it will remain down! It’s the end of an era, but the era is no longer up2date. We have put a server in a museum already, and now the tracking can be put there as well.
By moving to a more decentralized system of handling tracking (DHT+PEX) and distributions of torrent files (Magnet Links), BitTorrent will become less vulnerable to downtime and outages:
With decentralized peer acquisition, there is no central tracker that can be down.
With decentralized fetching of metadata (torrents) we don’t need to rely on a single server that stores and distributes torrent files.
I can even imagine this extended a bit to house educational video clips, distributed. Perhaps not as easily streamed, but certainly viable as a file-based video download approach. c.f. http://www.godaddy.com/hosting/word-camp.aspx for an example; not sure how much they captured, but as I’ve said there is little reason these days not to capture the vast majority of it these days, given low space costs and the huge userbase of WordPress.
The deal between Cisco, EMC and VMware announced last week may look familiar enough on paper. Technology companies join forces all the time, and in the vast majority of cases it never amounts to anything except a press release and a “free” lunch for anyone brave enough to sit through the initial presentation.
This one may be different, though, and it’s not just because of the players involved. It’s the technology itself–the maturity of enough pieces to make everything work together–coupled with a real business need for change within data centers. Timing is everything, and this one looks like a bulls-eye. Good timing is what made the deal between Intel ( INTC - news - people ) andMicrosoft ( MSFT - news - people ) so significant for the PC. It’s also what made the combination of AT&T ( T - news -people ) and Apple ( AAPL - news - people ) work so well for the iPhone.
The business case is simple enough. Many IT departments have been stockpiling technology for decades. Some of it is incompatible, some of it is unnecessary, and rarely does any CIO know exactly what everything does or how it interacts. Even worse, most of it is incredibly inefficient, which has raised the operating expenses to the point where even the CFO has to take notice.
This is why almost every CIO on the planet is looking at virtualization, cloud computing (private or public) and anything else that will simplify the internal mess, reduce redundancy and improve security. And after nearly a decade, all of these technologies have been banged around enough to attain a reasonable level of confidence.
What’s new in this whole scheme is flexible utilization, and it’s been a piece that has been sorely lacking. Amazon’s cloud approach is a great example of this. A customer can provision servers or turn them off within minutes, rather than the usual weeks or months it takes for an internal IT department. Cisco’s( CSCO - news - people ) approach is to do just that with its Vblock technology, which can add virtual machines as needed and lop them off when they’re not needed.
“Storage is underutilized 40% to 60%,” said Gary Moore, senior vice president for services at Cisco. “And when you go to provision new applications, it takes four to six months. We can do 250 applications in a weekend.”
On Monday, Cisco ( CSCO - news - people ) plans to announce a broad set of new collaboration software tools for instant messaging, e-mail, social networking, videoconferencing, document and video sharing, many of which go head to head with similar offerings from Microsoft’s (MSFT - news - people ) Live Meeting and Exchange messaging products, as well as enterprise collaboration tools from IBM (IBM - news - people ).
Most threatening to Microsoft among those announcements, according to Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala, may be a new online e-mail offering that Cisco calls Webex Email, an integration of the Postpath e-mail service it acquired last year with the Webex online conferencing platform it bought in 2007. The goal: to catch Microsoft customers in the middle of their move from the on-premises to cloud-based e-mail offerings and woo them to Cisco’s platform. “If Cisco can catch users in the middle of this transition, it gives them a real shot at this market,” Kerravala says.
Google ( GOOG - news - people ) and IBM have both launched their own attempts to own the Web-based mail box of the future with Gmail and IBM’s iNotes (See: “IBM Aims To Undercut Gmail“). But Cisco has a new trick: Its software-as-a-service e-mail uses the same protocol as Microsoft Outlook, allowing users to read their e-mail through the same interface that they’re accustomed to, despite the fact that their e-mail will now be hosted on the Web and also viewable through Cisco’s online software from any location. “Users can rip out their exchange server and retain the same experience,” says Murali Sitaram, a Cisco vice president for collaboration products. Cisco declined to reveal the pricing for any of its products ahead of their official launch.
Cisco’s wide-ranging launch extends well beyond e-mail. The company is planning to offer what it calls internally an Enterprise Collaboration Platform, a shared workspace that can be hosted online or within a company’s firewalls for security purposes. The platform will function as a sort of hybrid of Google Apps and Facebook, allowing users to blog or share documents, instant message and video conference.
Like Facebook or other social platforms, the real value of the Enterprise Collaboration Platform will come when third-party developers create more applications for the service, says Burton Group ( BURUY.PK - news - people ) analyst Mike Gotta. Cisco is offering an application programming interface to programmers who want to sell their apps through the platform. “Right now it’s really just a plate,” says Gotta. “We’re waiting for the food.”
by Kara Swisher – Posted on October 21, 2009 at 8:41 AM PT
In a stunning one-two punch, Microsoft will announce separate nonexclusive deals today with both Facebook and Twitter to integrate their real-time feeds of status updates into the Bing search service.
According to sources, Microsoft (MSFT) digital head Qi Lu will announce the deal onstage in a few hours at the Web 2.0 Summit.
But the addition of Facebook raises the stakes considerably because it has the largest pool of status updates, despite all the hype around Twitter. Facebook has previously stated that it has 40 million updates a day, on average, from its 300 million-plus audience.
Twitter has been talking to Google (GOOG) about a similar arrangement, and, according to sources, so has Facebook.
But the deal is a definite blow to the dominant search engine, since–for the first time–data will be available on Bing that are not available on Google.
Neither of the services is expected to be up and running for weeks, if not months. But there is the possibility of a demo today by Qi Lu of what it will look like.
What’s interesting about the deals, which have been in the works for several weeks, is that they will be very different.
Much of what is posted on Twitter is public by design, while Facebook users prefer the closed nature of the service to disperse a wide variety of personal information only to their friends, and they want to control it.
Thus, sources said, not all Facebook updates will be included in the real-time feed to be searched by Bing, but only those its users choose to make available to the wider public. Facebook will apparently provide users with a number of new tools to do so.
Besides working with PHP_FCGI_MAX_REQUESTS today, there was something else fun – free HD
Despite the installer requesting for the popular Ask.Com toolbar (which I never install; BHO’s slow down my daily work, etc.) it is a great program; the toolbar from their sponsor is completely optional.
Miro is a free HD video player. It can play almost any video file and offers over 6,000 free internet TV shows and video podcasts. Miro has a simple, gorgeous interface designed for fullscreen HD video.
Since Miro downloads most videos, you can take your shows with you, even on an airplane (Ed: also good to preserve items that may be removed by others . . .) Quite simply, Miro is a better way to watch all the video you care about.
Best of all, Miro is 100% free and open source, developed by a non-profit organization and volunteers around the world.
Unlike your browser, Miro’s built for HD. The built-in Miro Guide connects you to thousands of free High Definition video shows. Miro downloads video fast and stores it on your local computer for a level of quality that is often impossible on streaming video websites (even the ones that call themselves ‘HD’).
Fullscreen, HD video on Miro is like nothing you’ve ever seen online. Can’t open a video? Now you can, with Miro. Miro can play virtually any type of video file – Quicktime, WMV, MPEG, AVI, XVID, and more. (Ed: Yes! No more installing crap-tastic programs for some specific video codec . . .)
When it comes to video podcasts, Miro goes far beyond iTunes by letting you subscribe to BitTorrent RSS feeds, with one of the fastest torrent downloaders in the world (it’s called ‘libtorrent’).
Search, download, and save videos… from YouTube, Google Video, Blip, and more. You can even save a search term and automatically get new videos as they are posted. With YouTube’s new HD support, the video quality can be incredible; Miro will save the highest quality YouTube version automatically, when you choose save.
Good Saturday to all. Some of the Tech bits I’ve posted in the past involved how to deploy the Windows operating system from a corporate network, RIS, etc. Now, we aren’t going to be pushing images via PXE.
Today I’d like to focus on the lower volume users, the home / home office. You know how it is, someone wants you to help them, because “their system doesn’t seem to be working right”. Ahem You know the realistic course rather than trying to debug all that has plagued their system is a reinstall.
Backup the data you care about before I come over, you tell them. (this is the point that you hear “what’s a backup“, so you know you’ll need to verify that you have all of their data backed up before you “floor mat” their system; yes, someone once asked me over the phone to floor mat instead of format)
Then you contemplate manually installing everything; even the Windows install now looks like significant work.
If you do this often enough, it doesn’t have to be. Invest the time up front in a couple of things, and it will go quickly, and without your intervention :
While some of the automation side was technically possible before Nuhi and team created these, it was a lot more arcane. These two are simple and menu driven, you can add or remove major or minor components of the OS, adjust tweaks, automate user creation / login / etc., adjust default time zone settings, slipstream service packs and patches up to today’s date with, and it also boasts integrated .iso creation or burn straight to disc.
One of the nicest things that these programs can do is to integrate specific text-mode drivers for certain system components. This is a godsend under XP, if not generally as much of a factor in Windows 7. That custom motherboard you run for the “gaming machine” can now have the built-in RAID recognized during the install, without the need to try to find a USB floppy drive to install drivers from.
I just enjoy having a potentially slimmed down version of what I want to install, that had security patches up to the day I created my image. Less to download, less security risk. Security is also sometimes increased by removing some unneeded components; if you’re not going to use them, perhaps they shouldn’t be there.
Regardless, one of these two (as appropriate) is really worth checking into.
Very handy for reinstalling any set of programs within Windows; I’ve used this for both DVD based installs, directly from the DVD (and automatically running after Windows installs) and more commonly from a fast USB memory stick drive, after the install, by double-clicking it (the latter method to take advantage of faster read speeds / large space for a huge menu of programs for friends, family, self, etc.)
Per the WPIW site :
Windows Post-Install Wizard (WPI for short) is a hypertext application designed for giving users choice. While Windows XP offers many ways of customizing the setup process out of the box, its major drawback is the lack of being able to select which applications an end user may install. In the past, end users and administrators needed to either download the files manually, or create overly complex scripts that could only be used once. WPI allows you to create one image, which can then be custom configured, and optionally, automated, so that end users can install any applications.
WPI is a simple to use automation program for the choice and installation of multiple programs, tweaks and scripts. No longer will you need a dozen CD’s or more when doing a fresh Installation. No longer will you need multiple files when you are servicing another PC. With Windows Post-Install Wizard all that you will need is 1 or 2 CD\DVD’s to fully install your PC with all of your apps, scripts, registry files or tweaks. Instead of having to re-download those apps like adobe reader, flash or updates to programs you can have them all on one disk. With WPI you can have all of them all on one disk and then have a nice interface for selecting which apps to install and after configured properly WPI will install all of them without any needed input from you. WPI also and is commonly used added to your windows installation disks. This way you can automate the complete process of Windows and program installations.
With your typical setup of WPI you have your OS and all of the apps, tweaks and such on one disk. After windows installs, WPI kicks in and you are given a selection of everything you have configured WPI with, then you can select the ones you want or simply let the timer run out and your default apps will install.
This can be customized with multiple default menus / layout with a little bit of experimentation, to allow you to handle your Window 7 Ultimate developer needs in 64 bit, and your less technical friends need with Windows 32 bit, and quite a different (and possibly smaller) set of programs.
While WPI does take a bit of time to configure, it is easily recouped with just a few installs. You do still have to maintain an “up to date” set of install programs, such as Firefox, Java, etc. Hint to Adobe : please release a new downloadable version of at least Acrobat Reader, and don’t force folks to go online to go from 9.1.0 (the latest available for download) to update to 9.1.3, which includes security fixes. Ahem
You will learn about the whole new world of silent installs / switchless, if you’ve never done this. I much prefer to configure all things for an install of the operating system, or all of the application programs on one screen, start it, and walk away. You can always work on or enjoy other things while it’s running for however long it needs to install all that you require.
Between these two things, I think you’ll find your world to be better off. Once you’ve gotten that nice new system in place, you might consider using at least Windows backup to the cloud, for one off-site copy of the original / basics. If you’re looking for more features and insurance, I can highly recommend Acronis True Image Home 2010.
Acronis is very confident in their new product, and I have to agree; it looks even easier to use than before, and they’ve been steadily adding features instead of Bling. It’s always a good sign when they’re willing to let you try it out for free : Acronis True Image Home 2010 Free Trial Download.
For each picture below, clicking it should show an enlarged version in a new window.
I ran through a couple of Beta testing versions before this new launch, and Acronis looks like they made the minor changes needed. I was really glad to see the launch, as I’ve been relying on this for some time since I’m running the production Windows 7 on my (windows) machines.
Acronis says : “With Acronis True Image Home 2010, rest assured that all your important data including images, music, documents and applications are well protected and can easily be recovered in the event of any disaster. Also the newest Acronis True Image Home 2010 is the best solution for moving your system to Windows 7 and storing your backups online.”
The only portion I would add is that the online backup is optional; you can still use the conventional backup mode to practically any device (DVD, network, firewire or usb hard disk, etc.)
Since I prefer to have both a local copy (external hard disk, unplugged from electrical system when not in use) as well as an offsite backup copy (online is increasingly attractive, as long as it’s well encrypted, which True Image 2010 supports) this really fits my needs.
I’m quite happy with the dual destination backup feature as well; it’s refreshing to see this brought from their Enterprise market down to a much less expensive home / home office product.
Thanks for reading this launch information and review of Acronis True Image 2010. I hope you’ll be as satisfied as I am with the newest version of their flagship product. You can download a completely functional evaluation copy for free here, or you can order the full product for $49.99 directly from the picture link below.
More generational copies are better, when it comes to disaster recovery (even at the home machine level).
From: Acronis Central<noreply@acronis.com>
Date: Fri, Sep 4, 2009 at 12:07 AM
Subject: The Acronis True Image Home 2010 and Acronis Online Backup Beta program closure notification
To: John
Dear Acronis True Image Home 2010 Beta Participant,
Thank you for taking the time to be a part of the Acronis True Image Home 2010 and the Acronis Online Backup Beta program! We have used all the valuable feedback that you have given us to improve our latest product Acronis True Image Home 2010 which will launch in a few weeks.
We’re sending this email to inform you that the Acronis True Image Home and Acronis Online Backup Betas will end on Sep 7th, 2009.
You will be able to use the beta build of Acronis True Image Home till Oct 1st, 2009, but we encourage you to purchase the final release of the product to take advantage of all the new features.
After Sep 7th, 2009 your Acronis Online Backup accounts will be disabled and you will no longer be able to perform online backups. After Sep 14th, 2009 all your data will be permanently removed from our servers.
To prevent the loss of the backed up data you may need, please retrieve it from our servers before Sep 14th, 2009. We will permanently destroy the data on these servers after Sep 14th, 2009.
To ensure safety of your data, we recommend you to retrieve the data as soon as possible.
Once again, thank you for your patience and active participation in the beta program. We truly appreciate your time and your feedback is helping us make a better product for you!
