Earlier this week I took a tour of The Data Rescue Center, a data recovery service provider. Competing with the likes of DriveSavers, the Center opened in July in Livermore, Calif., near the Lawrence Livermore National Lab. Its services are available nationwide.
The Center is a division of Prosoft Engineering, a longtime Mac software developer and makers of Drive Genius 3, Data Rescue 3, and Data Backup 3. In addition to recovering data from hard drives that are physically damaged, users of ProSoft’s software can call upon the Center when the problem is beyond the scope of the software utility.
Step into the lobby of the Center, and you immediately encounter a view of the cleanroom. The cleanroom is where drives are taken apart and broken parts are replaced. (The Center keeps a library of old hard drives from which they pull parts.) When a hard drive mechanism is opened, it’s important to prevent air contaminants from polluting the drive, since they can cause even more damage.
Google on Thursday announced the addition of current weather information and cloud data from around the world to its Google Maps application, by an arrangement with The Weather Channel’s weather.com and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.
The new “weather layer” can be activated through a widget in the upper right corner of Google Maps. Clicking on the weather icon for a particular city opens a window with data like current humidity and wind conditions, as well as a forecast for the next four days, said Jonah Jones, a Google user experience designer, in a blog post.
The geniuses of disassembly, documentation, and delightful wit behind iFixit have targeted a new tool that needs improvement: online manual and knowledge base content management. Their new project, Dozuki, lets companies use the CMS behind iFixit to build own colorful guides with step-by-step instructions.
Boasting the slogan “Teach Action,” Dozuki offers businesses a hosted service that helps them create online manuals and knowledge base articles.
Apple’s looking to make a new friend in China, someone decides to sue Cupertino over something that’s not the iPhone, and Yahoo attempts to prove an old adage. The remainders for Thursday, August 18, 2011 will take you around the world in 80 seconds (or however long it takes you to read this).
I mean, they’re not talking on iPhones, because Apple’s phone still won’t run on China Mobile’s specialized TDSCDMA network, but word is that Apple is in discussions to bring the iPhone to China’s largest carrier. Apple already has one partner in the country—China Unicom, whose network runs on a much simpler three-letter acronym.
On Thursday Corsair revealed two new 90GB solid-state drives (SSDs). Both drives have a SATA-3 6Gbps interface.
The new 90GB Force Series GT is the fastest SSD made by Cosair. It uses ONFI synchronous flash memory, and according to Corsair, is capable of read speeds of up to 555 MBps and write speeds of up to 505MBps. The 90GB Force Series GT is $199.
The new 90GB Force Series 3 is a little slower than the Force Series GT. SCorsair says the Force Series 3 is capable of read speedd of 550MBps and write speeds of 500 MBps. The 90GB Force Series 3 is $159.
Kanex has unveiled the tantalizingly-named C247DL, a dual-link DVI-to-Mini-DisplayPort converter. The cable is designed for users with older Macs (or PCs with high-end graphic cards) who want to connect their computers to the 27-inch Apple LED Cinema Display.
According to Kanex, the C247DL supports the Cinema Display’s full native resolution of 2560-by-1440 pixels, which standard DVI adapters can’t always handle. Kanex says that the C247DL actively converts the video signal from the dual-link DVI to provide the best picture possible.
Evernote not only wants you to remember everything—it wants you to have the option to annotate it, too. On Thursday, Evernote announced that it had acquired Mac image annotation software Skitch and its two co-founders. The program will also now be available for free on the Mac App Store, eliminating its original $20 price tag.
The deal was announced by CEO Phil Libin at the keynote for the Evernote Trunk Conference, the company’s first gathering for Evernote developers. Additionally, both Evernote and Skitch posted blogs detailing the acquisition and future plans. All parties were quick to state that the app's development would continue to grow, spearheaded by co-founders Cris Pearson and Keith Lang, both of whom are moving from Australia as part of the deal.
