WD My Book (Home Edition) 500GB

I just purchased a 500GB hard drive for my high definition videos storage. Currently I am storing my videos in a internal SATA 250GB which is now running out of space. So I went out there and did my research on external hard drive and WD My Book (Home Edition) wins my heart.

At the front of the drive, you can see a gauge indicator which tells you the capacity used or space remaining. When the drive is running, you will see it moving up and down like Knight Rider. Pretty cool indicator, I say.

It has an sturdy and elegant design and comes with 3 type of connections - USB 2.0, Firewire 400 and eSATA. The box comes with only USB and firewire cable. If you have a eSATA port in your PC, the speed of transfer is amazingly fast. However if you use eSATA, this hard drive will not shut down accordingly with your PC. And the gauge indicator will not work too.

After trying out 1 day, I realise the speed of transferring via USB is slightly slow. If you frequently access the drive, I will suggest you to connect using eSATA. It comes in 320GB, 500GB and 1TB capacity. And there are 5 different types of collections for WD My Book Edition. Click here to see. It comes with 3 years warranty.

This drive is extremely quiet, as it does not operate with fan. It's small for space saving purpose. When your PC inactivity for sometime, this drive will hibernate until the next time you activate your PC. This will avoid overheating and reduce wear and tear.

I am planning to to play my high definition videos by connecting my PC via HDMI connections to my future HDTV. New graphic cards comes with HDMI port. 500GB = 100 (720p) high definition videos ready to play. No more clumsy discs.

For you guys out there thinking of getting an external harddrive, I strongly recommend this product.

iPhone Developer Program

iPhone as default has limited applications built it. Steve Jobs announced previously that Apple will open iPhone to developers. On March 6, Steve launch the iPhone Software Roadmap. Apple will allow developers to develop their applications for iPhone and Apple is willing to promote it to all iPhone users with a profit sharing arrangement (30% to Apple and 70% to Developers). The developers will have full liberty to decide the selling price.

If developers who wish to give out the applications for free, Apple will distribute it at no cost via iTunes. At the same if the application come in future updates, iPhone users will be prompt to download and install the updates for free.

With this arrangement, Apple have create a new channel for iPhone users to select their applications to be download and at the same time developers can ride on this program to distribute their applications.

iPhone users can download & install the applications via wifi or local network connections from iTunes and use it almost immediately.

However, Apple mentioned that certain type of applications such as gambling, porn, etc will be rejected as part of the limitations for this program. Developers who wish to participate in this program are required to pay a fee of $99 for Standard Program and $299 for Enterprise Program.

We are about to see hundred of applications flooding itunes and it is already happening. If you look at the numbers of iPod accessories available in the market, you can tell how successful this program can be for iPhone.

I really hope, they have good word processing and spreadsheet applications which can share with Microsoft Office. I am sure many PC users love that. This will give the windows mobile users a good reason to change to iPhone.

Microsoft Silverlight

If you recently run a windows update check, you may realise there's a new component to update, that is Microsoft Silverlight. If you are not sure, go to control panel and click on add/remove icon and see whether Microsoft Silverlight is in the program list or not? If you don't see it in the program list, run windows update now or click here.

What is Microsoft Silverlight?

"Microsoft Silverlight is a cross-browser, cross-platform plug-in for delivering the next generation of .NET based media experiences and rich interactive applications for the Web. Silverlight offers a flexible programming model that supports AJAX, VB, C#, Python, and Ruby, and integrates with existing Web applications. Silverlight supports fast, cost-effective delivery of high-quality video to all major browsers running on the Mac OS or Windows"

If you have installed Silverlight, some rich-content websites you visit will request you to enable silverlight application. Microsoft created Silverlight to enable developers to build rich multimedia interactive web contents within that platform. There will more applications build within Silverlight coming soon.

Click here for more info on Microsoft Silverlight.