• Solid-State Drives Go Mainstream #
• Woofer: This Twitter look-alike requires 1,400 characters #
• Using ‘Free’ to Turn a Profit #
• Hey, PC, Who Taught You to Fight Back? #
• Is Apple the Enemy of the TV Industry? Microsoft Thinks So #
• Apple kicks ZFS in the butt #

Solid-State Drives Go Mainstream

While prices for SSDs are still significantly high when compared to conventional spinning hard drives, mainstream consumers are starting to see the benefit of this new technology. As more and more manufacturers and models are available on the market, computer vendors are starting to incorporate them into lower-end computers as well. Because SSDs are currently still limited in storage space (up to 256GB, .5TB & 1TB are available but are prohibitively expensive), more and more people are turning to them as complimentary storage. SSDs can easily contain the operating system and applications, while other data can be stored on normal HDDs. Because SSDs are inherently faster, this workflow would evidently speed up your computer. ComputerWorld elaborates.

This Twitter look-alike requires 1,400 characters

I generally ignore Twitter “news” because it is cumbersome and totally useless – in my mind, but this one’s too funny. Woofer, an astoundingly accurate Twitter-lookalike actually requires you to update your status with at least 1,400 characters, as opposed to Twitter’s maximum of 140 characters. Woofer advises its users to be eloquent, to use adverbs and never to abbreviate. Via CNET News.

Using ‘Free’ to Turn a Profit

This editorial article from NYTimes gets together with Evernote and discusses its – and many other web businesses’ – revenue model. True to the web’s nature, Evernote is free for everyone to use. But how does the company make money? NYTimes finds out.

Hey, PC, Who Taught You to Fight Back?

Again from the NYTimes, this article describes Microsoft and Apple’s ad-fighting history in light of both companies’ latest television commercials. While Apple has always been big on advertising, it seems Microsoft has been making renewed commitments with its latest efforts – and is getting some results from it, too. From NYTimes.

Is Apple the Enemy of the TV Industry? Microsoft Thinks So

Microsoft’s Director of Consumer and Online in the UK has expressed his concerns with the Television Industry’s future if it doesn’t take initiatives to move its repertoire to the web and keep its content out of the hands of a single online entity – read: Apple. According to the said Director, the industry should be wary of what he called an “iTunes moment”, referring to the music industry and Apple’s hold on it with iTunes. The same could become true with TV, Microsoft warns. Via Mashable.

Apple kicks ZFS in the butt

In other Apple news, it turns out Apple completely yanked the promised ZFS functionality from its latest OS, Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. ZFS is Sun’s open source, highly reliable and modern file system that would make its entree into the consumer operating system market for the first time with Snow Leopard – as announced two years ago by Apple itself. With every developer release of OS X 10.6 traces of ZFS became vaguer and the final release completely erases any trace of it – silently. Microsoft was harshly called out for yanking WinFS from Windows Vista, but is anyone paying any attention when Apple pulls the same stunt? ZDNet blog post.