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Point of reference – A few months ago I wrote a post that I never ended up publishing that started with the line:

“My gods I need to work with technology that wasn’t conceived of in the 1990s.”

With that in mind, in case you’re wondering where I’ve been this past month or so…

I’ve been playing with this beast…

8 Engine VMAX

225 400G SSD Drives (90 TB Raw)

Direct Attached to *ONE* host.

Biggest.  Thumbdrive.  Ever.

Well I was saying I needed to get some serious hands-on VMAX experience.  When you put a request like that out there, sometimes the universe answers LOUDLY.

It’s funny, but I always get this funny look when I talk about technology being alive, evolving, and maybe even slightly sentient.

This is a non-storage post, but I never claimed to write only about storage, just mostly.

We dumped cable TV today.  And it got me to thinking on how certain technologies just become obsolete after a while.

We did it because the only ones who watched TV in our house were our kids, and they only watched two channels.  Nickelodeon, and Nick Jr, and becaue Nick Jr was a part of the “premium” cable package we ended up spending $100 a month or more so that my 5 year old could learn Spanish from a diminutive latina with a talking backpack and an oddly-dressed monkey for a friend.

Now they get that same education from the same shows, but they get it from Netflix streaming through the Sony Playstation.  Net cost $16.99/month.

But the cost savings are only part of it.  My kids are no longer assaulted by endless advertising, commercials for shows that are NOT on their age level, and are no longer scheduling their lives around what shows come on at what times.

It really is an amazing freedom when you think about it.  And it definitely signifies a technology that is finally moving away from “the way it’s always been done” to ways that may, finally, make more sense and put the consumer in control.

In a world where bandwidth is cheaper and cheaper, it really surprises me that more people aren’t making this change.

Ok, I’ve been a self confessed geek for years now. (and people have called me that for many more years – different story)

This has got to be the coolest thing I’ve ever seen.

First there was the punch-card.  Then the keyboard, then the Graphical User Interface (IE – Windows).  I think the next logical step in user interface is finally here. 

Calling it a “Multi-Point” touchscreen is not giving it nearly the credit it’s due.  This Demo from Perceptive Pixel shows it for it’s true potential.

The first real implementation of this technology is actually the new iPhone from Apple.  One of the things that makes it a breakthrough device is that you can hold the screen with one finger and drag or click with the other.

The next implementation, the one that got my intention, is by Microsoft.  Code-named “Milan” the “Microsoft Surface” (They had better come up with something better, that name doesn’t even begin to describe this product’s potential) has to be one of the more amazing consumer applications for this technology that I’ve ever seen.

In this demo by Popular Mechanics (of all people) you can see, it turns your table top, or desk top, into a completely interactive surface.  What gets me most is the seemless integration of wireless devices like phones, cameras, and the like, where you can set a wireless digital camera on the surface of the “table” and it will instantly download the pictures from it, allow you to manipulate them and transfer them to other devices, like phones, and such.

Amazingly enough the prices of these units are not entirely unreasonable.  Microsoft anticipates the first units to go to corporate and casino clients, and will cost around $10,000 to $15,000 each.  For those of us who have paid more than $2,500 for a simple flat-screen plasma television, you realize that this is not far off the mark for prototype, first-run technology.

I anticipate seeing this available for home use in the next 5-10 years..amazingly enough.

The thing that really gets me is the company responsible, Perceptive Pixel, is privately held as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of mathematical Sciences, and I don’t think they are selling stock any time soon.