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Pic (grabbed from High Def video) of Samsung genius Paul attached

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THE INTERNET COLUMN 
By Giles Turnbull


Which would you rather watch? A boring Powerpoint presentation filled with bullet points and statistics, or a funny video about a bloke called Paul?

Of course youÕd pick Paul every time. In this case, Paul is the technology genius chosen to bring life to a particularly dull subject: hard disks. 

Yes, hard disks. ThereÕs one inside every computer. The ones weÕre used to have moving parts - actual disks that spin round very fast. They tend to break or wear out, though.

So a new generation of Flash-based hard disks is beginning to emerge. There are no moving parts, so theyÕre more reliable and much faster. Right now, theyÕre also more expensive. But prices are falling fast.

The new disks are called SSDs (for Solid State Drives). Samsung, which manufactures SSDs, thought it would be fun to show what theyÕre capable of, which is where Paul comes into the story. Young Paul stuck 24 of the latest 256GB SSDs into a custom-made PC, just to see what would happen. 

The result? A PC that flies through tasks faster than anything youÕve ever seen. It can open every part of Microsoft Office in half a second. It can copy huge files in an eyeblink. ItÕs seriously impressive stuff, and you can watch a (pretty funny, for nerd-speak) video of it all at moourl.com/samsungssd.

OK, so itÕs a marketing gimmick. But itÕs fun to see, and a sign of things to come: one day weÕll all be wondering how we ever put up with computers that huffed and puffed their way through simple tasks.


+ Read easy +

Readability (lab.arc90.com/experiments/readability/) is a superb little tool for making all sorts of web pages easier to read. No doubt youÕve seen pages so crowded with adverts and flashing widgets that itÕs hard to see where the actual article is. Drag the Readability tool to your bookmarks bar and click it to turn most busy pages into clutter-free ones, with large text on a plain background. ItÕs a simple idea, but one that makes using the web so much more comfortable.

Readability is an example of a bookmarklet: a bookmark that doesnÕt take you to a different web page, but does something useful to the web page youÕre already on.

+ The national voice +

The BBCÕs Voices project isnÕt being updated any more, but the audio files you can find there (www.bbc.co.uk/voices/recordings/) are well worth browsing through. Recordings were made of people from all over the UK, discussing their accent and local figures of speech. If you thought the UK was just half a dozen accents, think again. There are hundreds of tiny local variations.

+ Love your postcode +

The people at I Love My Postcode (www.ilovemypostcode.com) want Londoners to celebrate their postcodes. Be they living in fashionable N16, or slightly less fashionable SW20 (my old stamping ground), thereÕs a T-shirt or pair of colourful undies on sale for them. And thereÕs a mini e-zine where Londoners write of their love for the local - see blog.ilovemypostcode.dreamhosters.com.



+ Browsing around ... castles! +

:: Ludlow Castle, Shropshire
www.ludlowcastle.com

:: St MichaelÕs Mount, Cornwall
www.stmichaelsmount.co.uk

:: Caernarfon Castle, the finest in Wales
www.caernarfon.com

:: More Welsh castles, with plenty of photos
www.castlewales.com

:: More castles from all over
www.castlexplorer.co.uk

:: The National Trust knows one or two more
www.nationaltrust.org.uk


+ Thing of the week +

:: A day in the life of Abbey Road
moourl.com/abbeyrd

+ Giles Turnbull has a web site at gilest.org +

ENDS