Forget about land speed records, how about SanDisk's setting of a new speed record of 30 megabytes per second for SD flash memory cards with the introduction of the SanDisk Extreme III 30MB/s Edition line of SDHC Cards. NOW THAT's EXCITING!

Today, SanDisk announces that it has increased the speed limit on digital photography by 50 percent. This extreem boost in performance will enable consumers, when used in a digital camera such as the newly announced Nikon D90 DSLR camera, shoot like the pros with DSLRs using continuous shooting mode, and shortening the time spent offloading images.
The new cards, expected to be available worldwide in September in 4-gigabyte (GB)2, 8GB and 16GB capacities. The manufacturer's suggested retail price is U.S. $64.99 for the 4GB card, US $109.99 for the 8GB card, and U.S. $179.99 for the 16GB card.

Take a speed-check at the press release at SANDISK BOOSTS SD CARD SPEED BY FIFTY PERCENT - SETS NEW SPEED RECORD FOR SD FLASH MEMORY CARDS

If you're new the the continuous data protection (CDP) game, continuous is the KEY word here. Most of us are familiar with CDP on Windows machines where changes are made and copies are automatically performed-capturing every change of data over time. The benefit here, as opposed to backups taken at a particular time, being you can restore to any point in time. Quite handy.

While CDP technology is not new to the Windows market, R1Soft currently offers the only CDP product that works cross-platform, for Linux and Windows. Since most IT environments are mixed-platforms, the need for a solution capable of supporting both platforms is strong and growing.

For your enjoyment, a current press release for the version just released: R1Soft Releases Windows 2.0 Continuous Data Protection Software

Also, there a trials you might want to give a go.

Imagine leaving work for the weekend, early no doubt, with big plans for a friday night. To leave early you know that the work just isn't complete yet so you save a few spreadsheets to a USB thumb drive and head for your car. Without ever leaving home you begin your friday night whatevers and the next thing that happens is you're waking up saturday afternoon. Needing to work on those spreadsheets before monday you frantically look for you USB drive-never to be found.

Now the question of leaking valuable information, code, and sales figures races through your head. What to do? Nothing...it's too late.

This is why companies like DriveSentry are releaseing products to help secure data on USB drives, laptops, PDAs, etc. Take a read and a look at the PR: Explosive Growth in Portable Storage Devices leads to Major Concerns over Data Security

Did anyone ever think that OpenSolaris Storage wouldn't be successful? Not for a minute! The opensource community is way too strong and plenty of SMBs, and large corporations, will easily bite the bait when money is involved. And why shouldn't they? Openness, virtualization, and commodity hardware is here to stay. Quick to deploy, easy to manage, and robust are the claims and reality of many systems. Obviously we must do our homework before taking the bait but I just get goosebumps everytime I download my free OpenSolaris. I never would have thought it possible when I started my IT career. Take a quick walk down memory lane at Sun Bangs OpenSolaris Drum...Again

If you haven't hear or read the wonderous news that Go Daddy is now offering unlimited email storage, don't worry. It is just another ploy to make you think you are getting something for nothing.

It is sort of like when my wife says: "It was on sale". And I reply: "honney it's always on sale, it just depends on how much". This is just another case of you pay for what you get.

It's funny to read some of the PR around this. Let's be real now, email has always been growing and pack rats have always and will continue to store everything.

Regardless, my hat is off to Go Daddy for providing unlimited email. But in retrospect, it probably should have been in the initial plans.

As fall approaches, IT departments are gearing up to make decisions about new technology investments and many struggle with how to evaluate the options. It's hard to separate hype and reality. Over the years, we at Neverfail have developed a set of questions to help customers determine what kind of continuous availability and disaster recovery solution is best for them. We tell them to ask themselves, will the solution:

• perform a failover that is transparent to the user (i.e. end users do not need to reboot or restart applications)
• check the overall health of the server prior to installation?
• provide an installation process that does not require the failover server to be manually pre-configured?
• offer complete data protection - ensure both the data and the registry can be rolled back?
• protect from all types of failures (data corruption or data loss, operating system performance, network issues and hardware issues)?
• work in a WAN environment?
• offer both a manual and automatic failover/failback?
• prove easy to maintain for upgrades, failovers and switchbacks?
• protect the primary application (e.g. Exchange) AND the auxiliary applications "out-of-the-box," such as anti-virus, archiving, back-up, anti-spam, and fax products?
• allow for comprehensive failover testing - including the application, Active Directory, DNS updates and network connectivity?

For a more comprehensive follow-up set of questions, visit the neverfail Web site at http://www.neverfailgroup.com/resources/faq.aspx.
Enjoy the rest of August. - Andrew Barnes, senior vice president of corporate development at Neverfail