Google planning to shut down Slide social apps

Apparently the age of “superpoking” social network friends and throwing sheep at them is coming to a close.Google plans to shut down the social applications developed by Slide, a company it acquired a year ago for $182 million. Slide products include SuperPoke and photo management and decorating tools like Slideshow and FunPix.Slide’s applications like Slideshow were very popular on MySpace during its heyday, and found success on other social networking sites, including Facebook, where the sheep-throwing feature of SuperPoke caught on, entertaining and annoying many.

But usage of Slide applications has apparently been declining and disappointing, according to a message Slide posted on its blog on Thursday.“We created products with the goal of providing a fun way for people to connect, communicate and share. While we are incredibly grateful to our users and for all of the wonderful feedback over the years, many of these products are no longer as active or haven’t caught on as we originally hoped,” the post reads.

IBM's 120 petabyte data drive: world's Largest data drive

IBM is currently in the process of building the world's largest data storage drive of 120 petabytes, to put this into perspective that's 120 million gigabytes, an iPhone 4 has 16GB.This mammoth task will be accomplished by putting together around 200,000 seperate disk drives, placed in a conventional horizontal pattern but with more spacing, allowing for more hard drives. 

To deal with all this data they've built an entirely new system which deals with how the information is collected and used. By sharing the information out over different drives the system is able to work on difference sections of the file at the same time, vastly improving speeds. The system is being produced for an unnamed client who apparently wishes to use it for 'simulation purposes'. At 120 petabytes this drive will be able to hold 60 copies of the largest backup yet made of the internet. Yes, that's right, 60 copies of the internet.

HP Elitebook 8×60 series laptop that can replace any desktop

HP’s Elitebook line of business laptops has enjoyed a pretty long history of good reviews from most users, thanks to their superb build quality, powerful specs and great business support (which is separate from the abysmal customer support for their consumer Pavilion line). The Elitebook has become an excellent choice over the other two main competitors, Lenovo’s ThinkPad and Dell’s Precision, especially when the former started to lose points in build quality (even their famous keyboard was affected) and the latter was full of bugs and improperly implemented features (like the fingerprint scanner that needs Dell’s custom software to run and therefore does not conform to most government or corporate specifications). And now, HP has released the next generation of Elitebooks – the 8×60 series, which are a worthy successor to the 8×40’s (not sure why they skipped the 50 number, though).

The new lineup brings a new, from grounds up redesign of the housing – after three generations of about the same design, the new laptops look either repulsive or very attractive. I really liked the classic yet modern lines and finish of the 8530w and 8540w, and the new “retro” look stirs somewhat mixed feelings – the hinge looks nice, but the overall design seems simply ugly. However, it’s really the thickness that gets a lot of people: with the previous models, HP was going for the slim design, while this time they just said “ah, forget it” and made the laptops a full half inch thicker than before – the 17 inch 8760w looks pretty normal, but for a 15 and 14 inch models, the 8560 and 8460 are too thick (and heavy)....