I needed some extra storage space, so I decided to purchase an external hard drive.
However I wanted to avoid all extra power cables, and a bulky device which is hard to carry around.
Regular external hard drives are mostly built to be placed on a desk next to your laptop.

Therefore I preferred the portable hard drive solution. Portable hard drives are powered via the USB cable/connection, and they are designed to be easily carried around (small size, low weight).

The product that I finally went for was a Verbatim 500GB, the Executive Arctic White edition.

Here is a quick list of the specifications:

Dimensions: 135mm x 85mm x 25mm
Weight: 163g
Interface: USB 2.0
Operating System: Win/Mac

It is advertised to have a 25% improved data transfer rate.
I guess I will have to test that under large file copy operations.

It also comes with a two-year guarantee, hope I won’t need it.

Here are some unboxing photos:

Well, not exactly with Google, but with the aid of Google!

Here is a Google “search story”, watch it and you ‘ll understand what I am talking about:

You can find more stories on the Search Stories YouTube channel.

via the Official Google Blog

Google Image Swirl is an experimental interface from Google for searching images.

Image Swirl expands on technologies like “Find Similar Images” and “Picasa Face Recognition” to group similar images together and build hierarchies out of these groups.

The interface is showing similar images together in groups/clusters, and you can easily navigate and explore other relevant groups.

You can try Image Swirl now at http://image-swirl.googlelabs.com/.

Official Announcement

Google has finally updated the Google Earth iPhone app.
Google Earth 2.0 comes with some new features and overall greater performance.

New features:

• Login to Google Maps, and view your own created maps, or custom maps shared by others.
• Browse photos, Wikipedia articles, business information etc. more easily.
• Added new languages, now supporting a total of 31 languages.

Update/Download Google Earth 2.0 through the App Store on your iPhone to start enjoying the new features.

Official announcement and more details

Adobe has released the beta versions of the upcoming Flash Player 10.1 and AIR 2.0 software.

Flash Player 10.1

Developers can test their content to ensure new features function as expected, existing content plays back correctly, and there are no compatibility issues. Consumers can try the beta release of Flash Player 10.1 to preview hardware acceleration of video on supported Windows PCs and x86-based netbooks.

Download (Mac/Win/Linux)
What’s New

AIR 2.0

Adobe AIR 2 is in the early stages of development which means it contains bugs, and not all features are fully implemented. This software is for evaluation use only, and should not be used for any mission-critical work.

Download (Mac/Win/Linux)
What’s New

If you really have to jailbreak and unlock your iPhone 3G/3Gs and understand the potential risks then:

Head to http://www.blackra1n.com/, download the appropriate file for Mac or Windows, and follow the neat iClarified tutorials:

How to Jailbreak and Unlock Your iPhone 3G, 3GS Using BlackSn0w [Mac]
How to Jailbreak and Unlock Your iPhone 3G, 3GS Using BlackSn0w [Windows]

The tutorials are based on the latest iPhone firmware (3.1.2) and baseband (05.11.07).

For support and news look at Geohot’s blog.

A couple of days ago Google has announced cheaper prices for extra storage.
Storage space is being used in Picasa Web Albums, Gmail and Google Docs.

Here is the summary of the new prices:

This is even cheaper than the Amazon’s S3 service, which is currently at $0.150 per GB per month. 20GB would cost $3 per month, or $36 per year (without calculating the data transfer costs).

We might be getting closer to the release of the rumored Google Drive.

Click here to purchase more Google storage space

This update is recommended for all Safari users and includes improvements to performance, stability, and security including:

• Improved JavaScript performance
• Improved Full History Search performance for users with a large number of history items
• Stability improvements for 3rd-party plug-ins, the search field and Yahoo! Mail

For detailed information on the security content of this update, please visit this site: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Download

2.8.6 fixes two security problems that can be exploited by registered, logged in users who have posting privileges.  If you have untrusted authors on your blog, upgrading to 2.8.6 is recommended.

The first problem is an XSS vulnerability in Press This discovered by Benjamin Flesch.  The second problem, discovered by Dawid Golunski, is an issue with sanitizing uploaded file names that can be exploited in certain Apache configurations. Thanks to Benjamin and Dawid for finding and reporting these.

Download

The 10.6.2 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Snow Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility, and security of your Mac, including fixes for:

• an issue that might cause your system to logout unexpectedly
• a graphics distortion in Safari Top Sites
• Spotlight search results not showing Exchange contacts
• a problem that prevented authenticating as an administrative user
• issues when using NTFS and WebDAV file servers
• the reliability of menu extras
• an issue with the 4-finger swipe gesture
• an issue that causes Mail to quit unexpectedly when setting up an Exchange server
• Address Book becoming unresponsive when editing
• a problem adding images to contacts in Address Book
• an issue that prevented opening files downloaded from the Internet
• Safari plug-in reliability
• general reliability improvements for iWork, iLife, Aperture, Final Cut Studio, MobileMe, and iDisk
• an issue that caused data to be deleted when using a guest account

For detailed information on this update, please visit this website: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3874.
For information on the security content of this update, please visit: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1222.

Firefox 3.5.5 fixes the following issues:

- Fixed several stability issues.

Download
Release Notes

iTunes 9.0.2 adds support for Apple TV software version 3.0, adds an option for a dark background for Grid View, and improves support for accessibility.

Download

The final version of Ubuntu 9.10 has been released today!

Download
Technical Overview

Firefox 3.5.4 fixes the following issues:

• Several security issues.
• Fixed several stability issues.
• Added the ability to re-submit crash reports (bug 378528)
• After using Clear Recent History some SSL sites would not load all images and styles without pressing reload (see bug 480619)

Download
Release Notes