HP storage blade coming soon

Hewlett-Packard announced the SB40c storage blade October 31. It can supplement a blade server's built-in storage with as much as 876GB more capacity. The storage blade starts at $1,599 and will be available November 14.

The StorageWorks SB40c blade, available Nov. 14 for a starting price of $1,599, plugs directly into HP's new BladeSystem C-class chassis. It houses up to six SAS (Serial Attached SCSI) or SATA (Serial ATA) drives in a half-height blade; a system with the maximum capacity of six 146GB drives costs $4,233.

Blade systems typically house several independent servers within a chassis that supplies shared power and networking infrastructure. Adding storage opens a new chapter in the blade server story of modular design.

But HP's approach isn't a complete replacement for the ways servers use storage today. Each storage blade can connect directly to one server blade, HP spokesman Jason Treu said. That means it doesn't connect over the server's communications backplane, which links all the servers.

It also can't be used as network-attached storage or connect with storage area network technology, though Treu didn't rule out such directions in the future.

Google creates uber search site

MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif.--In its biggest revamp ever to its home page, Google on Wednesday launched its version of universal search, a redesign that will list in one place search results from a variety of media.

Combined with its other new features, universal search not only makes it easier to find relevant information in one place, it will put even more pressure on Google's competitors.

Instead of using separate search pages for photos, video, news, archived news, scanned books and other sources relevant to, say, "Steve Jobs," Google's universal search users will find links to all of those sources in a single search attempt.

"Now with universal search we can provide a more holistic answer," Marissa Mayer, Google's vice president of search products and user experience, said during a "Searchology" media event at the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters.

To illustrate further, Mayer searched for the classic black-and-white horror film Nosferatu. The first result was a link to a popular film site, IMDB, and the second was a link to the actual movie, which can be played on the page in a window. A search for "I have a dream" will display results related to Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous civil rights speech, as well as to a video of the speech. The results also will include video from other sources such as video-sharing site Metacafe.

Other Google features were retuned. Some Google Oneboxes, which offer an instant result at the top of the search results to things like weather, will still be displayed, Mayer said. More significantly, the Google home page eventually will have ads featuring more than just text: some will include video and display, Mayer said in remarks to reporters afterward. "That door has always been open," she said. "We don't have a particular timeline in place."

This is the first major revamp of the site and its underlying architecture in several years, said Google co-founder Sergey Brin. The work began about two years ago and more than half of the company's search efforts were devoted to it, he told reporters after the event, adding that the site will continue to evolve. The changes will expose to more people some "underutilized" Google services, such as Book Search and Video search, and they will help boost Google's already huge market share, Brin said.

"Our data says we not only are the best (search engine) but we're widening the gap," Brin said. Google has about half of the market and even is the top Web property globally, according to comScore.

Google launching 'Universal Search'

At Google's Searchology press event right now, Marissa Mayer just announced a feature we're all going to appreciate: "Universal Search." Google is finally going to display results from various "silos" of search on one page. In other words, you'll no longer have to search books, videos, pictures, and the Web separately. The new Google search will display everything on one page.

Mayer also showed how videos from Google and YouTube will even play in the Google search results. Very cool.

You'll still be able to drill into data types ("corpuses"), but Google will only display links to the most relevant ones for each search.

The first silos to be brought into Universal Search: Books, Local Search, Images, News, and Video. Plus Web results, obviously. Mayer says the new feature will be rolling out today.

Speaking of Universal, a new "Universal navigation bar" will appear on Google services. It lets you quickly navigate between services, like Search and Gmail.

And if you want to always get the latest Google experiments in your engine, check out www.google.com/experimental. There's cool stuff there, like timeline and map views of search results.

Watch CNET News.com for more news; Elinor Mills is at the Searchology conference.

From the Searchology event: Marissa Mayer demos Universal Search.

(Credit: Google)

Intel Quad-Core Notebook Spy Shot

Techwarelabs claims to have acquired a spy shot of a Intel quad core enabled notebook that boasts compatibility with upcoming 8XXX Nvidia cards and much more.

This laptop will supposedly support dual 8800 Video cards, a 17" screen and chassis, two internal Hard Drives up to 160GB each, and the new quad core Intel CPU all using a 975 chipset.

Hide your firewalls! Adobe's CS3 may try to disable them

There are a lot of users out there who don't like to use the firewall included with OS X for various reasons. It does, however, provide at least a decent amount of protection, especially for those who aren't behind another, perhaps a hardware firewall. The firewall also doesn't do much if you think you have it on, and it gets disabled thanks to some software that hasn't been tested for quite long enough.

If you are using the OS X firewall, and you've recently installed Creative Suite 3, you should probably be checking your firewall right about now. That's because the Adobe Version Cue CS3 installer will shut off your firewall. More specifically, during the installation for Version Cue, the installer has to turn off the firewall in order to set up some TCP ports. These ports need to be open for communication to and from the Version Cue server, and the firewall would otherwise prevent the installer from tinkering with them. The problem occurs once Version Cue setup is done. Rather than turn the firewall back on at the end, the Version Cue installer inexplicably leaves it turned off, opening your Mac up to all sorts of nastiness. There's no word on if it's a bug or just a curious omission, but if you buy any of the affected versions of CS3 in the next few months, it would be a good idea to check your firewall after installation.

The bug happens with any of the Design or Web versions of the Creative Suite, so there's a fairly large number of systems that are potentially affected by this. If Version Cue CS3 did turn off your firewall, all you have to do it go to the Sharing pane in System Preferences, find the Firewall tab, and start the firewall yourself. It's not a particularly malicious bug or a particularly hard fix, but it's definitely a bit sloppy, especially for a big release from a company like Adobe.

Tamanoi Vinegar Robot

On May 18, buildup Co., Ltd. unveiled the Tamanoi Vinegar Robot, the world’s first robot designed to make presentations about vinegar. The robot is scheduled to go to work at the Tamanoi Vinegar Corporation’s Osaka office in July.

Relying on pre-programmed speech and gestures to communicate its knowledge of vinegar, the robot features a system of pneumatic servos that control 24 points of articulation in the upper half of its body. The 180 cm (nearly 6 ft), 100 kg (220 lb) machine has a mouth that moves in sync with its voice, as well as a fiber-reinforced plastic outer shell that is colored black — like Tamanoi’s black vinegar — with an iridescent coating that changes hue according to the viewing angle.

The robot’s first duties will be to entertain guests at Tamanoi’s “Cyber Trip” amusement theater located in the company’s new head office in Osaka. In addition to the robot, the theater will feature a 12-minute high-definition video on vinegar, also produced by buildup.

Watch video of the robot HERE.