Flash Drives Make Any Computer 'Personal'

Students at Eastside Preparatory School in Kirkland, Wash., are getting class materials in a new way this year: on a tiny flash-memory drive that plugs into a computer's USB port.

Small enough to wear on a necklace, this "digital backpack" can hold textbooks, novels, plays, study aids, the dictionary, graphing-calculator software - almost anything, really.

Falling prices in computer memory have made these little flash drives - also called pen, thumb or key drives - into enormously powerful tools that are on the verge of changing the concept of "personal" computing.

With a gigabyte of flash memory now available for less than $100, these inexpensive digital storehouses can hold not just important data but also entire software programs. The information they carry can be encrypted and accessed speedily, a benefit of faster microprocessors.
What this all means is that computer users are no longer at the mercy of the machine that happens to be nearby. Everything we need to interact with computers - even down to the appearance of our home PC's desktop - can be carried with us and used on almost any computer.
"What's your personal computer, anyways?" computing pioneer Bill Joy said in a speech that touched on the trend at a recent conference. "Your personal computer should be something that's always on your person."

A few years ago Jay Elliot was looking for a way to help doctors move medical information securely and decided that flash memory - which has no moving parts, unlike hard-disk storage - was the perfect solution.

But as memory prices kept falling, he realized there was room for more than just data. So he invented Migo, software that lets removable storage devices such as USB drives and iPods essentially function as portable computers.

Plug a Migo-enabled device into a computer and enter your password, and a secure session launches in which you can send and receive e-mail and work on documents, with the background desktop and icons from your own PC rather than the ones on the host computer.
When you're done and remove the drive, all traces of what you did are removed from that computer. The next time you plug the drive into your home computer, data on each are synchronized.

Multiple people can share one USB device, with separate password-protected profiles for each. So when Elliot recently went on vacation, he, his wife and two sons each called up personalized desktops on a hotel computer - all through a drive smaller than a cigarette lighter.
"People are carrying very expensive devices with them, but they only use 4 or 5 percent of their capability. What a waste," said Elliot, who heads Migo's maker, PowerHouse Technologies Group Inc.

Instead, he said, the model should be that "your data goes with you, in whatever form you want it. You just find a place to use it."
Another reason this flexibility is now possible is that software makers and flash-drive manufacturers relatively recently settled on technological standards that let programs be stored and run off the tiny drives.

Two hardware vendors, SanDisk Corp. (SNDK) and M-Systems Inc., formed a separate company, U3 LLC, to license and facilitate that technology.
Now a spate of U3-enabled drives have hit the market, preloaded with everything from photo-management software to the Firefox Web browser and instant-messaging programs.
Skype Technologies SA's Internet phone software is also available, meaning almost any computer can be used to make free calls over Skype, even if the computer owner never bothered to download Skype.

"The next time you go to install software that's going to be locked to the hard drive, your first reaction is going to be 'Man, I want this on my U3 so I can have this anywhere,'" said Kate Purmal, U3's CEO.

The only big missing element for now is Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) software.
Although its popular productivity programs such as Excel or Word are common on office PCs, traveling workers still might not find the programs on a home or public computer.
So the ability to launch Microsoft software from a flash drive could be a big help. Microsoft and USB companies are still discussing potential licensing arrangements.
In the meantime, though, several new devices are emerging to take advantage of this shift in computer use.

For example, by tweaking the tiny processor in its flash drives to enable copyright protections, SanDisk created a drive called the Cruzer Freedom that lets students download reams of educational materials when they plug the device into a PC. Because each drive has a particular numeric identifier, teachers can put assignments and materials online that are accessible only to members of their classes.

That enabled Eastside Prep's new flash-drive project in Washington. Mark Bach, who heads the upper school and teaches at Eastside, plans to use the drives to disseminate primary source documents and other materials he's gathered for a unit on regional history.
As the drives' memory expands even further in coming years, he expects to augment the text with video.

"It becomes very, very malleable, and very creative on the part of the teacher, because the teacher can go beyond textbooks," he said.
For the business world, startup Realm Systems Inc. soon plans to roll out its own USB-based "mobile personal servers," with several gigabytes of memory for a few hundred dollars a pop, that could be plugged into any PC to let mobile employees do their computer-related work.
The Realm device will have a fingerprint reader to restrict access. It also clears its tracks from the host PC for privacy.

Of course, any portable storage device with significant memory, whether it's a "smart" cell phone, a digital assistant or an MP3 music player with a miniature hard drive, can do this trick of making any computer personal. That's more reason to believe the PC will soon fade into the background.

International Business Machines Corp. (IBM) researcher Chandra Narayanaswami offers a good illustration of how we'll know it's happened:

When you check into an average hotel room and find - alongside the alarm clock, hair dryer and DVD player that once were bring-your-own items but now are as standard as the furniture - a cheap PC for guests to plug into, as our truly personal computing environment travels with us.

Microsoft to support PDF in Office 12

Microsoft will enable people to publish documents in the Adobe PDF format with Office 12, a company product manager said on Saturday.

Office 12, which is expected to be completed by the second half of 2006, will let end users take an Office document and convert it to PDF format, Brian Jones, a program manager for Microsoft Office, said in a blog posting. People will not be able to actually read PDF files from within Office applications, though -- a PDF viewer will still be required, he noted.

The PDF support will be built into Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Access, Publisher, OneNote, Visio and InfoPath, Jones said.

"We've really heard the feedback that sharing documents across multiple platforms and long-term archiving are really important," Jones said in his blog. "People now have a couple of options here, with the existing support for HTML and RTF, and now the new support for open XML formats and PDF."

Microsoft's XML-based document formats that will be the default setting for Office 12. The advantage of having an XML-based format is that information from documents can be more easily shared and archived, according to Microsoft executives.

The importance of multiple document formats came into sharp focus last month when the state of Massachusetts decided to mandate the use of the OpenDocument format in desktop productivity applications used in the state's executive branch agencies. Adobe's PDF is considered an 'open format' under the state's policy. Microsoft's Office 12 does not support OpenDocument.

Even as Microsoft adds PDF support, the company is working on a document format, called Metro, that offers many of the same features as PDF. Metro will be delivered in late 2006 with Windows Vista.

Metro is designed to enable people to view Office documents without needing Office applications. The format also uses the graphics engine in Windows Vista to have a consistent way of displaying data on a screen and sending document data to printers, according to Microsoft.

At a meeting with Microsoft partners on Saturday, Microsoft's senior vice president of Microsoft Office, Steven Sinofksy, demonstrated the PDF support. A beta test version of Office 12, which will include the PDF feature, is expected to be released this fall.

Nimble Data Backup, Recovery Tools on Tap

Microsoft Corp., Symantec Corp. and IBM are rolling out backup tools designed to help users recover from data losses more quickly while reducing tape management and redundant hardware costs.

Last week, Microsoft announced the availability of its Microsoft System Center Data Protection Manager. The disk-based product backs up file servers in Windows-only environments and integrates with DPM-ready applications and devices from vendors including Advanced Micro Devices Inc., CommVault Systems Inc., Computer Associates International Inc., Dell Inc. and others.

On tap for next year, the next release of DPM should dispel criticism that it lacks application-level backup with key Microsoft offerings, said Radhesh Balakrishnan, group product manager, Windows Server Division for Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash.

The next version of DPM will feature integration across Microsoft Exchange, SQL Server, SharePoint Services and "Longhorn." Customers will also see new bare-metal recovery functionality and centralized management capabilities, Balakrishnan said.
Microsoft also announced the beta version of its Windows Server 2003 R2 product. Targeted for launch at Storage Networking World in April, the product will enable document collaboration through integration with SharePoint Services and feature full index search and Microsoft-developed quota management capabilities.

Symantec's new Backup Exec 10d for Windows Servers, available next week, features a CPS (Continuous Protection Server) to simplify and speed backup for Windows files. The product enables all file changes collected on the CPS to be managed, retrieved and played back at any point to reduce tape reliance and ease tight backup windows, said officials of Symantec, in Cupertino, Calif. Users can use Google-type searches to retrieve and access their files without IT administrator intervention.

"One of the problems I had was getting someone reliable to change the tapes for me [at remote facilities]. That's something I really struggled with," said Steve Wilson, IT manager for Cincinnati Thermal Spray, in Ohio, who plans to eliminate all tape-based backup for his company. "[Backup Exec 10d] is an opportunity to relieve a lot of pain I have."

To address enterprises' non-Windows file recovery needs, IBM is accelerating its plans to enable its IBM Tivoli CDP for Files product to support AIX file servers and Apple Computer Inc.'s Mac OS. The move will come in two to three months, officials said.

Steve Tringali, managing partner for Rampion Visual Productions LLC, in Watertown, Mass., tested an early Mac version of CDP for Files and said his industry's needs span far beyond Microsoft operating systems.

"In the creative world, Apple has a very strong hold. So the ability to use that cross-platform functionality is great," said Tringali. "There are these niche markets that are going to be heavily Mac on the video side, graphics side, DVD and music side. Something exclusive to backup for Microsoft will be a problem for a lot of people."

Microsoft's Office upgrade to support PDF files

SEATTLE, Oct 3 (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp. (MSFT.O: Quote, Profile, Research) said on Monday that the next version of its Office program will be able to save documents in the PDF format, a popular method of sharing documents between different computers and software programs.

Being able to save Office documents as PDFs was a feature that more than 120,000 users have requested every month, said Steven Sinofsky, Microsoft's senior vice president of Office product development.

Portable Document Format, developed by Adobe Systems Inc. (ADBE.O: Quote, Profile, Research) allows users to save a file and share it with anyone using Adobe's Acrobat Reader software.

Sinofsky did not say whether there would be any extra costs involved in being able to save Office documents as PDF files, but hinted that the feature could be included in Office for free.
"We don't want cost to be a barrier for any of our products," Sinofsky told Reuters, noting that many other word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation programs include the ability to save files as PDFs. "We want to be a competitor." Sinofsky said.

Microsoft is gearing up to release the next version of Office, code-named "Office 12" in the second half of 2006, within the same time frame for a major upgrade of its flagship Windows program.

The main challenge for Microsoft, as it upgrades its two cash-cow product lines that together generate more than $33 billion in yearly sales, is to convince users that the new versions offer features that make it worthwhile switching.

Sinofsky said that including PDF in Office 12 would help broaden the appeal of the program, which is a collection of different applications used for different tasks.

The Office programs that will offer the ability to save as PDFs are: Word (word-processing), Excel (spreadsheet), Power Point (presentation), Access (database), OneNote (note-taking), Publisher (publishing), InfoPath (forms) and Visio (diagrams).

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft said that it developed the "save as PDF" feature in Office 12 using the open, freely available PDF standard published by Adobe. Under the open specifications, Adobe allows other software developers to create PDFs without paying a licensing free.

San Jose, California-based Adobe and Microsoft have been longtime partners in the software industry but, although they still collaborate, are increasingly competing against each other in the space for data-input forms and photo-editing software.

Cellphones are becoming portable music players

Cellphones are becoming portable music playersNY TIMES NEWS SERVICE , SAN

FRANCISCO Monday, Oct 03, 2005,Page 11

The hot topic among mobile phone executives gathered here for a cellphone trade show is the push to transform handsets into portable music players. By next year, phone makers expect to market several phones that will allow people to store and listen to songs and even download them wirelessly over cellular networks.

Industry leaders said they were gearing up for a major marketing pitch in 2006 to sell consumers on the idea that music is a must-have phone feature, just like cameras and Web connections.

At the three-day trade show, which ended Thursday, the potential success of the new iTunes-compatible phone, the Rokr E1, recently introduced by Motorola and Cingular Wireless was the subject of much speculation.

Nokia, the Finnish phone manufacturer, announced this week that it would introduce a line of Xpress Music phones. And Sony Ericsson showed off the Walkman W800 phone, which it began selling in August.

Carriers like Verizon Wireless and the phone makers said they hoped to offer handsets next year that could download songs over the air. (Phones like the Rokr can only download tracks from a personal computer.)

They have ample reason to push the music feature. Competition to acquire and retain mobile customers is brutal, and the carriers are looking for new streams of revenue, like taking a cut for selling songs.

Clint Wheelock, an analyst for NPD Group, a market research firm, said the wireless carriers were hoping to follow the huge success of the Apple iPod music player. Evolving technology has made it less expensive to build music capability into a phone than in the past. Some analysts say the cost of adding music-organizing software and more memory will be as little as US$30 a phone.

Equally important to the music phone's success is having millions of consumers accustomed to downloading and listening to digital music. Some phone companies believe a music phone can become a strong competitor to a standalone music player like the iPod.
"We give you the iPod -- plus," said Brenda Boyd Raney, a spokeswoman with Verizon Wireless. "We also give you voice." Verizon Wireless, Sprint and Cingular are all developing services to sell downloads of full tracks.

Still, there are obstacles. Consumers have not always embraced new features, particularly when they absorb battery life and could detract from the phone's main use: making calls.
The handset makers also are not likely to add so much memory that the phones will be able to hold the vast music libraries that iPods can hold.

This is not the first time carriers have tried to introduce music player phones. Nokia first introduced a phone with music software in 2000, and then another such phone in 2003, said Ilkka Raiskinen, senior vice president of the company's entertainment products unit. Other carriers have had phones with the software and memory necessary to store and play back MP3 files, a popular format used for digital music, but those phones have not been aggressively marketed.

Raiskinen said the older phones had some success, but he said improved technology, consumer awareness about digital music and better cooperation from record labels would make the new phones more successful.

Edward Snyder, a wireless industry analyst with Charter Equity Research, said he was optimistic about music phones, and that listening to music, unlike watching TV or reading e-mail, could be done while the user was on the move.

Indeed, he says he believes that over time, the huge size of the cellphone market, which he said could reach 780 million new phones sold worldwide this year, gives carriers and handset makers a chance to become the main source of portable music players.
"It's a very big threat," to existing portable music companies, Snyder said.

The Motorola Rokr E1 costs US$250 with a two-year Cingular contract. The Sony Ericsson Walkman W800 phone costs US$499. Nokia's first two Xpress Music phones are due out in the first quarter next year. Verizon's latest multimedia phone the VX9800, made by LG, which includes music and television capability, sells for US$299 with a two-year service contract.