Google Earth 4 beta no longer

Google Earth 4 Beta, has achieved whatever stored in its 'Karma' and released officially as Google Earth 4 (actual version 4.0.2722) yesterday. Google Earth was released exactly a year before and Beta version for Google Earth 4 came sometimes six months back yesteryear.

New Google Earth 4 features are:

• 3D Models - GE 4 supports a new format which allows for models which have textures. It also supports the new 3D buildings layer. The official release of GE includes lots of optimizations to improve 3D viewing.
• Time Animation - the new time slider appears when KML content has been stamped with time. Read about the new time feature. And, here is a list of the top ten time animations done in 2006 for GE 4.
• New Look - GE 4 has a much cleaner look than GE 3. It devotes more attention to the main 3D view, and has a new navigation gadget which appears in the upper right corner. There are too many enhancements to list them all. Some notable ones are: Support for radio buttons in KML, network link icons animate when loading, new organized menus, and more GE Options.
• Controllers - Support for joystick controllers and flight simulator yokes. And, best of all, the new SpaceNavigator (Windows only at the moment, but a Mac driver soon).
• Regions - GE 4 supports very large image overlays which can be "tiled" or "regionated" so you can view the full detail as you zoom in. See the "Rumsey Historical Maps" in the "Featured Content" layer for an excellent example of this powerful feature.

You can download it from Google earth homepage link .

Solid state Disk Drive unveiled by Samsung

The first hard disk drive was part of a computer system built by IBM in the mid 1950's called IBM 305 RAMAC, it occupied almost half a room, cost around $50,000, and had only 5 Mb of storage.

Since then, technical improvements lead hard drives to become continuously smaller, cheaper, and their storage capacities have grown over 100,000-times. Although the basic technology has remained the same. Rapidly spinning platters coated with ferromagnetic material hold the data, while a special actuator arm equipped with a read/write head hovers just above it.

Despite the fact that this technology reached a very high level of maturity in recent years, it still suffers from a number of basic limitations due mainly to its mechanical nature. Hard drives are vulnerable to shock, consume relatively high amounts of power in order for the platters to spin, produce a large amount of heat, and take time to start.

Mean while since the advent in 1984 from Toshiba and subsequent introduction of it as a commercial product by Intel, flash prices continue to decline 50% annually and sometimes even at higher rates. Although hard disk drives still have the price edge , analysts agree that the trend in cost reduction is expected to continue. The recent success of MP3 players based on flash memory has contributed greatly to high volumes and, therefore, reduced prices of the media. With the newer technology flash could be able to deliver enough capacity in small footprint.

Samsung has unveiled a consumer Solid State Disk (SSD), which will be tested out on laptops and portable devices first. Releasing 32 GB 1.8” and 2.5” SSDs inside a laptop and an ultra-portable mobile computer, costing $2,430 and $3,700, respectively, in Korea.

Postgres Vs MySQL

Choosing a relational database is not a simple task, if you ask people around their biases towards the tools they are familiar take over their judgment.

Don't hope that one tool fits all your requirements.

Here is a decent comparison of Postgres and MySQL the two top Open source database solutions. Click on the following link.

Postgres vs MySQL