DropBox rocks, but one thing it's lacking is the ability to upload files and share them quickly. Yes, you can drop files into your public directory in DropBox, but then you have to go to your dropbox web interface, navigate to the file then select copy url location. Yeah, I know I'm splitting hairs, but if I can remove parts of my workflow to streamline file sharing I will!

Here's one use case.
Select a song in iTunes or photo in iPhoto, hit keyboard shortcut, file uploads to Cloudapp, shortened URL is copied to your clipboard.

This works with any file on your mac under 50MB. WOW.

Check it out at getcloudapp.com

I was just speaking about this with my cousin who made a very similar statement. A similar comparison would be te introduction and domination of laptop computers over desktops.

Before dismissing this claim as ridiculous. The current iPad is version 1, so do not be fooled by its current limitations. Doing so would be the same as ignoring the evolution of laptops from barely portable hunks of plastic to the elegantly designed aluminum MacBook Pro I'm using to write this post. But as Amit says "The laptop starts dying tomorrow" and I'm a believer.

Xbox 360 gaining USB storage support in 2010 update

by Alexander Sliwinski

{ Mar 18th 2010 at 12:59PM }

Documentation obtained by Joystiq – and subsequently confirmed with two separate sources – reveals that "USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360" will soon be a reality. The document, authored by a senior software development engineer at Microsoft, states that due to "increased market penetration of high-capacity, high throughput USB mass storage devices, a 2010 Xbox 360 system update" will allow consumers to save and load game data from USB devices. The update is purportedly coming in Spring 2010.

Once the update occurs, Xbox 360 owners will be able to download Xbox Live Arcade games, Xbox Live Indie games, Games on Demand, DLC and Title Updates to the storage device. "USB storage devices may, however, have far greater memory capacity than MUs (at the date of writing, the largest MU is 512 MB), and may therefore support previously infeasible operations-such as installation of a full disc-based title." That's right, you can also store disc-based games to the USB device; however, it will require the disc to be in the tray for authentication, identical to the current functionality.

Gallery: USB Mass Storage Device Support on Xbox 360

According to the document, the USB mass storage device must be at least 1GB and the system will do a compatibility check. "The system partition occupies 512 MB of space, and by default the consumer partition occupies the remainder of the device capacity, or 16 GB, whichever is smaller." Upon inserting a blank USB storage device, "consumers are offered two choices: 'Configure now' or 'Customize'." The "Configure now" option will use "the entire device capacity, up to the maximum of 512 MB plus 16 GB" meaning, regardless of the overall size of the device you're using, the Xbox will only enable 16 GB of usable, non-system storage. The "Customize" option will allow you to "preserve some pre-existing, non-console data on the device" such as music.

It should be clear by now that Microsoft is simply pulling out of the Memory Unit business and not the highly lucrative Xbox hard drive business. With an artificial cap of 16 GB – still shy of the 20 GB hard drive that shipped with the original 2005 Xbox Pro and a fraction the size of the currently shipping 120 GB hard drive – USB storage support simply removes the onerous requirement for a Memory Unit on Xbox 360 Arcade units, and brings the Xbox 360 platform a feature that's been present on the PlayStation 3 since that console's 2006 launch.

If you're intent on circumventing Microsoft's cutthroat hard drive pricing the Xbox 360, you can use two USB storage devices for a maximum of 32 GB of usable storage; however, the console "has a fixed limit of two external USB mass storage devices" regardless of whether they're "formatted for the Xbox 360 or not." If you fill all three USB ports on the console, only the first two to be connected will be recognized.

With talk of a new (slim?) form factor for the Xbox 360 picking up, and plans to abandon (or at least obviate) Memory Units underway, we're guessing those Memory Unit slots could be cut entirely from future iterations of the console.

Tags: microsoft, spring-update, spring-update-2010, xbox-360

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Upon seeing the headline for this article I got really excited. The new Games OnDemand feature is cool, but without a robust storage solution it felt incomplete. Unfortunately, this is hardly a robust storage solution with a cap of 32GB storage.

There's cool and then there's cool but wildly strange. This would be the latter of the two. Even as the techie that I am, this strikes me as a bit strange. This is the bleeding edge technology that looks ridiculous now, but is a stepping stone to what will one day be a norm.

I've noticed more and more movies referencing Stanford which is pretty cool, and the latest, and perhaps most notable, is James Cameron's "Avatar." How many schools can say they've had a CGI blue alien/human hybrid synthetic lifeform wear their school colors? Yah Sigourney Weaver went to Stanford, so the film is biased, but if it wasn't believable Cameron would have never had that in his film. Any true Entourage fan knows how anal James Cameron is when it comes to messing with his movies.

As a side note, did any other Entourage obsessors think about Aquaman at all while they were watching Avatar? My wife and I both couldn't get it out of our heads, :-).

I like to refer to the Xbox as Microsoft's white knight. It's the only product they produce that I really think is good through and through(minus the red circle of death of course). The user interface is quite usable indeed, and it doesn't try to do too much while still bridging many different media services.