We've seen the traditional email verification box:  the one where letters are scrabbled a bit in some wacky font and you have to decipher and type it in another box if you're trying to forward a Web page or email.

Most times I get it right though there have been times I haven't been able to figure out what the second or third letter is thanks to the slash or graffiti-like design. When I'm denied due to poor typing, or illiteracy in reading the scrambled letters, I take it personally. I mean it's all about determining if I'm human or some bot right?

So that's why I am so excited to see a Web site using a different approach--one that asks me to add numbers to determine if I'm human. And it's simple math thankfully, like 16+9  or 7+4 ... the math I know and love well. The math that actually has helped me during life ;)  though I have to admit one of my college statistic courses has come in handy too over the years.

Some quick numbers that came in this morning:

Virtualization On The Rise?

On average 50% of storage production environments at Fortune 1000 organizations will be virtualized by 2009, according to new research from TheInfoPro. According to TIP's Wave 10 Storage Study -- which details technology adoption trends and timeframes, management techniques, and vendor performance data for the storage industry -- virtualization has risen to being the fourth most common storage initiative. Someone should let VMWare know I'm thinking.
As our own Larry Barret reports, VMware shares tumbled $21.86 a share, or 26 percent, to $61.14 Monday as investors punished the virtualization software company for falling short of analyst revenue estimates in its fourth quarter and offered less-than-scintillating guidance for 2008.

HTC Losing Its Footing?

Taiwan's High Tech Computer (HTC) is supposedly losing its top spot as the world's leading vendor of Windows Mobile based smartphones (excluding touch-screen models). According to internal data from Microsoft seen by DigiTimes, the company has dropped to third place, behind Motorola and Samsung. Motorola is leading the contest with a small margin, the data showed.

Previous data indicated that HTC topped the segment with a market share of over 50% in Microsoft's fiscal 2007 (from July 2006-June 2007).

Data, Data Everywhere

Seagate Technology expects a four-fold rise in data storage by 2012 and claims homes will soon overtake business as the biggest producers of digital data. It expects the annual rate of data storage to increase to 374 exabytes in 2012, or 440 percent more than the total amount of data stored in 2007.

Call me naive, go ahead, but I'm still blown away by what technology is providing people these days. Take the story of a man who lost both legs in the Iraq war. Bluetooth technology is helping him walk using prosthetic legs -- yes the same technology that's revolutionizing hands-free phone calling.

Here's the scoop but take time to read the entire CNN.com story:

<i>Computer chips in each leg send signals to motors in the artificial joints so the knees and ankles move in a coordinated fashion.<p>

Bleill's set of prosthetics have Bluetooth receivers strapped to the ankle area. The Bluetooth device on each leg tells the other leg what it's doing, how it's moving, whether walking, standing or climbing.</i>

Have a chuckle to start your week off good.. check out this cute toon about what today's 'smartphones' are all about.

Guess what was the number one returned electronic gift item this past holiday season?

The answer is the 'smartphone.' According to a report from Opinion Research Corp. about one-fifth of those who got a smartphone device (21%) has already returned the item citing it was too hard to setup.

FYI, the BlackBerry and the iPhone were not included in this study.

As I'm one of those few cell owners remaining whose phone doesn't even boast a camera or email capability I can see usability and feature float still remaining as big issues with gadget adoption.

Speculation abounds, rumors persist...even conspiracy theories about how and why Sun acquired MySQL will continue for weeks, months, probably years.

If you want Jonathan Schwartz's take, just check out his blog. He took time Saturday to post a full explanation. No it won't stop the conspiracy theories but it's an interesting read that's for sure.

Hopefully the next blog post will explain what Sun's been doing, or what it's not doing, with StorageTek ;)

In a quest to hook up new customers Open-E's offering up a free lite version of its Data Storage Solution (providing 2 TB of data and just online forum support) for the next week and a half. The free trial opportunity ends on January 31st.

You just download the software to a USB memory key and then you can morph any PC into a NAS--pretty neat. It's a great way to see whether Open-E's option is a good fit for your storage needs.

As I reported yesterday Drobo, the robotic storage device, has a sibling providing NAS functionality, the DroboShare.

Now it seems the company is offering up $2,000 to the developer who can build a port of its "Dashboard" Drobo configuration application to Linux, according to LinuxDevices.com.

Ever get a song in your head that you can't stop hearing. Since Christmas, when my kids replayed Santa Claus Is Coming To Town a trillion times, the lyrics to 'put one foot in front of another' have been reverberating in my head (it's a scene where Winter is embraced as a friend if you recall...)

Anyway, and yes this does have something to do with storage. I'm just taking the long way ;) 

Every day I get dozens of story items, blog blurbs, news bits, and trend bytes in the mailbox. One blog item mentioned how an online storage vendor was closing down. Now usually online storage companies are starting up right?

Then the name got me:  Ewedrive. So what the heck, I clicked through. And then kept clicking around (putting one foot in front of another... see the connection ;)  ) the site which is pretty damn cute. I tried to sign up but got the 'closed for business' note.

So I emailed the site operators. I just wanted to know what was up since Ewedrive was shutting down. By this time I was pretty intrigued. The service cost was very reasonable, the site seemed incredibly user friendly and the darn lamb puns were entertaining (ewe know what I mean).

CEO Paresh Morjaria wrote me back that day (another good business indicator in MHO.):

We have decided to close the Ewedrive service itself for a couple of
reasons really. The primary being that all the features of Ewedrive will
be incorporated into the relaunch shortly of our Desktop On Demand
service which has been in Beta over the past year.

However there is also the fact that as 'online file storage/backup'
companies seem to be all the rage at the moment (and with GDrive
seemingly on the horizon) we have been considering how we can stand out
from the crowd and an amalgamation within our DOD service looked ideal
(particularly since a lot of Ewedrive was born out of DOD in the first
place).

If you need any further information please let me know.

Regards
Paresh Morjaria
CEO, Defuturo Ltd
(The Home of Desktop On Demand and Ewedrive)

Now I'm back at Ewedrive looking for Desktop On Demand and see no link or connection. So I Google and the first two entries (another amazing business indicator) is the official company site and then a Wikipedia entry that lists the 'official Desktop On Demand Web site" link to Morjaria's company!

So now I'm going to keep an eye on Desktop On Demand as I think it's a great example of how companies that are nimble and responsive can compete in what is clearly becoming a very busy storage in the cloud environment.

TechWorld's Chris Mellor reports that a new start-up--so new there's nothing on the Web except a light data sheet--is launching data centers on the high seas. Well actually in ports.. not out on open water.

It's an intriguing idea as it does seem to be more environmentally friendly. But given homeland security issues you have to wonder if it's a good idea. I mean we've read about data centers in remote locations but a pier right in San Francisco bay? It's the first of 50 that International Data Security has slated for around the US coastline.

Ok so when I talked to Hitachi back on Jan. 4th, about its decision to can their smallest HDDs, I specifically asked if the business decision was tied to an some alleged deal to sell off its HDD division and they said no.

Maybe what I should have asked was if they're planning to spin off the HDD division as reports from several news organizations are running amok with the rumour that Hitachi is chatting with Toshiba and Fujitsu about a new joint-company focused on just hard drives and other storage systems.

No one's going on record anywhere and media outlets are quoting "inside sources" and anonymous ex-Hitachi execs. But it does make sense when you remember that Fujitsu also dropped plans to push out a new line of 1.8-inch hard disk drives.

Educating the business side about storage and options is a continual task for tech people. That's why I wanted to share a neat YouTube tutorial video I came across recently.

It's worth bookmarking for the next time you need to explain storage and all the important aspects that come into play.

Seriously, the quest we humans have to store files might be getting into the ridiculous.

Consider these facts from the Huddersfield Daily Examiner:

An iPod classic can now hold up to 160 gigabytes of data (about 40,000 songs)
Some laptops can store 600 GB of data (about 160,000 songs)

If those two statistics don't blow your collective minds, here's one more:

Hitachi says by 2011 it will be able to produce hard drives that store up to 4 terabytes of information.

That's about 1 Million songs.

I mean come on people! How much music can one person listen to in a lifetime?

And no, I have no clue what the Huddersfield Daily Examiner is. I'm guessing some English publication. Thank goodness for Google new alert crawls ;)

Nope, this post has nothing whatever to do with data storage.

But it does have everything to do with big dreams. And hey, everyone, even if they don't admit, has big dreams.

CareerBuilder.com is helping Disney find its first ever Disney Chief of Magic (CMO).

No kidding here. Just check out the job description:

A simple dreamer won’t do. If you’re selected, you’ll wear an official costume, and you’ll get some interesting coaching from a bunch of characters. But you’ll have to play the part up to eight times in a 12-month period beginning May 1, 2008 during The Year of a Million Dreams celebration in 2008.

The Chief Magic Official will be tasked with helping create magic for guests, including appearances at Walt Disney World® Resort in Florida and Disneyland® Resort in California.

Here are the 'skills' they're looking for in applicants:

• Able to make magical “decrees”
• Able to create magic experiences
• Good interaction with guests
• Able to make special appearances
• Can spread magic and inspiration

Woowee. Can you make the magic happen? If so, grab the video cam and get your audition tape in by Jan. 27th.

Don't think those bucks spent on data security and protection are paying off? 

Just consider these few factoids about computer data loss from Data Deposit Box:

• A hard drive crashes every 15 seconds
• 32% of data loss is caused by human error
• 25% of lost data is due to the failure of a portable drive
• 44% of data loss caused by mechanical failures
• 1 in 5 computers suffer a fatal hard drive crash during their lifetime
• The overall average failure rate of disk and tape drives is 100% - all drives eventually fail

I've talked to a few enterprises this week, mostly SOHO and SMBs, who've made a leap from tape disk to other options including online storage services and even a cool tool that lets you tap unused workstation drive space to build an internal LAN-based mini SAN of sorts.

Want to know the one thing each had in common?

Well no one had actually tried recovering or retrieving housed data. And I know they're not alone--pundits repeatedly talk about clients who never go the full mile in testing data storage and disaster recovery programs and technology. They shove valuable docs into a shiny vault, the files are sliced and diced and dispersed, and everyone's feeling good.

But what if pulling those chunks of data back together doesn't work as smooth as expected? What if a few chunks have gone missing? If you couldn't sleep due to concerns that the tape broke overnight, how the heck will you get any zzz's if you don't test your new fangled storage tool.

I mean, yikes.