Solid State Drives (or “SSDs”) are all the rage right now. They allow for incredible speed increases on existing hardware, and can be considered perhaps the biggest performance boost on computers in the last few years. Unfortunately they are still very expensive compared to plain old Hard Disk Drives. For example, a internal 500GB 2.5 inch HDD costs around R600 these days, but an equivalent 500GB SSD currently goes for almost R10 000. No, that is not a typo…

But while we are still stuck on HDD’s, we can at least boost their performance by occasionally defragmenting them. One of the pains of hard disk drives is the fragmentation of files and free space. If left unattended, your hard drive can become very fragmented which results in much lower performance. Here is a simple graphic that explains how fragmentation occurs, and how a defragmenter fixes it:

Fragmentation occurs when the operating system cannot or will not allocate enough contiguous space to store a complete file as a unit, but instead puts parts of it in gaps between other files (usually those gaps exist because they formerly held a file that the operating system has subsequently deleted or because the operating system allocated excess space for the file in the first place). Larger files and greater numbers of files also contribute to fragmentation and consequent performance loss. (Wikipedia, 2011)

The supplied defragmenter with Windows is simply abysmal. It is slow, not very effective and the user has not feedback on what exactly is happening on the drive.

The best defragmenter is still Diskeeper. It does small things like changing the drive layout so that files that need high performance is moved to a high speed area of the drive, and small files that need faster random access to the inner sectors of the drive. But you have to pay for it. So for people who need the highest performance from their drives like server admins and video editors, Diskeeper is a great buy.

But not everyone wants to spend money on this type of software. The best free version is Defraggler, (an oldie, but a goodie). This software enables a user to very quickly defragment specific files and folders, something that the windows supplied defragmenter cannott do. Or of course you can defrag the drive completely, just like all other defragmenters. The result is much better performance from your drive. Considering that storage is still the slowest part inside a modern computer, it really helps to defragment your drives regularly. You can of course set Defraggler on a schedule to do a quick defragment every few days – your choice.

My Tip: A very quick way to defragment your drive is to first analyse the disk, click on file list, arrange the files so that the most fragmented files are on top. Then click the tickbox next to the filename column (which then automatically ticks all the boxes for you). This is surprisingly quick and even faster than Diskeeper.

If you are however looking for a good middle ground between a HDD and an SSD, consider a Hybrid Hard Drive. These drives combine a standard HDD with a small amount of SSD storage for only frequently used files. These frequently accessed files get a massive performance increase, at only a small price premium above a normal HDD. Look at our review of the Seagate Momentus XT to get an idea of the performance boost it gives. I recommend it highly to anyone not willing to jump to SSD just yet. (PS: If you are lucky enough to be using SSD’s already, you should never defragment them, because it creates unnecessary write cycles on the drive, which decreases its reliability.)

Pixable (the makers of the popular Photofeed iPhone app) did this great infographic detailing some stats regarding peoples preferences regarding their profile pics on Facebook. Quite interesting is how often people change their profile pics – reaching up to 18 per year on average in 2011, with women uploading way more profile games than men. But enough with all this chatter, here you go:

The Nielsen Norman group just released there latest study findings on the usability of iPad Apps and Websites, which gives some very interesting points regarding the design of iPad apps, but also which types of websites can be seen as “tablet friendly”. The study was released last year, and many of the findings tend to replicate in this year’s version – but its interesting to see how user interfaces have improved over time.

The major difference between the previous study and this one is that the developers in the 2010 version were still under a cloak of secrecy from Apple, and best-practice ideas was not clear yet because the iPad was only out for two months.

Examples of bad application and web navigation ideas which have become clear recently include: (more…)

Microsoft yesterday evening previewed the next major release of Windows Phone, code name “Mango,” through a series of media events around the world, including Cape Town with its “Dev Days” event. “Mango” will deliver more than 500 new features to the Microsoft smartphone experience around communications, apps and the Internet. Nokia’s recent adoption of Windows Phone also means that their upcoming devices will ship with Mango out of the box, called Windows Phone 7.1.

The Mango release will be available for free to Windows Phone 7 customers and is scheduled to ship on new phones later this year.  Windows Phone 7.1 will also add support for additional languages; expand access to apps by launching Marketplace in South Africa, and partner with new OEMs to enable this expansion. This means that SA Windows Phone developers will not need to use portals like Yalla Apps, and have more control over their app submission process.

“Seven months ago we started our mission to make smartphones smarter and easier for people to do more,” said Nazeer Suliman, Consumer and Online Lead at Microsoft. “With Mango, Windows Phone takes a major step forward in redefining how people communicate and use apps and the Internet, giving you better results with less effort.”

(more…)

According to 148Apps.com, Apple has “unofficially” reached 500 000 apps in it’s App Store. The catalogue of apps have grown at a tremendous rate – in Jan this year it was still on 350,000, so clearly Apple has had its hands full approving all these apps. Here are a few key numbers you can take away from this:

From that nearly 3 years of data we know that you’d need a 7.5 terabyte iPhone to hold all of the apps available at once on your device. I guess we have a new high end target for the storage limit of the iPhone 5. Oh, and it would cost you $891,982.24 to buy all of the apps.

37% of all live applications are free while 15% are games. It’s interesting that in recent months Books has been the largest category. But just this last month we saw Games overtake Books once again.

But enough with the jibber jabber – here is the infographic:

I’ve attended a number of tech conferences in South Africa and at every one of them one of two topics seem to raise it’s head, and frankly I think we need to ban the types of people pushing these topics on stage from speaking…

Social Media Marketers

Every time I attend a conference I find that I would have much rather have been listening to one of the developers in the crowd than the person on the stage, this feeling is amplified when a self proclaimed Social Media guru takes to the stage. In South Africa this is especially true because we have a huge amount of talented devs often sitting in the crowd, and a social media evangelist hogging the lime light.

I have nothing particularly against Social Media agencies, but I do take issue with the fact that they insist that a room filled with a thousand tech savy geeks live tweeting from their latest Apple iSomething has never heard of Social Media.

VC and Angel Investors

Another group of people I think conferences can do without are all these VC and Angel Investor types. These blokes very often have never written a line of code in their lives, have a horrible track record in picking investments and most of them have never run a start up or even launched an app. Then we ask them to run onto the stage and for 30 minutes tell us what we should be doing as entrepreneurs thinking about starting up?

This is very much like having talent scouts running on stage explaining what they are looking for at a talent show instead of having the actual talent showing off their skills on stage. It’s always so sad to see all the people clamouring for attention from investors after they speak… Why on earth are we flocking to investors anyway? Shouldn’t they be flocking towards the talent? Put the talent on the stage for goodness sakes.

The Silicon Cape events have been trying to put the talent on the stage. They have this elevator pitch competition they always run, and although it’s a step in the right direction, I feel a 30 second time limit on a world changing idea someone has spent months, if not years coming up with, is grossly dehumanizing and insulting. I personally would never do an elevator pitch at a Silicon Cape event on stage, for that matter I refuse to do elevator pitches in general.

In Conclusion

Can we please for the sake of sanity put people on stage at Tech conferences that are actually trying to build tech? Investors and Social Media Marketers are essentially fanboys of tech, using it and investing in it but not building it. Can we get the engineers and tech entrepreneurs back on the stage please?

Vodacom today launched its new prepaid credit system, which allows users to keep using their phones if their credit is done, up to a maximum of R10. This works similiar to some salary advance type systems – users request the R10 credit, which is then subtracted from their next credit loading amount.

While the idea is very simple, the convenience it offers is valuable to user’s who see communication with family as critical. “We like to think of Airtime Advance as a solution that could be a life line for our customers when they have no airtime and are in desperate need of it. With Airtime Advance, we are giving our customers the ability to communicate even when they have no airtime,” says Portia Maurice, Chief Officer: Corporate Affairs.

It is easy enough to do, but there are a few requirements to enable Airtime Advance. First off, they need to have been active with Vodacom for more than 12 months, they need to recharge with a minimum of R29 per month in total, and they should be registered with RICA. If you still have not RICA’d: Time is running out…

With winter fast approaching, and more people spending time indoors, it’s pretty good news that Nintendo Wii is now available at a lower price in SA. Nintendo has announced that on 20^th May 2011 it will be reducing the trade price* of its existing Wii bundles, which include a white, black or red Wii console, bundled with varying software titles.

MyBroadband was able to confirm with Incredible Connection that the Nintendo Wii cost is now available at R1600, around R800 cheaper than before…

Nintendo have also announced the launch of Nintendo Select, a range of discounted software titles. The Nintendo Selects range, launching on 20th May 2011, is a value for money selection of popular Wii game titles. Titles included are the all time favourites such as Wii Sports™, and the action packed Mario Strikers™ Charged Football. (more…)