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Delkin Archival Gold Blu-Ray Discs Keep Your Data Good for Two Centuries

Gizmodo US Edition — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Manufacturers are powering up on their Blu-ray disc development, now the format war’s over: just two weeks ago we had the 6x speed ones, and now Delkin have these archive-quality discs. According to Delkin they’re the first BDs “guaranteed to preserve data safely for over 200 years” and they use some sort of patented phase-change tech to make the discs resistant to UV degradation. They’re also 25GB, 4x speed burnable, and have an anti-scratch coating. You’re only going to want to preserve really important stuff on them though: a ten-pack will cost you US$250. Now, to find a Blu-ray player that’ll last two centuries… [Reghardware]

Darwin Manuscripts Evolve From Paper Notes to Online Archive

Gizmodo US Edition — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 13:50:05 +0000

The manuscripts that later became On The Origin of Species are going online for the first time. The good guys at the Cambridge University library, who were the only people with access beforehand, have put Charles Darwin’s notes on his book and another 20,000 archive items online, turning it into one vast educational/scientific resource. Apparently it’s actually so vast that if you downloaded one image a minute, it’d take you two months to view it all.

The hosting site, Darwin Online, went live 18 months ago, but largely held just the final product publications of Darwin’s lifelong research interests. With the addition of the new material, people will now be able to read his notes, his notes on reference reading he’d done, interesting press clippings he kept and private communications with others.

There’re some gems in there too: his first scribblings doubting the “stability” of the species, made on his voyage aboard Beagle; his first pencil outline of the species theory, all 61 pages of it (about half crossed-out as his writing progressed). There’s even a memo written by his wife Emma, concerned about Charles’ religious doubts.

Apparently the archive, stored as images of the texts, will be most useful to Darwin scholars, due to his notoriously scribbly handwriting. But if you’re into cooking, then there’s also some recipes for muffin pudding and other dishes from Emma, and instructions on how to boil rice from Charles himself. [Darwin Online, New Scientist and BBC News]

Ripserver NAS Makes CD Archiving Easypeasy

Gizmodo US Edition — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 14:36:16 +0000

Okay, so the CD is maybe slowly on its way out but for a while there’ll be enough around to make the Ripserver NAS gadget useful. In use it’s as simple as its case design: slot in a CD, and it automatically rips it, archives to its hard drive, and spits the CD out again. Linking up to your home network is then handled by gigabit connection. It rips in MP3 or FLAC format, syncs with leading home music streaming systems and even has USB ports allowing you to make backups or add on yet more storage. Available now in black or white, US$1,200 for 500GB or US$1,400 for 1TB. [Ripfactory via Techdigest]

Old Websites Sure Are Funny

Mark Wilson — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 04:59:00 +0000

Digging through websites cached from the 90s is akin to seeing a celebrity’s high school yearbook pictures—during the early, awkward years of the web, brave companies made a stab at winning consumer hearts through 15″ CRTs and 14.4k dial up modems. Inspired by this MSU page, we decided to take a gander through the Internet Archive’s Wayback machine (a service that started saving pages in 1996). Needless to say, we found some funny stuff.

My personal favourite might be the LEGO site, but really, there are no winners on this list. What do you think? Oh, and special (non-existent) prize to anyone who digs through the Wayback archives and finds funny stuff for the comments. [wayback] Photos by Eric Sheline

Save Rare Films by Donating to Have Them Uploaded to the Internet Archive

Seamus Byrne — Sun, 05 Aug 2007 18:30:00 +0000

Uploading movies to the internet doesn’t always have to cause “injury that cannot be compensated or measured in money.” By donating to the Academic Film Archive of North America’s “Save a Film” initiative, you’ll be spotting them tax-deductible support for the uploading of a rare film from their over 6000-title 16mm film archive for free-as-in-beer public viewing at the Internet Archive. You’ll also get a DVD copy of the movie you chose to sponsor.It’s not as cheap as throwing some quarters into a Salvation Army bucket—digitizing 10 minutes of film costs $110, up to 45 minutes runs $244—but supporting and preserving the arts is always a worthwhile cause. Besides, it shows the MPAA that internet+film doesn’t always = piracy. [Save a Film via Boing Boing]