New report says SSDs are, in fact, more efficient

So LAPTOP magazine published a report confirming what most people already believe to be true about SSDs (that is, before last week when SSDs supposedly hit the fan): they use less power than traditional drives. Apparently they got up to 20 minutes more battery life when testing an SSD against a platter-based drive in an Eee PC and Gateway T-6828 (which jibes with our own experiences using SSDs in laptops), but if you ask us, the discussion seems a little moot. SSDs perform way faster and are far better suited to portable computing where drives are moved, bumped, and jostled -- the power savings is great, but the speed and reliability are still our top two reasons for going SSD.

Pioneer's Blu-ray disc hits 400GB across 16-layers

16-layers -- that's how many layers it takes to the hit the center of a 400GB Blu-ray disc, pops. That's 25GB per layer just like those dual-layer 50GB discs available for retail. Best of all, the technique used by Pioneer is expected to be backward compatible with existing Blu-ray gear since the specs and lenses required for pickup are identical. The prototype is read-only for the moment but R&D's on it so let's give them some time to work it out.

Update: Now that the English press release is out, it's less clear whether the new media -- whenever it might come to market -- will work in existing Blu-ray players or not. While "it is possible to maintain compatibility between the new 16-layer optical disc and the BD discs," players would seemingly require a modified optical pick-up mechanism to see the data. We'll learn more on July 13th when Pioneer discusses the breakthrough in detail.

[Via Impress]

iPhone 3G launching 00:01 NZ time, home delivered in the UK

Vodafone just went public with the information you already knew, New Zealand will see the world's first iPhone launch at 00:01 local time on the 11th. That's almost a full day before any New York, propaganda farmer gets his. In the UK, O2 is now taking pre-orders (one per customer) on a first come, first serve basis. Better yet, your new slab of 3G will be delivered to your home on the 11th of July by courier where you can activate it from the digital comforts of iTunes. So civilized.

Update: According to a handful of tipsters, O2 sold out of the 16GB version of the iPhone in about three hours. Here's hoping you made the cut.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read -- O2 UK
Read -- Vodafone NZ

Making a living taking digital snapshots of passers-by

Posted by Daniel Terdiman

Darryl Cannon, of Killboy.com, takes thousands of pictures a day of drivers and motorcyclists who are touring US route 129 on the Tennessee/North Carolina border. The road is very popular, especially with motorcyclists, and Cannon and three others in his company make full-time livings selling the images they take. There are least three other operations doing the same thing in the area.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

FONTANA VILLAGE, N.C.--If you've got a fancy digital SLR and have been wondering how you could make money with it, I might have just the suggestion for you.

Head on out to the border region between Tennessee and North Carolina, just on the edge of Great Smoky Mountain National Park, and there, you'll find a never-ending supply of people riding their motorcycles and driving their cars along one of the most-famous and beloved stretches of road in the South.

Known as "The Dragon," the road is a longtime favorite, especially among motorcyclists, and hundreds, if not thousands, of people navigate its windy curves every day.

As a result, people like Darryl Cannon of Killboy.com have proliferated. They park their cars at strategic curves in the road where they can shoot pictures of drivers coming from either direction, and then they sell the drivers--at least some of them--the pictures.

And how?

At first, as I drove along this stretch of highway as part of Road Trip 2008, I was confused as to what was going on. But after seeing two such vehicles at corners, each of which had a URL emblazoned on the side, I figured it out: The photographers were taking pictures of the riders and drivers, and then later posting them online, hoping that people will visit their sites, see pictures of themselves on the famous road, and decide to fork over a few bucks for a high-res image.

That's what Cannon, his wife, and a couple of friends are doing. Full time, he said.

I stopped at one of the curves along the way to talk with him about what he was doing and why.

He said that he routinely shoots thousands of pictures a day and sometimes, if there's a motorcycle rally in the area, can take as many as 17,000 in one shift.

This is definitely a business based on direct-mail type of response. After all, there is a steady stream of traffic, and there's a lot of competition. Yet, Cannon said he's been doing this since 2003, so I guess he sells enough $6 CDs of digital images--as well as more expensive coffee mugs, prints, and other manifestations of peoples' ride along the famous road--to make it worth his while.

After he and his team finish taking their pictures--he uses a Canon 40D and has "whole pockets of" 4GB compact flash cards--they go home and laboriously sort them and post them. They organize them by date, and then by category: "Cars-Trucks," "Motards-Dirtbikes-Trikes-Scooters-Sidecars," "Touring Bikes," etc.

He said he works about 100 hours a week.

Cannon and others park themselves at strategic curves along the famously windy road to best capture drivers coming from either direction. They will also position a vehicle with a URL on its side so that drivers can see where they can go to find their picture.

(Credit: Daniel Terdiman/CNET News.com)

Cannon says that every day he sets up in a different place, something that's not hard, given that this stretch of road has seemingly thousands of tight curves offering the kind of two-way vantage point he needs. He's looking for good lighting and good background, so that he "might get a tight shot, but still get some of the background."

I had never seen an operation like this before, which surprises me. I heard afterward that this is something that's popular on river-rafting routes, but I'd not seen it on popular highways. And being from the San Francisco Bay Area, which is of course close to the Pacific Coast Highway, that surprised me.

But it's the extreme popularity of this stretch of US-129 with motorcyclists that makes Cannon's business possible. These are riders who travel great distances to make their way through the Dragon, and enough of them seem to like the idea of buying a picture of themselves doing so to create a business. I suspect the same is true in other parts of the country that bikers frequent.

For me, when I find myself being photographed without my consent, I usually make a gesture that I hope will render the picture worthless. It's not what you think. And I guess I'm not the only one who does things with his hands.

Cannon said that plenty of people do that, some just to say hi.

"It would be better if they wouldn't," he said, ever the photographer.