Would the I/O port of the future please stand up!

Over the last week I have written two new posts for Bandwidth Blog on the future of I/O. My first article focused on the emergence of USB 3.0 (or Superspeed USB).

Bandwidth Blog article on USB.3.0

My primary intention for writing this post was to just make more people realise that this was out there and that you could get a USB 3.0 portable HDD on sale for the same price as one that is only USB 2 enabled. Furthermore, USB 2 HDD is bound to start dropping in price considerably, so if you were toying with the idea of getting an additional one perhaps get one that is USB 3.0 compatible or pick up a USB 2 drive at a reduced price.

The really awesome thing about this post however was that it was the lead story on NEWS 24's tech page for almost 2 whole hours. This was completely unexpected but extremely satisfying. It unfortunately brought out the "Grammar Nazi's" from their bunkers (Thanks for teaching me a  cool new word @yuvaan_gugrajah), but perhaps I should stop writing articles at 2 in the morning and pay more attention to grammar. Although I am making light of this, I was grateful for the corrections. I much prefer being corrected than to allow an error to remain on a post.

At the request of my editor at BandwidthBlog, I then set out to write an article on the "other" superfast I/O Port, Thunderbolt.

Bandwidth Blog article on Thunderbolt

I loved writing this article and am very proud of how it turned out. For the first time since I started writing online, I was writing on a topic that I did not choose. It involved research, chatting to people in the know and determining my opinion before setting out to write the article. I came up with so much of stuff that I had to leave out because it would have just made the post too long. Some would argue that such a task would make my "hobby" of writing more work-like but I really enjoyed the experience and look forward to more assignments. I titled the article "Thunderbolt - One Port to rule them all!", in obvious reference to The Lord of the Rings. I recently bought my wife the extended edition boxset of the trilogy (cos I am sensitive like that), and watching it again has been like watching a whole new movie. I mean that literally because the amount of deleted scenes that have been included in all three movies easily constitute another movie. Seriously though, for fans of the greatest Trilogy ever made, if you have not watched the extended edition, you are seriously missing out on an amazing experience. For fanatics of the trilogy, hope you are enjoying the BluRay boxset and may the" The Phial of Galadriel" guide you oneday, when you choose to ever leave your room.

The one major change that my editor did make to my article, not that I blame him was the removal of an image I had drawn myself and wanted to use. It was a crude drawing and looked childish but that is why I write, and don't paint. I wish I had the skill to draw well to supplement my writing because I often think in "cartoon", but alas, my sister got all the artsy genes, and all I got was this blog! P.S. The red line is supposed to be the line you draw around a murder victim.

Is this the death of USB 3.0?

After the success of the USB 3.0 article I occasionally checked on News24 to see if they had picked up this article. By "occasionally checked", what I mean is that I subscribed to their twitter feed and refreshed the News 24 page every 5 minutes! The thing was that I thought there was something missing in my USB 3 article and I had invested a lot of effort on this article so surely it would be picked up. Right?

Well, it was but Good News/ Bad News. Although the article featured on the NEWS 24 sci-tech page, I was beaten to the top spot by an article titled "Baby Squirrels saved after Hurricane". A good friend attempted to cheer me up by saying that the only way that that article should appear on the Sci Tech Page is if the baby squirrels were saved by Alien Robots! (Thanks @ShabnumB). The article made no mention of Alien robots and the title is in essence the entire story unless you add the bits about their weight (70g), vulnerability and the fact that the mother has not been found as yet. "Experts fear she may be searching for her babies". The previous sentence was a direct quotation form the article and it proves yet again that my vanity has no bounds and that I am in fact a sore loser!