data – FTI

How National Archives are Going Digital

Paper was one of the humanity’s earliest means of data storage. Since its invention in China almost two thousand years ago, it is still one of the most important materials that we use in our daily activities: it is used as means of payment in form of cash, many important documents are still signed on paper, paper books are still more popular than the electronic ones and at the end of the day, don’t you still scribble your notes on the business meetings in a paper notebook?

Civilization used paper for centuries (and it will likely continue to do so for several more): our ancestors managed to leave us hundreds of thousands historical documents and books. From these sources, we are able to get the valuable information about important historical events and the way our ancestors lived. Paper allows us to see the footprint that previous generations have left in the history. It is a truly unique invention, as important and significant as the use of fire, iron and the wheel.

Nonetheless its undisputed value and role in the history of the mankind, paper have its weak side: it is not able to resist the influence of the environment. Old paper documents may corrode and the information recorded may gradually fade away and disappear over long periods of time. Before the invention of the first printing presses in XVth century, old manuscripts were copied manually in handwriting. Despite the complexity of that process, people understood the importance of preserving the information for future generations and some even dedicated a lifetime to restore the old manuscripts for the future generations.

Nowadays the technical progress allows us to archive the information in a more safe and simplified way: through digitalization and electronic archiving.

The Telangana State Archives and Research Institute of Hyderabad, India has come up with a proposal for a digital library placing online all its documents that include ‘farmans’ and gazettes issued by erstwhile rulers and also a rich collection of manuscripts. The proposal has already been submitted to the State government for approval.

Once in place, the digital library will come as a boon for researchers, teachers, and students apart from the general public who at present have to go through a cumbersome manual process to check the material of their interest.

“Now, whenever a researcher or student approaches us, we take their request and locate the papers and hand them over. With the proposed system, students coming for research can view the information on computers connected to the server,” said a senior official.

The process has already been initiated and the institute has digitized more than 60 folios which are to be made available to the public through the digital library. The digitized content includes ‘farmans’, gazettes and manuscripts that were issued at different points of time by the then rulers. The impressive collection at the State Archives and Research Institute has thousands of documents related to the Moghal rule while the oldest document preserved here dates back to the year 1406 pertaining to Adil Shah.

Every year, researchers from the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, and Singapore among other countries visit the Institute for research.

Digital archiving has an important role in historical data preservation: as paper manuscripts and important historical documents are decaying under the influence of temperature, pressure and humidity fluctuations, there is always a risk of data loss. Therefore, digitalization becomes a must, rather than an option.

Just think about it: if the medieval monks would not copy the manuscripts back in the day, we would probably never know about some of the major historical events and scientific discoveries.

We at Falcon Technologies International understand the importance of historical data preservation. It is hard to underestimate the importance of these materials in the context of the history of the civilization. That was one of the ideas behind the development of FalconMEDIA Century Archival Disc – an optical media storage device, that is able to store data for centuries. Manufactured with use of gold and platinum layers technology, it is able to serve as a reliable and secure long-term data vault.

Source: Telangana Today

Meet all new 9.5-mm Optical Disc Drive by Silverstone

SilverStone has introduced its first ultra-slim ODD that can read and record CD, DVD, Blu-ray and BDXL media. The drive is not a technological breakthrough, but it is going to be one of a few 9.5-mm BD/BDXL-supporting ODDs on the market. The manufacturer is primarily known for its cases, PSUs and coolers, so the launch of the TOB03 ODD demonstrates that the company sees demand for such products.

Nowadays the vast majority of audiovisual content (games, music, movies, etc.) is distributed digitally via services like iTunes, Netflix, Origin and Steam. Partially due to this reason, a number of ODD makers and optical media manufacturers reduced production levels and focused on other markets. However, a lot of people still own large collections of CDs, DVDs and Blu-ray discs which need something to access the media. Moreover, Blu-ray and Ultra HD Blu-ray formats still offer the highest quality 1080p and 4K movies due to massive bitrates that streaming or digital download services do not offer, due to network restrictions for most. As a result, while demand for ODDs, in general, is not high, it exists and there are people willing to pay for such drives.

From SilverStone’s point of view, these are people who buy its SFF PC cases, SFX PSUs and coolers for home theater PCs and then go to other suppliers for optical drives. From a business perspective, it makes a lot of sense for SilverStone to offer its customers premium ODDs in addition to what it already sells them.

However, there is a problem. While SilverStone makes various products in-house, producing optical drives is not what it does and sourcing lasers, motors and other ODD components is sometimes tricky in a world where only a few companies produce them. Therefore, SilverStone had to find an OEM to manufacture the hardware.

Apparently, there are only two companies on the planet that make 9.5-mm Blu-ray/BDXL burners: one is LG and another is Panasonic. The latter is the maker of the TOB03 and this is something that SilverStone does not seem to hide: the official photos of the drive clearly reflect that this is indeed the Panasonic/Matshita UJ272. The drive has been around for a while, but given the relatively slow evolution of ODDs in general, this is hardly a problem. Moreover, when it comes to availability of ultra-slim BD/BDXL burners, the more the merrier as right now their choice and supply are very limited. SilverStone’s offering does not expand the former, but it clearly boosts the supply by making the drive available from the company’s usual channels.

The SilverStone TOB03 (aka Panasonic UJ272) uses the SATA 3.0 interface (with a Slimline SATA connector) and can read and record CD (CD, CD-R, CD-RW, HS-RW, US-RW), DVD (DVD, DVD±R, DVD±R DL, DVD±RW, DVD-RAM) and Blu-ray (BD, BD-R SL/DL/TL/QL, BD-RE SL/DL/TL) discs. The drive has a 2 MB buffer underrun protection (which is lower compared to other high-end ODDs) and supports 6x CAV burning speed for popular BD-R SL/DL (25 GB/50 GB) media as well as 4x PCAV burning speed for BR-R TL/QL (100 GB/128 GB) discs. As for supported Blu-ray formats, both SilverStone and Panasonic declare Blu-ray and Blu-ray 3D, but not UHD Blu-ray (at least for now). Since SilverStone’s TOB03 comes in retail packaging only, the ODD always comes with a 12.7 mm bezel to be compatible with cases that support slim drives as well as a slimline SATA adapter featuring a flexible braided cable for easier installation (which contrasts to OEM drives from renowned makers that come without any cables in some regions).

SilverStone’s TOB03 ODD burner will be available from the company’s partners in the coming weeks. The company does not disclose anything about pricing, but since Panasonic’s UJ272 is available for $70 to $90 depending on the retailer, expect the TOB03 to be priced in the same ballpark.

Source: AnandTech

The future of archiving

We all know content is king but just as important is the need to prepare, protect and preserve the content through viable and long lasting solutions.

Within the video production industry alone, data-heavy content such as HD, 4K and high frame rate videos are exponentially growing by the day. Subsequently, these newly created assets need to be managed effectively, stored safely, and utilised along with the old assets.

Broadcasters, production companies, and other content holders are not only handling large and growing quantities of daily content, but are also much concerned with digitising the massive VTR assets currently sitting on shelves. As it becomes increasingly possible to effectively manage and rapidly search these materials via shared networks, new potential is discovered for the reuse of such assets.

As data volumes rise, so do storage costs – making it essential to implement storage systems that distinguish between hot (frequently accessed), warm (occasionally accessed), and cold (infrequently accessed) data, and se-lecting the best storage media for each. The main obstacle for content owners is to ensure the ability to preserve, access, and re-use their valuable assets without incurring repeated investment, and huge running costs.

The requirements of long term reliability, the ability to maintain large quantities of data at relatively low costs, and the ability to maintain data integrity in “green environments” with limited environmental controls are essential.

Sony is convinced that optical disc storage fills all of these requirements, and is therefore ideal for warm and cold storage. The new technology, with open and non-proprietary formats, involves the use of multiple bare discs contained within a robust cartridge and a dedicated disc drive unit with an associated software driver able to manipulate the discs individually – providing a seamless read/write capability.

The non-contact read/write technology offers the ability to access data with remarkable speed compared to tape data that necessitates the physical fast-forwarding and rewinding of a tape, 800 metres or more in length, until the location of the required data is reached. Also, it’s never going to jam, tangle or snap.

The fact remains that optical discs are considerably more durable than hard-disk storage systems or magnetic tape based media, with a 100-year shelf life expectancy. The system is highly reliable and optimised for long-term archiving. It also succeeds in keeping down total archiving costs, and has a low environmental footprint. It offers accessibility, high speed, and can be scalable to fit the users’ needs which can begin with small archive stored on a few shelves, and expand into a large library as data accumulates.

Whilst the professional AV media industry has moved steadily from its tape based origins toward file based workflows for acquisition, post-production and distribution, the archive domain continues to remain largely tape-based. An alternative modern day solution, the Optical Disc Archive (ODA), has been created helping organisations achieve safe, long-term storage of video, photos, text, and other important digital assets.

Both LTO magnetic tape and Optical Disc Archive are viable cold storage options. The most common complaint from the user community is the constant need to migrate valuable assets from one form of tape media to the next version upgrade simply to maintain a viable archive. This requirement for copy migration every two generations (approximately five to six years), incurs substantial media and labour costs.

By leveraging the proving optical technologies, and inter-generational compatibility of optical discs, ODA technology can store important data safely, eliminating the need for migration every few years. This eliminates the need for media, hardware and software re-investment, as well as the cost of human resources required to perform copying work, resulting in reduced total cost of ownership.

ODA solutions are also ideal for deep archive, whereas data tape does not provide the assurance or meet the need for very long-term archive requirements. It also provides a second copy broadcast archive solution at a remote site and is suitable for business continuity, disaster recovery, post house and production back-up and, for video, film and stock footage archives or AV national archives. The system can also be used for news and sports clips that need to be near-online and as an on-line browse and proxy clip store.

Recently, Sony unveiled the second generation of its Optical Disc Archive System, which doubles the capacity of a single cartridge, and doubling read/write speeds over the previous generation, accommodating 4K video in real time, and maintains backwards read compatibility with first generation optical disc drives.

Optical disc archive can serve as the core of highly productive archive systems capable of managing and storing valuable, high-volume data—including 4K video, future-generation video, older video assets, and multimedia video content.

The technology is future proof and achieves a revolutionary jump in the world of data storage ideal for any circumstance.

Now and in future, this system delivers an efficient, secure, and reliable archive solution. Unlike data tape technology, where you have to migrate your content or you can’t access it as your technology moves on, the Optical Disc Archive media written today, will be readable by the drives of tomorrow.

Bottom line is with the current region pre-dominantly tape based, it is now time to transition towards the future. Optical disc archiving is the way forward – it is a solution that is long term, economical, and ultimately scala-ble to grow with your business.

Written by Nabil El Madbak

Source: ScreenAfrica

When buying Professional Optical Media, pay attention to these points

Choosing the right product is always challenging. With all this competition on international markets, we may find a wide variety of options on the shelves out there: it is always about choices we make. But what defines our choice: is it price, quality, logo, recommendations of friends? Normally it is a combination of many factors that define our choice.

Choices that consumers make are driven by different types of triggers, but when you are purchasing something very specific and technical, it is necessary to be rational, as your choice can actually influence many things in future. It is very true for the market we operate in – data storage and informational security.

Choosing the right optical media may also be challenging, as there are so many manufacturers and everyone claims superior quality and longevity, however not all of them are transparent and honest in what they actually communicate in their promotional messages.

Here are some points worth paying attention to, when choosing the right optical media:

Raw material: Quality comes from Quality!

Reliable sourcing of high-quality raw materials is the fundamental element to manufacture quality products.

FTI uses the best Polycarbonate, internally develops our high-grade dye and utilizes the best material for its Optical Media recording layers such as Silver, Gold and Platinum in order to minimize batch-to-batch variation and reliable definition and selection of archival grade discs.

Lifetime Claims: Check the source!

Some manufacturers claim product durability that lasts for years, even hundreds of years, but do not explain how they came up with their figures or back up their claims.

FTI Archival grade Optical discs have estimated archival lifetimes exceeding 100 years or even 300 years. These lifetime estimations are obtained using recognize and verifiable Industry storage tests so called accelerated lifetime tests. Mathematical models such as the Arrhenius model 1.1 or the Eyring model 1.2 extrapolates the lifetimes observed at high storage temperatures into expected lifetimes at room temperature and enable predictions of how many years the recorded data can safely be recovered when the discs are stored at normal room or office temperatures.

Dye and Recording Layer Resistance: The Best for Less!

The metal layer(s) used must be corrosion resistant to offer robustness against minor included defects over the lifetime of the disc. Gold reflecting layers offer this robustness at an increase in cost over silver.

FalconMedia Archival grade Platinum-alloy solution is the latest development in archival grade optical discs to offer robustness while maintaining the cost advantages of optical disc storage by producing media with all the benefits of Gold media but at a more competitive price.

Quality Control Production Process: History doesn’t lie!

Finally, select a manufacturing Company that has consistently proven to supply reliable quality products. This is the best guarantee that quality control, product grading, process control and product stability are handled in a professional quality-conscious way that ensures every shipment and every disc meets the archival grade requirements.

We pride ourselves on our dedicated technical support and high-quality Control provided to our customers. FalconMedia is such a product from such a Company. FalconMedia is the perfect solution if you want to be assured your data will be retrievable and usable in the years, decades and centuries to come.

Printable Options: Consistency!

All FTI printable layers, regardless of product, adhere to FTI’s internal quality standards to ensure a consistently high-quality product regardless of product line. Our internal testing has demonstrated the following features compared to competitors:

Superior sustainability of printable layers before and after testing
Improved water resistance of the disc
Greater durability due to excellent bonding with substrate
Better results for ink drying

Guarantees: Be Covered!

The Company warrants that the Goods will be free from material defects under normal conditions of use and when used in conjunction with the appropriate equipment.

Customers can return to FTI, within 6 months of receipt of a shipment, products which are alleged to be defective or which do not comply with the order.

Security: No Forgeries Allowed!

In the security Law enforcement and legal world, security is key.

Make sure that your Optical Media is traceable and has a unique number to avoid forgeries and unauthorized copies.

FTI discs have a unique serial number and are 100% traceable!

Falcon Technologies International LLC is continuously performing benchmark and quality control tests under extreme conditions to ensure consistent batch to batch quality and product longevity.

Tests versus competitors have shown that FTI products:

Show up to 25% better results in accelerated aging test in comparison to any other analog products
Perform extremely well compared to notable competitors in standard industry measurements such as Tracking Errors (41% less errors) and Focus Errors (37% errors)
Show an error rate 50% lower compared to notable competitors after 250 hours of extreme environment conditions tests (PISum8)
Have excellent cross-compatibility with the major disc drive manufacturers including Pioneer, TEAC, Asus, Samsung and LG.
The sustainability of FTI discs and printable layers is superior to competitors before and after testing, with a lower possibility of disc failure based on internal comparison tests.
Show minimal disc-to-disc variation on key mechanical deviation measurements (vertical / radial / tangential deviations).

FTI Partners: River Pro Audio

At Falcon Technologies International we firmly believe in lasting and mutually beneficial partnerships. During the last decade we have managed to establish a number of such relationships, resulting in strategic market partnerships on the global scale.

One such partnership that has helped us to gain a significant market share in Europe is with UK-based company River Pro Audio.

River Pro Audio have always prided themselves on the quality, consistency and innovation of the products they stock and services they deliver. Naturally, championing a manufacturer who shares those ideals (and delivers on them!) was an easy decision to make.

As the official distributor for Falcon Media in Europe and the largest stockist, we have in partnership achieved a huge amount of conversions and, the bottom line, a huge amount of happy customers.

This partnership couldn’t have come at a better time; with Taiyo-Yuden bowing out of the optical industry, many European clients were in-between brands, with nowhere to turn to for high quality, reliable media. This push towards Falcon Media was a dramatic success and has secured their position in Europe as a high-end supplier of optical media.

As well as optical discs, River Pro Audio also manufactures and stocks a full range of casing. Well recognised in Europe under the ‘River’ range, these cases are made to the highest standards. Using nothing but virgin prime resin and high-end Japanese moulds, these cases are meticulously quality controlled to ensure they’re the best in the world.

By working in partnership with all major manufacturers of publishing equipment, as well as all employees being trained to an exceptionally high standard in their use and repair, River Pro Audio can also supply equipment and consumables at the lowest prices – as well as offering support and recommendations for your equipment and workflow.

It doesn’t stop here; River Pro Audio and their staff are constantly striving for improvement and will go above and beyond to assist your business or projects. For anything media related in Europe, whether that’s high quality Falcon Media, high quality casing and publishing consumables or equipment, they’re certainly the place to go.

For industry leading advice, or supply in Europe, feel free to contact your River Pro Audio Falcon representatives (Robert Butler-Ellis or Sampson Monger) on:

sales@riverproaudio.co.uk

+44 208 311 7077

From floppy disks to deep freeze: what’s the best way to store data?

A New York-based team of volunteer archivists and preservationists are working to transfer old VHS videotapes into digital formats. Volunteers meet weekly in a Tribeca loft filled with “racks of tape decks, oscilloscopes, vectorscopes and waveform monitors” to painstakingly digitize cassettes from the 1980s and 1990s. As they note, transferring video isn’t plug-and-go; much tweaking and troubleshooting can be required to get it right. That’s why they’ve only managed to transfer 155 tapes so far – a very small percentage of the total analog format archive.

The group partners with artists, activists, and individuals to lower the barriers to preserving at-risk audiovisual media – especially unseen, unheard, or archived works.

Whatever the content, once it’s digitized, it becomes publicly available via the Internet Archive.

And what about your own tapes? There are plenty of paid services that will help you to digitize old videotapes – or you can do it yourself using directions from open sources. And if you still have a big dusty box of your home video tapes stored somewhere deep in the closet, it may be a good idea to transfer their contents on the new storage mediums. In fact, we have already discussed that in one of our previous articles.

Tape manufacturers predicted 20 to 30 years of life expectancy, but media lifespan depends greatly on environmental conditions. Format obsolescence contributes to the crisis: Umatic and VHS tapes are no longer manufactured and BetaSP will soon be discontinued. Machines to play these formats are becoming more scarce as are the skills to maintain and repair them.

Of course, it’s not only the videotape that’s at risk. Entropy is relentless, and anything recorded on the old storage mediums will eventually have to be transferred and digitalized. Even if the medium remains intact, formats and interfaces become obsolete and disappear. Preserving data for the long term is a discipline worth more attention than we can give it here, but a few tips might be helpful.

Lifespan comparison of different backup storage media

Keep track of how long media is likely to last – but remember that the statistics are controversial projections, and many won’t be so precise. The general consensus is that consumer segment CD-Rs should last 30 to 50 years, DVD-Rs less than that, and CD-RWs and DVD-RWs even less. Similarly, tapes and hard disks can be expected to be readable for 10 to 30 years, while portable disks, USB thumb drives, and other solid-state storage devices may survive for half that time, maybe.

Back in 2005, The New York Times reported that 3.5” floppies have “an estimated life span of 10 years if stored in a cool, dry place with average care and use”. If you’ve still got any, we’ll bet they’re older than that!

With this in mind, regularly copy data to new media, especially if it’s approaching its expiration date. And make sure anything you haven’t saved is “in a cool, dry place,” not your attic or garage. It is strongly recommended to use a specialized archival optical media, like FalconMedia Century Archival, which are able to secure your data for up to 500 years.

Move away from physical formats that are becoming obsolete. For example, many people who used to back up their data on Zip drives, Syquest cartridges, and 1.44MB floppy drives no longer have access to these. Even interfaces can be an issue: external devices often used serial or parallel ports that no longer ship standard on computers (though desktop PC and ExpressCard laptop adapters can still be found). Make sure you’ve migrated your data before you dispose of an old device or format.

A common related issue: data trapped on a working hard disk in a dead PC or laptop. The Guardian serves up some useful guidance on installing the drive in an external USB enclosure and restoring from there.

Migrate data from obsolete programs, or at least make sure you have the tools to do so when necessary. Millions of people still have content trapped in ancient word processing. Tools for viewing such data or move it into “living” software include Quick View Plus and FastLook; for some formats, the free LibreOffice productivity suite or XNView image viewer might be all you need.

TechRepublic offers some useful high-level advice on planning a long-term strategy for protecting your data here.

All this is great as far as it goes, but as the amount of data we’re generating continues to soar, we’re likely to need some radically new. Here are some technologies that may potentially improve data storage in near future:

Analog micro-etching: The Long Now Foundation – which specializes in trying to envision the long-term future and solve the problems it might present – ran a full conference on super-long-term data storage. The solution it found promising enough to test: analog micro-etching onto nickel disks. Eight years later, they had a prototype: a disk containing information in about 1,500 human languages, plus translations of the Book of Genesis in each. Since the information is analog, it’s readable directly by humans (though they will need a microscope).

The Arctic World Archive: Officially opened on March 27 in Norway’s Svalbard Arctic region, the for-profit Arctic World Archive is already housing key documents from Brazil, Mexico, and Norway — safe, theoretically, from natural disaster and warfare. According to a report in The Verge, data is actually imprinted on special film, in huge high-density greyscale QR codes – and the archive is completely disconnected from the Internet to protect against hackers and ransomware.

DNA: According to Science Magazine, researchers have been making breathtaking progress since the first attempts to store data in DNA molecules back in 2012. DNA is ultracompact, and it can last hundreds of thousands of years if kept in a cool, dry place. And as long as human societies are reading and writing DNA, they will be able to decode it – not something you can say with confidence about videocassettes or QR codes.

Source: Naked Security

How smartphones became our personal portable data banks

During last couple of decades, it is stating the obvious to say that mobile telecommunications has entirely changed the world we live in. Over this period we have gradually switched from handwritten paper contact notebooks to electronic contact records in our mobile phones, however it is not only the phone numbers we store in our phones anymore: with the development of smartphones, they became or own personal data banks.

Alongside the contacts, our small electronic friends now store so much data (passwords, photos, music, sometimes even medical records and biometric parameters etc.) that losing our device would most likely be a total disaster for one’s day-to-day routine. Some people even don’t remember their passwords from social media accounts, because their phones keep them securely stored in their memory.

Loss of that sensitive data may be a problem, but it is transfer to another device is even more problematic.

Everyone has, least once in their life, switched from one mobile phone to another. Back in 2000’s it wasn’t such a big deal: you switched the SIM card and all your data is easily transferred to the new phone. Those were the good old days when the contacts were stored on the SIM card and there was no hassle with gigabytes of photos and music. These earlier phones pretty much were meant to ring and exchange texts back then: no cameras, no players, not even mentioning the mobile internet.

It was later in 2006-2007, when the smartphone market started to emerge, the problem of data transfer between two devices became bigger when different mobile operating systems decided to develop in completely different directions.

By the beginning of 2010’s it became obvious that data transfer between Android and iOS devices became so difficult and time consuming, that leading developers could not ignore consumers’ complaints anymore, and a revolutionary step was taken.

As one of the market leaders and most innovative consumer electronics companies, Apple made iPhone owners’ life easier, by launching of the “Move to iOS” app that provided an easy way to move contacts and other data from an Android phone to an iPhone.

Google, as Apple’s biggest rivals on mobile operating systems market, developed similar technology in their own mobile device, called Pixel. They even included a dedicated adapter to make data transfer procedure easier.

According to Google, the new Pixel phones ship with a dedicated Switch capability that allows users to transfer contacts, calendar events, photos, videos, music, SMS messages, iMessages and more from one device to the other. Quick Switch Adapter technology is a dedicated On the Go adapter that is shipped within the Pixel box, which Google confirms within its Pixel specs.

Google describes the switch as a three-step process. Older phones have to run on Android 5.0 and up, or iOS 8 and above for iPhones.

If data has to be transferred from an older Android phone, the process is relatively simple. For iPhone users, they turn off iMessage and FaceTime, then remove the SIM card. Then it is required to sign into your Google Account from the Pixel. Finally, Google will ask the user to select what data needs to be imported.

Once that’s all decided, Google takes over and migrates the requested data. It’s as simple as that.

These developments are a great example of how consumers benefit from a healthy market competition and innovative thinking about how to secure personal data that smartphones carry nowadays. Anyone who is somehow related to IT industry will tell you: ALWAYS do backups of your data. No matter how secure you think all the cloud technology systems and personal hard drives are, just remember one thing: once data is lost – it is lost forever.

Therefore, as a conclusion to this article, we at Falcon Technologies International strongly recommend to use dedicated archival optical media solutions to store all the sensitive and valuable data, that you would like to keep secure for a long time. It doesn’t take too much time to burn couple of DVDs, but it will ensure that your data is insured.

The shiny, plastic memory of the compact disc: when the new format was introduced.

Many people still remember the time when we had to listen to the favorite music from the cassette tapes, or, if you are old enough, even the vinyl records. The least ones seem to gradually come back into our houses, with the introduction of the latest re-invented record players, and there are even some signs of the cassette tape revival that are periodically observed here and there.

But what about the CDs? We kind of heard that they recently migrated from the consumer market to some niche industries like data archiving and medical IT, however there are still some implications of that media on the mass market as well (gaming consoles are still mostly operate on optical discs, as well as offline media distribution).

Anyway, when observing the revival of the media storage formats that preceded CDs and DVDs, one may logically presume that same phase will come one day and for the optical discs. Many people still use optical media for things like music playback, as many claim that sound quality of the studio recorded disc can’t be beaten by anything else.

Saskatoon based writer, editor and columnist with the StarPhoenix and related publications, Cam Fuller still remembers the days when the optical disc started its small industrial revolution, that eventually changed the way we listen to the music and watch the movies. Here are his memories, that reflect those days:

The miracle of the compact disc is not forgotten by me.

I remember when they first came out. They were impossibly cool. There was no hiss and pop when you put one on, unlike vinyl records. I remember an audiophile magazine article from way back then. The writer was caught off guard after pressing play — with no background noise before the music started, it was like nothing was working at all. You had to trust the song would start eventually and avoid cranking your speakers to full volume on speculation. Many woofers were melted by impatient audio fools, I suspect.

CDs were small and shiny and oh-so modern. Amazingly, they could hold 75 minutes of music, way more than an LP. And you could play them in a car. If you listened to Tom Cochrane’s Life is a Highway on CD when you were literally on the highway, life was just about as good as it could possibly get.

Because of my job, it felt like I had an even closer relationship with CDs than most people. Working in the Entertainment Department put me on the publicity list of every major record label. Since they wanted attention for their bands, they’d send CDs. Lots of CDs. CDs for bands I was doing stories on. CDs for bands I wasn’t. Compilations, movie soundtracks, you name it.

In fact, the three main labels had representatives who’d phone and pop by with boxes of them.

Was I spoiled? Was I ever. Unless it was for somebody else’s Christmas present, I rarely bought a CD, and when I did it was a jolt of reality. “Twenty-three bucks? What a rip.”

This was free music before free music, a golden age before downloading changed everything. My entire music collection consisted of 50 LPs and 25 cassettes. We’re talking 600 songs. Then one day I was drowning in music. “What is Third Eye Blind? I’ll have to give it a whirl. Ooh, the new Aerosmith album!” Having access to all that music was like being able to make it rain when you needed rain. A god-like power.

And then something happened. Twenty-five years went by. The novelty wore off, to say the least. Digital music took over. And I’m left, on my shelves, with a gallery of the obscure. Kashtin, the soundtrack from the movie The Perez Family, The String Cheese Incident, Woman and Songs 6, The World’s Very Best Opera for Kids. It’s nothing if not diverse.

None of these, by the way, have I listened to in the past 20 years. It wouldn’t feel right selling them but I doubt there’s a market anyway. I can’t in good conscience take them to the landfill. They’re no good for floor tile. I suppose I could wait until they’re cool again — it happened for LPs. And I just read that The String Cheese Incident has a new album. I’m so out of it, I’m cutting-edge.

Source: Saskatoon StarPhoenix

Exploring the History of Archiving: Exhibit Examines the Evolution of Technology Used to Record Memories

Before we typed on PCs, touched smartphone screens and wrote on paper, people in the past carved into rocks and clay or wrote on trees and even animal bones.

It’s the instinct to record that perhaps set us apart from other species.

It also is through documentation that our memories can expand beyond what our brains can remember and that we can pass down memories to the next generations.

The newly-opened Memory Museum within the National Library of Korea in Seoul, South Korea, sheds light on how documentation evolved throughout history. From pre-historic rock art to Egyptian papyrus; from woodblock to modern printing; from a typewriter to a PC, humans have managed to find a better way to record and store memories and data.

Upon entering the exhibition hall, located within the institution’s digital library building, visitors see a media art piece featuring a human face and a book.

Renowned media artist Lee Lee Nam created the piece to celebrate the opening of the museum. Titled “Face Within a Book,” it features LED lights on metal slates and the lights create five different imageries that represent humans’ creativity and imaginativeness.

It represents that humans are destined to archive, and that books and libraries are important for that reason.

About 200 items are on display.

One of the highlights from the first section of the exhibition, titled “Archival Media, Awakening Civilization,” is the Great Dharani Sutra of Immaculate and Pure Light (Mugujeonggwang Daedaranigyeong), printed in the 8th century during the Unified Silla period (668-935) period. The publication is considered the world’s oldest woodblock print, although what is on display at the museum is a copy.

While this section is more about text, the second section expands to scope into how humans archived pictures and sounds. Naturally, items like cameras and films are displayed here. One of the interesting artifacts in this section is the stereoscopic viewer from the 1900. When people gaze at two photos through the viewer, they get a 3-D effect. Lee Kwi-bok, the chief conservator at the library’s preservation and research center said, “the basic logic is the same as the 3-D equipment today,” adding that such devices were brought to Korea by American missionaries.

The last part focuses on digital archiving, showing how PCs and their components have developed. Korea’s first ever personal computer, SE-8001, developed in 1981, is on display, as well as Korea’s first hard disk drive (HDD), donated by Yonsei University, which can store up to 20 megabytes, as well as Korea’s first semiconductor, donated by Samsung Electronics.

There are some interesting programs that visitors can take part in at the end of the exhibition.

They can write a letter using ancient printing tools, like woodblocks and metal movable types, as well as a typewriter. Also if you have any data on older media formats, like VHS, reel-to-reel tape, cassette tapes or LP records, you can take them to the museum, which can convert the data into a more modern format, like digital files, CDs or DVDs.

“Civilization and the culture today exist because of archiving and media,” director Park Joo-hwan said. “Archiving is what transcends time and space and connects the past with the present. And libraries have been part of this process throughout the history.”

Source: Korea JoongAng Daily

Falcon Technologies International LLC shares these universal values of cultural heritage preservation and puts them as a base for the development of archival media production. We firmly believe that without knowing where we come from, there would be no vision of where are we heading to, therefore data preservation for the future generations is essential.

FalconMEDIA Century Archival is a professional grade optical media, that is able to store and preserve data of any kind for hundreds of years, literally meaning that many things around us may change forever, but the information that is stored under the Century Archival’s Gold Protective Layer will be still accessible.

At the Dawn of the Computer Age: Memories of the “Informational Revolution” Pioneers.

Do you remember your very first computer? Pretty much everyone does; most of the people in their mid-30s, early-40s can still remember these noisy big white boxes with huge square screens and clicking dial-up modems that took ages to download a plain-text news article or even a basic e-mail with no attachments. Well, it took almost 40 years for the technology to get to that point, and there are still alive today witnesses to how it all started in the basements of the world famous universities and colleges.

Joyce Wheeler is someone who saw it all in those early days. She also can still remember her very first computer, and one of the reasons for that is because it was one of the first computers anyone used.

Dr. Joyce Wheeler was among the pioneers of programming

It was EDSAC (Electronic Delay Storage Automatic Calculator), a “proto-computer” that was assembled and served scientists at the University of Cambridge back in 1949. Joyce Wheeler was a member of the scientists group who were working on their PhD degree under the supervision of famous astronomer Fred Hoyle. They were researching the reactions inside stars, in particular the star lifecycle stages and their length.

In order to perform the research, Joyce needed some powerful calculating equipment, since the inner workings of the nuclear furnace that keep stars shining is a very complicated problem to solve with use of a human brain, pencil and a piece of paper. Mathematics capable of describing this level of nuclear energy processes is pretty formidable: Joyce remembers that she had to solve a nasty set of differential equations that describe their behavior and composition.

A copy of Edsac is being built at the National Museum of Computing

Completing these calculations manually would almost certainly result in errors, inaccurate data and ultimately could – and probably would – affect the research outcomes. And here is where she met EDSAC – a machine built by Professor Maurice Wilkes, a technical device the size of several average size bedrooms, that was there to do the kind of calculations that Ms. Wheeler needed to be done to complete her advanced degree.

The first challenge for young astrophysics student was to learn the sophisticated language that machine could understand. She was quite familiar with the machine itself, since it was showcased to her prior the start of her degree course in 1954. Being keen to get her research done accurately, Joyce sat down with an instructions booklet and worked her way through dozens of the programming exercises from that pioneering programming manual. That little book was called WWG (after the names of the authors: Maurice Wilkes, David Wheeler and Stanley Gill).

The foundations of programming were laid down by Edsac's creators — The foundations of programming were laid down by Edsac’s creators

While learning the programming, Joyce (whose family name was Blacker at that time) got talking to David Wheeler, since one of her programs was helping to ensure that EDSAC was working well. They eventually got to know each other, fell in love and married in 1957.

Joyce remembers that exciting time in detail: she could not stop wondering what the machine could do for her work. She was able to study the programming quite fast due to her strong mathematical background: she became very quickly able to master the syntax into which she had to translate the endless complex equations.

At certain point of time she realized that programming is very similar to Maths in the sense that one can’t do it for too long.

“I found I could not work at a certain programming job for more than a certain number of hours per day,” Joyce Wheeler remembers. “After that you would not make much progress.”

Research students like Joyce Wheeler had to use Edsac at night

Sometimes the solution to some programming problems that worried her from time to time would come into her mind while she was doing some other things outside of the computer lab: like doing the laundry or having lunch.

“Sometimes it’s better to leave something alone, to pause, and that’s very true of programming.”

When the programming bit was finally done, Joyce Wheeler was allocated a timeslot to run her programs on the EDSAC: it was Friday night. She remembers that this period was perfect for her: there were no lectures the next day she had to attend.

As an operator she was granted the right to run the EDSAC alone, but she had to make sure that everything she did was recorded. A quite common occurence for all the early computers (and EDSAC was no exception) was unexpected crashes. Joyce remembers that only occasionally she was lucky enough to keep machine running all night, and if it did crash, there was little she was allowed to do to try to fix it. Even the cleaners were not allowed to get near EDSAC.

Dr. Wheeler showed Joyce one procedure, that allowed the recalibration of the EDSAC’s two kilobyte memory, but if that did not help, Joyce had no other choice but to stop her work for the night. But despite the regular crashes, she made steady progress on finding out how long different stars would last before they collapsed.

“I got some estimates of a star’s age, how long it was going to last,” she said. “One of the nice things was that with programming you could repeat it. Iterate. You could not do that with a hand calculation. We could add in sample numbers on programs and it could easily check them. I could check my results on the machine very rapidly, which was very useful.”

Now, you should understand that “rapidly” back in the 1950’s meant “not more than 30 minutes”. This is the time that EDSAC required to run a program. After that the results were printed out for the researcher to analyze them. After that you had to re-program and wait another couple of days to run another round of complex calculations. Despite all these delays, Ms. Wheeler felt that she was a part of something that would change the world.

“We were doing work that could not done in any other way,” she said. And even though EDSAC was crude and painfully slow by modern standards, she saw that a revolution had begun.

We at FTI never fail to get inspired by pioneering scientists like Dr. Wheeler, with their single-minded dedication and commitment to innovating new solutions to existing problems, often in lonely circumstances and running against the tide of conventional thinking, driving them to expand the frontiers of discovery and learning in ways that eventually become implemented into normal life for the entire global population. Innovation, research and patience are some of the core values we cherish at FTI, and no-one demonstrated these better than Dr Joyce Wheeler.