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Not even a month ago, Pioneer had announced that they had developed a 16 layer disk with 400 gigabytes of data storage. Totally amazing, right? Well, apparently those engineers at Pioneer don’t like to sit on their haunches, because they’ve just announced the development of a 500GB disk that includes extra encoding layers (I’ve read it has anywhere from four to nine extra).  I’m not even sure what I’d DO with all that space on one disk.

Although details haven’t really been given about the development of the new disk, we can probably logically theorize that they followed the same process as it’s predecessor.  With the 400GB disk, data transmission issues were minimized by lowering the amount of crosstalk and hiking high-precision signal transmissions from each respective layer.

Both of the disks will work with Blu-ray players, though Pioneer is quick to stress that their strides in these ultra-high capacity disks will see more of an impact on the industry as file formats grow past the current limitations of the Blu-ray technology used today. Don’t look to run out to your local Wal-Mart or Staples to pick one of these puppies up today though, reports show that since they are still technically in the prototype stage, they aren’t available to the general public at this time, and won’t be for the next two to four years.

Via [ubergizmo]

Over the years that Adobe Photoshop has had to mature into a professional product, it has gained impressive features with each new release.  The release of Photoshop CS3 is no exception.  Before I get into the details of the software, I must disclaim – I tested it on a Dell laptop with 1GB of RAM, and an 1.86 Ghz Intel Pentium M processor.  Any issues with performance that I mention may very well be due to my PC, and not the software itself.  Now that I got that out of my system, lets get the show on the road.

Panels

With the release of CS3 comes many user interface enhancements.  One of the most frequently used ones are the new Panels.  Similar to previous versions of Photoshop, Panels are the tool boxes on your screen that hold the most frequently used options and styles – such as Layers, Paths, Swatches, and Channels. 

The improvement of these tools not only is due to the content in the Panels, but also how you manage their appearance in your “workspace”.  Similar to the older Macromedia products such as Dreamweaver, you can now click the arrows in the top right of the Panel to make them minimize.  This is extremely helpful for those of us that do not have gigantic monitors, and need to get those Panels out of the way so we can work with an image.  Here are a few screenshots of the different ways you can view your Panels:

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