Google Staff Can Get Laundry Done for Them

Google was just named the number one place to work in America, and really, is it any wonder when they have people cleaning employees' apartments and doing laundry?

Between 20 percent time projects, fantastic cafeterias and scooters to get around the building, it's easy to see why the work environment at Google is envied by many. And, if you thought you were green with envy before, how about we turn you into a green-eyed monster with this next one? Google has teamed up with TaskRabbit, an online service that brokers odd jobs in selected major cities around the country, to do employees' chores outside the office. Tasks they'll do range from assembling IKEA furniture, doing your laundry and walking your dog. Having someone do your odd jobs couldn't be easier. You just pick a task and state how much you're willing to pay to have it done. Then, one of TaskRabbits 'runners' accepts the job, and you pay once they're finished. Easy-peasy!
However handy this service may be for individuals, Gawker reports that Google is using it in a whole new way: as a perk for employees. Yes, the search giant is apparently awarding staff TaskRabbit credits. Founder Leah Busque spoke to Gawker and while she didn't go into details (such as how much Google is paying for jobs), she did confirm that they have a partnership with Google to provide staff with this perk and said Google isn't alone in offering this service to employees.
"We are working with other companies to roll out the deal to their employees as well," Busque told Gawker. "The perks are obvious - employees get the extra help they need and some work life balance, while companies get happy and loyal employees that are more focused on their work (without the stresses of the 'little' stuff)."
And I thought I had it good because working from home means I can do laundry at lunch. Guess I'll just have to console myself by napping at lunchtime instead.

Seagate Says Future is Hybrid HDD, Not Pure SSD

Seagate's placing bets that people still want big, capacious HDDs, not just pure SSD speed.

When Steve Jobs debuted the new MacBook Air laptops last week, he said that the new products were what Apple felt were the future of the notebook. Likely he meant that laptops would be shipping with SSD rather than HDD storage.
We love SSDs and we think that they're quite at home inside mobile computing devices, but Seagate doesn't see the industry moving to full solid-state storage.
During a Seagate conference call, CEO Steve Luczo, said that he doesn't see SSDs as being the future. While that sounds funny coming from the leader of a storage company, remember that Seagate isn't heavily invested in SSD technology as some other companies who have feet deep in flash memory.
Luzco also said that he owns a previous-generation MacBook Air with an SSD, but he's frustrated at the lack of storage capacity inside the machine.
Check out the Seeking Alpha transcript for the full call.

Well look, I mean obviously Steve sits in a position that only Steve sits in, in terms of the offering that they provide to their customers and its obviously pretty [compelling]. I would say though that from what we know of the offering for example Apple, the percentage of their units that they sell with SSDs versus HDDs is a tiny fraction. I think it’s under 3%, certainly under 5%. Obviously this isn’t the first product that they’ve had. I have an Air book with an SSD unit that I’ve had for I guess a year and half now. And I think, there are certain things that are certainly very nice about it. And other things that are little bit frustrating and a little bit frustrating parts are the cost and the lack of capacity.
I spend a lot of time cleaning out files so I can make room for not a lot of content to be honest with you. I think are there some users that can operate net environment and be happy, I think the answer is yes but I think as Seagate introduced hybrid drive last quarter, you get basically the features and function of SSD at more like disc drive cost and capacity. And in fact with the additional layer of cashing we believe that, downstream from a product perspective there will be performance advantages to SSD whether or not that has to do with instant on or application load or what a load looks like year or two after you, you have your product versus that day you buy it.
I can tell you that my SSD drive takes about 25, 30 seconds to boot now versus the 12 seconds when I bought it. And that’s just an issue more related to OS than it is specifically to the technology but again with the hybrid there is things that you can do it alleviate that so your boot times are actually as compelling one and two, three and four years down the road.
So I think that’s where mainstream notebook computing is going if that’s what your question is no I don’t, do I think that Apple will be [successful] with that product absolutely, because Apple is successful with all their products. And so it’s a very compelling company and a compelling value proposition within their value chain. But again we just view it as more devices that are computing in eating data and if they’re low capacity on the edge that means they need a lot of storage pipe and down close to the edge and whether not that’s in a mash box or code in the cloud or in a local cloud. Those are all markets that we serve. So the more that people do creative things with computers and devices were all four and Steve certainly at the forefront of that.

I Think this disk have too small SSD capacity...U?