The hybrid hard disk drive market is expected to reach 600 million units in 2016, according to market researcher Objective Analysis. This would mean an explosion of mainstream drives that integrate the performance-boosting benefits of flash memory.

The first generation of hybrid drive technology was “well conceived but poorly implemented,” according to a report released on Monday by Objective Analysis. “Now that working versions have been implemented the hybrid drive promises to sweep the PC hard drive market.”

“We expect the hybrid drive market to nearly double every year for the five years following its initial adoption, reaching 600 million units by 2016,” said analyst Jim Handy, who authored the report, in a statement. “This blazing growth will result from hybrid drives replacing standard HDDs in mainstream PCs.”

Hybrid drives, in their current form, add a small amount of flash memory to a traditional spinning HDD. But this pinch of flash can deliver a big boost to performance on certain tasks at relatively little extra cost, as CNET Reviews demonstrated with the 500GB Seagate Momentus XT and as other reviews of the Seagate drive have shown.

“The NAND [flash memory] in these hybrid drives will be pretty small. Seagate’s Momentus XT does a really good job with only 4GB of flash, and Nvelo’s Dataplex software accelerates HDDs very well with only 16GB of NAND,” said Handy, responding to an e-mail query.

Handy continued. “We expect the hybrid drives released in 2010 and 2011 to be introduced around the 4GB level, but over the forecast period, the amount of flash per drive should ramp to an average of 16GB.”

The upside for consumers is that they’re not as expensive as flash-only solid-state drives, which can add hundreds of dollars to the price of a traditional HDD. “A 4GB NAND–using SLC [single-level cell] NAND flash, which is required in this application–should add about $20 to the manufacturing cost of an HDD today, which might translate to an added $30 to 40 to the end user.”

He continued. “A lot of consumers would be perfectly happy to spend an extra $30 to 40 to get the performance of an SSD and the capacity of an HDD. So far they have not been happy to spend an extra $200 to 500 to get an SSD that’s smaller than an HDD.”

In the case of Apple’s just-announced MacBook Air, for example, adding just 128GB of flash storage to the base configuration increases the price of the 13-inch model from $1,299 to $1,599. And choosing a 256GB solid-state drive over a 500GB hard disk on a 15-inch MacBook Pro adds a whopping $650 to the price.

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SAN FRANCISCO–Aiming to bolster its hosted software for businesses, Microsoft announced today that it is adding Web-based versions of Office to its collection of hosted software for business. The company will also offer traditional Office as a subscription-based service. As expected, the company also rebranded the product.

What once went by the mouthful Business Productivity Online Suite will now be known as Office 365, Microsoft announced at an event at the St. Regis Hotel here. The St. Regis is owned by Starwood hotel chain, one of Microsoft’s early customers for its hosted online services.

Newly minted Office unit President Kurt del Bene said that the shift to the cloud is as big a change for computing as the move to a graphical user interface a generation ago. Del Bene noted that Microsoft developed Office 2010, which was released earlier this year, with the goal of having products that could be used both online and as traditional software.

The move is a huge bet for Microsoft. Office, along with Windows, is one of the two big profit centers for the company. Offering it as a subscription has the potential to make the company’s total sales larger and more predictable, but also runs the risk of cutting into profits.

For very small businesses, Microsoft is pricing the service as low as $6 per user per month, though that version includes only the Web-based versions of Office. The company is starting a limited beta with a few thousand customers now, with the service planned to be broadly available next year, and it also plans to migrate its service for universities–Live@edu–to a version of Office 365 for education.

Larger businesses will have a range of options, ranging from $2 per month for hosted e-mail only to $27 per user per month for the most full-featured Office which includes the full Office Pro Plus desktop suite in addition to Sharepoint, Exchange, communications server tools and the online versions of Word, Excel, PowerPoint, among other tools.

“We think one size does not fit all,” said Senior Vice President Chris Capossela.

As for adding the Web-based versions of Office to the mix, he said that the move will bolster an already strong set of online services for businesses.

“We’ve had remarkable success and remarkable adoption,” Del Bene said.

Unsaid, but clearly in Microsoft’s sights, is competing more aggressively with Google Apps, which offers its own set of cloud-based productivity tools for businesses.

Google offers its hosted Google Docs and Gmail for free to consumers, and many small businesses use the free services. Google also sells a business version, known as Google Apps, for $50 per user per year.

Capossela noted that the shift from selling software to running services allows Microsoft to make more absolute profit and revenue.

‘”We’re actually running a company’s infrastructure,” he said.

The Houston Building Owners and Management Association came together this week for the BOMA Golf Classic.  Percento Technologies was a proud sponsor of this event, offering sun screen, tee bags, and Romea and Julieta Cigars (along with complimentary Percento branded cigar cutter and lighter).

The weather was perfect and the day was successful for great golf and strengthening buisness relationships and forming new business relationships.

Percento Technologies

Apple’s iPad will be available in more than 2,000 Verizon Wireless stores starting October 28, the companies announced today.

Verizon will offer three bundles with an iPad Wi-Fi model, along with the company’s MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot, a small device that provides access to Verizon’s 3G network. When away from Wi-Fi, iPad owners will need to connect to the MiFi 2200 from the iPad. Verizon said the MiFi’s “cloud” allows it to provide Web access through the company’s 3G network to up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices at the same time.

The first bundle will include the 16GB iPad Wi-Fi and the mobile hot spot for $630. The 32GB Wi-Fi model and hot spot will retail for $730. Finally, Verizon will be selling the 64GB Wi-Fi iPad with the hot spot for $830. The company will also offer all three iPad Wi-Fi models without the hot spot. Verizon didn’t specify prices, but Apple sells those models for $499, $599, and $699, respectively.

Verizon’s decision to not sell Apple’s 3G models isn’t a surprise. The iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G connects to AT&T’s network, making it a nonstarter for Verizon.

Those who plan to buy the iPad bundle featuring Verizon’s MiFi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot will need to pay a monthly fee for access. Verizon said it will charge $20 per month for 1GB of data, with no contract required.

AT&T isn’t allowing only Verizon to get in on all the fun. AT&T also announced today that it will start selling the three versions of Apple’s iPad with Wi-Fi and 3G starting on October 28. It will charge $629, $729, and $829 for the 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models, respectively.

AT&T offers two data plans: $15 per month for 250MB of data or $25 per month for 2GB of data.

According to Apple, Verizon customers will be able to use the iPad just as they do now, including access to the 280,000 applications in Apple’s App Store.

Apple and Verizon’s partnership could be sign of more to come from the companies. Speculation has long run rampant over when, not if, Verizon will get the iPhone. This new partnership will undoubtedly lend even more credence to rumors that Apple will bring its iPhone to Verizon stores in the relatively near future.

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Gitex Technology Week, the annual global showcase of cutting-edge products and services of the Information and communications technology industry, is set to lure leading world players vying for a share of the region’s huge IT spending now growing at 12 per cent.

This year’s edition, marking the 30^th anniversary of the show, will open on Sunday amid bullish forecasts that investment in the region’s IT industry is on course to reach $213 billion by the end of 2010.

The annual technology spectacle, which connects more than 133,000 industry professionals from 135 countries with more than 3,500 suppliers, has become one of the most influential and powerful events in the global ICT sector today, said Helal Saeed Almarri, Chief Executive Officer of the Dubai World Trade Centre, the organiser of the event.

With 675 new companies taking part for the first time in this year’s edition, the exhibition is making more of an impact than ever, he said at a Press conference on Tuesday.

The exhibition assumes greater significance was IT spending in Middle East and Africa is set to grow 12 per cent throughout 2010 compared to just three per cent globally.

“In the last 30 years, Gitex Technology Week has been the driving force behind the region’s ICT growth and transformation, making lasting contributions in shaping the technology landscape of the Middle East, Africa and Asia. With the ongoing support and commitment from our partners in the industry, the event has played an instrumental role in promoting innovation and entrepreneurship,” said Almarri.

“As we pursue increased creativity and development to keep pace with the unwavering progression of information technology, we will continue to intensify our efforts to serve as a transformational catalyst in this fast moving sector,” he said.

The progress achieved by the Middle East IT industry has been rapid, and along with Gitex, other industry leaders are also marking milestones this year, he said.

The growth in IT investment in the region is driven by some of the cornerstones of the region’s ICT industry and Gitex key players such as du, Dubai eGovernment, etisalat, HP, Microsoft, Oracle, Panasonic and the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority,                said Almarri.

Launched in 1981 under the name Gulf Computer Exhibition, with just 46 exhibitors and 3,000 visitors covering 820 square metres, Gitex has grown by over 93 times in scale, with 76 times the number of exhibiting companies and 44 times the number of business visitors in the current edition, Almarri said.

The public sector is also making enormous investments in ICT and as part of its commitment to complete online services, Dubai e–Government is expanding its presence at Gitex by three and a half times over last year in this anniversary edition. This year’s event welcomes over 65 participating countries with several new entrants, including Afghanistan, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Iraq and Ukraine. Also making their debut at the show are Amazon, CA, Garmin-Asus, Huawei, MEEZA, Nokia, Rackspace and Schneider Electric.

The show is open to trade visitors and industry professionals only from 1pm-7pm on Sunday, October 17, and from 10am-7pm from Monday, October 18 to Wednesday,  October 20, at the Dubai International Convention and Exhibition Centre. On Thursday, October 21, the show will open at 10am and close at 5pm. Tickets cost Dh60 per day or Dh120 for a five-day pass.

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Information Technology Services and Support

The big news from Facebook today: an overhauled version of Groups. The news I actually care about: downloads.

This new feature allows you to “quickly download to your computer everything you’ve ever posted on Facebook and all your correspondences with friends: your messages, Wall posts, photos, status updates and profile information.”

In other words, all those great photos you uploaded to FB and subsequently deleted? Now you can retrieve them. And those clever, pithy status updates you thought were lost to the ages? Stick ‘em in a local archive (i.e. your hard drive).

While it’s a pretty basic function at this point–everything gets crammed into a single Zip file–I’m happy to finally have a way to preserve my various Facebook doings. (Yes, I’m a digital pack-rat. Sue me.)

Don’t be surprised if you don’t have access to downloads just yet (I don’t)–the feature is rolling out over the next several days.

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Yahoo started rolling out several major changes to its search engine last night with the goal of helping people more quickly find and interact with all the information they need in a single place.

Using the search engine’s new “intelligent shortcuts,” you can search for popular movies, celebrities, and other topical items, and Yahoo will deliver the latest articles, photos, videos, event listings, and Twitter tweets on your chosen topic. If Yahoo knows your location, it can also display the closest listings for movies and concerts. The various search results are organized by type all in one spot at the top of the page, letting you easily tab back and forth between photos, videos, tweets, and other areas.

A search for Lady Gaga, for example, conjures up a list of nearby concert appearances, the tracks of her last few albums, and tweets from the lady herself. The search results are also interactive, so you can play sample songs, view videos, and even buy tickets to the next Lady Gaga concert through a Yahoo partner.

If you’re a Netflix subscriber, searching on Yahoo for your favorite movies and TV shows can now access your Netflix account. Clicking on the Netflix QuickApp button next to a movie or TV episode in Yahoo’s search results lets you add that item to your DVD queue or watch it on the spot through Netflix’s instant queue.

Yahoo has also added more visuals to its search results. Photo slideshows will now appear on Yahoo’s main search and Image Search pages for certain topics from its Trending Now list. Image Search can also now grab photos from your own Facebook albums and those of your friends–with your permission, of course. For example, I typed “wedding” in Yahoo Image Search, and it showed me photos from some of my friends’ Facebook wedding albums.

And finally for mobile users, searching at Yahoo’s mobile site on your iPhone or Android device taps into some of the new features. You’ll find news, photos, tweets, and other results on your favorite topics and also get directions to nearby businesses, all on one single mobile page.

Yahoo’s goal behind the updated search is to offer people a more immersive and interactive way of finding things.

“We’re creating a search experience that, instead of merely presenting you with a simple list of results, lets you discover important, relevant information and get things done right after you search,” Shashi Seth, Yahoo’s senior vice president for Search and Marketplaces, wrote in a blog post.

The new features have already started reaching people in the U.S., according to Yahoo, while those in other countries can expect to see them next year.

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Mobile check-in app Foursquare’s Monday outage happened after staff tried to fix one problem and somehow triggered another.

Then another glitch hit Tuesday, just hours after they were up and running again.

“It sucked for everyone (including our team — we all check in everyday, too),” the always irreverant Foursquare staff said in a blog post late Tuesday. “We know how frustrating this was for all of you because many of you told us how much you’ve come to rely on foursquare when you’re out and about. For the 32 of us working here, that’s quite humbling. We’re really sorry.”

The post’s title: “So, that was a bummer.”

Tuesday’s outage was shorter and more spotty.

“[W]e had downtime on Monday and Tuesday, but things should be ok now,” Foursquare support’s Twitter account reported at about 2 a.m. Wednesday.

Monday’s glitch was caused when one of the app’s servers was noticed storing too much data. When the support team went to fix in, all the other servers went down.

The blog said Foursquare is working with the company that makes the system that runs their servers. It also said changes are planned in the coming weeks and that the New York-based startup will communicate problems to users better in the future.

The outage prevented the app’s nearly 3 million users from checking in between about noon ET on Monday and just before midnight.

Launched in 2008, Foursquare is a location-based app that lets users “check in” at clubs, restaurants or most any other place they visit. Checking in alerts that person’s friends to his or her whereabouts. As a social-networking tool, the app is designed to help friends find and socialize with each other.

And its game aspect lets players earn virtual badges for certain accomplishments (visit 10 different movie theaters for the “zoetrope” badge, for instance) and the most frequent visitor to a spot becomes its “mayor.”

As of last month, Foursquare was nearing 3 million users, with more than 15,000 businesses offering special deals to people who check in there, according to its website.

On Monday, Foursquare’s New York-based staff was using various Twitter feeds to update users, sometimes lightheartedly.

“The servers are overloaded but we’re working on it! We will be back up ASAP,” someone wrote on Foursquare’s technical support Twitter feed.

The post was followed by the hashtag #caseofthemondays. Hashtags are ways Twitter users can find other people talking about the same thing or make joking follow-up comments — in this case a reference to the movie “Office Space.”

A later tweet said that Foursquare’s entire engineering team had been called in to handle the problem.

In recent weeks, Foursquare has been updating its app with new features, including the creation of a “to do” list that ratchets up the game-play aspect of it.

Since then, users have reported sporadic trouble checking in, although Monday’s was the longest widespread outage.

The app is facing increasing competition from the social networking giant Facebook, which recently launched a feature called Places that lets its 500 million members “check in” to locations, much as they can on Foursquare.

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Toshiba unveiled two 3D TVs today that work without special glasses.

The Regza 20GL1 is a 20-inch flat-panel display with 1,280×720 resolution. The Regza 12GL1 is a 12-inch flat-panel display with 466×350 resolution. Toshiba unveiled the models to coincide with this week’s Ceatec electronics show near Tokyo.

Toshiba said that its 3D technology, which is currently best-suited for small displays, provides “nine different perspectives of each single 2D frame.” The company added that those perspectives are then “superimposed” by the viewer’s brain “to create a three-dimensional impression of the image.”

The 3D effect is available within a 40-degree area in front of the set, Toshiba said. According to the Associated Press, viewers must also sit two feet from the 12-inch LCD and three feet from the 20-inch LCD to view 3D content.

The new LCDs are “first step into the 3D future in the consumer home cinema market,” Toshiba European marketing chief Sascha Lange said in a statement. “But it will take several years to develop larger 3D TVs without glasses with screen sizes of 40 inches and more at a yet reasonable price point.”

The possibility of viewing 3D content sans glasses is something that many consumers will welcome, though.

Last month, a survey about 3D TVs showed that 30 percent of people don’t like the need to wear special glasses to view 3D content.

Although Toshiba is trying to make its name in the glasses-free arena, the company is already a player in the 3D TV market. It currently sells the WX800 line of 3D TVs. Both the 46- and 55-inch models of the WX800 require glasses.

Toshiba’s 20GL1 and 12GL1, which switch from 3D to 2D mode, are scheduled to be released in Japan later this year. They will retail for about $2,900 and $1,400, respectively. The company has not announced plans for availability outside of Japan.

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