PortableApps.com Unveils 1.0 Format for USB App Developers
For John so loved us all that he gave his PortableApps Format 1.0 release to the world. Having put the finishing touches on a few remaining items that allow for many more programs to share in the portable glory. The 1.0 release is effectively an invitation for developers to tinker with creating portable applications with a friendly wrapper and installer. The specification includes functions that help handle portability features like registry redirects and setting storage locations. The truly hardcore portable applications can run on all windows versions from 98 and up. With the maturity of many Java and .Net applications the bar has been obliged to move. The times, and the relative ubiquitous installation of both .Net frameworks and Java run-times, has called for the inclusion of applications that require those frameworks. Recent work on making the JRE portable has also met with some success.
This expanded base has opened the door and PortableApps.com is welcoming all comers to add their applications to the fun. The same philosophical guidelines remain around GNU and GPL code being required. Commercial development can be accommodated as well with special permission. There are quite a few new applications for grabs on the site thanks to this expanded policy. This is truly great news for those of us checking the site daily for new gems to add to our Swiss Army flash drives.
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WD & NEC Working on USB SCSI Protocol Driver for Future SuperSpeed SSDs
There could be some delay in mass adoption of USB 3.0, largely due to Intel pushing USB 3.0 integration into its southbridge to 2011. That doesn't stop rest of the industry from going after this huge connectivity market. Western Digital and NEC have jointly announced the two are going to push the envelope even further with a USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) driver that they claim to fully leverage the SuperSpeed USB transfer rate while giving a moderate boost for legacy USB 2.0 mass storage devices.
The UASP is a complete MSC back-compatible replacement for current USB Mass Storage class as well as Bulk Only Transfers (BOT). For it to work, UASP must be implemented on both host and device. That's why NEC and WD are collaborating on this. It's logical to believe that when the time is right, WD will debut a USB 3.0 SSD, which is perhaps the only application that needs UASP to flex its muscles. The current fastest USB 3.0 drive to date is LaCie 2Big, hitting 275MB/s when in RAID 0 mode.
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