What I’m Reading

Article by Kevin Lee

PCIe SSDs are getting so big they can almost be mistaken for graphics cards. Take for instance this honking G.Skill Phoenix Blade Series 480GB PCIe SSD. G.Skill boasts its latest over-the-top piece of flash storage will deliver sequential read and write speeds up to 2,000 MB/s.

Of course, when you break down that down to continuous speeds, the 480GB SSD will write at about 1,050 Mb/s and read at around 1,900 MB/s. Still, that’s still double the write speed found on a fast SATA SSD like the Samsung 840 EVO, which boasts sustained read and write speeds of 515 MB/s and 503 MB/s, respectively.

The G.Skill drive can also read random 4KB blocks of data at a rate of 90,000 IOPS. 4KB Random Writes, meanwhile, go all the way up to 245,000 IOPS.

G.Skill explains that the Phoenix Blade can deliver these extreme speeds because it is equipped with four LSI SF-2281 SSD controllers, each of which is linked to a 120GB MLC flash module. The whole thing is also slapped into a RAID 0 array, whose speeds are turbocharged again with the PCI-express port.

The trade-off for all that speed, of course, is price. A 500GB Samsung EVO is only $230. G.Skill Phoenix Blade Series 480GB PCIe SSD is set to be available starting next week on NewEgg for $699 with an included three-year warranty.

You’ve heard of Pop-Up Video? Tumblr now has Pop-Out Video! I know that sounds like they’ve perfected an incredible 3D video player but no. . . .  What it really means is that you can pop the video out of any Tumblr stream so you can watch on a continuous loop while you skim your Tumblr feed. Instant second screen!

But that’s not all! Log on now and you can embed your Vine and Instagram videos absolutely FREE!

I know it looks like I made that cheesy graphic, but it’s actually a screengrab from the bizarre, intentionally (I hope) cheesy video Tumblr made to announce the new features. They do get points for a sense of humor, even their list of new features ends with a laugh. Good for them.

Tumblr has plenty of reasons to smile. On their recent investor call, Chief Executive Marissa Mayer said the company was on track to make $100 million next year. In 2012, the year before Yahoo acquired the site, Tumblr’s revenue was $13 million and they owe it all to an influx of users.

Tumblr’s user base has grown 40% in the past 15 months. They’re now sitting at 420 million users with 206 million registered blogs. What might be even better news is that visitors are hanging around longer than ever before; from 22 minutes to 28 minutes.

So where do they go from here? Tumblr is still a very specific network for a very specific type of user. There’s speculation that Mayer is angling to turn up the volume on videos to compete with YouTube. Video posts are growing twice as fast as the photo posts that are Tumblr’s claim to fame but then, video is growing everywhere. Technology has simply made it too easy to film, edit on the fly and upload. And since Tumblr’s audience is mostly young creatives – video is going to happen.

All this video talk is going to naturally lead to more video advertising. Tumblr runs only native ads so we’re not talking about pre-roll ads like you see on YouTube. If you want to promote your product on Tumblr, you have to make videos that blend in with the colorful, humorous, creative style that is the Tumblr trademark.

If you can do that, you’re golden.

Apple Pay rolled out on Monday to a great deal of fanfare, but launching the service was only half the battle. Now Apple is faced with the enormous challenge of gradually adding support for every credit, debit and gift card in the United States in the coming months. It appears that Apple isn’t wasting any time either as reports began to spread on Friday that Apple Pay is now compatible with Amazon Rewards Visa Cards.

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Google-owned Nest has announced it acquired a company that makes smarthome automation devices: Revolv. Although the terms of the acquisition deal were not disclosed, several reports have claimed Nest only wanted the Revolv team for its experience and…

Not everyone who uses WordPress is a web designer or developer. In fact, understanding how to build a custom WordPress theme takes a good knowledge of PHP. Theme development company ‘Elegant Themes’ realized that users wanted to be able to design their own site layout inside of WordPress. They developed the Divi drag-and-drop WordPress theme to make it easy for WordPress users to build their own custom sites, without knowledge of code. If you haven’t had a chance to look at the Divi WordPress theme, let’s take a look at some of its amazing features.

Layouts

You can use the traditional WordPress interface, or you can use the Divi page builder. This enables you to stack and arrange components that are pre-made for specific purposes.

One of the options inside of Divi is the ability to choose a pre-made layout. This is a pre-built page design already built into your Divi WordPress theme. These pre-made layouts enable you to edit each module and replace the content with your own. This takes the difficulty out of design and development for your WordPress site.

Pre-made layouts range from landing pages, to home pages, shops portfolios, corporate, masonry layouts, and more. There are many options to choose from. Clicking load will automatically enable this layout for the page that you’re working on.

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