A few weeks ago we published a press release with Syabas about the integration of Tuxera NTFS into Syabas set-top boxes. Here’s a brief overview how everyone using Syabas products benefits from Tuxera NTFS inside. In the below pic you have Syabas’ Popcorn Hour set-top box at Tuxera labs ready to rock:
On the left you have two USB ports and on the right a removable hard drive bay circled. You can plug any NTFS-formatted portable hard drive or USB stick full of high-definition movies into the USB ports and it is plug & play. The same goes for the hard drive bay: take your NTFS-formatted drive from your Windows box and it works seamlessly with the Syabas media tank without any additional drivers.
We think Syabas’ example shows where the market is going. With both disk and file sizes growing, NTFS is currently the best — and in increasing cases the only — format option if you want your storage media to work plug & play with all computers from PCs to Macs and Linuxes as well as the latest consumer electronic devices.
There has been a lot of discussion around exFAT on both IP and technical details. The basis is that SD Association has chosen exFAT as the file system in the next generation SD cards. Tuxera is here to provide the actual exFAT software for companies that embed the file system into their consumer electronics products. We published recently an Tuxera exFAT for Linux white paper at Interoperability vendor alliance to showcase the work we have done on exFAT. While the white paper is rather high-level, Tuxera is happy to provide more information on how the file system and licensing works for anyone interested. Tuxera exFAT is built on a portable and reliable code base and now available for Android, Linux and other operating systems.
Computex Taipei is finally over and done for 2010. A great event, with a lot of interesting electronics. It is clear the current semiconductor hotspot is here. From NAS systems to set-top-boxes, from cameras to phones, everything is packed together in Taipei or the nearby cities. In connection with Computex we did a joint press release with Microsoft on Tuxera exFAT for Linux.
The scenery in Taipei is unique. A quick escape from Taipei101 to Meokong for an afternoon tea shows everything from modern high-tech architecture to unreachable rainforest jungle in less than an hour. While it was raining almost every day I found the climate pleasant: warm but not too hot. You could walk with a T-shirt around the clock.
Nokia and Intel announced yesterday the merge of Maemo and Moblin called MeeGo. At face value, the news were not so surprising as Android is taking market share very quickly at the moment. In between the lines, the news strongly indicate that Linux will sooner than later become the dominant platform for cool phones. Nokia’s Ari Jaaksi says:
Make you stuff work under, inside, or on top of MeeGo and you get your stuff deployed all over the place. Nokia will ship tons of MeeGo devices, Intel, too
This is good news for companies like Tuxera. We are ready to support data portability on any Linux-based mobile device, be it running Android or MeeGo. For example shooting 1080p video into the device’s flash card requires in practice a file system change from FAT32 to exFAT. Tuxera exFAT works inside Android and MeeGo to manage that change.
We have been walking our legs flat the last four days at Consumer Electronics Show, Las Vegas, meeting valued customers and partners from all over the world. Perhaps the biggest benefit one can get from a huge event like this — in addition to catching market trends — is to have face-to-face time with all those one has communicated with over email and phone during the year.
We decided CES is the right time to go public with our Windows CE work. The most common use case must be Windows CE powered set-top boxes and other consumer electronic devices with a USB plug. If I want to upload my videos and music from a portable NTFS-formatted hard drive into the box, it must read NTFS.
Another relevant market are cars, where Windows CE is gaining momentum. At CES, Microsoft had driven Fiats, Fords and Kias on their booth. Window CE is running the “infotainment” or entertainment systems in these cars. But what if I want plug in the car stereo my portable NTFS-formatted hard drive, which is full of MP3s? Yes, the system should read NTFS.
We are currently in IFA in Berlin – touted as the “Leading Business Event for Consumer Electronics and Home Appliance’s”. This is a huge exhibition where you can see everything from cutting-edge kitchen electronics to digital media. For us, it has been great to note we have created an impact building on the excellent foundation of our open source work. Seems that demand for file system compatibility is on the rise, and who are we to say no to that challenge…