Breakthrough Stores Bit Of Information On Single Molecule

from huffingtonpost.co.uk: How big is a bit?

Currently one bit of digital memory is 'made' of about 3 million atoms. But thanks to researchers in Germany and Japan, that could be able to get a whole lot smaller.

Their tests have shrunk one bit of memory to the site of a single molecule - which could lead to the equivalent of every word ever written in human history being stored on a laptop-sized hard disk.

Put simply, a hard drive that currently holds one terabyte could be expanded to more than 50 petabytes, with the same physical dimensions.That's enough to hold the equivalent of a billion filing cabinets filled with text, or about 650 years of HD video. It is also enough to store 33 copies of every photograph on Facebook.

Using an electric pulse, the researchers from Japan, Strasbourg and Karlsruhe had made it possible to switch a metal-organic molecule from a conductive to a low-conductive state. Crucially that means it can 'store' one position or the other, and so build up with other bits to form computer memory. Each of the molecules contains just 51 atoms.

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amazon says 'majority' of cloud problems resolved after crash

from dow jones: Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) said it resolved a majority of the technical problems that plagued its Web services business last week and prompted many websites to either crash or perform slowly. Amazon, which rents Web services and storage to companies, suffered from a glitch in one of its data centers that caused many companies to move to contingency plans as they waited for a full recovery. The company provided short status updates on its website as the technical problems lingered on Thursday and Friday and through the weekend...

Amazon disclosed early Thursday it was experiencing "instance connectivity, latency and error rates" with one of its data centers in northern Virginia. Start-ups such as Foursquare, Quora and Reddit suffered from service problems last week related to Amazon's technical issues. Those three sites now appear to be operating regularly. Amazon's Web-based services are often listed as a model for other such offerings. It allows users to run programs and store information remotely over the Internet, accessing the applications over the so-called "cloud" and eliminating the cost of operating the equipment themselves...

While Amazon's cloud glitch has sparked outrage among customers, Brian Marshall, an analyst at Gleacher & Co., said it's "highly unlikely" this blemish will hurt overall demand for enterprise infrastructure from cloud computing customers. "If anything, this interruption stresses the need for redundant offerings and backup," he said. Disaster recovery services and companies that provide backup systems, like EMC Corp. (EMC) and Quantum Corp. (QTM) could experience a boost in demand, Marshall added. Amazon shares recently edged down 0.36% at $185.22. The stock is up 3% this year.