Holiday jingles are playing in the stores not so subtly submerging into your subconscious.

Decorations and holiday displays in stores make any shopping experience an obstacle course.

Promos for holiday specials are running to remind you that Frosty the Snowman, Santa Claus, Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer and even Charlie Brown are all coming to town.

It can’t be avoided and it sneaks up on you every year like a portly ninja in a red suit with a white beard coming down your chimney. Face it, folks, its time to go holiday shopping.
Even though and Black Friday and Cyber Monday have come and gone, you still are wondering what to get that special someone. But what do you do for the guy who has everything from monogramed socks to robotic dinosaurs?

Here are a couple key gift ideas that will keep you in good standing and be original regardless of whether your “guy” is a techie, sports fan, jet setter or an average Joe.

Logitech Harmony® 1100 Advanced Universal Remote – The beautiful, 3.5 inch color screen allows you to reduce clutter since it works with over 225,000. $349.99

Nintendo Wii U – The new Wii U™ console introduces the Wii U™ GamePad, a controller with a 6.2-inch touch screen that redefines how people interact with their games, their entertainment and one another.  Perfect for family game night or just a quiet night in. $349.99 for the deluxe set or $299.99 for the basic set.  * May want to get some backup storage as the system caps at 32GB.

Play: 5 by Sonos – This all-in-one wireless music system will have your house rocking regardless of what room you’re in.  Stream your music library or connect with your favorite online radio stations or music services to keep your groove hand strong. $399

Seagate Satellite hard drive – Wirelessly stream up to 300 HD movies (or music or photographs) without being connected to the Internet. With 500GB of portable power at your fingertips, it’s easy to take what’s yours wherever, whenever you want. $199

51-inch Plasma 8000 Series by Samsung – Experience the next generation of visual euphoria with Samsung’s groundbreaking Smart TVs, with Smart Interaction, full web browsers, all-new content services, fast dual core processors and much more. Just in time for Super Bowl XLV. $1,199.99

Bond 50 – Take a look at fifty years of the world’s greatest spy beautifully restored on Blu-ray disc. Enjoy the holidays with a martini, shaken, not stirred, as you watch all 22 films starting with Dr. No and ending with Quantum of Solace. $129.99.

A50 Wireless Headset by ASTRO Gaming – Whether you game on Xbox 360®, PlayStation® 3 or PC, get ready to experience Dolby 7.1 Surround Sound with clarity and performance powered by KleerNet’s strongest 5.8Ghz solution available. Hear the difference that professionally tuned audiophile-grade sound makes. $299.99

So there you have it. Armed with a credit card, an energy drink and comfortable walking shoes, you are now prepared to enter the holiday season with gusto. The holidays can be a stressful time of year, but don’t let the pressures get to you. Be strong, be vigilant, you’ve prepared for this the last eleven months of the year and with these amazing holiday gift ideas, you are ready.

An infographic like this needs little commentary. And when you find something cool, you run the risk of not being the first to share it. (Hi, Mark!)

Instead, I will simply ask how many of these storage transitions have you witnessed in your lifetime?

It’s not the kind of industry where you can have a commercial with a gorgeous young movie star with silk hair woman eating your core product.

It doesn’t create the kind of products where you can have models dress up (or down) at tradeshows like E3 to entice you to your exhibit.

But then I look at our SeagateCreative page and that is where I will disagree with the idea that storage isn’t sexy. To quote a friend, “it’s not about the product, it’s about the process.”  If you’re not familiar with Seagate Creative, it’s a community for artists, musicians, filmmakers, and photographers to post and share videos, photos, tips and tools, to inspire each other with DIY genius and soak up behind-the-scenes magic from our Creative Professionals partners.

Given that storage is so essential to the creative process, creativity makes storage sexy. Sexy like a canvass, a palette, a studio; like a roll of celluloid or a stage ready to be set. Sexy can be defined in different ways – it’s subjective.  While there may be some universal truths to what sexy is, the reality is that what is sexy to you may not be sexy to someone else.

I love watching people create. The ability to make “something” from “nothing” is fascinating, and watching that is perhaps the only way to look inside the mind of an artist

We have some other new things in the works that I also think will change perception about making storage sexy, but until that curtain gets pulled back, you’ll just have to trust me.

You can't deny this is sexy

I can see the point the article was trying to make about storage not being sexy, but that can depend on your perspective. However, there is a great point the article made about the impact of not having storage in your life I want to call out:

“Without Storage:
no smart phone
no tablet
no PC
no CD and no music
no DVD or Blu-ray and no movie
no Internet
nothing to replace your limited memory
The life will be just different.”

Storage isn’t something you think about until you need it. It may not have the glitz and glam of cheeseburgers, cars or an exotic vacation, but it’s there whenever we’re creating something sexy. It’s a constant. After thirty years, so are we.  And don’t you worry, we’re bringing sexy back.

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Getting My Feet Wet

Hot on the heels of the big Consumer Electronics Show, Seagate is diving into another influential technology gathering today.

By the standards of CES—which drew more than 140,000 people to Las Vegas earlier this month—theMacworld/iWorld show, which runs Thursday through Saturday at the Moscone Center in San Francisco, is fairly cozy, with about 26,000 attendees last year.

Seagate is showcasing a wide range of GoFlex for Mac external drives.

And while Apple stopped attending the show in 2009, the event remains influential, thanks largely to a passionate community of Apple enthusiasts. That loyal following makes the show a good fit for Seagate, which has greatly expanded its lineup of storage solutions for Apple products.

“We’re there to show our support for the Apple community and to demonstrate storage solutions we think Mac enthusiasts, whether they’re creative professionals or everyday consumers, will appreciate,” says Greg Falgiano, a senior Product Marketing manager for Retail at Seagate. “It’s also a great opportunity for us to get feedback about our products directly from end users.”

The Macworld event adds “iWorld” to its official name this year to reflect a shift toward more mobile devices, such as the iPad and iPhone. And those gadgets have never been hotter. On Tuesday, Apple announced it sold a record 37.04 million iPhone units in its fiscal first quarter, up 128 percent from the same period last year, and 15.3 million iPads, up 111 percent from a year ago.

Satellite on the Big Screen
Seagate will demonstrate its support for the iPad with an innovative new demo of its GoFlex Satellite™ mobile wireless storage device. The demo includes a 50-inch display screen connected to an iPad via HDMI. The display will show visitors to Seagate’s booth how easy the GoFlex Satellite interface is to navigate—and how simple it is to carry their entire libraries of music, movies and other content with them on the go.

Seagate also will announce a firmware upgrade for the GoFlex Satellite. The upgrade, which will be available for free download in March, will enable consumers to access the Internet and stream their media libraries at the same time. The firmware upgrade also extends the Satellite’s battery life from five hours to eight hours.

Let’s say you’re using your GoFlex Satellite in a Starbucks store. With the firmware upgrade, the GoFlex Satellite’s built-in WiFi connects to your iPad, iPhone or iPod Touch (or an Android mobile device) The Satellite then gives you an option to connect to the coffee store’s own WiFi connection, enabling Internet access in addition to media streaming.

“We’ve heard from a lot of consumers that they wanted to do more with their Satellite,” explains Falgiano. “People who like to listen to a lot of music while they’re on the go, for example, also want to check their email or catch up on the news. This is an example of how we’re listening to feedback from end users and reviews from the tech press to build a better product.”

And for the first time, those users can purchase Seagate products directly at the show. Among the Seagate storage solutions displayed at Macworld/iWorld are a wide range of GoFlex™ for Mac® external drives, including a new 500GB GoFlex® Slim for Mac® portable drive.

Storage Sweet Spot
“Our current GoFlex Slim has been a hit, but it’s only been available in 320GB until now,” says Falgiano. “500GB is a real sweet spot for consumers. Having half a terabyte of storage in such a small form factor should make it an even more compelling product.”

Seagate’s Thunderbolt adapters deliver “a major performance boost,” says the New York Times.

Also at the show, Seagate will demonstrate its new GoFlex® Thunderbolt Adapter and GoFlex Desk Thunderbolt Adapter. The former supports 2.5-inch drives and is priced at $100, while the latter supports 3.5-inch drives and is priced at $190. Running at 10Gbps, the Intel-developed Thunderbolt interface is up to 12 times faster than FireWire 800 connections and 20 times faster than USB 2.0.

In its coverage of the CES event, the New York Times said Seagate’s Thunderbolt adapter is “an accessory that will give some hard drives a major performance boost.”

Apple’s new Mac computers include Thunderbolt slots, but there haven’t been many Thunderbolt-compatible hard drives to choose from until now. Seagate and Western Digital both announced Thunderbolt solutions at the CES show, but WD’s offerings aren’t expected to reach the market until the middle of this calendar year. Seagate’s Thunderbolt offerings will begin shipping in the next few weeks.

As such, it makes perfect sense to see some of the innovations that are coming from manufacturers specializing in audio & video during CES this week.

GoPro:
Touted as the “Worlds Most Versatile Camera,” this is a product that may actually back it up. The HD Hero 2 comes locked & loaded with up to 1080P, 30 FPS, 32GB of memory and depending on shooting output, 4-6 hours of recording time.  Able to be mounted on your motorbike, surfboard, or Vespa, with this camera you’ll be able to capture and record every action shot you’ve ever dreamed.

Coming soon will also be the ability to live stream so your friends back home will be able to watch as you skydive from that Cessna at 30,000 feet wearing nothing but boxer shorts to win the bet.  Look for the HD Hero 2 available now for $299 in either the Motorsports, Surf or Outdoors editions.

Fujifilm:
Winner of CNET’s Best of CES for Digital Imaging, the FUJIFILM X-Pro1 is a technological accomplishment with new features including 3 single-focal length lenses to maximize performance. The FUJIFILM X-Pro1 also has a new sensor that nixes the need for an optical low-pass filter allowing the camera to capture a full, “unfiltered” lens performance.  Take that!

Dolby:
Unless you’ve not watched any film or TV in the last fifty years, everyone knows Dolby almost as a household term, and that’s not including the song by this guy.

With the recent announcement to provide “Immersive content anywhere, anytime on any device” Dolby Laboratories is making looking to make sure that the audio euphoria you experience while at the movies or your home theater system is also available for you while you’re on the go.

The crisp clarity of Dolby technology when experienced on a tablet is almost chilling.  You really get the full, immersive experience how it was intended to be.

There you have some of the highlights in audio, video and photography straight from the show.  Check here for more CES highlights and let us know your thoughts below on or Twitter.

This week we announced the release the Momentus XT hard drive and after watching some YouTube videos showcasing the power and speed of the drive, the first thing I thought was “Why Should I Care?” Yes, it’s faster, but is that enough of a big deal? I wanted to chronicle this thought process because for all intents, I’m seeing this through the same rookie eyes as many of you may be.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a gamer at heart and while I’m no longer in that industry, I remain a keen observer. (R.I.P. GamePro.) One of the things that struck me as interesting in learning more about the Momentus XT was how this could impact PC gaming.  I spoke with a friend over at Icrontic to get his take on the release of this drive and the comparison videos and what I learned was revealing.

He agreed that the speed increase for the drive is important and isn’t something that should be glossed over, but what is a crucial bullet point that makes this the true competition killer is the 750GB space availability combined with such speed.  Our conversation evolved to discuss how gamers keep their games long after completion.

You see, gaming isn’t just a hobby for some, but a lifestyle. It’s lived, breathed and consumed. If you’ve been gaming for any number of years, it isn’t something you can easily walk away from. That said, it makes sense that gamers would want to keep their games. They spend time, money and many a can of Mtn Dew to create characters, personalities, and in some cases, worlds. That kind of history and emotional connection is not something you can easily discard simply by selecting uninstall.  To further prove Brian Ambrozy’s point (aka @primesuspect), he conducted an informal poll on his site to emphasize how passionate and dedicated the gaming community is around the importance of having adequate storage for games. I can’t say I was surprised when I saw how much space is used and how many games accumulated by respondents. It’s enough to warrant the cost of having a drive with that much space.

If you haven’t heard, there’s a little tradeshow that takes place every January in Las Vegas called the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). An idea we’ve been bouncing around internally for the show, is setting up a small “gaming lounge” where we can have a couple computers on hand to showcase the speed and power of the Momentus XT. While I try my best to act professional during these meetings, inside my head I’m screaming at the top of my lungs about how cool this is. Making a connection between gaming and storage is an easy one given how much space games require today. Besides, anything I can do to bridge the gap from my old life to my new one is a bonus.

It’s all coming together for me. What makes the Momentus XT a big deal is more than just the processing speed, the power and the glory of being the only solid-state hybrid drive with a whopping 750GB of storage space. (Stop me if I start to sound like an infomercial.) It’s about accessibility. It’s about stability. It’s about getting one step closer to that euphoric state of “instant-on” with a drive that boots so quickly, you won’t have time to grab a cup of coffee. It’s about having enough space for music, games, movies, photographs, software applications, Xzibit MEME’s, confidential documents from your favorite secret society, inspirational pictures of Star Trek’s Captain Kirk and everything else under the sun.

(cc Tim Russell)

There you have it. Grab the Momentus XT at your favorite retailer and as they used to say at ye olde time gas stations, “Fill ‘er up!”

What will you do with 750GB at near-SSD speeds? Drop a comment below or reply on Twitter to @Seagate_Con.

Hi, my name is Jonathan and I’m the latest addition to the Seagate Family managing  Social Media for the consumer product line. In this day and age, that likely won’t be a head-scratcher for you, but in case it is, it means that I put together content that will go onto this blog and talk with our community on our various social network channels such as Twitter (@Seagate_Con) and Facebook.

Having spent a good portion of my career in the gaming industry, I jumped at this opportunity because I knew it would present me with new opportunities and challenges. In going through the interview process, I kept trying to wrap my head around the question “What makes storage sexy?” Video games is a fun business. It’s energetic, it’s creative, and at its core, it’s social. But data storage is something that would require a different approach.

Data storage is something that everyone needs, but isn’t something you think about until you need it. In explaining to my mother why I was interested in the position, I compared hard drives to a refrigerator or a washing machine. You have a need for it, but it isn’t a “luxury” item like a new TV, a game console or the latest smartphone.  Yet without it, how do you store photos? How can you watch movies or play music on the go?  Let’s take it even further – what if you’re a gamer, how do you save your player information or game files? In the world of television, there is this hard drive we all own, but know more commonly as the DVR. When you take a step back to look at it, data storage drives everything that we do today but it’s become so commonplace that we don’t even realize the extent of its reach.

So for the first couple weeks I have been spending some time thinking about what makes storage “sexy” and I think I’m on my way to finding the answer. Storage itself may not be sexy, but the creative ways storage is used are. The tingling feeling for me comes from the eye-opening illumination on how it impacts people day-to-day. It’s about about the creative or developmental process, not just the final product.

The cool story is what you are doing creatively that needs a canvas — whether it be a work of art, a musical composition, a photograph or a video. It can be as simple as a piece of homework that you got a good grade on or as complex as a chemical formula that will let you turn water into wine. It’s a story to tell. It’s information to save. It’s a memory to keep. And without a device to save that memory on, it will vanish to the wind and remain just a memory.

So let’s take a journey and start to explore the different ways that storage gets used in the everyday world and revisit some of the fascinating customer stories that are already out there as we begin to create our own.

There are other stories of course, like Arnel Pineda, a singer who lived in the Philipines and began posting cover songs on YouTube in 2007. Before the year was out, he was discovered, asked to audition, and then earned the role as the lead singer for multi-platinum selling band Journey.

Bay Area rockers Zed recorded a music video with three Flip cameras in an hour and a half

Beyond the stories of discovery, I’m also very impressed by the ability of musicians to take technology and create quality work of their own. The DIY (“Do It Yourself”) initiative that one can take is also very empowering. Bands these days can record their music and achieve high quality on their computers using relatively low-cost tools.

Video, as well, can be done without needing to use the most costly equipment and hire an expensive technical crew. And great results can be had in a short amount of time.

A recent example is Bay Area rock band Zed, who produced a new video using only three simple Flip cameras, and that only took an hour and a half to film. Bassist Mark Aceves then spent a day doing edits on his Mac system running the content off of a Seagate FreeAgent drive.

The resulting video for Zed’s track “Leave Me Alone” looks and sounds great and also features Seagate’s own senior social media manager (and officemate) Rich Harris behind the drums. This is DIY done well by these hard rockers – and who knows who might eventually just take notice of this talented group of musicians on YouTube?

While I’m familiar with  some very handsome systems for cataloging your DVD collection on a hard drive based system, such as Kaleidescape, you can actually achieve a entry level type solution to this yourself using a hard drive enabled digital streaming device, like FreeAgent Theater+ or GoFlex TV.  Give it a try – it can make finding and playing movies a whole lot more convenient.

The Fast Talking Drive That Becomes Your Mac’s New Best Friend

The GoFlex ultra-portable drive is the forerunner in the family and as the world’s most versatile drive, allows you to access the drive’s contents with the interface of your choice and experience your content on your TV, throughout your home network or from a mobile device anywhere
in the world! Previously, external drives were shipped with fixed interfaces or for a premium, a few interfaces built into the drive. The GoFlex ultra-portable drive is revolutionizing the industry by offering a way to upgrade the interface you chose to access the drive. The GoFlex ultra-portable drive comes with a USB 2.0 interface and simple to use software to automatically backup and encrypt your files and folders – preloaded so there are no CDs to mess with. But the unique benefit of this drive is its ability to remove the USB 2.0 interface and connect much faster interfaces such as FireWire® 800, powered eSATA – even USB 3.0. Plus, this drive is both PC and Mac® computer compatible. That’s right, we didn’t say or Mac – it’s PC and Mac! This drive allows you to easily go from the PC you use at work to the Mac computer you love at home. And no you don’t have to deal with the less than ideal FAT32 format. All GoFlex drives include a driver for your Mac that allows it to both read and write to a PC formatted GoFlex drive (also known as NTFS). With just a one-time install of the driver on you Mac computer, you can seamlessly go between your Mac and your PC without any headaches along the way.

The GoFlex ultra-portable drive can also connect to other GoFlex Storage System products, enabling you to access the contents of your drive on your TV, from any networked PC or Mac in the home and mobile devices while on-the-go via the Internet. More to come, stay tuned…

Desktop Drives Also Get the Custom Treatment

The GoFlex Storage System is mainly about the ultra-portable drives and their ability to move about so that you can access them the way you
want, wherever you are. But the GoFlex family also includes the GoFlex Desk external drive, a high capacity drive that well you guessed it, is made to live on your home or office desk. The GoFlex Desk external drive has the same great software, PC and Mac integration and upgradability as the ultra-portable drives. The GoFlex Desk external drive can be upgraded to FireWire 800 or USB 3.0. Each upgrade adapter, as we call them, includes an easy-to-view capacity gauge which makes it simply to see how much capacity is available on your drive.

To learn more about the GoFlex family of storage products, make a purchase or find a local retailer, visit www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/external/external-hard-drive/