My Cranberry Quest, The Beginning
What happens to a picture with data loss.
It was late 2005 and I had just finished a meal with Jeff Barr at what used to be one of my favorite restaurants in Bellingham, the Big Fat Fish Company. Why that establishment used to be my favorite is a topic for an entirely different blog post.
As we were leaving I asked Jeff what kind of digital camera he used. What I’d hoped would be a quick recommendation for a replacement camera turned out to be an eye opening experience. Jeff said he didn’t like the concept of digital pictures and digital video because he didn’t know of any viable way to store digital files for the long term.
What? Nobody told me that. I’d been using a digital camera for years. Was he saying that all of my pictures were in jeopardy? Turns out that’s exactly what he was saying. Jeff works for Amazon as a technology evangelist and is a pretty credible guy in my book. I paid close attention and felt compelled to do some research of my own.
I already had a sense that hard drives were problematic since I’d experienced several platter collapses or other hard drive failures in my life. I also knew that hard drives had the additional problem of being a magnetic media. (Those of us who can remember cassette tapes and VHS know how poor magnetic media is for long term storage and playback.) I learned that USB drives and memory cards only had a limited number of read/write cycles.
What about online storage? In theory, storing files across the internet on redundant systems seems like a good idea, and until recently it appeared to be the only real solution for long-term storage. The problems associated with online storage is fodder for a future post. Let’s just say it did not meet my criteria for permanent storage.
My search led to a solution that will outlast my requirements, perhaps keeping my information safe for centuries. I understand that I probably don’t need my files to last that long, but I do need them to hold out until another viable permanent solution is available.
The answer came from a smart group of professors at Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah (more on this later), and I ultimately invested in the company that licensed the technology from BYU. Right from the beginning I could see that the company was hyper-focused on the enterprise and government markets.
But I wanted access to this for the public’s personal use. My company, Humanicity, operating under the name “Cranberry,” has since secured the exclusive rights to this new technology for the consumer marketplace. Now, people like you and I can use this state-of-the-art digital media storage.
And it all started with a simple question over dinner with a friend.
Need more information? Stay tuned to this blog or the Cranberry Web site for more details as we get closer to our public release of the Cranberry DiamonDisc™.
Tags: archival, archive, digital pictures, digital storage, digital video, optical media, photos, portable media
Cranberry, Cranberry Venture Partners, Technology | David McInnis | 
October 9, 2009 3:12 pm
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