24-year-old Sainul Abideen thinks he's come up with an alternative to CDs and other data storage options that'll allow for greater storage capacities and be cheaper and biodegradable to boot, using a fancy printing technique he's devised to cram loads of data onto a plain old sheet of paper. The trick is to first convert the data into a so-called "Rainbow Format," which is made up of various geometric shapes that can be densely printed onto a sheet of paper; that can then be read by a computer or other device using a Rainbow Card Reader. From the sound of it, the system appears to be somewhat similar to QR Codes and other newfangled bar code-type technologies currently in use in parts of the world other than here, but Abideen's "Rainbow Versitile Disc" can apparently store far more amounts of data than those -- between 90 and 450GB, according to The Arab News. Demonstrations of the technology, however, seem to have only shown much smaller amounts of data being Rainbowfied, including a 45 second video clip and 432 pages of "foolscrap" being stored on a four-inch square piece of paper. Still pretty darn impressive if you ask us, and it sure looks a heckuva lot better hanging on a wall than a CD.
Its a good discovery though got its own prblms. Firstly, da use of "symbols" in communications is nothing new (might hve heard abt Barcodes)- 4 example, instead of transmitting one signal for 0 nd other for 1, u could define four signals for 00,01,10,11 nd transmit them instead. U've doubled da number of signals u need to be able to distinguish (so reduced accuracy) but doubled da amount of data u can send at a given symbol rate.
Even our DVDs r jus binary, so use two symbols for 0 and 1. To get "131 times" da capacity on a disc da same size wth such a symbolic techinque, you could either use lots of different symbols of da same size, or alternatively use just a few symbols nd also make them smaller.
Think abt tht 4 a second. DVDs use pits of da order of a few microns in size, whch r read by reflecting a laser off them. Do u honestly believe 4 a second tht u could replace each of these TINY pits wth a coloured, shaped symbol, replace da pressed plastic disc wth a printed piece of paper, nd replace da laser reading systm wth an optical scanner wth dozens of possible values per bit nd still hve a feasible systm? I dont knw.
I even heard he is planin 2 make a Mobile memory card out of ths technology, but how, jus by cutting da size of da paper to the memory slot size wont do anythng.
Coz it doesnt hve any reader? or scanner?. Lord knws, but lets pray for da best coz he hve done som homework. Still its somthin im proud of.
Love b3Ni.
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