Sony to launch fastest XQD cards

Sony will start selling memory cards capable of write speeds of 125 Mbps from February. This will be the first cards launched under the new XQD card format.

This XQD card format utilizes PCI Express as its data transfer interface rather than SATA or PATA and can achieve extremely high read speeds and storage capacities.

These new cards address the issue of bottlenecking in high-end cameras caused by low write speeds. The amount of data processed by raw images and high-definition videos is often too much for current memory units to handle quickly, resulting in lagging video and pauses between taking a picture and the actual image obtained.

Sony has announced that the new cards will launch with 16 GB (the QD-H16) and 32 GB (QD-H32) versions along with readers compatible with USB 3.0 (MRW-E80) and PCI slots (QDA-EX1) for computers. The costs of these cards are quite high at $129.99 for the H16 and $229.99 for the H32. The readers themselves are far cheaper, at only $44.99 for the E80 and $44.99 for the EX1.

The Indonesian Mimic Octopus

A researcher shooting video in Indonesian waters captures a jawfish mimicking an octopus that itself mimics other fish.




As you saw in the above two videos, the mimic octopus is a brazen and audacious creature that got that way after it evolved a complex set of characters.

During a diving trip in Indonesia in July 2011, Godehard Kopp of the University of Göttingen in Germany, filmed a never-before-seen interaction between these two animals. In his video, we see the small and shy black marble jawfish closely following a brazen and audacious mimic octopus whilst it moves across the sandy bottom. The jawfish's markings are very similar to those of the octopus and as you'll see, it is quite difficult to see the fish as swims amongst the octopus's many arms.