Review: Nextly brings together the best of RSS, social networks, and Web browsing

Google Reader is dead. It changed forever the way we read our news, and it's gone for good, leaving the arena open for other players to attempt the same feats. Nextly, an innovative reading app based on streams, takes regular RSS feeds, strips them of everything that's annoying about the format, and provides a new reading experience that combines RSS with regular website browsing and social-network surfing.

Nextly turns any webpage or feed into a stream you can easily browse through.
To personalize the experience further, sign into Nextly using Facebook or Twitter. This will give you access to the My Collection and Favorites features, but will also enable Nextly's social Web browsing. Let's say you connected Nextly with your Twitter account; you can now use Nextly's stream to browse your Twitter feed and lists, automatically accessing all tweeted links as full articles. In other words, your Twitter (or Facebook) feed will be miraculously transformed into an easy-to-browse stream, complete with reply, retweet, and other sharing options.

This is all great, you might be thinking, but browsing single feeds doesn't sound too exciting in a post-Google-Reader, Feedly-inspired world. This is where Favorites come in. Once signed in, you can add any stream (or website) to your favorites, which then acts as a regular RSS reader for all intents and purposes.

Bookmark any webpage to your collection, or share it using a unique link.
All your favorite websites are listed under the Favorites tab, and while you can't sort these into folders like you can in other readers, Nextly makes up for it with full articles—no "read more" links—and a built-in social browser. Although Nextly displays full webpages in its streams, these are all pre-loaded, so you never have to wait for them to load while you browse.

Nextly also includes a built bookmarking feature called My Collection, to which you can add articles, tag them, and put them aside for later reading. You can also use the My Collection feature to save important articles for quick reference, and browse it at any time just like any other Nextly stream.

With Nextly, your Twitter feed turns into an RSS feed, with full webpages for each link.
Nextly is still in beta, but you won't notice this most of the time. The only bug I encountered, and this too was rare, was Web elements that failed to load correctly, mostly special ones like an iOS 7 live demo I was trying to check out. There's also no way that I could find to add streams manually if you can't find them in the Explore tab or by using the nextly.com/websitename method. While I was able to browse the vast majority of websites I tried using one of these two methods, I could not browse the ones I failed to find. With that said, if you're tired of truncated RSS feeds and traditional RSS readers, Nextly is sure to brighten your day.

Hitachi brings high-end flash to midrange HUS VM storage line

Enterprises are gaining the ability to turn existing storage platforms over to flash even as solid-state media remains mostly a tool for caching and for applications with special requirements.

On Wednesday, Hitachi Data Systems is bringing flash technology from its high-end storage platform to its midrange Hitachi Unified Storage Virtualization Machine (HUS VM) system and introducing software for the system that will allow it to be used as a high-performance, all-flash array. Other vendors are also entering the all-flash arena, including Hewlett-Packard, which announced the 3Par StoreServ 7450 Storage system less than a month ago.

Hitachi is taking the Hitachi Accelerated Flash Modulefrom its Virtual Storage Platform and offering it for the HUS VM, a midrange array designed for smaller enterprises with less need for scale. The new, flash-optimized software included in Wednesday’s announcement will roughly double the potential throughput of the system, and another software release later this year will double it again to 1 million IOPS (I/O operations per second), the company said.

The HUS VM, introduced last year, fits in between the VSP platform for large enterprises and the HUS 100 family, Hitachi’s entry-level line. Customers can now outfit an HUS VM entirely with SSDs (solid-state drives) or mix those components with spinning hard drives.

The flash module packs 1.6TB of capacity onto a card that goes deeper into a standard 19-inch rack unit than a typical SSD would, making more efficient use of space, according to Roberto Basilio, vice president of infrastructure platforms product management at Hitachi. The module also uses multilevel cell flash, which has higher density than the single-level cell type used in many enterprise SSDs.

But speed is at the heart of solid-state adoption and of Hitachi’s enhancements to the HUS VM. Each Hitachi Accelerated Flash module has its own multicore, multithreaded controller chip that can carry out functions such as compression and wear-leveling without affecting read and write performance, Basilio said.

To go along with the new flash module performance that this design brings, Hitachi has introduced software improvements to the HUS VM that can double its overall throughput. The HUS jumps from 250,000 IOPS (I/O operations per second) to 500,000 IOPS. Another optional software upgrade, coming in the fourth quarter, will double that yet again, to 1 million IOPS, according to Hitachi.

The rapid read and write performance of flash can help speed up enterprise applications where needed, though it will coexist with hard disk drives for the forseeable future, said Enterprise Strategy Group analyst Terri McClure.

“Judicious use of some level of solid-state storage at every layer of the stack is going to become the norm, over time,” McClure said.

The key is good data-management software to control how the two types of media work together, she said. This software has improved since the introduction of flash storage, and Hitachi’s capabilities there are strong, she said.

Enterprises will be able to fit 12 flash modules on each tray in the HUS VM, with a full eight-tray system holding more than 150TB of capacity. That will double by the end of this year, as the company plans to come out with a 3.2TB module.

The flash modules are available now for $28,427 each, and an all-flash HUS VM with 8TB of flash capacity costs about $300,000, including the Base Operating System and three years of maintenance.

'Lone Ranger' Premiere Brings Johnny Depp, Armie Hammer and the Wild West to Disneyland

At the official world premiere of Disney's The Lone Ranger, a long, winding red carpet snaked its way through the streets of Disney's California Adventure Park in Anaheim, making many of the actors wish they had a horse to ride on their way to the big premiere.

Fans (many dressed in Western costumes), who lined the carpet hoping to catch sight of the film's stars Johnny Depp and Armie Hammer, were treated to stilt walkers, jugglers and appearances by Disney's classic characters such as Minnie Mouse.

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The big production Saturday was fitting for the event, which celebrated Disney and Jerry Bruckheimer Films' big-budget Western -- which cost a reported $250 million to make -- bringing Tonto (Depp) and the Lone Ranger (Hammer) to the big screen.

Hammer, who plays John Reid aka the Lone Ranger in the film, was quick to praise the Gore Verbinski-helmed project, which went all-out creating lifelike Western towns, five miles of train track and two steam engine trains on set in New Mexico.

"It was really helpful. It was the difference between standing in the middle of the desert looking at some of the most beautiful scenery you can point a camera at and standing in an air conditioned room at some studio going, 'This is a lot of green fabric.'" he told The Hollywood Reporter on the red carpet.

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"It just made it that much more real, and hopefully, the audience feels it as well," added Hammer.

Hammer, who starred in The Social Network and J. Edgar, also had kind words for his co-star Depp, who plays the Native America hero in the film. "He's such a great guy. Nicest guy in the world. He's fantastic," said Hammer.

In addition to creating the massive sets for the film, the production also sent many of the actors, including Hammer, to "cowboy camp" in order to get their horse-riding and lassoing skills up to snuff.

Ruth Wilson, who plays Rebecca Reid in the film, also said the set was an amazing creation. "You didn't have to act much. You were just put there and transported back in time," she said.

She also had to attend the cowboy camp. "I learned to lasso. I found new skills I never knew I had," she said. "It was brilliant fun."

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James Badge Dale, playing Dan Reid, admitted to THR that he had to spend a lot of time -- about six weeks -- at cowboy camp.

"I had to work really hard because Armie is very good," said Dale, "and so we had a competitive-brother thing going on, and I'm turning to him like, 'You don't make me look bad, man.'"

Hammer, who grew up in Texas, came to the production with more horse-riding skills than most of the cast, but that didn't exclude him from the camp.

"I did. We all went to cowboy camp," revealed Hammer, adding with a smile. "But don't worry -- I'm a pro."

The Lone Ranger opens in theaters July 3.