Viiv creates need for metadata

WHILE SINGING the praises of Intel's Viiv PC in the home, Intel fellow Brendan Traw highlighted the need for indexing tools. And data backup.

Working on the basis a seven per cent per year chance of a hard disk failing, Traw pointed out that it's not too difficult to possess electronic devices with a total of five hard drives inside.

That translates to a thirty per cent chance of hard disk failure in one year. Estimating that all the digital content in the home is reaching terabyte levels, Traw estimated that hundreds of DVDs would be required to back it up.

One possible solution, of course, is to back up data on a hosted Internet service. That's been tried before for business applications with only a little success.

Indeed Traw was accidentally making a good case for RAID in the home.

He also highlighted the need to index the myriad of digital files which consumers are creating at an alarming rate. His solution is to index them using 'metadata' instead of relying on data-stamping.

Asked by the INQ if there were any such tools out there (and better still, freeware), Traw replied that there was a desperate need for an industry standard. Although MPEG (which gave us MP3, etc) is already working on the problem.

The INQ suspects this problem will give rise to yet another industry forum. Oh, joy! µ