private byte[] encodeW1String(String value) {
    byte[] svalue = null;
    try {
      svalue = value.getBytes(charset);
    } catch (UnsupportedEncodingException e) {
      throw new RuntimeException(e);
    }
    byte[] result = new byte[svalue.length + 1];
    System.arraycopy(svalue, 0, result, 1, svalue.length);
    result[0] = SPECIAL_STRING;
    return result;
  }
Handles old whalin (tested with v1.6) encoding: data type is in the first
byte of the value.

@author bpartensky
@since Oct 16, 2008
src/main/java/net/spy/memcached/transcoders/WhalinV1Transcoder.java