Data farm to be powered by Wind energy

I like this.

This is where technology should be headed a bit more in my opinion.

There is so much natural energy to be harvested out there... pretty much everywhere. If you have wind, there's energy.. if you have tides, there's energy.. if you have sun, there's energy...

How about using that energy to power a data center??

With the emergence of the internet and since nowadays "everything" (maybe not... but probably close) is generally "computed" in one way or another it seems to me that using these natural resources to power these huge electricity sucking centers only makes sense.

A company out in Texas called Baryonyx Corporation is behind this.

They're planning to run about 100 wind turbines to power the data center and they're also planning to develop hydrogen fuel cells and solar power...

In my opinion, this is innovation.

You can read an article here:
Wind-Powered Data Center Planned
by Rich Miller
For Data Center Knowledge

The war heats up: Microsoft VS Google

With Google announcing their new OS on the way and Microsoft announcing that Office 10 will have free online tools to compete with Google's free "Google Apps"... looks like this is just heating up.

Microsoft have long had a hold on the operating systems market as well a large percentage of office based software.

This CNN article gives some numbers as well as describing the combatants...

Google will have desktop OS

As it's been reported in many places... Google will be releasing "Google Chrome" operating system.

I've heard about this for some time. Everything (well, not everything) often starts as a rumour.. this one did long ago.

Here's an article on pcmag.com.
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2349836,00.asp

Recent internet traffic spikes and outages

Just read this article about the recent outtages and other problems due to the overwhelming traffic that occured over the internet after the death of "The king of pop" Michael Jackson.

I've often thought of these cloud based systems as very solid architectures... and really they are.

When I think of Google, I think of an almost unsinkable ship (almost... remember the Titanic??).

But in the last couple of weeks... we've seen many of these very large systems crumble under the huge spike in traffic.

Is Michael Jackson telling us not to use Google Apps?
By Christopher Dawson

Google Android for desktop?

I'm sure some if not all of you have heard of Google Android.

InfoWorld has an article stating that Google Android will be released by year's end... the birth of the "Google OS" that we've heard of for some time.

Another Linux based OS.... Windows beware.

The Google OS is coming by year's end

InfoWorld

Compact Disc 30th birthday

Wow... the CD has hit the 30 year mark.

Amazing.

http://i.gizmodo.com/5166399/happy-30th-birthday-compact-disc

Windows VS Ubuntu Memory

I thought I'd post a link to this article on InfoWorld primarily because I love comparisons.

Over on that blog, they make a brief comparison, Windows 7 vs Vista vs Ubuntu.

On a computer with 8GB of RAM and on startup...

Windows 7 on x64 memory = 1.24 GB

Windows Vista on x64 memory = 1.34 BG

Ubuntu 8.10 = 349 MG

And the winner is...

Here's a link to the article:
http://weblog.infoworld.com/stratdev/archives/2009/03/ubuntu_vs_windo.html

by Martin Heller on InfoWorld

As a side note, the article also talks about using for backups....

At my former employer and current client, I had set up an Ubuntu system on an older PC, put in better HDs.. and every night it automatically backs up data from 3 different servers...

Ubuntu has always done the job for me.

Microsoft testing their new search engine

Looks like Microsoft is working on a new search engine which they hope will help them grab a much larger chunk of the search engine market.

I personally use search engines extensively every day.... when I'm not actively looking for information to help solve a problem or any subject that may interest me.... then I'm likely not @ the computer.

This should be interesting.... I've looked at other types of search engines that came out the last couple of years... and personally, I'm still using Google and the occasional Yahoo!

Read the article here:
Microsoft testing new Internet search engine Kumo

on Yahoo!

Blogger tag cloud

I just now added a tag cloud to this blog and I wanted to post the link to the author's post where he shows how to create it in blogger.

http://phy3blog.googlepages.com/Beta-Blogger-Label-Cloud.html

It was very easy to do.

PS3 super computer

The "IT Dojo" over @ techrepublic.com has a new post on a super computer cluster built on Sony PS3s done over at North Carolina State University.

They apparently clustered 16 PS3s together..

Pretty neat.

;-)

Read it here:

PS3 supercomputer illustrates innovative IT cost savings
http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/itdojo/?p=359
By IT Dojo

Microsoft wants their money back

Seems as though when Microsoft recently laid off 1400 workers... they (say they) overpaid some of them in their severances packages.

Microsoft has written a letter to their former employees requesting their money back.

Check out this post which shows a scanned copy of a letter.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-10169119-75.html 

Mac users should use antivirus

I found this on Macs and Anti-Virus programs....

I've mentioned this before (at least, I'm sure I have)...

Macs are computers, and computers have vulnerabilities.... that's essentially one of the reasons there are patches and updates as well.

I read this blog post that points to a page on Apple's support site, where they "encourage" the use of anti-virus programs on Macs.


Here's a link to an article by PC Blogs:
Apple Says You Need Anti-Virus For Your Mac

And here is a link to Apple's support page:
Mac OS: Antivirus utilities

Very interesting post by Google on massive stored data

This blog post is a very interesting read... and as I read it tried to envision what kind of systems Google are running behind these services such as Gmail, Search, Maps....etc.

Pretty amazing at the amount of data that they would have indexed..

Read this article for a glimpse @ Google.

http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/sorting-1pb-with-mapreduce.html

Technology - great way to voice yourself

The internet certainly is a great place for self-expression. Blogs (like this one) are certainly a way where anyone can write about their interests.... (usually) whatever they are.

Sports, gardening, philosophy, technology.... politics.... it's all out there.

And, it appears that some people on Facebook have wasted no time in voicing their political views.

Seems as though some have already started facebook groups aimed at president (elect) Obama. Obama has gotten quite a world wide reaction after this US election season.... the majority being very positive. But of course, there are always those of the opposite opinion.

So, while he (Obama) hasn't even been sworn in and had but one day of leadership as president... some "Impeach Obama" groups have sprung up. Amazing.

While the internet does allow us to express ourselves and expressing ourselves is in and of itself good.... our expressions do show something about ourselves. And I will completely leave this up to you who've come across this post to decide if the expressions in question are in good character or not.

(Here's the article on Yahoo! Tech)

Microsoft and the big marketing bucks

I still think the "I'm a Mac, I'm a PC" commercials are great. They were totally original. Marketing genius (IMO).

This article points out some of Microsoft new attempts at countering those commercials and promote that "old" OS called Vista (while they are trying to come out with Windows 7).

(InfoWorld article)

Great question on Apple VS Microsoft

Over on ZDNet blogs, Adrian Kinglsey-Hughes asks a great question....

"How long until Apple is bigger than Microsoft?"

Apple has hit a few home runs... I think among them iTunes, iPod, iPhone....etc.. and the fact that through all the years the PC was so widely used it's a wonder that Apple's computers are still around.... even gaining popularity (I am writting this on a MacBook)...

There are some numbers on this page (linked below) and if they are accurate, the numbers are in fact pretty close.

(Read it here on Adrian Kinglsey-Hughes ZDNet blog)

Phishing scams - can happen to anyone

Did you ever see those emails that say they come from your bank... .or some other bank you don't deal with.... or maybe PayPal even though you don't have an account.... or you get it to an email that is not associated to an account????????

(I've seen all those emails.... and more)

Well, falling prey to phising scams can happen.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy is one of the people who fell victim to such a scam. 

It can literally happen to anyone.... keep your guard up!!

(AllSpammedUp article)

Plan your funeral

The internet pretty much has websites for anything and everything. You can view tons of videos, waste tons of time..... you can watch cartoon Badgers dance around....

Well, now you can do what you've always wanted to do.

Plan you're funeral.

So make sure you're funeral goes the way you want it to.

(TechCrunch article)

City of Washington uses Google Apps

City of Washington D.C. is using Google apps as their intranet.

Interesting.

(PC World Article)

New Flock release and Hello world!!!

Hello out there.

It's been about forever since I've posted anything here. But, it's time to start posting once again.

I've been keeping my eye on technology news... .for a number of years.

Just wanted to post that Flock, a browser based on Mozilla Firefox has just released their new version. Flock 2.0.

I've used Flock quite a bit but haven't really used all of it's features... it has alot of built in features, new ones include some new functionality for MySpace.

Check it out.

http://www.flock.com/