On this site I write about my various projects and share my thoughts on areas that interest me including, but not limited to, vertical search engines, cloud computing, social networking, Twitter, space exploration and the semantic web.
Adobe yesterday released version 1.0 of Adobe Integrated Runtime (AIR) knows as Adobe Air along with Adobe® Flex® 3. Adobe Air, Adobe Flex and Adobe Flash are the foundation of the Adobe technology platform for rich Internet applications (RIAs). And while the impact this platform will have on how users interact on the Internet won’t be known for some time it’s not too early to say that it could be profound.
The two biggest strengths of the platform are its cross platform appeal and the fact it breaks away from the Web browser. Once an application is developed from the platform it can be installed on Windows and Apple computers and later this year on Linux and runs as a stand alone program independent of the browser. Users still need to install the Adobe Air software but that’s a breeze.
“Rich Internet apps, or RIAs, could be loosely defined as software with engaging user interfaces that typically bridge the connectivity of the Web with a graphical richness and custom user interface that used to be reserved for client software.”
“Air, a cross-operating system platform that was code-named Apollo, attempts to bridge the gap between the Web and the desktop by allowing developers to create Internet-connected applications that aren’t restricted by the form and functionality of Web browsers.“
“Because the platform is open it gives all Web site owners — big or small — an opportunity to present more useful information on the Yahoo! Search page as compared to what is presented on other search engines. Site owners will be able to provide all types of additional information about their site directly to Yahoo! Search. So instead of a simple title, abstract and URL, for the first time users will see rich results that incorporate the massive amount of data buried in websites — ratings and reviews, images, deep links, and all kinds of other useful data — directly on the Yahoo! Search results page.”
“Just a few days ago, according to reports from Ars Technica, a panel put Network Solutions up for questioning for allegations of domain frontrunning. Frontrunning is the practice in which users would look up a domain name via the registration-site WHOIS, and would appear available, but every other internet registrar would show the names as unavailable, and registered to Network Solutions, thus forcing the user to purchase the domain from them.”
The clouds cleared just in time for me to see the lunar eclipse tonight. I’ve posted the pictures to my newly created Flickr account, yes I know it took me forever to break down and create one. Enjoy, follow the prompts for the larger versions. I used a Nikon DX40 with a Nikkor 18-135mm lens. For the close-up I had an aperture of f5.6 and shutter speed of 18 seconds. For the wide-angle I had an aperture of f4 and shutter speed of 30 seconds. For the background light shot I had an aperture of f3.5 and shutter speed of 18 seconds. I’m very much an amateur photographer and still learning and wish I had more lenses.
Some exciting news today from Eric Baldeschwieler, Senior Director, Grid Computing on the Yahoo Developer Network, Yahoo! Launches World’s Largest Hadoop Production Application. I’ll note that my company Hyperix is using Hadoop for our vertical search platform.
Here’s some of the stats:
Some Webmap size data:
* Number of links between pages in the index: roughly 1 trillion links
* Size of output: over 300 TB, compressed!
* Number of cores used to run a single Map-Reduce job: over 10,000
* Raw disk used in the production cluster: over 5 Petabytes
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