February 2008 Archives

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.

J. Nicholas Hoover of InformationWeek writes in his post "Adobe Stakes New Claim To Rich Web Apps With Release Of Air":

"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."

In his latest entry on the Yahoo Search Blog, Vish Makhijani, discusses "Yahoo! Search An Open Approach to Search". This post builds on last weeks announcement of the largest Hadoop production application and I love it. It's innovative, especially for content producers. They, we finally get a say in the output of Yahoo's search results like never before. Regardless if you're a content producer or searcher you can sign up for more information here.

"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."

Mashable is reporting that "Network Solutions and ICANN Named in Class Action Lawsuit". It's about time. My business partner and I were victims of this dubious practice by Network Solutions not too long ago. It cost us money. At this time as each domain we have left on Network Solutions comes up for renewal we've been transferring them to my Go Daddy reseller service Cheap Available Domains.

"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.

PS For some reason if click in the photo to get it larger Flickr isn't working. So you can visit the Lunar Eclipse large format slideshow by clicking here.

And you can zoom into the Moon on this one.

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

Google like all the big players needs huge data centers positioned around the world to handle the vast amounts of data they collect. In the March issue of Harper's Magazine, author Ginger Strand gives her take on Google's energy consumption needs and provides a sneak peek at Google's, used to be secret, super cloud computing data center in The Dalles, Orgegon. Included is the blueprint to Google The Dalles data center.

"Velcroed together, stacked in racks, and lined up in back-to-back rows, the servers require a half-watt in cooling for every watt they use in processing, and Google leads the field in squeezing more servers into less space. Based on projected industry standard of 500 watts per square foot in 2011, the Dalles plant can be expected to demand about 103 megawatts of electricity - enough to npower 82,000 homes, or a city the size of Tacoma, Washington."

With these type of energy needs it's no wonder Google is investing big time in renewable energy and plans on being a leader in the field. The author it appears is not convinced of Google's good intentions when it comes to clean energy. You be the judge.

ReadWriteWeb has a good article on cloud computing today.

The first, Reaching for the Sky Through The Compute Clouds, is written the Amazon Web Services outage last Friday fresh in our minds. I'm a big proponent of cloud computing as it's the only way in my opinion to truly scale large data driven applications such as search which is what I'm working on.

"So is it really true - is cloud computing a bad idea? Of course not. It is a wonderful, powerful idea. In this post, we explore the ideas behind cloud computing and argue that it will be an integral part of our future."

"Do Clouds Really Work?

You bet! The best example is Google. The king of the web is reigning with a farm of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of boxes. To race along with the web, Google constantly increases the size of its cloud, incorporating new web sites, and expanding its index.

Of course, Google isn't the only one operating in a cloud. All major web players including Amazon, eBay, Yahoo! and Facebook are running some sort of massive computing cloud."