The Google Navy

Google are thinking of moving some of their data centres off-shore, literally. Barges up to 11km off the coast could house these data centres taking advantage of the ocean to cool the computers, use wave power to power them and take advantage of tax loopholes which is probably the real slam dunk. There are a few concerns with this, such as the safety of the barges in storms like hurricanes. I suspect they haven't thought about Baidu or Yahoo hiring submarines and sending torpedoes into their data centres though.

They arn't the only company looking into "greener" solutions, Microsoft are looking into building a data centre in Siberia. Thats where you'll get transferred too for introducing too many bugs into Word 2010.

Russia to centralise production of amphibious aircraft / flying boats

I have a weakness for flying boats i admit, the fact Russia is setting up a single centre for the development and production of flying boats and amphibious aircraft made me smile. The centre will include Beriev of course and the Tavia production plant with a testing base at Gelenzhik on the Black Sea. Production initially will be of the A-42 Albatros, Be103 and Be-200 and newer designs. As well as new aircraft the facility will maintain, repair and modernise existing aircraft. This is all part of the re-organisation of Russian aircraft production as the United Aircraft Corporation.


A-40 "Mermaid"

Be-200 Altair

Be-103

Google aim to digitize newspaper archives

Google are aiming to digitize every amount of information out there and make it searchable it seems (maybe one day even the notebooks my Mum has kept from the 1970s detailing how much food cost then). The latest step is to digitize the archives of newspapers which is truly going to be a massive task. There are already some of these archives available such as the Times Digital Archive which i find very fascinating. Though i'd really love to see some local newspapers such as the (Birmingham) Evening Mail and Sutton Coldfield News archives, i suspect these might not be in the Google search for a few years...

Google Chrome

Google Chrome is the new web browser from Yahoo... no just kidding, Google of course. I installed it at work and had a little play. The new interface with it's take on tab browsing takes a little getting used to and of course everything renders correctly as its using the same rendering engine as Safari. I found a flaw with Google Chrome rather early, it supports scrolling down a page with the mouse scroll wheel but not back up! It also did not open right-click-searches in a new tab though that has been fixed now.

Does the world need another web browser, well with Google behind it its no doubt going to be a success. Their aim is to take market share from Internet Explorer but that remains to be seen as i suspect a lot of IE users are locked in for various reasons or don't care. The danger is Chrome will attract users from non-IE browsers and further Balkanise the "alternative".

Tracking the container

The BBC have an interesting new project, they are going to track a container for a year with a GPS tracker and update a live website. This will show, hopefully, how globalised world trade is as the container goes around the world. Its first journey (according to a TV news report this morning) will be to take whisky to China. I hope it doesn't end up like the container that was marooned on the sports field near my office for 2 years! Track the container here, its currently still in Southampton.