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Hundreds of millions of social networkers contribute to new data center building boom

Published on May 26, 2010 in Facebook, clean tech, social media and technology. View Comments

There seems to be a data center building boom currently going on in Silicon Valley, partly driven by the many hundreds of millions of online social networkers.

Internet mapInternet map image from The Opte Project

Apparently there are 7 projects underway in Santa Clara alone. If these reports are to be believed, unlike during the over-funded, over-development during the dot-com boom, construction is struggling to meet demand from the likes of fast growing companies such as Facebook.

According to this report, Facebook is looking to grab all the space in two new data centers and a good part of a third that’s still being built. However, it seems Facebook is leasing some space to meet its short term needs until it builds its own in-house.

When Facebook only(!) had 300 million users, it said it had 30,000 servers. User numbers have increased by well over 100 million since then.

It’s good to see that Facebook, Twitter and Yahoo all have servers housed at Digital Realty’s Santa Clara operation. These data centers have a Platinum or Gold rating under the LEED standard for energy efficient buildings.

It’s got to take a hell of a lot of power to run all the servers these companies (and we) are using daily. As well as being efficient, wouldn’t it be great if this power came from clean energy sources at some stage in the near future?

Worth switching to Seesmic for iPhone from Twitter for iPhone? Yes. Here’s why.

Published on May 24, 2010 in Facebook, Twitter, clean tech, environment, mobile and social media. View Comments

I was a big fan of using Tweetie, then I started using the replacement Twitter for iPhone app after Twitter recently bought the app and took it over. There’s no doubt, it’s a great app, there’s much to like about it. You can easily move between multiple Twitter accounts (if you have more than one), access and manage your Twitter Lists, make and save Twitter searches, upload and tweet out images, shorten URLs within posts and more.

So if I like it so much, why have I just made the switch to the new Seesmic for iPhone? Well for me, here are a few of reasons that make it worth it. Keep in mind that I haven’t tried Tweetdeck or Hootsuite or any other similar app, so I’m willing to be convinced if you think any have better features than this.

1. The biggest reason is that it’s not only a Twitter client. You can operate multiple Twitter accounts, your Facebook account, and a Ping.fm account from the app. The Ping.fm account access really opens it up to a lot of different network accounts.

Seesmic for iPhone

2. You can hit the reply or compose button on one account and then choose which account, or multiple accounts, the message will be sent from. This is something you can’t do with Tweetie/Twitter. I find myself wanting to do this quite a lot.

UPDATE: Scratch no. 2. In comments tomtubbs has pointed out that you can actually do this in Tweetie. In all the time I was using Tweetie and Tweetie 2, I never realised you could do this. Doh! Or is this a fairly new feature? It’s still good you can do this in Seesmic too though.

3. You can easily move between accounts or saved searches by swiping the screen sideways. This is a small but nice little time saver when reading messages across accounts.

5. If you have Ping.fm set up, you can select a Ping group to send a particular message from, while the composer is open no less. This is a great feature!

I’ve now set my Ping account up with additional groups, so that each service is a group of one. This means that if I want, I can individually select my Google Buzz, Friendfeed, Flickr or any other account to send messages from, all at the time of composing a message.

Seesmic Ping

Loic from Seesmic has said that they plan on adding Foursquare at a later date too, so hopefully you’ll be able to check in and send messages via Foursquare, as well as seeing your Foursquare activity timeline.

6. You can send tweets to Evernote, which I use on a daily basis. This is a handy feature if you want to read an article later that someone has linked to, for instance.

One downside to the Seesmic for iPhone for me is that you can view your Twitter lists but you can’t manage them from the app. Twitter for iPhone is great for this and I hope Seesmic adds this functionality.

Those are my reasons for using it instead of anything else at this point. Do let me know if you are using something you think is better.

Google launches Gulf oil spill crisis response and starts crowdsourcing news

Published on May 5, 2010 in Google, clean tech, environment, social media, technology and video. View Comments

google crisis response

Further to my previous post about the Gulf oil spill in relation to social media, Google has launched a Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill Crisis Response page. Every day a new Google Earth layer is being produced to track the spread of of the oil spill.

In addition, Google is encouraging people to help by volunteering during the crisis and by donating to the Alabama Coastal Foundation.

Interestingly, they are also attempting to crowdsource news by asking people to upload their own videos of the Gulf oil spill as the situation develops. The videos will automatically be fed back to the crisis page.

There is also a Deepwater Horizon oil spill page developing on Wikipedia, with a substantial and growing number of references. No doubt this will become a significant resource as the disaster continues to unfold.

5 ways to find the best Twitter connections

Published on April 12, 2010 in Twitter, clean tech and social media. View Comments

Lately, a few people have asked me about the best ways to find “good people” to follow on Twitter. Here are a few suggestions. They are perhaps more for those who are fairly new to Twitter but if you’re an old hand on Twitter, please feel free to add your own suggestions. This is by no means a comprehensive list.

Firstly, it really depends what you’re into, as to who you might want to find and start following, doesn’t it? It may take a bit of effort to find the people who are the most interested in similar things to you, depending on what you are into.

For instance, one of my growing interests is for emerging clean technologies, or cleantech. Here are some of the ways I have gone about finding people, organisations and blogs similarly interested. You could do the same for whatever subjects you are interested in.

1. Twitter (Real-Time) Search

One of the best ways to find people to follow and talk with is to use Twitter Search itself. Simply search for any term or combination of terms and you are sure to find people tweeting on that subject. The search updates in real-time, so it’s possible to keep it open and reply to some of those tweets as they happen. The search can be saved for later and repeated at will.

twitter_search

2. Wefollow

Wefollow is a directory of Twitter users who have added themselves by tagging their profiles by category. It sprang from an idea by the founder of Digg, Kevin Rose. You simply enter a search term to find a list of the most influential and most popular profiles in that category. Don’t forget to add yourself so people can find you too.

wefollow

3. Who do you respect? Follow some of the people they follow

Out of the people you already follow, decide who you respect the most in your chosen category. Look at who they follow and have conversations with. Chances are you’ll find some great people to follow this way. You may even feel you want to contribute to the conversation.

4. Who do you respect? Look at their Twitter Lists

Twitter Lists have been around for a while now. Have a look for the public Twitter Lists of the people you respect in your chosen category. Chances are those people have made some lists of the people they most respect, for the benefit of themselves and others.

5. Mashable’s new Twitter List Directory

Mashable has only very recently started a Twitter List Directory. It’s by no means comprehensive yet, but is still worth a search under your chosen subject. You can also add your own Twitter lists to the index, which will help others find you.

mashable

Got any other other good ways to find the best people to follow? let us know.

I’m Creating An Enviro Twitter List, Who Should Be On it?

Published on November 2, 2009 in Twitter, clean tech and environment. View Comments

I’m attempting to create a reasonably comprehensive Enviro Twitter list. The list contains many of the twitter streams I follow that involve the environment in some way, shape or form. So far there are 216 profiles on the list.

I’m sure I’ve missed quite a few, as I haven’t had much time to spend on it yet. If you can think of anyone who should be on it and isn’t yet, or you think you should be on it, just leave the username as a comment here, or just tweet me.

Later on I’d like to break this large list down into smaller, more manageable subcategories such as clean tech, organisations, individuals, companies and blogs.

Let me know if you can add to it. Thanks.

jjprojects enviro list

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