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Thursday, October 6th, 2005

blogosphere stats from Dave Sifry

Continuing Web 2.0 coverage…

I’m fascinated by Technorati, the original blog search engine, for a couple of reasons:

Technorati’s archive (a retrospective search architecture, btw) is tiered into 3 layers based on recency. They’ve made the assumption that the most recent hits for a search are more interesting than older hits, and of course in many cases that’s true. But the data i/o requirements, of simultaneously pushing new data into the front of each archive while expiring it out the other side (and from there into the next-most-recent archive) would seem to be unmanageable.

I learned this week that the write to read ratio within technorati’s database is 5:1. That presents a horrible scaling problem, because writes are slow and can’t be easily parallelized. Compare to Tribe.net’s write to read ratio: 1:99. Tribe’s is probably an extreme example (in fact I suspect that figure needs to be qualified) but in any case if your write rate is bigger than your read rate, you’ll be hurting under load. E.g., searches will take 30-60 seconds.

Part of Technorati’s problem is volume. Check out these “state of the blogosphere” stats from Dave Sifry:

It’s a big pile of data to read, store, and index.


Tags:
posted to channel: Web
updated: 2005-10-06 20:55:36

Wednesday, October 5th, 2005

Google product launch: Google Ice!

Google Ice
October 5, 2005 - SAN FRANCISCO - Today, Google announced the launch of Google Ice, an innovative new product in the beverage-cooling market. Google Ice is available exclusively at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco, but will soon be rolled out within after-hours tech confererence geek lounges nationwide, except perhaps in Redmond.

“Google has already made tremendous strides in making access to information on the web a reality for users across the globe, but we’re still in the Internet’s early innings,” said Google CEO Eric Schmidt. “But at least now you can see what you’re drinking.”

“We hope this product makes quite a… splash,” added Google founder Sergey Brin. “Heh, heh, heh. Heh. Ahem.”

google ice!Added Stewart Butterfield, founder of Flickr and employee of Google rival Yahoo, “5000 Ph.D.’s and they come up with this?!


Tags:
posted to channel: Web
updated: 2005-10-06 06:56:14

Web 2.0 Launchpad: 13 company launches in 90 minutes

90 minutes, 13 companies, six minutes apiece. (Six minutes… sort of like the elevator pitch at Sears Tower.)


Tags:
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2005-10-06 19:41:43

Web 2.0: tagging tagging tagging

Continuing Web 2.0 coverage…

I snuck into the Tagging workshop when the guard’s back was turned. A couple great ideas were presented even in just the final 15 minutes.

Also, I made this important technical discovery: when 200 people crowd into a room built for 150, it’s at least 5°F cooler on the floor.


Tags:
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2005-10-05 20:34:37

traffic

6:45 am depart home
7:05 am arrive highway
7:06 am traffic jam. crawl about 3 miles in 40 minutes.
7:45 am brief respite from traffic, as inexplicable as the jam itself. no sign of accident or lane closure. drive 75 mph for 5 minutes. celebrate, briefly.
7:50 am another traffic jam. crawl about 3 miles in 40 minutes.
8:15 am seethe
8:30 am Web 2.0 conference starts without me. But! traffic opens up (inexplicably).
8:42 am arrive GGB toll plaza in just under 2 hours, avg speed = 35 mph
8:43 am hit traffic 1 mile past the bridge. WTF?
9:00 am seethe
9:10 am arrive Argent hotel. Elapsed time = 2 hrs 25 minutes for a 65 mile drive.

I rushed upstairs to the first workshop. The doors were closed. The guard said even the standing room was taken.

Later I learned that at the first Web 2.0 conference, only half the registered attendees showed up for the morning workshops. The organizers planned for 50% turnout this year. But apparently just about everyone showed up. All the workshops are overflowing into the hallways. People sit hip-to-hip or stand three deep in the corners. Between conferences, corridors are completely gridlocked.

The organizers are coping as well as they can, but as the morning rolls on only more people arrive.


Tags:
posted to channel: Personal
updated: 2005-10-05 20:30:28

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