Technology: April 2009 Archives

For years it was a rumor that Google ran their massive datacenters within many movable standard shipping containers. On April 1st, April Fool's Day, the company confirmed this and released pictures and video of the centers (no, it wasn't just another Google hoax on April Fool's Day). Google also talked about the custom server design they've been running to accomplish the massive scale they've achieved over the years. What's interesting is how they framed all of this around a goal of energy efficiency and cost savings.

In honor of Earth Day (a belated honor since Earth Day was April 22nd), I'd like to share this video. Any geek, especially ones that run datacenters, will appreciate this video. Pretty cool to move more than 1,600 servers in a self contained shipping container with a huge crane.

There's been discussion about the potential for electric cars for many years, even a documentary about why it hadn't worked called, "Who Killed the Electric Car?" When oil prices were high there were many companies looking into this again and some high end manufactures, like Tesla Motors, are producing them now. One of the obvious issues has been the ability to charge, which begs the question, how far can an electric car actually be driven?

Better Place has a bold plan that is explored in this TED 2009 talk by Shai Agassi. This isn't the typical TED talk with cool visuals or amazing technology but more about a real world solution for a problem that has--and will--continue to drain the economy and call into question relations throughout the world.