Latest reading

Here are a few of the articles that have caught my attention recently:

• Google tries again in social, this time focusing on the common trend of having sharing buttons distributed across the Web. ([1])
  
  
• Good thoughts on building robust websites. I particularly like the assumption that off and slow are perfectly valid states in underlying services and should be expected by all other services. ([1])
  
  
• A Yahoo data center based on chicken coop designs (along with relaxing assumptions about maximum tolerable peak temperature) yields big energy savings. ([1])
  
  
• Cool paper from Googlers coming out later this year at VLDB that talks about how useful direction searches (like on Google Maps) are for finding places of interest and places people might want to go. Similar to the GPS trail data work (using data from GPS-enabled cell phones), but using search logs instead. ([1])
  
  
• I really like this vision for what Google should do for social, that they should go after personal search. This is closer to the idea of an external memory, Memex, and the promise of the languishing Google Desktop than what Facebook is today, but it is a problem many people have, want solved, and one that Google is better able to solve than anyone else (except maybe Microsoft). ([1])
  
  
• Surprising results in this paper out of Yahoo Research showing queries that tend to be unique to particular demographic groups (like men/women, racial groups, age groups, etc.). Jump right to Table 3 (about halfway through the paper) to see it. ([1]
  
  
• Over at blog@CACM, I outrageously claim that both netbooks and tablets are doomed. ([1] [2])
  
  
• Randall Munroe (author of xkcd) is brilliant. Again. ([1] [2])
  
  
• Sounds like YouTube wants to build millions of TV channels designed to match any mood, interest, or person. ([1])