Want to scale a system which can handle over 300 million monthly users, approximately half of which are logging in daily? It’s not an easy task however Facebook has managed to pull off an impressive feat but as many users are noticing: not everything is working as it should. The primary problems exist for the minority, yet rapidly growing population, of hyper-connected individuals who have thousands of contacts. So what’s going wrong?

Facebook Scales Horizontally
Facebook has been the most effective platform so far for attracting a large volume of users on a global scale. In an interview with Fast…

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There has been an earthquake measuring 6.3 on the Richter scale iin Assam. A low intensity quake was felt in Delhi too.The tremor in Assam on Monday was the fifth in the last one month and was of a longer duration than the others. The epicentre of the quake was in Bhutan.The regional meteorological office at Kolkata said the tremor was felt at latitude 27.3 degrees north and longitude 91.5 degrees east in the region centering Bhutan. A report from Coochbehar in North Bengal said people rushed out of their houses as doors and windows rattled for about 20 seconds.There…

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Google Inc is disappointed with the lack of breakthrough investment ideas in the green technology sector but the company is working to develop its own new mirror technology that could reduce the cost of building solar thermal plants by a quarter or more.”We’ve been looking at very unusual materials for the mirrors both for the reflective surface as well as the substrate that the mirror is mounted on,” the company’s green energy czar Bill Weihl told Reuters GlobalClimate and Alternative Energy Summit in San Francisco on Wednesday.Google, known for its Internet search engine, in late 2007 said it would invest…

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Railway stations across the country are set to get a facelift with the railway ministry set to begin work on multi-functional stations and also carry forward the earlier plans of world class stations. These are some of the recommendations in the first report of the expert committee on railways led by Amit Mitra, which was submitted to railway minister Mamata Banerjee on Monday. The minister assured that these will be acted upon and said, “Rail Board will take care of their implementation.” The expert panel has identified 64 stations which will be turned into multi functional complexes with facilities like…

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We’re very impressed with [Steve's] Electronic Snowball Fight game. It consists of two life-sized players standing opposite of each other. Each can throw a snowball or duck, the object is to hit the other person and not get hit yourself. He’s utilized a lot of good building techniques that could be easily adapted to other types of game play.

For the outlines of the players, [Steve] took pictures of himself standing, ducking, and in a throwing motion. Each picture was used to generate an outline which was then stenciled onto some Masonite. He then drilled holes along the outline…

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A top SAP executive said Wednesday that the vendor’s Business ByDesign on-demand ERP (enterprise resource planning) suite for SMBs will take “the world by storm” one day, but declined to reveal when a long-anticipated broader release will occur. SAP initially announced the suite in late 2007, and predicted it would generate US$1 billion in revenue by 2010. But it subsequently limited the rollout to a handful of markets while working to make sure the SaaS (software as a service) application will be profitable enough at scale. In remarks at the Citigroup Global Technology Conference in New York Wednesday, SAP executive…

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[Guus] screwed together this coffee table which doubles as a scale. No welding was required to put it together - just some bolts, pulleys, miscellaneous fittings, and an original design. The weight is indicated through the (unlabeled) position of the counterweight arm. Currently it is limited to measuring 10kg (22 pounds), but can easily be boosted by adding a heavier counterweight. It looks pretty robust, maintenance-free, and fitting for any living room workshop’s weighing needs. [Guus] is also the proud inventor of the rock radio, and he is working on creating Man-Y-Man: a modular play system allowing children to create up to 1520 unique…

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Its been a few months since I passed the CCIE Security exam.  Since then I have been working on Voice and R&S but jumping back and forth.  It’s not the study plan I would follow if I had things my way.  Alas, work, family, and study all have to come together in a fine balance for me to acomplish anything.  It took me 2 years and three attempts to pass the Security Lab. The reason it took me so long is because I wasn’t seriously studying for much of that time.  So when people ask me what plan I followed…

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