Google is pushing for electric efficieny. What? I never heard yahoo or microsoft do that. Why of all companies Google would care so much for PCs to be power efficient? Ah! the data centres! That must be a part of their running costs! No wonder the newest data centre is being constructed close to a power source. So for a cash rich company like Google, how much the electricity bill should be to sound an alarm?

 

Let's calculate.

 

Electricity charges: 5 cente per kwh

power for a server = 100 w (60 w machine consumption + 40 w for cooling + operating etc)

power per year: 100 w * 24 h * 365 days = 876 kwh

cost per server = $43.80 per year

 

So if you assume Google runs a million such servers, their power costs are over 40 million dollars per year!!! I know I made lots of assumptions here but the figure should be in ballpark. Just Google around and you should be able to validate most of the assumptions. 43 million for a company that spends around 800 million in cap ex is 5% of their expenses. No wonder they want efficient PCs

 

Numerous sites out there with small obvious bugs. Just came across this blog search engine called Blogdigger. I think its easy to miss testing in the excitement to release a new product ;) Check out the screen capture below.

 

So I'm thinking of building an HTPC. Or rather I'm so addicted to TV these days that I feel its worth spending a grand to not miss a show. Surprising given that not a too long ago we didn't even have a TV at our place and never missed it. But then, since I'm wasted anyways, I thought I should atleast get to decide the brand of addiction. :)

 

There are two choices to get the PVR functionality. You get it from your cable/satellite provider or build it yourself with windows MCE. I've chosen to build it myself primarily because it's more flexible that way. I took an easy way to build it and decided to use an off the shelf PC as a base system. Last week I ordered Dell dimension 9150 and ATI TV wonder RCE. I'm excited to get it all hooked up so that I can watch all those Friends reruns without having to miss any of chandler's wisecracks

Wonder how far a dollar bill travels to come to you? See if you can find it out at http://www.wheresgeorge.com. A site I stumbled upon yesterday. Enter the serial number of the bill and see if anybody has seen it before. Just some fun for a lazy day. See the most seen bills here: http://www.wheresgeorge.com/wrapper.php?page=top10bills_d0

 

So here's a brain teaser for you: What are the chaces that you'd see a bill more than once in your lifetime? Well if you are in India trying to get rid of a torn out one then the answer is kinda trivial but lets leave that case out for the time being. :)

Apple is the King when it comes to drumming up hype. Back in the limelight with its ubiquitous iPod and metrosexual imacs, Apple is all set to announce some new products tomorrow. Word is out that it includes a movie store, an update to ipod and a wireless media streaming solution. Nothing really ground breaking but gadget sites such as gizmodo and engadget were teeming with news and rumours about this for past week or so. As if there was going to be some earth shattering coming out of today's announcement...

 

Microsoft's UMPC had generated a bit of a hype recently and the windows marketplace caused a beep on the gadgeteers' radars but nothing comparable to what Apple has generated. Microsoft has at least two consumer product launches coming up, Vista and Zune I hope they learn some tricks from apple :)

Newsblogging sites such as digg and reddit have the power to make an instant hit out of any mildly interesting topic or website. Yesterday Browzar must've experienced a roller coaster ride of the blogsphere with the digg effect. Hailed as a solution to all those adwares and spywares, this super slim browser became an instant hit in blogsphere.

 

Today it turned out to be an uber adware itself! By the time people realize this and kick it off their machines it would have made a few grand already through it's spyware search. Now that's how you make quick money in web 2.0 ;)