November 2006 | TOP500 Supercomputing Sites

The 28th TOP500 List was released in Tampa, FL during SC06.
On the new list, the IBM BlueGene/L system, installed at DOE’s Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), retains the No. 1 spot with a Linpack performance of 280.6 teraflops (trillions of calculations per second, or Tflop/s).

The new No. 2 systems is Sandia National Laboratories’ Cray Red Storm supercomputer, only the second system ever to be recorded to exceed the 100 Tflops/s mark with 101.4 Tflops/s. The initial Red Storm system was ranked No. 9 in the last listing.

Slipping to No. 3 from No. 2 last June is the IBM eServer Blue Gene Solution system, installed at IBM’s Thomas Watson Research Center with 91.20 Tflops/s Linpack performance.

Slashdot | The Web Is 16 Today

The first website was purportedly http://nxoc01.cern.ch/hypertext/WWW/TheProject.html  which was put up on Nov. 13, 1990.

» The great [structured] database in the sky | Between the Lines | ZDNet.com

MySQL ECO Marten Mickos described the database in the sky as the other side of the coin for what Google does for unstructured data, although it must part of Google’s vision to tackle the dark Web of structured data. Mickos wouldn’t mind if MySQL become the underlying database storing the structured data or index for the great database in the sky.

MsDewey  is a new experimental search engine by Microsoft that purportedly has an attractive young brunette that interacts with you and cracks jokes.

What do you think of such interface?

The blog implies that social networking may just be a  fad.

E-Commerce News » Blog Archive » MySpace Expanding to Avoid Future Bankruptcy?

MySpace is looking to offset its inevitable losses and possibly total collapse in the United States market by rapidly expanding into Asia, first into Japan and now China.

The poor history of social networking combined with MySpace’s declining average viewing time per visitor may very well be the reason why News Corp executives are looking to expand their presence worldwide. On November 8 I wrote about MySpace’s expansion to Japan - now, however, TechWack reports that the social networking giant is looking for a joint venture partner to expand into China next year.

I have always thought that the way to success is not marketing, but product and service excellence .

Of course, my marketing professor would have disagreed. All over the world, there are scores of examples about how good products improperly marketed lost out to inferior products with the right buzz.

But the internet is changing all that, and more and more, as people can communicate faster and better through myriad means, a company with a bad product will find out that no amount of marketing will overcome bad customer experience.

The growth of internet and other communications means that more than ever, the old Emerson adage, ” Build a better mousetrap and the world will beat a path to your door“, is running ever more true.

The internet is filled of scores of websites who struck the correct chord, and even for a few seconds, had their walk of fame.

Yesterday, I spent the weekend redesigning my site, and hopefully it came out cleaner and easier to navigate. Obviously the readers noticed, and I got twice the usual traffic on Monday ( Tuesday figures is as of 7:30 a.m. ).

For the people who blog or maintain websites, try to offer something compelling. If people have good reason to come back, or to tell their friends about it, they will - and fast.

In today’s world, you just had to have the confidence that even if you are the most remote place in the world, it is becoming easier to notice talent or great work. Thus, I believe more than ever, the way to success is plainly just to excel — and the rest will follow.