Make Sense, Be Positive, Help Out – social reporters

January 3, 2010 Dave Ohara

socialreporter.com has a post on his 2010 resolution. I liked his points as it remind what I am trying to do with www.greenm3.com.

Make Sense by using social media to capture content at events and elsewhere; listen out for the conversations taking place; highlight the stories that you hear; interpret for different interests; comment to add your own ideas, and aggregate to make it easier for people to follow what’s happening in many different places.
Be positive so there’s more chance of good things emerging from your reporting: make friends, applaud other people’s successes, celebrate together, and spot opportunities (while not ignoring the problems).
Help out and promote collaboration (rather than highlighting conflict) by encouraging, supporting, and signposting people to other resources.

Two other good things to think about are referenced.

Jeff Jarvis, suggesting journalists must see themselves as more than storytellers, could be talking about social reporters:

When we open ourselves up, we can think of journalists as enablers, as community organizers (not just of information but of a community’s ability to organize its own information), as teachers, as curators (how could I get through this without using the word at least once?), as filters, as tool makers, as algorithm writers.

For those in social media, Scott Gould also says that this year we must make sense or die:

There’s too much content, both online and offline, for everyone to cohabit – meaning those that lack clarity will, by the end of 2010, die. Furthermore those who aren’t making sense probably don’t have much money left to continue not making any sense, so unless they start making sense, they too will die.

2010 a year of change?

January 2, 2010 Dave Ohara

Happy New Year!

As we start the New Year there are many who look at 2009 as a year to forget. StorageMojo has his top 2009 stories post, but what I like best is his last points.

The StorageMojo take
Like a termite-riddled barn after a heavy snow, the Great Recession is seeing old models collapse. We can’t afford to keep doing what we’ve been doing.

As the new models emerge, competition will grow in the hot areas, leading to even more innovation in the next 3 years than we’ve seen in the last 5. More on that in a future post.

I agree 2010 will have even more innovation.

So far most of the green data center efforts have held on to old models and tried to make them greener. Now it is time to cast off the old models and look for new models to be green when resource consumption (carbon impact and water) is a top priority.

As the year develops I’ll be making announcements of changes GreenM3 is making in what I write about. 2010 is going to be an exciting year.

Biomass power plant and data centers, Google’s Finland data center site?

January 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

Found this interesting year 2000, document by National Renewable Energy Laboratory on 20 different biomass power plants most of which are forest mills.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
________________________________________________________________________
This report includes summary information on 20 biomass power plants—18 in the United States, one in Canada, and one in Finland, which represent some of the leaders in the industry. Table 1 lists the 20 plants in order of on-line date, the same order in which they are presented in the report. In some cases, the on-line date means the date an older fossil fired plant started using biomass fuel commercially (not its original on-line date). Some of the information in the table is abbreviated, but can be clarified by referring to the specific plant sections.

One of the sites studied is in Finland which reminded me of Google’s pulp and paper mill acquisition.

Google Confirms Data Center in Finland
March 4th, 2009 : Rich Miller
It’s official: Google will build a major data center at a former paper mill in Hamina, Finland, the company said today. Google bought the former Stora Enso newsprint plant for $51 million last month, and said it was “likely” to use the facility for a data center. Today Google posted details about the Hamina project on the data center section of its web site.

The site will come online in 2010.

“When fully developed, this facility will be a critical part of our infrastructure for many years to come,” Google said. “Limited testing of the facility should be underway in 2010 and the center should be fully operational later that year.”

On a humorous side, here is this post.

Biomass Power Plant Probably Hides Future Evil World Ruler

I don't know if I would like to have a biomass power plant next to my house, but if I have to get one, please let it be like this. Better yet, let me live in it.

This 49.3 megawatt biomass power plant in the United Kingdom will be fully integrated with its surroundings on the banks of the River Tees. Fully integrated as in "hey, look that cool big fat metal volcano coming out of those woods." [Heatherwick via Dezeen via Inhabitat]

A simple definition of Cloud Computing – Pay as you go SaaS

January 1, 2010 Dave Ohara

UC Berkeley RAD lab is researching data center innovations. Here is a slide from one of their presentations. Note the sponsors and members.

One of the points made on a blog post is cloud computing is their definition of cloud computing is a Software as a Service (SaaS) with “pay as you go billing.

Hence, to be more precise, in Above the Clouds, we defined Cloud Computing as follows:

Cloud Computing refers to both the applications delivered as services over the Internet and the hardware and systems software in the datacenters that provide those services. The services themselves have long been referred to as Software as a Service(SaaS), so we use that term. The datacenter hardware and software is what we will call a Cloud. When a Cloud is made available in a pay-as-you-go manner to the public, we call it a Public Cloud; the service being sold is Utility Computing. … We use the term Private Cloud to refer to internal datacenters of a business or other organization that are not made available to the public. Thus, Cloud Computing is the sum of SaaS and Utility Computing, but does not normally include Private Clouds.

In the same presentation, RAD lab goes on to explain “why now?”

The Economics of Pay by use have an interesting overlap with a point AWS makes.

Capacity vs. Usage Comparison

This last graph is the Christmas wish list for enlightened green IT thinkers. IT load that tracks to demand.

Oil companies funding biofuel research, Codexis is one example

December 31, 2009 Dave Ohara

WSJ.com has an article on Royal Dutch Shell and others investing in biofuel research.

Royal Dutch Shell PLC has roughly doubled its financial support for biofuels start-up Codexis Inc. in the past year, the latest sign that oil companies are slowly and selectively increasing their interest in plants-to-fuels research.

Shell is on pace to spend $60 million in 2009 to fund research at Codexis, nearly twice the amount as the year before, according to regulatory filings. Codexis filed paperwork this week for a $100 initial public offering. The start-up is developing microbes to speed up the chemical reactions that turn inedible plants, such as grasses or stalks, into ethanol and diesel.

The Energy Information Administration projects the fuel growth from 2008 to 2022.

Other oil companies are investing too in biofuels.

Other crude-oil companies also have increased spending on biofuels. Exxon Mobil Corp. said this summer it would spend $600 million over five or six years on a partnership with Synthetic Genomics Inc. to develop a way to turn algae into motor fuels. Chevron Corp. entered into a relationship in October with Mascoma Corp. to investigate plant-based fuel. And BP PLC created a venture with Verenium Corp. this year to build a fuel plant in central Florida next year.

Codexis is one example.

Recognized by the EPA

Codexis is focusing on pharmaceutical and biofuels which makes sense given their investors.

Codexis is a privately-held company, with investors including:

Bio*One Capital

Chevron Technology Ventures

CMEA Capital

FirstMark Capital

GE Energy

Maxygen, Inc.

Pfizer

Shell