Verizon's Data Center host eWaste event in Florida

Finding a data center is difficult, but here is one that is being used as a place bring eWaste to in Florida.

Verizon facility hosts recycling event

Wednesday, February 23, 2011 6:57 PM

(Source: Tampa Tribune)By Joyce Mckenzie, Tampa Tribune, Fla.

Feb. 23--TEMPLE TERRACE -- Search the attic, closets, cabinets, garage and other storage areas for electronic equipment that is merely taking up space and collecting dust.

The Verizon Data Center at 7701 E. Telecom Parkway in Telecom Park is opening its doors from 7:30 a.m. to 2 p.m. Thursday as a collection site for people to dispose old laptop and desktop computers, keyboards and cables.

Is this site really a data center? Yep, here is the Google Map location.

GreenM3 advisor executive, now Chairman of Halogen Media Group

Peter Horan has been a friend and advisor for years, and today he accepted a job at Halogen Media Group as Chairman.

Halogen Media Taps Peter Horan As Executive Chairman

Halogen Media Group, an online marketing firm focused on connecting “prestige” advertisers with social media audiences, has named former About.com and IAC (NSDQ: IACI) exec Peter Horan as its executive chairman. The announcement comes a day after the shut down of e-mail startup Goodmail Systems, which Horan left a year ago as CEO.

Horan’s role will cover two major areas, said CEO and founder Greg Shove, in an interview with paidContent. Specifically, he’ll be charged with building up the company’s audience strategy. He’ll also grow content sites in-house and will also look for companies to invest in or acquire as additions to its network.

Here is Peter's past job experience from LinkedIn.

Current

• Executive Chairman at Halogen Network

Past

• CEO at IAC Media And Advertising
• CEO at AllBusiness.com, Inc.
• CEO at About.Com, Division of Primedia
• CEO at DevX.com, Inc.
• Senior Vice President at International Data Group

Peter and I have had great conversations over the past few months on social media which fits his move to Halogen.

Our Company

Audience fragmentation continues to accelerate, so the usual media companies can no longer be relied upon to reach and engage the affluent audience with both impact and performance. Typical ad networks can provide reach and efficiency, but are not able to ensure the relevance and brand-safety that prestige brands demand. This gap is why Halogen exists - to provide prestige brands with affluential audience reach that enhances their brands, yet also delivers results.

Since our start three years ago, we have built the largest aggregate network of affluent users online, with hundreds of mid-tail publishers that reach more than 55 million users each month and an email subscriber base of over 10 million. Halogen's suite of capabilities includes custom editorial campaigns, high impact ad formats, behavioral and income targeting, and video advertising channels. Advertisers that have partnered with Halogen in the past include Rolex, smartwater, Trapiche wines, Chase Manhattan Bank and Harry Winston.

While Peter was CEO of IAC, ask.com was expanding in Moses Lake, WA with its data center build out.  It is rare to find a CEO who gets data centers.

Horan left his post as CEO of IAC Media & Advertising, to become CEO of Goodmail in May 2008. Before that, Horan was best known as the head of About.com during its sale to NYTCo.

David Kaplan
@davidaKaplanFeb 23, 2011 12:00 AM ET

Programming for a Greener Data Center

The progress on energy efficient software is difficult for many.  If you are a mobile developer you think of the energy efficiency of your code.  If you are Google, Microsoft, or Facebook you think of the performance per watt.  But, there is a lot more that can be done.

The National Science Foundation has awarded a grant for greener software.

New approach to programming may boost ‘green’ computing

By Rachel Coker
Published on February 21, 2011

A Binghamton University computer scientist with an interest in “green” software development has received the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious award for young researchers.

Yu David Liu received a five-year, $448,641 grant from the NSF’s Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program. The highly competitive grants support junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.

Part of the challenge is the lack of support for energy aware programming.

None of the mainstream computer languages supports energy-aware programming, he said. However, language designers often create a blueprint that can be extended. Java, for instance, could be extended as EnergyJava and remain 90 percent the same. Such moderate changes would make it possible for programmers to adopt it relatively easily.

Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley has the highest concentration of data center decision makers and innovation, and I am sure most of your take regular trips to Silicon Valley.  I am heading down today, and I’ll be back for The Green Grid conference the following week.  Going to the bay area is almost as easy as a bus ride, a 2 hr flight.  This trip I am taking my kids to see grandma. Being raised in Cupertino/Saratoga getting around is not a problem.

Steve Blank writes a post that would be useful for those who want to see some highlights of Silicon Valley.  One area that Steve hits the mark and why I go to the bay area so much for clients and friends.

The Valley is about the Interactions Not the Buildings
Like the great centers of innovation, Silicon Valley is about the people and their interactions. It’s something you really can’t get a feel of from inside your car or even walking down the street. You need to get inside of those building and deeper inside those conversations. Here’s a few suggestions of how to do so.

…

Steven has humor in his post.

Hackers’ Guide to Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is more of a state of mind than a physical location. It has no large monuments, magnificent buildings or ancient heritage. There are no tours of companies or venture capital firms. From Santa Clara to South San Francisco it’s 45 miles of one bedroom community after another. Yet what’s been occurring for the last 50 years within this tight cluster of suburban towns is nothing short of an “entrepreneurial explosion” on par with classic Athens, renaissance Florence or 1920’s Paris.

And, pokes fun at many aspects of the valley.

A Visitors Guide to Silicon Valley

Posted on February 22, 2011 by steveblank

If you’re a visiting dignitary whose country has a Gross National Product equal to or greater than the State of California, your visit to Silicon Valley consists of a lunch/dinner with some combination of the founders of Google, Facebook, Apple and Twitter and several brand name venture capitalists. If you have time, the President of Stanford will throw in a tour, and then you can drive by Intel or some Clean Tech firm for a photo op standing in front of an impressive looking piece of equipment.

The “official dignitary” tour of Silicon Valley is like taking the jungle cruise at Disneyland and saying you’ve been to Africa. Because you and your entourage don’t know the difference between large innovative companies who once were startups(Google, Facebook, et al) and a real startup, you never really get to see what makes the valley tick.

If you didn’t come in your own 747, here’s a guide to what to see in the valley (which for the sake of this post, extends from Santa Clara to San Francisco.) This post offers things to see/do for two types of visitors: I’m just visiting and want a “tourist experience” (i.e. a drive by the Facebook / Google / Zynga / Apple building) or “I want to work in the valley” visitor who wants to understand what’s going on inside those buildings.

Is VMware a top influencer in server hardware design? Yes

You can’t build data center hardware or software without addressing the cloud.  VMware’s focus on virtualization put them in a key position for the cloud.  Here is an interesting post from VMware office of the CTO’s Richard A. Brunner.

"Day-Zero" Enablement of New Microprocessors and Servers at VMware

An Office of the CTO Guest Blog
By Richard A. Brunner, Chief Platform Architect, Office of the CTO

…

In early 2009, my colleagues and I formed an internal server roadmap team, that has been meeting weekly since then, to plan for new microprocessor launches up to two years in advance. By tracking the microprocessor launches, we are generally able to support the launch of new servers, which are usually aligned. In this way we can ensure that we have timely support for the latest and greatest microprocessor and server technologies.

This got me thinking who has the most influence in the server hardware designs.  Here is the process VMware now uses for new processors.

Based on our experience over the last few years, we have developed the process around four phases of availability and maturity of new microprocessor and prototype components (see figure below). The timelines for these phases can be described relative to the day-zero date of a given microprocessor generation. Note that, as mentioned earlier, every new microprocessor generation has its own independent timeline that is seldom aligned with any other. (The timeframes discussed below are for a new major generation, such as the introduction of the Intel "Nehalem" generation; the timeframes for minor generational changes, such as the introduction of the Intel "Westmere" generation is more compressed.)

• 1^st Phase CPU Prototypes: this is when VMware gets the very first samples of a new microprocessor (CPU) generation in very fragile platforms directly from AMD and Intel. This phase starts between 10 to 11 months before the day-zero date.
• 2^nd Phase CPU Prototypes: in this phase, VMware receives more mature microprocessor revisions that are adequate for us to finish our development processes. Typically, microprocessors in this phase show up between 7 to 8 months before the day-zero date. The same microprocessors also tend show up a few weeks later in the first phase OEM prototypes.
• 3^rd Phase OEM Prototypes: our server-vendor partners provide us the first prototypes of actual retail servers that will use the new microprocessor technology. This phase starts between 5 to 6.5 months before the day-zero date.
• 4^th Phase OEM Production: this is the final step where VMware validates candidate releases of vSphere on near production-level server platforms. This phase is usually 2 to 3 months before the day-zero date. If we are successful in our final internal testing, the certification window for partners opens soon thereafter.

Note the phase 3 when server OEMs get involved.

At the start of the 3^rd phase, a number of the server vendors generously loan us early prototype platforms of their new servers populated with the new microprocessor generation. It is not possible to recognize all of our partners here, but companies such as AMD, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, IBM, Intel, HP, and many others have supported VMware in this way. These platforms allow enablement for server-vendor specific features by the vmkernel and I/O Device Driver Engineering teams.

Phase 4 has performance optimization.

One of the last stops for a new microprocessor generation is at the lab of our Performance Engineering team. This team characterizes the performance improvement we can expect to see from a new microprocessor generation. Oftentimes they find performance bottlenecks that require attention in either our code or the microprocessor itself. One of the most critical activities they perform is to run VMware's VMmark benchmark on these prototype systems to ensure that performance expectations have been met. This analysis always happens in the 4^th phase and may happen in the 3^rd phase if the server vendor platforms are stable enough.