Google doubles its presence in Kirkland (Seattle), Seattle is a cloud development hub with Amazon and Microsoft

I moved to Seattle 20 years ago.  Part of Seattle are clouds.  And it makes you wonder if all those clouds are influencing software developers. :-)  As Google invests more in cloud development like Amazon and Microsoft cloud development teams in Seattle.

NYTimes posts on the Google expansion in Kirkland, WA.  Kirkland is probably more known as the Costco branded items.  Kirkland city is near Costco HQ. And Kirkland is where Google has its hub of offices in the Seattle area.

In a battle for dominance in cloud computing, Google is taking onMicrosoft and Amazon in their own back yard.

Google said Tuesday that it was doubling its office space near Seattle, just miles from the campuses of Amazon and Microsoft, and stepping up the hiring of engineers and others who work on cloud technology.

It is part of Google’s dive into a business known as cloud services — renting to other businesses access to its enormous data storage and computing power, accessible by the Internet.

Here is a video by local Komonews with a tour inside the Google Kirkland facility.

Inspiration from Great Architecture, La Sagrada Familia

5 years ago I went to Barcelona to moderate a panel with Mike Manos (Microsoft at the time), HP, and Dell at Microsoft TechForum.  I was able to get away for an afternoon with another Microsoft friend and we visited the La Sagrada Familia.

60 minutes just covered the latest update on the project.  Here is the written story.

And for the people who want to see more about the construction here is the story.

And another video.

I will write another post on what ideas I have used for inspiration.

Bunch of Retina MacBook Pro problems went away with 10.8.3 beta updates - screen flicker, Time Machine, Network Connectivity

I've had problems with my Retina MacBook Pro since Sept 2012.  And, posted what I thought was a fix.  I was wrong and eventually relegated myself to make appts to sit in the Apple Store in Bellevue to demonstrate the problem.  This didn't work either as the magic of the Apple store kept my screen in good shape.  How bad was my intermittent display problem.

The frustrating part is this was not reproducible.  I would shut the laptop, open it up and screen is fine.

Then I got pushed the beta 10.8.3 12D76 MacOS release and it looks like the screen problem has gone away. Also, a strange Time Machine problem resolved and my network connections to my home network work better. Today I was pushed the beta 12D78 release.

I am keeping my fingers crossed that 10.8.3 will fix my screen flicker.

oops, Cleantech doesn't move at the pace Moore's Law, expectations reset

GigaOm's Katie Fehrenbacher post on the VC cleantech bust.

SUMMARY:

One of the key misplaced assumptions that Valley VCs made in cleantech boom times is that the rapid progress of Moore’s Law could be created for cleantech with a little bit of VC funding and Valley smarts.

Katie starts discussing the controversy of VC Cleantech by taking a stance agreeing with Wired's post.

One of the more in-depth pieces on the cleantech venture capital boom and bust cycles was published in Wired this week. While not all of my peers will agree with me (I have already gotten in some heated debates over this), I think the story was a solid analysis of how a lot of VCs piled into cleantech investing in 2007 and 2008 with not a whole lot of knowledge of the sector and now have backed out of it (we have covered this a lot, too). The long-term promise of cleantech itself isn’t dead, but the boom VC cycle has clearly ended, much the way the dotcom boom went bust and the promise of the Internet arrived later on.

Katie jumps to the flaw in VC thinking.

But another layer to this story is that one of the key misplaced assumptions that VCs made in the cleantech boom times is that the rapid progress of Moore’s Law— which says that the number of transistors that can be placed on a chip doubles every two years — could be created for cleantech with a little bit of VC funding and Silicon Valley smarts. The notion (which is seductive but not true in most cases) is that the traditional energy industries throughout the world just didn’t do the right kind of innovation and that the Valley’s can-do spirit and open wallets would be able to unleash this potential.

I was always surprised that VCs choose to invest in physics constrained problems like solar cells, fuel cells, and batteries.  But, hey the environmental stuff seemed like it was big money to be made.  Until the Chinese came in as well with its government dominating by engineers.

A good memory helps you imagine the future

The WSJ has an interesting article on the new power of memory.

Memory allows for a kind of mental time travel, a way for us to picture not just the past but also a version of the future, according to a growing body of research.

The studies suggest that the purpose of memory is far more extensive than simply helping us store and recall information about what has already happened.

Researchers from University College London and Harvard University have made strides charting how memory helps us draw a mental sketch of someone's personality and imagine how that person might behave in a future social situation. They detailed their latest findings in work published in the journal Cerebral Cortex last week.

I find this article interesting because it describes a great strategy on how to network.  Meeting people imagining how they fit in your future is built on a good memory of who they are and what they do.

Researchers from University College London and Harvard University have made strides charting how memory helps us draw a mental sketch of someone's personality and imagine how that person might behave in a future social situation. They detailed their latest findings in work published in the journal Cerebral Cortex last week.

How many of you think you have  data center systems that provide a good memory of past performance?  If you don't have a good memory of the past how can you imagine the future?