With Amazon Fire Mayday, Amazon will collect more data from consumers

Amazon.com revolutionized retailing by tracking customer habits and allow them to rank items and write comments.  With Amazon Kindle Mayday feature most focus on the tech support issue, but the game changer is for Amazon to collect more data from consumers to create the next game change.

Here is the Mayday feature.

News sites are focusing on the tech support feature and a bit on how to sell more.

1. Slate Magazine (blog)

   Amazon launches Mayday, a virtual Genius Bar for theKindle Fire ... The Verge-by Dan Seifert-Sep 24, 2013 Amazon may be trotting out new versions of its Kindle Fire tablets and an updated software platform for them, but its also introducing a unique ... + Show more

    

2. How the Kindle Fire's 'Mayday' Feature Will Help AmazonSell More ... Wired-Sep 26, 2013 Amazon's Mayday tech support for Kindle Fire HDX puts a tiny helper on your screen when you need it most. But the exchange between you ... + Show more

Amazon if they do this right is going to have an ability to connect to consumers in a way that no one else can.

I have my Kindle Fire HDX on order so I'll be able to see how it works.

98% of Egypt's Fresh Water is imported, an Ethiopian Dam brings change

National Geographic has a post on a new dam on the Nile River in Ethiopia.

Water Wars: Egyptians Condemn Ethiopia's Nile Dam Project

The Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam along the Nile has ignited a water debate between Egypt and Ethiopia.

Photograph by Cameron Davidson, Corbis

As the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam takes shape, tempers rise.

What caught my eye was how much fresh water is imported to Egypt.

A total of "98 percent of Egypt's freshwater comes from outside its borders, and it has exceptionally little leverage," said Angus Blair, an economic and political analyst at Cairo's Signet Institute.

Besides the water supply the dam will change power generation capacities.

Egypt fears that storing water behind the Ethiopian dam will reduce the capacity of its own Lake Nasser (thereby reducing the power-generating capacity of Egypt's giant hydroelectric plant at Aswan). Ethiopian officials have sought to allay fears by pointing out that storing water in the cooler climes of the Ethiopian lowlands will ensure much less water is lost to evaporation, but Egyptians are unconvinced.

"The production of electricity at the Aswan High Dam is likely to drop by almost 40 percent should the Ethiopian dam be built," concluded Nader Noureddin, a professor of agriculture at Cairo University.

Do you know anyone who is line to buy IO IPO?

For years, when anyone asked me what I thought about IO Data Centers, I said the company is looking to be bought or go IPO.  Well now IO has filed a confidential S1 for IPO.   

Modular data center specialist IO files for IPO

by Derrick Harris

SEP. 24, 2013 - 10:56 AM PDT

No Comments

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photo: IO

SUMMARY:

Modular data center manufacturer IO has filed a confidential S-1 form and plans to go public in the near future. The company has made a name for itself selling fully contained data centers that take up only 462 square feet of floor space.

I wonder how many of you are looking to buy the IPO shares and are putting your buy orders in.  Talking to my friends, we will be watching the IO stock to see if it flies, goes sideways, or ???  

Top 5 Modular Data Center Construction Companies

I have a post on the Top 5 Data Center Construction companies.  This post is a list of the Top 5 Modular Data Center Construction companies.  This list is based on conversations at conferences, bars, e-mail and phone calls and what companies come up.  If you don't already have these companies on your RFI list, you may now.

1. Dell Modula Data Center

The Smart Alternative to a Brick-and-Mortar Data Center: Dell MDC

Intelligent Connectivity and Flexibility: The Dell Modular Data Center
Take a look at the hyperefficient, snap-together, flexible choice over the traditional brick-and-mortar or pod-type data center: the Dell™ Modular Data Center (MDC) solution. Many key benefits make the Dell MDC a compelling alternative for your data center solution. Read a few of those benefits:

• Speed: The Dell MDC can be designed, built, and up and running 75 percent faster than a traditional data center.
• Efficient: Designed for hyperefficiency, the Dell MDC choice provides important advantages for flexible growth and cost reduction. When you choose an MDC from Dell, the Dell Data Center Solutions (DCS) engineering team works hard to optimize your entire data center to reduce operational costs. Best of all, the MDC is modular, so you can add only the modules you need, incrementally, as you grow, without substantial up-front costs.
• Flexible: Where the competition force fits IT into a rigid shipping container, we collaborate with customers like you to custom build your MDC.

2. HP POD (Performance Optimized Datacenters)

HP Performance Optimized Data Centers (HP PODs) are a portfolio of breakthrough, modular data centers that help enterprises rapidly and efficiently expand data center capacity and meet increasing service level agreements. Compared to traditional brick-and-mortar data centers, HP PODs help you scale capacity on demand, reduce capital expenditures and increase energy efficiency. Along with our complete portfolio of HP POD solutions, HP provides turnkey solutions that help customers deliver on their data center strategies saving time and maximizing performance.

3. Compass Data Centers

Your mission critical applications are too important to be housed in the same data center with other customers in a data center located hundreds of miles from your operations team. A Compass dedicated data center is built for you alone to control your operational costs, enhance security, and simplify your day to day operations like moves, adds and changes; and it can be delivered within six (6) months of pad ready site. The benefits of a having a dedicated facility would be worthless if it wasn’t located where you needed it, and that’s why Compass will build your new data center exactly where you want it.

4. AST Modular 

AST Modular offers a range of fully integrated modular data centers which provide unmatched flexibility, resiliency, and energy efficiency. Our offering includes containerized ISO datacenters, NON ISO modular datacenters and datacenter modular rooms. The three systems offer a scalable method of quickly developing data centre capacity, require minimal work on site and can be operational in a fraction of the time it takes for a traditional build. -

5. Commscope Data Center Solutions

Discover data center solutions that evolve with your needs

Data centers are at the center of everything a business does, and modern applications are demanding more and more of them than ever before. IT operations are struggling to meet demand, manage costs and maximize uptime in the face of several key challenges:

Why Bloggers Fail, break the rules

I found this post on why bloggers fail, and the following are ways that I like to break all the rules the writer puts in his post.

There is no way I am like these type of bloggers.

What’s unfortunate is, in that group of people, I’m betting there’s someone just like you….

…Someone who believed pumping out good content will generate the leads and sales they need to run a profitable business.

…Someone who believed a journalist or Google would notice their hard work—and reward them with an endless supply of traffic that converts.

I am not a journalist, and spend little time pumping out content, and i don't try to make it good.  I try to make it interesting.  I think interesting content beats good content.

Traffic is not my goal.  In fact, I don't want to get too big, because it means I don't have targeted readers.

Most people who start blogs dream about their blog soaring to Everest-level subscriber numbers.

The results focus is shallow.

They’ll waste their first 3 months, and they’ll have NOTHING to show for it other than a bunch of social media logins, passwords, and the belief that “I’ll be ready to go, when I just finish this one thing…”

And here is the assumption that I disagree with.

They start their blog with good intentions, but fall off the beaten path because they waste time on pointless drivel that doesn’t deliver what they really want: more traffic… more leads… more sales.

I don't make any money on the traffic.  Well less than $1,000 a year in google adsense I don't consider money, it's loose change from not splurging at Starbucks.  I don't get any leads or sales.

So, why do I blog?  Writing my ideas down ingrains them in my memory.  My blog entries are all searchable.  The thing I didn't expect from this blog is many of my friends read regularly and we have fun chatting in person.

My main value from blogging is it enhances the conversations I have when I meet with my friends in person, talk on the phone, or exchange e-mail.

Name me a blogger who uses their blog to improve the quality of the communication with their friends.