Sky on Tech

What's New in MySQL 5.5 "It's been a busy year for MySQL. Perhaps you've heard. Here are some recent improvements to the speed, scalability, and user-friendliness of the MySQL database and the InnoDB storage engine that we think deserve their own headlines. Now is a great time to beta test the 5.5 release and give feedback to the MySQL engineering team."

Parallel Information Retrieval is a sample chapter in what appears to be a book-in-progress titled Information Retrieval Implementing and Evaluation Search Engines by Stefan Büttcher, Google Inc and Charles L. A. Clarke, Gordon V. Cormack, both of the University of Waterloo.

V4.1 is a major step forward in the database monitoring capabilities that were previously provided in DB2 Performance Expert . A re-architected Web-based user interface that provides overview and alert dashboards for immediate problem detection with a guided workflow to diagnostic dashboards to simplify root cause analysis.

DotSpots is a service that enables anyone to update the news in real-time with dots, or distributed objects of thought: mini-blog posts containing text, videos, images, documents, perspectives from the blogosphere, or eye-witness accounts from the scene.

Free templates for cross browser HTML and CSS column layout. Includes 3 Column, 2 column with left or right menus, 2 column double page, 1 column full page, and even a combination stacked column. Excellent examples, valid xHTML strict markup, SEO optimiation... great stuff!

Geoffrey McCaleb, Nsyght's Mad Scientist, talks about beginning with a desire to solve a problem of search relevancy and ending up with a new brand and approach to social network aggregation. For more details see http://www.nsyght.com/

Joel Bush co-founded Amplifier.com to help web companies monetize and expand their brands. Clients include The Onion and Despair Inc., and Bush and company go about their business with a unselfed zest that might seem odd to many in today's "brand-yourself-24/7" web world. But it's the nature of their business and part of what makes them so effective. I caught up with Joel at SXSW and we spoke about his business, the great even that is SXSWi, and other things on his always active and observant mind.

I listened to a Knowledge @ Wharton podcast with C.K. Prahalad, who has spotlighted a largely invisible emerging market--the world's underclass--and called for global companies to kick over their tired notions of the poor as victims and to start treating them as "value-conscious consumers" and "creative entrepreneurs" in their own right. Here's a smaller interview with FastCompany.

Dr. Moira Gunn chats with author and science journalist, Shankar Vedantam about his new book, The Hidden Brain: How Our Unconscious Minds Elect Presidents, Control Markets, Wage Wars, and Save Our Lives, touching on how the brain functions automatically during times of heightened emotion. More at http://www.hiddenbrain.org/

Geoffrey McCaleb, Nsyght's Mad Scientist, talks about beginning with a desire to solve a problem of search relevancy and ending up with a new brand and approach to social network aggregation. For more details see http://www.nsyght.com/

Joel Bush co-founded Amplifier.com to help web companies monetize and expand their brands. Clients include The Onion and Despair Inc., and Bush and company go about their business with a unselfed zest that might seem odd to many in today's "brand-yourself-24/7" web world. But it's the nature of their business and part of what makes them so effective. I caught up with Joel at SXSW and we spoke about his business, the great even that is SXSWi, and other things on his always active and observant mind.

Shaffi Mather explains why he left his first career to become a social entrepreneur, providing life-saving transportation with his company 1298 for Ambulance. Now, he has a new idea and plans to begin a company to fight the booming business of corruption in public service, eliminating it one bribe at a time.

400 years after Hudson found New York harbor, Eric Sanderson shares how he made a 3D map of Mannahatta's fascinating pre-city ecology of hills, rivers, wildlife -- accurate down to the block -- when Times Square was a wetland and you couldn't get delivery. See more on the project at http://themannahattaproject.org

To find the path to long life and health, Dan Buettner and team study the world's "Blue Zones," communities whose elders live with vim and vigor to record-setting age. At TEDxTC, he shares the 9 common diet and lifestyle habits that keep them spry past age 100. You can learn more about his work in his book, The Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer From the People Who've Lived the Longest.