Apple releases Camera Raw for Panasonic Lumix G1

I noted last week that Apple finally released compatibility in Aperture & iPhoto for RAW files from the Panasonic Lumix G1 series cameras. I haven’t used the RAW features of my G1 much yet, as there has been no way to handle them in my workflow. Now that I can, I think I will.

I attended every user conference session I could that featured Aperture workflows and RAW format work at Macworld last week (when I wasn’t teaching MacIT sessions that is!) I REALLY want to start handling all my images in RAW to avoid the destructive nature of the JPEG format work I’ve been doing since I went digital back in the day. Until now I really couldn’t. I’ve installed the new update, and have requested a 30-day trial of Aperture 3.0. I’ll let you know how it goes!

Twitter as a Marketing tool: Failure

Twitter Marketing Failure

Twitter is an amazing communications channel. It serves to maintain several types of communications. Here’s how I use it:

  • Keep a sort of running conversation going with my friends, many of whom are literally scattered around the globe.
  • Follow news, as it is shared and interpreted by friends, colleagues, and acquaintances.
  • Gain insight into things I’m interested in, such as Datacenters, the Network Operations side of the Internet, Web Hosting, Cloud Computing, Technology news, Apple, the Automotive Industry, Collector Cars, Photography, and the Pacific Northwest.

At work we use Twitter as an out-of-band comms channel with our customers. We post notifications of scheduled maintenance, new support blog posts, and real-time updates when there is any sort of an issue going on within our facility, such as UPS maintenance.

Twitter is great for items that are “important now” like that. Where I have seen Twitter consistently fail, is marketing to new customers via responses. Usually this is a Twitter API driven “bot” (automated software) that responds with a pat bit of sales-speak to any Tweet that makes mention of them, their product/service, or posts a URL that links to them in any way.

The image above is an example of one such miserable, fail-prone auto-replies. I posted a URL pointing to an article on TechFlash, which is a local news blog, covering the Seattle-area technology & business beat. The article in question pointed out the irony of a local Tech Exec, being swept up in a long-term criminal investigation concerning suspected organized crime involved in a Seattle strip club. The exec in question committed perjury with regard to having “Clintonian” relations with a stripper at said club. The irony of course was the same exec’s on-stage demo of their software which allows people to perform background checks of people they meet, on the fly using their mobile phone. The criminal history feature of this software is called “Sleaze Detector.” The layers of irony here are too good to pass up, so I sent the tweet.

The employer (which by the way has a history and reputation in Seattle of seemingly sleazy executives) of this seemingly sleazy executive responded to my tweet with a discount on their software!

This is why human beings are unlikely to lose their jobs to software over the long run. Software lacks judgement, and can not detect sarcasm or irony.

Wall Street Sheep bleat to Steve Jobs’ tune.

I don’t have anything to say about Apple’s new “iPad” device. Unlike technology pundits, I would prefer to get my hands on one before I start spouting opinions about it.

What I would like to point out however is Wall Street’s view of today’s product announcement. I noted that when the name was announced AAPL stock nosedived a bit, then slowly climbed as features were explained. Later when the price was announced (at a bit more than half where the pre-announcement speculation put the price tag) the stock marched right back up again. In my twitter stream it seemed only myself and Kevin van Haaren were commenting on the stock market’s reaction.

There are at least two months to go before the (real, not stock) market can begin to asses what this product can and will do. It will be interesting to observe the stock along the way. I generally have a very dim view of what Wall Street analysts think, as I see them of incapable of real analysis, completely out of touch with the real world, and far more prone to herd mentality than they’re willing to admit. Meanwhile, I wish Apple luck here though, as a customer and shareholder.

Datacenter Site Selection – Facebook in Prineville, Oregon

Average Industrial Power Rates per State

Facebook announced this week that they are building a datacenter in Prineville, Oregon.

Other than being the place of my wife’s birth, and the home of Les Schwab Tire Centers, why on earth would they choose to locate a high-tech industrial facility in Prineville, a tiny town in eastern Oregon far from any major metropolitan area? The reasons are simple, and boil down to two things: Cost of Electricity, and Climate.

Have a look at the map above. This represents the average cost of power to an industrial user on a per-state basis. I’ve said it many times, but it bears repeating: A datacenter is essentially a facility that transforms electricity into bits. Power goes in, bits come out. The by-product of this bit manufacturing process is heat. So power costs, and the ability to keep the facility cool are the two critical components of datacenter site selection. Those white states running through the map represent the lowest power costs.

While the cost to build a datacenter is staggering (~$2000 per square foot) the cost to operate it over time is daunting. Datacenters use a lot of electricity. Not just for powering the servers, but also to keep the environmental conditions correct for those servers. Computers don’t react well to dramatic changes in temperature and humidity, so a stable environment is critical. It takes as much, and often more power to maintain the datacenter environmental conditions as it does to power the servers. Locating the datacenter in a place with a naturally cool climate is a huge advantage due to the concept of “free cooling”… that is using naturally cool outside air to maintain the inside temps. We do this at digital.forest’s datacenter in Seattle. Outside air is used the majority of the time, year round. Only in daytimes during the summer do the mechanical cooling systems have to kick in and take over. You can’t do this in Houston, or even in most of California. So look at those white states and think about which ones have the reliably coolest climates.

Washington & Oregon.

Washington state has an advantage over Oregon in that power is less expensive here. Visionary companies started building datacenters near the large hydroelectric dams along the Columbia River about seven years ago. Microsoft and Yahoo near Quincy, VMware and T-mobile near Wenatchee. More were planned until our Attorney General, Rob McKenna declared that datacenters were not classified as “Manufacturing Facilities” and therefore not eligible for sales tax breaks on capital purchases tied to their construction. Given that it costs tens to hundreds of millions of dollars to build a datacenter, this action tipped the scales into Oregon’s favor. Even though the long term operating costs in Oregon may be slightly higher, the cost to build a facility is much, much lower as Oregon has no sales tax. This is likely why Facebook chose Oregon.

Construction will last for quite a while and inject $188 million dollars into the Oregon economy. Once in operation the facility will bring about 35 well-paying jobs (Facebook says 150% of the region’s prevailing wage) to the town of Prineville. For rural areas this can only be a good thing. So congrats to Facebook and Prineville, and let’s hope it is a long a fruitful relationship.

Datacenters are a growth industry of the future and will be a wonderful economic boost for rural communities east of the Cascades where traditional industries such as timber have all but vanished. I hope our politicians in Olympia have noted this and can get datacenter construction rolling again here in Washington.

Realization of an Anachronism: Raised Floor – Requiescat in Pace

This morning I noted, via Rich Miller’s twitter stream a new article counter-proclaiming the death of Raised Floor in datacenters. It boggles my mind how people still cling to this outdated, outmoded, and clearly obsolescent technology. I’ve ranted about this before two and a half years ago. Nothing has changed in those two and a half years other than raised floor being that much more obsolete.

Put your racks on slabs guys. It’s liberating.

787 First Flight

I am privileged to have witnessed first-hand today a historic moment. Mind you it is a small one in the big scheme of things, but I had the chance to see it, and now I’m sharing it with you.

My office is very close to Boeing Field, and my window is host to all manner of interesting aircraft, as you have seen occasionally. The flight path of Sea-Tac is also behind our building, so there is always something flying by. Today though, was a historic day as something special was set to fly by. Boeing’s new passenger jet, the 787 “Dreamliner” took flight for the first time. I watched it take off from Paine Field in Everett live on the Internet and set my phone’s alarm to remind me to be ready to photograph it 5 hours later when it arrived at Boeing Field a bit before sundown.

The winds were from the south which meant it would land towards my window, not across it. I was preparing to make a run to the post office to mail a few things when Kevin, our Facilities Manager and Civil Air Patrol member informed me that the flight was now scheduled to land much earlier. As I grabbed my camera my phone rang and my friend John, who works on the 787 project at Boeing let me know exactly when it would touch down: 1:22 PM. This meant I had about 12 minutes to go find a spot near the runway to catch it. If it had been a clear day with wind to the north I would have gone to the south end of the runway and been right underneath it as it landed. It was coming from the north though and 12 minutes would be not long enough to get to the far side of the airport and found a spot to park, so I gave up on getting really close shots and drove as fast as I dared to the Museum of Flight, which has a good view of the runway and a large parking lot. Of course EVERY light between my office and the Museum was RED.

I arrived with about 3 minutes to spare, with a large crowd already gathering. I lucked into a parking spot and walked around trying to find a good spot for photos. The air was thick with cold rain (the weather was what cut the first flight short), hovering news helicopters and a pervasive sense of anticipation.

News choppers overhead, people wait for the 787's arrival under the warm friendly umbrella of a retired B-47 Stratojet Strategic Nuclear Bomber.

That white speck under the bomber's nose is the 787's lights as it emerged from the heavy overcast above Seattle.

Zoomed as far as my lens will go. The 787 & chase planes approach out of the gloomy sky. Note the upswept wings.

getting closer.

Just after touchdown. You can see the flexible wings have let down.

The landing was essentially perfect. The plane was smooth and undramatic. By this point it was pretty much taxiing.

Once the landing roll was done and the Dreamliner was essentially just parading, the chase planes flew over.

Does anyone other than me find it ironic that the chase planes for the world's newest jetliner are:…

… a Lockheed design dating from the 1940s?

taxiing down past the Museum of Flight.

The IMAX chopper does a low flyby around the nose as the 787 comes to the turn-around point.

The crowd waves, and the pilot waves back.

A closer look at the Rolls-Royce engine. Interesting cowl shape.

As the 787 heads toward the testing center at the north end of the field, everyone takes a last look at her before heading back to work and out of the rain.


You can see all of my photos, as they were dumped out of my camera, here.

Published: Five fallacies of cloud computing

Five fallacies of cloud computing.

My article about cloud computing fallacies was recently published over at Tech Target. The cool part for me has been seeing people reference it in Twitter posts. Big thanks to my college buddy Richard Puig for asking me the question that set me off on this rant. 😉

Unlike past articles I’ve had published there this one does not have a comments sections, so I can’t see the feedback. I’ll have to ping my editor and see what sort of cranky emails he’s been receiving .