Some time needed to pass before we can publish this post. With an event so devastating, it didn’t feel right blogging about technical difficulties in Japan. With some delay, I would like to summarize what’s been happening with key communication across Japan.

It is of the utmost importance for people and the government that the data centers remain operational at all times. In any society, such disasters cause panic. In times of need, people reach out to relatives and friends. Communications play essential role in keeping society’s integrity and morale as high as possible. With data centers being at the heart of keeping the country connected, it is vital that they remain fully operational at all times.

“The future is here!” This is what many sites say about Intel’s latest technological advancement - the 3D Transistor a.k.a. Tri-Gate transistors. It is a huge step forward. Probably the biggest in semi-conductor devices since transistors were first about 60 years ago.

Here is the best part. It is available now. It will be widely available within 12 months. Mass production within a year sounds too good to be true. Then again, it is only logical for Intel to try to spearhead this as fast as possible and produce a new generation of processors before the competitors get around to it. Some believe Intel might be about 3 years ahead of their competitors. This estimate is pretty optimistic since technology companies rarely can afford to stay behind for such a long period.

I stumbled upon httparchive.org last month, and I think anyone concerned with the performance of his website should take a look at it. It will give you a good idea of the current status of the web. There are some pretty interesting figures on it. The best way to describe the site is by quoting the title on their homepage, “TheHTTP Archive tracks how the Web is built.” As simple as that.

The averages on that site are calculated by using raw data from all the sites listed in Alexa 500, Alexa US 500, Alexa 10,000, Fortune 500, Global 500, and Quantcast10K. To get accurate data, each site is loaded nine times. Then the data is fed and parsed to the database. What you get are some pretty impressive figures.

“We want Facebook to use 100% renewable energy” - Ironically, this is the name of a group on Facebook. It is a Greenpeace initiative which started back in February 2011. The group has grown dramatically in just under 2 months. Currently, there are over 300,000 people supporting the initiative.

Daniel Kessler of Greenpeace was quoted saying "Facebook, by opening this center, is sending a signal: We're not quite done with coal yet." Greenpeace and Change both called out Facebook to use clean renewable energy and avoid coal. Facebook’s decision to build and operate its new data center is mostly the reason behind the campaign. The data center, located in Prineville will be powered by Pacific Power. The power service agreement is already in place.

Every modern website relies on stable and well written databases. It is impossible to find a large-scale website not implementing one or more database systems.

This month, we’ve detected a high increase in response time for one of the sites we monitor. It is not a particularly large site; however it is one that relies on fast navigation. On average, the website used to load in about 3 seconds. One morning it went up to 10 seconds only for the site to begin to load. This is a good time to say that it is always advisable to test out new designs and functionality.