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Content Delivery Networks - Are they for you, how they work and providers

Content delivery networks (CDNs) offer a way to reduce latency for a web application's content for regional, national or world audiences. Tuning a web server, using a proxy, applying caching or using compression are all excellent performance strategies for a web application's content, but if the end users requesting the content are half-way around the world from a web application's data center, performance will suffer because of increased latency.

If you've ever downloaded some type of open-source software, you might have noticed there are multiple locations from where to download the software. In most cases you're automatically re-directed to the location nearest to you, so you can download the software faster. This is the principle of CDNs, having multiple copies of the same content in different data centers to increase throughput. The term mirroring is also often used to describe CDNs, given that nodes in a CDN mirror copies of one another's content.

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November 3, 2010 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

URL shorteners necessary evil - Technical and usability facts

Links are the lifeblood of the web, allowing users to jump from one page to another without messing with the keyboard. Hovering over links with a mouse will generally show a link's destination URL on a browser's status bar.

As a user, I find this feature very helpful because it tells me on what site I will end up when clicking on a link, not to mention a URL can be sufficiently descriptive to give me added context about what I'll read next.

Which is why I find URL shortners disruptive. Up until a few years ago, there were just a few URL shortening services, but now that Google has made its URL shortening service public -- http://goo.gl/ -- it appears the inevitable is upon us.

Are URL shortners really warranted on the web ? Here are some technical and usability facts.

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September 30, 2010 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Intel offers software upgrade for unlocking CPU power

'Unlocking' hardware is a prevalent practice in high-end hardware. If a Fortune 500 company orders a $500,000 dollar piece of hardware with 10 CPUs, there's a high-probability it will be shipped with its maximum CPU capacity (e.g. 20-30 CPUs), but with only 10 active CPUs. If the customer later decides on wanting more CPU power, he just purchases it by calling support and getting a software activation code. No need for on-site visits, re-opening the hardware or buying new hardware. A win-win situation.

I hadn't seen this offering target the $500-$1000 dollar PC market, until I recently saw it in the news and visited Intel's retail upgrade site . For 5% to 10% (e.g. ~$50 dollars) of the actual cost of a PC, a buyer can unleash more CPU power on his PC.

But judging by comments on articles on this topic from around the web, this really puts the Intel inside slogan to the test, with many customers asking Intel, what's mine!?.

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September 18, 2010 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

The multi core processor quandry for software developmet - can and will you take advantage of it

The era of multi-core processors, dual-core two processors in one, quad-core four processors in one, is now in full-swing. If you think to yourself 'my software will be blazing on a machine running a hexa-core processor which is six processors in one!'. It just might, but before it can do that, your software might as well run on a single-core processor if it isn't designed to take advantage of this fact. This post is a high-level view on multi-core processors, concurrency and the programming languages that have caught recent headlines as concurrency champions and how they fit this multi-core paradigm.

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February 20, 2009 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Wubi : Windows Linux dual boot the easy way, when virtualization is not an option

I've always liked the capability to use Windows and Linux on the same piece of hardware. Linux for any type of development, and Windows for doing documentation and media - some companies will never use Open Office or Linux compatible media lets face it. However, installing the two on the same laptop or workstation isn't straightforward: You either need to partition your disk, erase what is more likely the Windows boot loader and lets not even talk about wrecking a perfectly good Windows installation if you go wrong in any step. The other option is using virtualization software, in which one operating system is hosted and run simultaneously by the other, a resource hog and even unusable system if you don't have the adequate hardware. Another way and probably the simplest I've seen is using Wubi .

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December 4, 2008 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Data Center technology inside Google : Wow

With more and more software deployed as services over the web, the infrastructure used to support it is becoming increasingly important, as a consequence data center technology is also gaining its fair share of attention. Google recently held an event showcasing some of the technology it uses in its data centers, from custom made circuit boards, custom made server racks to its own custom file system, its an impressive look at the backbone of what is probably the most scalable 'web application' on the Net.

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May 31, 2008 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Turing Machine's get simpler

Turing machine's are generally confined to Computer Science 101, so needless to say they are not a constantly changing subject like a software platform or framework, nevertheless they provide a very important foundation for computers in general. So when a concept as fundamental as a Turing machine sees a breakthrough, its only a matter of time before some of these changes bubble-up into the software ecosystem and make their presence felt.

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October 24, 2007 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

Voice over IP gets a Peer to Peer (P2P) twist

The early adoption phase in Voice over IP has long passed, unlimited voice calls between PC's and monthly subscriptions to land-lines at very competitive prices are all but common now a days, but there was one final 'hump' that remained to be covered in this area: bypassing the toll charged for linking a Voice over IP(Internet) call to a land line, something which now looks very much in reach, and since its software which makes this possible, I thought I would make an entry on the technicalities behind this feat.

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September 24, 2007 | Permalink | Track Back (0)

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