This underground data center has greenhouses, waterfalls, German submarine engines, simulated daylight and can withstand a hit from a hydrogen bomb. It looks like the secret HQ of a James Bond villain.

And it is real. It is a newly opened high-security data center run by one of Sweden’s largest ISPs, located in an old nuclear bunker deep below the bedrock of Stockholm city, sealed off from the world by entrance doors 40 cm thick (almost 16 inches).

Above left: View from the conference room (its floor is the surface of the Moon). Above right: Power equipment.

Above: The NOC is set in a cozy jungle setting. That light fog almost makes us think of cloud computing. Fog computing?

Above: The space-themed conference room is suspended about the server hall.

Above left: The submarine engines used for backup power. Above right: Another view of the power equipment.

And here is what it used to look like

Above: This map shows the layout of the data center.

Facts about the data center

• Originally a nuclear bunker: The data center is housed in what was originally a military bunker and nuclear shelter during the Cold War era. The facility still has the code name from its military days: Pionen White Mountains.
• Located in central Stockholm below 30 meters (almost 100 ft) of bedrock: The facility has 1110 sqm (11950 sq ft) of space and is located below 30 meters of solid bedrock (granite) right inside the city.
• Fully redesigned in 2007-2008: Pionen was completely redesigned in 2007-2008 to become the data center that it is today. More than 4,000 cubic meters (141,300 cubic ft) of solid rock was blasted away to make more room.
• Can withstand a hydrogen bomb: The bunker was designed to be able to withstand a near hit by a hydrogen bomb.
• Houses the Network Operations Center for one of Sweden’s largest ISPs: The bunker houses the NOC for all of Bahnhof’s operations. They have five data centers in Sweden, Pionen being the largest. The facility also acts as a co-location hosting center, so you can actually put your own servers here.
• German submarine engines for backup power: Backup power is handled by two Maybach MTU diesel engines producing 1.5 Megawatt of power. The engines were originally designed for submarines, and just for fun the people at Pionen have also installed the warning system (sound horns) from the original German submarine.
• 1.5 megawatt of cooling for the servers: Cooling is handled by Baltimore Aircoil fans producing a cooling effect of 1.5 megawatt, enough for several hundred rack-mounted units.
• Triple redundancy Internet backbone access: The network has full redundancy with both fiber optics and extra copper lines with three different physical ways into the mountain. Pionen is one the best-connected places in northern Europe.
• Work environment with simulated daylight and greenhouses: For a pleasant working environment the data center has simulated daylight, greenhouses, waterfalls and a huge 2600-liter salt water fish tank.
• Staff: 15 employees, only senior technical staff, work full time in Pionen.

Further info: http://www.bahnhof.se/colocation.php

Google has turned 10, and we wanted to celebrate. Soon we will be a teenager a Googler said…

The site for the Tenth birthday has some nice features, including a scrolling time line of the history that is very Gooey indeed.

There are nice subtle elements to the component. If you scroll the bar you will see that the size of the blue area changes as the scope changes.

It’s fun to look back and see how bad the original logo was (no comment on the current one

This is a series of demos intended for showing implementations of HTML5 in (non-final) browsers available in September 2008.

See also: Web Hypertext Application Technology

Researchers at the University of California have developed a new network routing algorithm that has the potential to significantly boost Internet traffic routing efficiency. This new approach focuses on the needs of dynamic networks, where connections are frequently transient. From the article: ‘What the team did with their new routing algorithm, according to Savage’s student Kirill Levchenko, was to reduce the “communication overhead” of route computation — by an order of magnitude.’

I just remembered the old DOS times…

Convert your text to ascii art NOW!

http://www.patorjk.com/software/taag/

Is it just me, or is performance getting a LOT of attention these days?

Over the past decade, the web has flourished, fizzled a little with the dot-com bust, and re-invented itself with concepts such as Web 2.0 and social networking. Traditional browser limitations, such as the security sandbox, are perfectly acceptable for a broad category of web application, but sometimes you need more.

By allowing web developers to extend their applications beyond the browser, Adobe AIR is poised to become a springboard for innovation in the next chapter in the life of web technologies—the desktop.

The security sandbox of the browser is often one of the first lessons many of us learn when we begin developing projects for the web. You don’t have access to the local file system, and you have limited cross-domain support. We also learn that the fundamental system on which the web is constructed is entirely stateless.

Despite these seemingly critical limitations, web developers have persevered, and increasingly complex applications continue to appear, setting new precedents.

What would happen if these limitations were removed? What if we could use the same technologies the web is built on, but escape the security sandbox of the browser? When you develop a desktop application for Adobe AIR, you have exactly that option. The technologies employed are the same HTML, JavaScript, and CSS on which the web is built, but the deployment model is that of the desktop.

Desktop applications built with Adobe AIR can make requests across as many domains as they want. When good old XMLHttpRequest gets data returned, it can save directly to the user’s file system, or even store that data in a local relational database. Taking this even further, there’s support for new types of data exchange that include binary data and persistent socket connections.

Exploring this newfound freedom and combining these new abilities with the massive proliferation of services opens the door to an entirely new world of possibilities, such as media storage with YouTube or Flickr, data storage with Amazon S3, workflow and CRM infrastructure with Salesforce.com. The list goes on and on. Developers can manifest these services as features for their own applications with minimal investment.

Adobe AIR makes it possible to build the next generation of web-enabled desktop applications without the need for expensive infrastructure consistent with traditional web development. Developers can use the same skills and technologies, but deploy them without the traditional limitations. Web developers don’t just lose those limitations, they also lose something else—the browser chrome.

Why Adobe AIR?

Developing for the desktop usually means leaving your web skills behind, building a platform-specific application, or using an alternative of complex object-oriented technologies. Adobe AIR, however, enables web application developers to use their existing web development skills, tools, workflow, and even existing code base, to build and deploy desktop applications.

At a high level, Adobe AIR accomplishes this by taking the world-class WebKit browser engine (most notably used in Safari), and wrapping it alongside Flash and PDF technologies, as a cohesive desktop runtime. Adobe AIR doesn’t stop there, though; it also folds in a rich API that enables common desktop features such as file IO, network awareness, native drag-and-drop support, an embedded relational database (SQLite), and much more.

Did you know…

- That FACEBOOK was launched on February 2004 by the only 19 years old student Mark Zuckerberg. By the end of the month, more than half of the undergraduate population at Harvard was registered on the service.

- That FACEBOOK grows with around 250.000 people a day (autumn 2007) and has more than 300 employers.

- That FACEBOOK reserves every right to register and keep all kind of your private information and FACEBOOK activities – even though you eliminate your profile?” (see Facebook Privacy).

- That the FACEBOOK privacy claims any right to use all pictures uploaded on your profile?

- That Facebook leaves a cookie in your browser which enables other Internet sites to identify your identity.

- That thanks to the FACEBOOK BEACON system, FACEBOOK is informed about your activities from 44 big Internet sites that have partnered with Facebook.

- That the owner of FACEBOOK Mark Zuckerberg has rejected offers in the range of $975 million to hand over Facebook. If FACEBOOK is sold, all registered kind of private information will be handed over to the new owners – even though you at that time already have deleted your profile! It means, you have no control, who will end up having your personal data.

- October 24, 2007, Facebook has agreed to sell a 1.6% stake in the company to Microsoft for $240 million. This means Microsoft, as an exclusive third-party will get assess to every FACEBOOK information.

- Estimated price of FACEBOOK: $15 billion.

- Why? Because in cyberspace private information is hard value – and all kind of private data is recorded in FACEBOOK.

- Did you know that FACEBOOK is about to develop an intelligent system of information searching. The idea behind the system is that, while you’re using FACEBOOK, your personal information and cyberspace behavior will be categorized to maximize the value of your information.

- That the European Union is considering the Privacy topic.

- By using FACEBOOK you are an essential part of the global cyber data economy behavior will be categorized to maximize the value of your information.

- that the European Union is considering the FACEBOOK Privacy topic.

- By using FACEBOOK you are an essential part of the global cyber data economy.

I saw the following website:

WikipediaVision

It is wonderful to see in a more visual way the rythm and the dispersion of the articles enrichments of Wikipedia Encyclopedia.

I bet this is one of the most exciting result of the internet revolution…

In my oppinion: Wikipedia is one of the best Encyclopedia of the world. It is one of the 10 most visited websites in the world. Learn more about Wikipedia Foundation.