All Entries Tagged With: "cluster"
Google Now Lets You Star Stories on Google News
Google announced today a new feature that allows you follow stories on Google News more easily. If you remember well, Google introduced a feature that let users create new Google News ‘sections‘ with only the specific type of stories they want. With the new feature introduced today, users can star their favorite story clusters on Google News, similar to the way you star email on Gmail and Google Reader.
When you star a story on Google News, you’re automatically letting Google know that you’re interested in similar stories. Once there are various updates, Google will let you know by making the headline bold. If you wish to follow your most recent 20 stories, you can do so by clicking on the “Starred” section of Google News.
The feature is available now. We’re not sure if it’s only available in the English U.S. version of Google News or other international versions. Let us know what you think.
Google Introduces ‘Google Image Swirl’
Google just recently announced on the one and only, the Official Google Blog, the introduction of a new experimental feature to Google Labs called “Google Image Swirl.” The new feature basically arranges similar images into groups, so you can find the image you are looking for in a cool, interactive, and exploratory way.
For example, when searching on Image Swirl for photos of the Boston skyline, which is one of my favorites, the results are displayed in 12 different groups including aerial views, ground views, night images, day images, close ups, distance images, the Zakim Bunker Hill Bridge, etc.
Apple’s possible $1 billion investment
Rumor has it that Apple is shopping around at this time for a location to implement a $1 Billion server farm on the East Coast of the United States. Specifically, the company is considering North Carolina as a possible location. According to Data Center Knowledge, officials in North Carolina “are rushing to pass enhanced tax breaks to woo Apple to their state rather than neighboring Virginia, which just passed its own incentives for data center projects”. For those of you who don’t know, a server farm is essentially a huge cluster of networked servers, used to provide various online services to users. Though there isn’t too much detail at this point in time, this might actually suggest that Apple is planning something incredible for the future. Of course, that’s purely speculation. It’s certainly possible that Apple is looking to set aside some more resources for its fast-growing iTunes and App stores.
Whatever this turns out to be, it’s quite the investment.
[ via Data Center Knowledge ]
