engineers

The key to attracting traffic to your Web site is a high ranking by the major search engines, which deliver more hits than any other means. Attracting the attention of search sites usually means paying a consultant or other outside expert for the service. Fortunately, there's a less expensive option: SEO Administrator by FlamingoSoft. It can help get your Web site noticed. It's a search engine optimization (SEO) package that provides all the tools you need to optimize your Web site for maximum visibility and traffic. Its ranking monitoring tool checks major search engines and displays the most … Read more

As much as Twitter is a powerful communication and social application, it's a relatively simple Web app. As part of a new contest sponsored by Engine Yard, Ruby on Rails developers are going to turn Twitter into their own application server.

The contest asks developers to program the "Worst App Server Technology Ever" (Waste) using Twitter as the message bus. While much of the contest is being done tongue-in-cheek, it's actually an interesting use case to see if a service like Twitter can take the place of a more traditional message bus like IBM MQ series … Read more

CAMBRIDGE, Mass.--A group of academics on Friday considered the ultimate engineering challenge: building machines to stabilize the earth's climate.

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology convened a symposium here to discuss the potential benefits and pitfalls of geoengineering, also called climate engineering. Everything from shooting light-blocking particles into the atmosphere to "artificial trees" is being seriously studied, despite trepidation among researchers and opposition from others.

During talks Friday morning, academics said climate engineering techniques are not well understood and, because of the complexity of the global climate system, individual approaches are pockmarked with uncertainties.

Still, speakers at … Read more

If you're a person who would gladly relinquish the task of parking your car to a computer, there may be a Volkswagen in your future.

Last weekend, Volkswagen Group of America and Stanford University's School of Engineering hosted a dedication ceremony on the Stanford campus for the new Volkswagen Automotive Innovation Laboratory (VAIL) that included the "first ever" autonomous parking demonstration by a driverless car.

The car, a VW Passat called Junior, was developed jointly by VW and Stanford and is the same one that finished second in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge. Driverless cars have … Read more

I've written about social recommendation network Glue before, noting that it is a social network that is just along for the ride as a Firefox/IE extension that slides out when you need it. The basic idea is that when you visit a site that's supported by Glue (IMDB, Amazon, Wikipedia, Last.fm, and a lot more), the Glue extension will slide out and tell you what your friends thought about that particular piece of content and give you the option to review it yourself. It's a great concept where the information comes to you instead of … Read more

Wow. I write a piece a couple days ago about the 2010 and upcoming 2011 Chevrolet Camaro, and next thing I know a representative from Chevrolet communications is posting a comment to my blog. Yeah, it was regarding a discrepancy in the information relayed in the video blog, but to me that's still pretty cool. As this gentleman pointed out, there are custom car builders out there who are co-opting the Chevy Camaro make and putting out non-GM versions of the Camaro for the consumer who wants one done their way. Apparently, Hennessey Performance Engineering does just that, and … Read more

AllSubmitter is a search engine optimization tool for Web site designers. It has several useful built-in tools that can help you check your Web site's keywords and rankings with popular search engines such as Google. It also has a robust Project Manager that individual designers and Web site design companies will find helpful in tracking their Web design projects. The Search Engine Ranking Checker checks Web sites' rankings of keywords with popular search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and several others. AllSubmitter's Keyword Suggester offers information and tips from Google AdWords, Word Tracker, and Rambler.

A quick tour … Read more

SAN FRANCISCO--More than 8 billion minutes are spent on Facebook every day, Facebook executive Mike Schroepfer said in a talk Wednesday at the Web 2.0 Summit here.

Some 2 billion pieces of content are shared every week, and 2 billion photos are uploaded each month--1.2 million served per second on a "peak day," he said. Five billion calls to Facebook's application program interface (API) were made on Tuesday. It's huge: Schroepfer, Facebook's vice president of engineering, was focused on talking about the challenges of scaling a social network to the more than 300 million active users … Read more

If recent research is any indication, Amazon.com and Google are winning the cloud game.

Evans Data on Tuesday released a report (registration required) on how developers perceive cloud service providers related to cloud services offerings, including their completeness and the companies' ability to execute on the vision.

Janel Garvin, the founder of Evans Data and the author of the report, provides excellent insight into the current state of the market and how quickly things could change, if certain large vendors (notably AT&T and Microsoft) got their acts together more quickly.

Given their robust services, it isn't surprising that Amazon and Google top the list. And although IBM, VMware, and Microsoft trail, each offers important components of cloud infrastructure. … Read more