Building bigger, faster, more reliable websites.
Strategy
Ivan Zuzak wrote a fascinating article on Real-time feed processing and filtering using Google App Engine to build Feed-buster, a service that inserts MediaRSS tags into feeds that don't have them. He talks about using polling and PubSubHubBub (real-time) to process FriendFeed feeds. Ivan is trying to devise
This is an excerpt from my article Building Super Scalable Systems: Blade Runner Meets Autonomic Computing in the Ambient Cloud. Have we reached the end of scaling? That's what I asked myself one day after noticing a bunch of "The End of" headlines. We've
This is a guest posting by Marty Abbott and Michael Fisher, authors of The Art of Scalability. I'm still reading their book and will have an interview with them a little later. If 2010 is the year that you’ve decided to kickoff your startup or if you’
jobs
Ashleigh Anderson from Zynga let me know that they have an opening for a Systems Engineer working on some new games they are developing. Given the state of the job market I thought it worth posting. Here are more details... Zynga is looking for a strong server-side Systems Engineer to
hot links
* Building Super Scalable Systems: Blade Runner Meets Autonomic Computing in the Ambient Cloud. The only independent platform most of us will have access to capable of hosting planet-scale applications is the Ambient Cloud. It forms a sort of digital potluck where everyone contributes memory, network, and other compute resources from
ambient
"But it is not complicated. [There's] just a lot of it." -- Richard Feynman on how the immense variety of the world arises from simple rules. Contents: 1. Have We Reached the End of Scaling? 2. Applications Become Black Boxes Using Markets to Scale and Control
I try to keep this blog targeted and on topic. So even though I may be thankful for the song of the tinniest sparrow at sunrise, I'll save you from all that. It's hard to tie scalability and the giving of thanks together, especially as it
nosql
Brian Aker gave this 10 minute lightning talk on NoSQL at the Nov 2009 OpenSQLCamp in Portland, Oregon. It's incredibly funny, probably because there's a lot of truth to what he's saying. Here are the slides and here are the notes. Found though #nosql.
* Eventual Consistency by Example by Sergio Bossa. Attempts to clear up some misconceptions about eventual consitency as discussed in Amazon's Dynamo paper. * Boston Big Data Summit keynote outline by Curt Monash. Interesting topics: Big Data and the cloud actually have relatively little to do with each other and
Example
You don't even have to make a bid, Randy Shoup, an eBay Distinguished Architect, gives this presentation on how eBay scales, for free. Randy has done a fabulous job in this presentation and in other talks listed at the end of this post getting at the heart of
Strategy
Think of building websites as engineering composite materials. A composite material is when two or more materials are combined to create a third material that does something useful that the components couldn't do on their own. Composites like reinforced concrete have revolutionized design and construction. When building websites
hot links
* The Cost of Latency by James Hamilton. James summarizes latency info from Steve Souder, Greg Linden, and Marissa Mayer. Speed [is] an undervalued and under-discussed asset on the web. * Dynamo - Part I: a followup and re-rebuttals. Dynamo under attack as having Design flaws and the resounding rebuttal in response.