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(The Hosting News) – Concerning the data center industry, openness isn’t always guaranteed. Take for example competing designs that don’t necessarily emphasize the prospect of sharing.

Could some type of design confidentiality actually be hurting the advancement of data center technology?

Earlier this year, in April, social networking giant Facebook sought to make the data center industry more open. Why? So it becomes more efficient.

Not only is the social network creating its own data centers, servers and software, it’s also sharing them with the world (open-source).

Besides just sharing its own designs, Facebook is getting other companies and engineers to join the project as well.

On the Mission and Principles section of their site, the Open Compute Project states, “We believe that openly sharing ideas, specifications and other intellectual property is the key to maximizing innovation and reducing operational complexity in the scalable computing space.”

“The Open Compute Project Foundation provides a structure in which individuals and organizations can share their intellectual property with Open Compute Projects,” the statement continues.

And engineers appear eager to participate. Just this week, top data center solutions provider Future Facilities announced plans to participate in the Open Compute Project.

Making comments in a company press release, Future Facilities North America GM Sherman Ikemoto stated, “Facebook’s Open Compute Project is serving a very important need that will help establish benchmarks and reduce costs for the data centers industry.”

When it comes to data centers, Future Facilities specializes in software modules, design, design, and management.

Meanwhile, the project recently held its Open Compute Summit in New York City.

So it appears that Facebook has indeed ventured outside the realm of social networking. How much efficiency will this newly sought openness bring to the data industry? Only time will tell. For further information on the Open Compute Project, visit: http://opencompute.org/

Open Source Data Centers? Facebook’s Open Compute Project Grows

(The Hosting News) – Social networking giant Facebook is set to expand its presence via the data center. While the company already has facilities in the U.S. states of Oregon and North Carolina, construction of a new site is expected to mark Facebook’s first data center presence outside the United States.

So exactly where will the data center site be built? According to the Associated Press, the company has indicated the location will be Lulea, Sweden, an area near the Arctic Circle. That means the data center will be in an environment known for cold temperatures, a factor that could play a pivotal role in the cooling of the facilities’ servers.

The site will host three hydro-powered buildings.

Discussing the matter with The Associated Press, Tim Furlong, director of site operations at the company stated, “Facebook has more users outside the U.S. than inside.”

“It was time for us to expand in Europe,” he continued. Meanwhile, construction on the project is expected to be complete by 2014.

The facilities are expected to be backed up by diesel generators to handle any possible downtime the site may experience.

The company is said to be working on additional facilities at already present data center sites within the the United States.

Facebook has kept busy working on a profiles revamp called “Timeline” that allows users to more easily track the entire course of profile histories. Earlier this year in July, the social site indicated that it had reached 750 million users.

Data Centers: Facebook Looks to the Arctic

(The Hosting News) – For social networking giant Facebook, expanding its data center facility property in North Carolina couldn’t come soon enough.

Recently, the state’s Governor’s office brought news that Facebook is already prepping a second facility in the area, even though the first was just recently completed.

Besides assisting Facebook’s expansion as a social networking giant, construction of an additional facility is welcome news to one particular aspect of the state: the economy.

Commenting on the matter in a press release, Facebook Data Center Manager George Henry stated, “We believe the expanding operations and continued construction activities will have a positive impact on Rutherford County’s economy.”

Exactly what does it mean for the state’s economy? According to the release, the site’s development has provided work for over 1,500 people. Additionally, there are thirty permanent jobs at the completed facility. So, continued development means continued jobs.

North Carolina Governor Bev Berdue expressed delight regarding the announcement, stating, “Facebook continues to be a ‘friend’ to North Carolina.”

The Governor was expected to tour the recently completed facility today.

The second facility at the site is expected to be nearly identical to the first. Building number one, which was recently completed, measures 300,000 square feet and was announced late last year. Besides having a data center presence in North Carolina, Facebook also has a facility in Prineville, Oregon.

Meanwhile, Facebook has provided plenty of news lately regarding actual changes to its social network. In the recent past, Facebook has partnered with communication service Skype and updated its user privacy settings. The company is also expected to soon unveil a new profile layout called Timelines (However, the feature has been delayed due to a legal battle with a company that goes by the same name).

Expansion: Facebook Set for Second NC Data Center

Your business is your livelihood, and if that business is online, your web presence must be strong and reflect the image you want for it.  Therefore, it is always bad news when an ecommerce website suffers from technical glitches or even outright negligence on the part of its creators.  The following are a few blunders you should avoid.

1. Technical exclusion – These are the websites that require users to have certain technical credentials.  Insisting that your site’s visitors have a certain browser, a proprietary plugin, a particular operating system, or any other inconvenient technology is a good way to make sure they do not revisit.
2. Untrusted certificate – Having no SSL certificate may be bad enough, but it will really hurt your business to have an expired or otherwise invalid certificate.  Some browsers, such as Google Chrome, really freak out and display a nice scary red page before users can even access your site.  Many customers will simply move on to your competitors.
3. Complexity – This can take many forms, such as a complex menu navigation system that requires several steps to reach a desired page, popups that interfere with user tasks, and large images or other media that slow the website’s load time.
4. Forced social media integration – While it is cute and sometimes even useful to have social media integration, requiring a user to have Facebook or Twitter accounts to buy your products is simply absurd.

If you can manage to avoid these huge mistakes and a few others, you will already have a leg up on the competition.  Treat your Ecommerce website just like a physical store front.  Sticking a picture of something offensive in the window will scare customers away, and the same is true for your website, even if it is only a technical mistake.

Technical Blunders in Ecommerce Hosting

(The Hosting News) – Social networking site Facebook is planning an expansion of its data center site in Prineville, Oregon. The news came after the company’s data center manager Ken Patchett discussed the plan with the Prineville City Council.

A second facility at the site will go a long way towards supplying Facebook with the resources it needs to assist its ever growing user base. According to data center site DataCenterDynamics, during the meeting, Patchett noted that Facebook’s user base had grown from 350 million users to 750 million since the company initially announced plans to build in Prineville. Such a statistic represents a 400 million user increase.

Facebook initially broke ground on the data center site in January of last year and the company debuted the facility’s specifications in April with the Open Compute Project, a data center solution provider.

Commenting on the move via his Facebook profile, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Ron Wyden stated, “Great economic news for Oregon: Facebook announced today they will expand again in Prineville with the building of a new data center starting in October. With Facebook’s continued growth this is a great economic partner for a community that has taken some hits but keeps on getting up. This means hundreds of construction jobs in the near term, and a long-term investment in future of central Oregon.”

Fifty-four employees now work at the current facility on the property. With the new facility, (besides shorter-term construction jobs) a small number of additional jobs are expected to be added for the site’s actual maintenance.

Facebook’s currently facility at the site relies on energy efficiency standards to effectively cool and maintain its servers (which Oregon’s climate plays a part in). For more information on Facebook’s Prineville Data Center, visit:  http://www.facebook.com/prinevilledatacenter?sk=wall

Time to Expand, Facebook Plans Data Center Add-On

(The Hosting News) – Social networking site Facebook is planning an expansion of its data center site in Prineville, Oregon. The news came after the company’s data center manager Ken Patchett discussed the plan with the Prineville City Council.

A second facility at the site will go a long way towards supplying Facebook with the resources it needs to assist its ever growing user base. According to data center site DataCenterDynamics, during the meeting, Patchett noted that Facebook’s user base had grown from 350 million users to 750 million since the company initially announced plans to build in Prineville. Such a statistic represents a 400 million user increase.

Facebook initially broke ground on the data center site in January of last year and the company debuted the facility’s specifications in April with the Open Compute Project, a data center solution provider.

Commenting on the move via his Facebook profile, Oregon’s U.S. Senator Ron Wyden stated, “Great economic news for Oregon: Facebook announced today they will expand again in Prineville with the building of a new data center starting in October. With Facebook’s continued growth this is a great economic partner for a community that has taken some hits but keeps on getting up. This means hundreds of construction jobs in the near term, and a long-term investment in future of central Oregon.”

Fifty-four employees now work at the current facility on the property. With the new facility, (besides shorter-term construction jobs) a small number of additional jobs are expected to be added for the site’s actual maintenance.

Facebook’s currently facility at the site relies on energy efficiency standards to effectively cool and maintain its servers (which Oregon’s climate plays a part in). For more information on Facebook’s Prineville Data Center, visit:  http://www.facebook.com/prinevilledatacenter?sk=wall

Time to Expand, Facebook Plans Data Center Add-On

(The Hosting News) – TeamSupport.com, an emerging leader in SaaS-based customer service and help desk tools – today announced an integration of the company’s flagship TeamSupport product with social networking phenomenon Facebook.

“With some 150 million users in the United States alone, Facebook is the ‘go to’ destination for friends, families, and increasingly, businesses seeking to connect with their customers,” noted Robert C. Johnson, CEO of TeamSupport. “Our corporate users are acutely aware of the impact that responsive customer communications can have on their bottom lines; after all, it’s why they chose TeamSupport to ‘connect the dots’ between internal staff silos.” With a few keystrokes, administrators can add the TeamSupport button to their company Facebook page, giving end-users a new avenue to open a support ticket or search the knowledgebase. “A truism of business growth is to be where your customers are; Facebook certainly heads the ‘A-List’ of places to be and be seen.”

Used by customer support and corporate help desks worldwide, TeamSupport is easily configured and customized; the application is offered in several reasonably priced, upgradeable versions. TeamSupport is scalable from a simple help-desk application to a 100+ seat enterprise-wide customer support and product defect tracking system.

About TeamSupport

TeamSupport.com is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Dallas, TX-based Muroc Systems, Inc. (http://www.murocsystems.com/), a holding company focused on developing productivity enhancing software products delivered via the Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) model.

For more information, please visit: http://www.teamsupport.com/

TeamSupport.com Integrates with Facebook

(The Hosting News) – Global Power Supply, provider of critical power equipment and fully integrated power services for emergency back-up and primary power applications, was recently chosen by Facebook to meet the critical power needs of their new data center in Prineville, Oregon. Facebook began the construction of this new data center with the goal of creating a more energy efficient computing infrastructure at a relatively low cost.

“Inspired by the model of open source software, we want to share the innovations in our data center for the entire industry to improve upon.”-Tom Furlong, Director of Operations at Facebook

Facebook’s new data centers were designed and engineered to be some of the most energy efficient and economically sound systems available. In order to accomplish this, Facebook’s engineering team required a custom designed power system and back up generators that could handle the unique demands of their massive server loads. Global Power Supply was able to deliver, accommodate and support these requirements by providing a diverse range of products as well as a highly customized array of services and support.

“Global Power Supply has a unique vendor neutral approach that allows us to provide highly customized critical power solutions.” -Ron Zamir, CEO at Global Power Supply

Critical Power Infrastructure is vital for the uninterrupted operation of Facebook’s constantly expanding network. “Having energy efficient software and servers means we can support more people on Facebook and offer them new and real time social experiences.”- Tom Furlong, Director of Operations at Facebook. Global Power Supply provides their clients with unique project management services to implement and oversee all aspects of their project through completion. “Global Power Supply takes a ‘Value Engineering’ approach to the design and implementation of their custom generator power systems in order to minimize costs and maximize reliability.”- Ron Zamir, CEO at Global Power Supply

Facebook broke ground on the Prineville data center in January 2010, and plans to finish their extensive build out and testing process within five years. Global Power Supply will continue to work closely with Facebook’s engineering team to provide operational and testing support through project completion. “Global Power Supply has been a valuable member of our data center deployment team, their expertise in standby power applications as well as their competent and responsive project management approach has allowed us to meet our project goals.”-Jay Park, Director of Data Center Design and Construction at Facebook.

About Global Power Supply

Global Power Supply is a leading supplier of equipment and technical solutions for critical project management and logistics. Global Power Supply offers solutions for critical facilities worldwide including buying, selling, and servicing critical power equipment, program management, asset recovery, and technical consulting.

For more information, please visit: http://www.globalpwr.com/

About Facebook

Founded in 2004, Facebook’s mission is to give people the power to share and make the world more open and connected. Facebook is one of the most widely used websites in the world, connecting millions of users around the globe 24 hours a day. Facebook is a privately owned company located in Palo Alto, California.

Facebook Partners with Global Power

(The Hosting News) – A new survey released by the Pew Research Center shows some interesting results about users of online social site networking sites.

To get their results, Pew surveyed over 2,000 adult participants.

Overall, Pew found that 32% of social site users are between the ages of 23 and 35, 16% are between 18 and 22, 26% are between 36 and 39, while 6% are users 65 and up.

As for as the social sites used, 92% of users have a Facebook, 29% have MySpace, 18% have a LinkedIn, while 13% use Twitter.

Since Facebook accounted for such a high percentage, the survey’s results on Facebook were particularly interesting.

Participants were asked whether they felt that most people could be trusted. Pew found that regular Facebook users are 43% more trusting than non-users.

They survey also showed Facebook users have closer relationships, are more social than others, and are more politically engaged. Also, the average Facebook user has 229 friends.

Some had previously contended that the use of online social networking had the opposite effect of making people less social in real life.

As far as how Facebook users were connected, the poll found 22% were acquaintances from high school, 12% family members, 10% coworkers, and 9% went to college together.

For the entire results by Pew, please visit: http://pewresearch.org/pubs/2025/social-impact-social-networking-sites-technology-facebook-twitter-linkedin-myspace

Survey Examines Social Site Use

(The Hosting News) – Facebook’s new facial recognition tagging feature in prompting privacy concerns among some users and tech analysts.

The feature, called “Tag Suggestions” suggests friends tag users based upon facial analysis.

Yesterday, online security company Sophos warned that the site had failed to properly notify users of the feature.

On its blog, Sophos stated, “As your Facebook friends upload their albums, Facebook will try to determine if any of the pictures look like you. And if they find what they believe to be a match, they may well urge one of your Facebook friends to tag it with your name.”

“The tagging is still done by your friends, not by Facebook, but rather creepily Facebook is now pushing your friends to go ahead and tag you,” the post went on to say.

Meanwhile, Facebook says it’s intended to simplify the tagging process.

Facebook announced the feature in December of last year and it was already enabled in North America. However, it’s only recently been enabled in other parts of the world and many users were unaware that it was added.

Despite having good intentions with the new feature, the site is admitting some regret with how it was introduced.

Citing some misconceptions about the feature, a Facebook spokesperson told the BBC, “We should have been more clear with people during the roll-out process when this became available to them.”

Facebook is currently in the process of enabling the feature globally.

The social networking site has received similar criticism concerning privacy issues in the past.

Facebook Facial Recognition Receives Criticism