Not to give MySpace any more exposure than it already has, but they have published a brand new Iron Man trailer that is really worth viewing:

So when I’m not working, blogging, or slacking off, I do development work at Neowin. I mostly prefer to work on making the new toys (who doesn’t?), but a few days ago I had a chance to test our site under the most traffic it has gotten in a long time.

During Wednesday afternoon, Neowin hit the homepage of Reddit and Digg. Now while this wasn’t the first time our site has been on the homepage of a social website, it is one of the first times that our forums, powered by IP.Board, was the focus of the traffic. While our main homepage has stood up to this kind of traffic before, we were unsure how the forums would handle it.

It actually didn’t turn out that great.

As soon as the forums started to see around (estimated) 10,000 users at a single time, the site crippled and neither the regular visitors or the new ones from Digg and Reddit could view the content they wanted to see. This was due allegedly to the MySQL server being abused by the thousands of queries being requested by it every second.

As a result we decided to take down the forums and put up a static page that linked to the content (images) that the visitors from the social sites wanted to see. The parts of the site that were still online instantly came to life again, but now members in our IRC chat were starting to become frustrated about the forums being shut down.

At that time I decided to make it so only traffic to the specific topic would result in a static page so everybody would be able to get what they want. It took only a couple of seconds to modify the code and we had the forums back online and the social website viewers were still getting their static page that used a total of zero queries!

We left things alone for a while as the traffic wouldn’t be going away for a while — it was on Digg’s front page for hours. Once and a while we would take our static page off to see if the forums could handle the traffic again, but we watched as the site was slowly crippled again.

During this time a post was published to our front page discussing the incident and also linking to the images that were of interest to our new visitors. We decided to see what would happen to our server if we directed all the social website traffic to this article on the front page. So with a few quick code changes, all the social website traffic was now diverted to our front page code system (a completely internal project to Neowin). What was the result? Our servers survived. We watched as the strain jumped on our servers due to increased load of all the various images, files, and queries being requested by the thousands of visitors. Did we buckle under the load? Not once.

So while we’re now looking into plans to prevent such a crippling action on our forums, it’s good to know that our front page can handle whatever is dished out to it.

Neowin: Worst hard drive crash I’ve seen

Digg: Worst hard drive crash ever [pics]
Reddit: Worst hard drive crash I’ve seen [Pics]

Today I had a rare chance to visit Nintendo’s North Bend facility. While my visit there did not give me the chance to take any photographs, I can tell you that it is something you really need to see for yourself as photographs really don’t cut it for their building.

As I was walking up to an office on the second floor, robotic carts moved along a yellow path and beeped at each other as they took their various contents to their destinations inside this massive building.

I collected some photographs from around the internet and have made them available for viewing here. These are from Nintendo World Report and their visit to the North Bend facility. They have an article about their visit, but all the links to their pictures are broken (I found them).

Here are some links to information about the North Bend facility:

Wikipedia: Nintendo North Bend
Gizmodo: Secret Wii Warehouse
Nintendo World Report: Inside The Facility

So I, along with the rest of the population, made sure I had a good view of the lunar eclipse. Thankfully the room where my desk is at has a nice large window of the eastern sky.

I had looked up data on the internet and viewed images of previous lunar eclipses. Apparently the moon would have a reddish glow to it, which I was looking forward to seeing. Sadly until the eclipse actually got close to completely covering the moon, my view was blocked by clouds. But it didn’t really matter, as I soon found out.

You see if I would have been a bit smarter, I would have figured out that I would need more than just my two eyes to see it the way one should watch an eclipse: With a big huge expensive telescope. That’s alright, as someone was kind enough to link me to a website that was taking live shots from a big huge expensive telescope with a digital camera taped on to it (I’m sure it’s not really like that). The pictures they took? Amazing.

Click For Full View

So thank you people with big huge expensive telescope, you have inspired me to find a nice open field with a decent telescope in 2010. Lets just hope for no clouds.

So the new Knight Rider movie was on last night, and I was looking forward to seeing some good action and watch KITT use some of his classic (and new) technology as he helped to take down the villian. I had accepted that they would be going away from the classic Trans Am and using Val Kilmer (odd choice) as the voice of KITT. What I didn’t expect, though I really should have, is that this was a terrible 2 hour commercial.

Ford Motor Company was the sponsor of this movie and apparently had a lot of input when it came to the cars used and the commercial break times. Not only was KITT a Ford Mustang (an extremely nice one, that is) which had the ability to morph into a cheaper silver model that fooled the bad guys every time, but the villain vehicle was a Ford Edge. Now tell me this: Why do military-like folk drive around in an Edge? If I worked for a military contractor company out to steal secrets, I’d at least be driving around in a Hummer. Cliché, but it makes more sense.

And when it came to the commercials, I almost lost it. I found myself counting the time it took to get through a commercial break and how long the movie scene lasted before the next commercial break. The worst spot was around the 1 hour mark where there was a 5 minute commercial break followed by 5 minutes of the movie. Are you kidding me? I’m not even going to touch the topic of those Ford commercials that aired right as they went into each commercial break.

Now lets turn our attention to the car itself. I will agree that the design was great they really pulled off that self healing nano-technology off, but where were the missile launchers, turbo jump, and other things that made the original KITT so awesome? All we got to see this car do was morph, heal, and go really fast. You guys underused the car, and the show is all about the car. Nice touch on the Apple keyboard in the glove compartment, though.

While this next point is really meaningless, there wasn’t enough Hoff. Sure he’s old now and has the America’s Got Talent show, but he really made that show what it was all those years ago. Do I think this commercial movie would have been better with the Hoff in more than just the final 5 minutes? Yes, I think it would have helped…as long has he didn’t take out a microphone and started singing.

Would I want to see them try and revive the series? I’d like to see them attempt, but they’d have to do a lot better than what we had last night. I do thank Ford for giving this movie a chance to be broadcast, as I’m sure it probably would have never made it without their financial backing.

And for your attempted enjoyment, but likely retreat, I present to you: Knight Rider, the movie.

Courtesy of hulu. (I have 10 invites to give away. Leave a comment with your e-mail address and I’ll send you one)

For those who are unfamilar with the website, Netvibes is a place where you can bring your RSS feeds together, add some special Netvibes widgets, and put them all on a stylish homepage. Using Netvibes, I am able to view all the headlines from my favorite technology blogs, have a section of my favorite bookmarked sites, see if there is any new e-mail in my Gmail account, watch the financial market, and see what TV show is airing tonight.

But Netvibes can be much more than that. It can allow you to search various types of content (blogs, images, video, and so on), help you keep track of your calendar, monitor your Alexa ratings, track down deals on craigslist, integrate social networks, show the latest videos from partnered websites, and so much more. I have barely touched on the amount of content available to Netvibes users.

The previous release of Netvibes, which is when I joined, was code named Coriander. When it comes to function, Coriander performed mostly the same way as Ginger does. At this stage in its life, Ginger redefines the style of Netvibes. The interface to add new content to your page has cleaned up considerably as the entire top portion of the site gets taken over by the Add Content interface when you select that menu option.

Aside from the menu interface, the main content section where all your feeds and widgets appear received a face lift with a re-designed border for each content block. Also for the RSS feeds, you can share a RSS entry with your friends as a favorite item. These items marked as a favorite will appear in the Activities menu at the top of the screen.

Then there is the new public Universe screen, where you can create a content page that can be shared by all viewers. All they have to do is enter your Universe URL and they are shown the custom page and all RSS feeds/widgets you published to that page. I haven’t had time to create a Universe page as of yet, but you can see my blank Universe here.

This weekend I plan on looking deeper into the new menu system and adding some content to my Universe page. If anything interesting comes out of it, I’ll discuss it here.

I understand the uniqueness and style of the keyport and would purchase one myself if it wasn’t for the price and the fact that if you get a new car or move you have to have your keyport updated with the new key (which means shipping them a copy of your key).

What has me at a loss for words is why they are holding a party in Hollywood with the preface being that they will have the keyport on display for two hours? And is there seriously anybody who would attend this event?

Actually, looks like they beat me to the thought. The people behind keyport have devised a cunning plan to entice Hollywood moguls and nerds alike to attend this party:

Ok guys, you win.

For those in the Hollywood area who are interested in attending: RSVP

If this teaser proves anything, it’s that we’re in for a treat when May rolls around. For those who thought Harrison Ford would be fighting the forces of evil with a crutch: Think again!

I’ve been given access to the private beta of Netvibes Ginger. From the start I can already tell you that the UI is a lot sharper. I’ll give a more detailed review of this beta after I have some time to test it out.

The above article, courtesy of IBM, is a good read if you’re looking at using a framework to support your coding ventures. It’s a lengthy read and gets a bit technical, but I recommend it.

Read the article