Jesse Robbins has an interesting post on O’Reilly Radar about how IBM is building a new datacenter in Zurich that will use its excess heat to warm a public swimming pool for local residents. He references an article on GreenerComputing.com, which notes that “the Zurich data center will be completed later this year, and will generate 2,800 megawatts of excess heat each year.” According to Steve Sams of IBM, reclaiming the waste heat from the data center “will save about 130 tons of CO2 emissions.”

So, I swing by a Starbucks on my way into the office this morning and pick myself up a latte.  Nothing out of the ordinary yet.  

One of the hard parts of international travel is that it costs $1/minute to use most cell phones.  That makes staying in touch with those at home pretty expensive.  I use Skype to call home but for that I have to be on a computer, in a quiet place, and I have to initiate the call. 

I've been researching the opportunities 'Web 2.0' or 'semantic Web' provides for creating 'content', content having become the catch-all term for a company's documented efforts to communicate with customers/users. It includes what we used to think of as 'documentation' or 'technical communication,' as well as marketing and sales materials and help, all pictures and instructional materials etc. I'm interested in the burgeoning disciplines of organizing (Information Architecture) and managing that content on a company-wide basis (Content Management), as well as the specifics of the technologies and strategies for communication that have opened up as a result of emerging technologies. Over the next few months, as I research and think about this, I'm going to post a bit about what I'm learning. Interspersed in these ruminations will be my thoughts on another topic I've recently had the good fortune to get involved with in a serious way, usability.

Do you play online virtual reality games?  Have you created an avatar in Second Life?  Did you know your next job interview might be on Second Life?  I have created an avatar but I don't play regularly and the thought of going on a job interview in a virtual reality world is a bit scary.  Well, maybe a bit terrifying.  Also, a bit sad.