Daily Bits

The Rise of The Yen

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In times of recession, although some claim that the recession has ended already, the strength of currencies is very important for nations to maintain their economic power. While a strong dollar can damage the revival, and make imports more expensive as well as exports, Japan and the USA and Europe have had to deal with the amazing rise of the Yen over the last months.

Earlier this year the Yen reached its strongest point in 15 years compared to the USD but the currency did not stay as high and would soon drop again. One of the problems for Japan was that half of its exports to China are invoiced in yen, thus making its products less attractive. Luckily the country did not have to look for a credit loan and the Yen dropped in value again. Even though last week nations have stepped up and announced a verbal intervention to save the Yen. We looked at how the Yen grew this strong and its history. We also compared the Yen to other international markets and looked at its market share.

With thanks to Infographiclabs for another awesome graphic.

The Story Behind Facebook’s September 23 Outage

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Facebook addicts enthusiasts were sure to have noticed the outage last night – or early morning, rather.  The downtime lasted for about two and a half hours  – the longest in four years.  While some people (like yours truly) just gave up and forgot about the social networking site for a while, others just got totally frustrated.

Naturally, the Facebook Team released a statement to provide an explanation regarding what happened.  In a note, Robert Johnson tells us this:  “The key flaw that caused this outage to be so severe was an unfortunate handling of an error condition. An automated system for verifying configuration values ended up causing much more damage than it fixed.”

He goes on to say that the system resulted in a feedback loop that bogged down the database. In short, users couldn’t access the site.  Interestingly, the only way they could fix the situation was to shut down the site.

Think about it this way…if your computer freezes and will not respond no matter what you do, what is your course of action?  The chances are that you will simply turn the device off and then have it up and running again in a few minutes.  That’s basically what the tech guys at Facebook did.  Of course, the downtime took much longer than rebooting your computer, but that is only understandable considering the larger scale of the operations of the social network.

In any case, they had the site up in a couple of hours and we’re all enjoying the new Facebook look.  Don’t be surprised, though, if you encounter a few problems here and there in the next few days.  They’re still looking at the issue and doing a few tweaks.  What matters now is that you can go check your food in Cafe World and make sure they don’t spoil.

The Harry Potter Franchise

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Without a doubt, J.K. Rowling has changed the landscape of the fantasy genre with the series of Harry Potter books that she came up with. The only billionaire author, Rowling has influenced popular culture with her creation. The books have received critical acclaim, and so have the movies. Of course, there will always be naysayers, but no one can contest just how influential Harry Potter is.

We’ve created an interactive infographic that gives you the dish on the books, movies, and characters of the Harry Potter franchise.

BlackBerry Tablet to Be Revealed Next Week

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By this time next week, BlackBerry enthusiasts might be buzzing about the latest tablet computer to hit the market – the BlackPad.  The rumor is that RIM (Research in Motion Ltd.) is going to reveal its take on the tablet in San Francisco next week at a developer’s conference.  Needless to say, the news has got certain groups excited.

The tablet, which – according to an insider from RIM – is being dubbed the BlackPad (surprise!).  According to The Wall Street Journal, the BlackPad is going to have a new operating system – one that is totally different from what the current BlackBerry devices are using.  The sources who have leaked the information say that the new OS is built by QNX Software Systems.

More so, the tablet computer is supposed to NOT have the capability to connect to cellular networks on its own; that is, it has to connect to another BlackBerry device to go online.  That’s a seriously major bummer which just might turn potential buyers off, don’t you think?

Other specs (rumored as of now) of the BlackPad include:

  • 7-inch touchscreen
  • camera (one or two, nothing’s confirmed)
  • Bluetooth
  • Broadband connectivity

For sure, BlackBerry users will be keeping their eyes peeled for this new tablet.  With the drawback of not being able to connect to cellular networks, though, I wonder if the BlackPad will appeal to a lot of people who are not currently using BlackBerry?  (Plus consider the fact that the competition is not to be taken lightly.)  We’ll find out soon enough – in a week or so.

Photo via The Wall Street Journal

Getting Tired of Facebook? There’s Diaspora.

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In spite of all the complaints that people have been making about Facebook, no one can deny that it still has countless users – and it doesn’t look like the numbers are going to drop anytime soon.  If you don’t have a clear idea about the numbers, you might want to take a look at Infographic Labs’ post on how Facebook is dominating the scene.

However, just because everyone and their mother is on Facebook does not mean that everyone’s all happy and content about it.  That’s just the thing – with the numbers involved, you can’t really expect to make everyone happy.  That’s a fact of life, isn’t it?

Just in case you have serious and legitimate issues with Facebook, then you just might have an alternative pretty soon, and it’s called Diaspora.  With the tag line “The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network,” Diaspora is all about bringing together the users and the platform together.  The idea of Diaspora came up earlier this year, and it immediately received a lot of attention.  However, it wasn’t until last week that the brains behind the idea actually had something concrete to show.

On the 16th of September, the Developer Release of Diaspora was made available.  Before you get all excited and try to create an account, though, you ought to know that it’s simply for developers – people who can deal with the underlying technology.  In layman’s terms, if you are a mere user (like me), then there’s still nothing concrete to be excited about.  Still, once the ones who do know how to program work things out, we ought to have a safer alternative to Facebook.  Don’t hold your breath, though – small chance of seeing it in a “usable” format within the year.

A Library Without Books?

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Being a trained librarian, I don’t find the idea of an online collection that strange at all. After all, some of the courses in school were all about electronic collections. What with e-book readers becoming so popular these days, it is but expected that libraries will expand their collections to electronic format more and more.

The University of Texas at San Antonio’s Applied Engineering and Technology Library’s collection is something else altogether. Its collection is not a simple mixture of “real” books and electronic material, but is instead composed of ONLY electronic books. In essence, the library has no “real” books at all!

This has been the trend in the past years. Academic libraries across the United States have been reducing the number of bound volumes they keep in the premises – especially those books which are rarely accessed by their patrons. As you can imagine, having to keep print copies can take up a lot of space and cost the libraries in maintenance. With electronic copies, costs are reduced considerably and access is made even easier.

This development could very well open the floodgates for collections that are fully electronic. This is quite interesting, as there is sure to be criticism coming from those who adhere to old school principles. Yours truly things that bound volumes will always have a place in libraries, but we must adapt to changes in order to make information as freely available as possible. That’s not to say that I do not want to see old school libraries totally die out. What say you?