Eastern Standard Tribe is a 2004 novel by Cory Doctorow. Like Doctorow's first two books, the entire text was released under a Creative Commons license on Doctorow's website, allowing the whole text of the book to be read for free and distributed without the publisher's permission. == Plot summary == The novel takes place in a world where online "tribes" form, where all members set their circadian rhythms to the same time zone even though members may be physically located throughout the world. The protagonist, Art Berry, has been sent to an insane asylum as a result of a complex conspiracy. Told...

The Google Modular Data Center is a modular data center built from a set of shipping containers, and used by Google to house some of its servers. They were revealed on April 1, 2009, during the first Google Data Center Efficiency Summit in Mountain View, California. The data centers are rumored to cost $600 million USD each, and use from 50 to 103 megawatts of electricity. They house the computing resources that comprise the Google platform. == History == Google was reported in November 2005 to be working on their own shipping container datacenter. Although in January 2007 it was reported that...

Friendly Floatees are plastic bath toys marketed by The First Years, Inc. and made famous by the work of Curtis Ebbesmeyer, an oceanographer who models ocean currents on the basis of flotsam movements including those of a consignment of Friendly Floatees, containing 29,000 plastic yellow ducks, red beavers, blue turtles and green frogs, washed into the Pacific Ocean in 1992. Some of the toys landed along Pacific Ocean shores, like Hawaii. Others traveled over 17,000 miles, floating over the site where the Titanic sank, and spent years frozen in Arctic ice to reach British and Irish shores 15 years...