Wednesday, February 06, 2013

Phil Bradley Celebrates 10 years of blogging

Congrats to UK blogging librarian Phil Bradley, who is celebrating 10 years of blogging!

For me, Phil Bradley is the original "Librarian 2.0". He writes on search engines, web usability, and librarianship; all important topics for me.  In fact, I've probably read far more of those 10 years worth of posts than I care to admit. 

So, "cheers" to you, Phil! Your writing and rants traveled some 7500 kilometers over here to the west coast of Canada. I hope your online voice will carry forward for a long time.

[RSS Subscription here]

Friday, February 01, 2013

Map of Global Underwater Telecom Routes

Put this one in the category of digital vs the real world. TeleGeography, a global telecom market research and consulting firm, has released their latest interactive map of data lines running under the world's oceans. (No picture could do this map justice. Click over and zoom in for closer look.)



The map shows 232 routes currently in operation, with 12 more planned in the coming year.  As ExtremeTech points out, submarine data routes like these have been around for some time. The first ones dating back to the 1860s for transatlantic cable runs.

If there's a common theme here, it might be that no technology is immune to the physical realities of mother nature. Regardless of whether you're tugging lines across the ocean for early telegraphs in the 1800's, or prepping for terabytes of data in the 21st century.