Facebook has been working on a PHP compiler that will increase speed by around 80% and offer a just-in-time (JIT) compilation engine that will offer a number of advantages.

Less CPU means fewer servers, which means less overhead. This project has had a tremendous impact on Facebook

HipHop for PHP isn’t technically a compiler itself, it is a source code transformer. HipHop programmatically transforms your PHP source code into highly optimized C++ and then uses g++ to compile it.

HipHop executes the source code in a semantically equivalent manner and sacrifices some rarely used features — such as eval() — in exchange for improved performance.

HipHop includes a code transformer, a reimplementation of PHP’s runtime system, and a rewrite of many common PHP Extensions to take advantage of these performance optimizations.

You can read more about HipHop here

How it works

In one scheme, the roadway has magnetized stainless-steel spikes driven one meter apart in its center^{[citation needed]}. The car senses the spikes to measure its speed and locate the center of the lane. Furthermore, the spikes can have either magnetic north or magnetic south facing up. The roadway thus has small amounts of digital data describing interchanges, recommended speeds, etc.

The cars have power steering and automatic speed controls, which are controlled by a computer.

The cars organize themselves into platoons of eight to twenty-five cars. The platoons drive themselves a meter apart, so that air resistance is minimized. The distance between platoons is the conventional braking distance. If anything goes wrong, the maximum number of harmed cars should be one platoon.

The acquisition probably will add $1.5 billion to Oracle’s operating profit, excluding some items, in the first year.The purchase will give Oracle Sun’s Java programming language and Solaris operating system software, which works with its database programs. The takeover also marks the company’s entry into the server-computer market, allowing it to challenge IBM in that business and sell more products for corporate data rooms that run networks and Web sites.

IBM was in takeover discussions with Sun in the past month, with negotiations breaking down over price, according to people familiar with the situation. 

Here is a quick list of all 15 of them.

Yahoo! Site Explorer
Compete
Quantcast
Alexa
Feed Compare
popuri.us
socialmeter
TweetVolume
Quarkbase
BlogPulse Profiles
Technorati Blogging Central
Statbrain.com
Cubestat
dnScoop
WebsiteOutlook

Many people think that Vista will never out run XP on a 512 MB computer. With some proper tuning, your Vista is absolutely faster than XP on a computer with the memory of 512 MB and above, just follow the 5 simple steps outline here.

Step #1 – Strip everything.

Bring your Vista on a diet plan, use vLite to generate a stripped down version of the original installer, you should lose as many things as possible, including driver and unwanted hardware support. If you can strip Vista until fit on one CD (600 MB or less), you are done!

Step #2 – Disable excessive services.

Do some study and disable all unwanted services, as many as possible . You should have stripped 1/3 of the services on the installer, now you have to disable another half and make Vista as tiny as possible.

Step #3 - Disable theme services and use classic menu.

You need classic interface to save your resources for application. Classical menu is very fast and smooth to use.

Step #4 – Use memory optimizer.

Vista will try to cache any application, you need memory optimizer to free the memory for application as much as possible. Memory optimizer can be obtained freely and easily, just types “memory optimizer” in any search engine, you should be able to download.

Step #5 – Use Process Tamer.

This tiny program will continuously monitor your programs, any program you are currently running, foreground or background, then set it to lower priority and free more resources for other application.

If you perform these 5 steps correctly, your Vista is definitely faster than XP on the same machine, try it today, and if you are not sure what to tune, get a copy of “Unleash Vista Power Advance Guide” before doing anything.

Unlike Amazon Web Services’ loosely coupled architecture, which consists of several essentially independent services that can optionally be tied together by developers, Google’s architecture is more unified but less flexible. For example, it is possible with Amazon to use their storage service S3 independently of any other services, while with Google using their BigTable service will require writing and deploying a Python script to their app servers, one that creates a web-accessible interface to BigTable.

What this all means: Google App Engine is designed for developers who want to run their entire application stack, soup to nuts, on Google resources. Amazon, by contrast, offers more of an a la carte offering with which developers can pick and choose what resources they want to use.

Developers simply upload their Python code to Google, launch the application, and can monitor usage and other metrics via a multi-platform desktop application.

More details from Google:

Today we’re announcing a preview release of Google App Engine, an application-hosting tool that developers can use to build scalable web apps on top of Google’s infrastructure. The goal is to make it easier for web developers to build and scale applications, instead of focusing on system administration and maintenance.

Leveraging Google App Engine, developers can:

• Write code once and deploy. Provisioning and configuring multiple machines for web serving and data storage can be expensive and time consuming. Google App Engine makes it easier to deploy web applications by dynamically providing computing resources as they are needed. Developers write the code, and Google App Engine takes care of the rest.
• Absorb spikes in traffic. When a web app surges in popularity, the sudden increase in traffic can be overwhelming for applications of all sizes, from startups to large companies that find themselves rearchitecting their databases and entire systems several times a year. With automatic replication and load balancing, Google App Engine makes it easier to scale from one user to one million by taking advantage of Bigtable and other components of Google’s scalable infrastructure.
• Easily integrate with other Google services. It’s unnecessary and inefficient for developers to write components like authentication and e-mail from scratch for each new application. Developers using Google App Engine can make use of built-in components and Google’s broader library of APIs that provide plug-and-play functionality for simple but important features.

Google App Engine: The Limitations

The service is launching in beta and has a number of limitations.

First, only the first 10,000 developers to sign up for the beta will be allowed to deploy applications.

The service is completely free during the beta period, but there are ceilings on usage. Applications cannot use more than 500 MB of total storage, 200 million megacycles/day CPU time, and 10 GB bandwidth (both ways) per day. We’re told this equates to about 5M pageviews/mo for the typical web app. After the beta period, those ceilings will be removed, but developers will need to pay for any overage. Google has not yet set pricing for the service.

One current limitation is a requirement that applications be written in Python, a popular scripting language for building modern web apps (Ruby and PHP are among others widely used). Google says that Python is just the first supported language, and that the entire infrastructure is designed to be language neutral. Google’s initial focus on Python makes sense because they use Python internally as their scripting language (and they hired Python creator Guido van Rossum in 2005).

[Courtsey: TechCrunch]

Haochi Chen (Googlified’s ) in his forum reports about the addition of a box on the Google’s search page.. Its like a box which holds the results of different type such as videos, images or selling stuff. Lets wait and see what value it adds to one of the most visited page: The Google serach page.

Workstreamr is Work Made Social™. Workstreamr, a start-up started by Stowe Boyd, Sam Huleatt and Ben Schippers. Workstreamr is the tool, designed to apply several complementary principles to project-based work (Not only projects but to track and monitor common day to work for a small company). For Workstreamr we are also working on a desktop client that channels the information from applications to the user proactively. So the mix of social networking and the project management makes Workstreamr stand tall among the competitors.

Soon the company is will be opening te product to the consumers, the registration for the beta is open and you can register for the product at www.workstreamr.com, which will also register you to get updates on the project.

Will post more information about the project as we move further in the development phase.

Saxena, now 42, had worked at or consulted for several startups. He has seen several entrepreneurs spend virtually all of their time wrestling with the implications of the accelerating pace of work and life. They try to navigate the turbulent waters of the economy with a business plan that is as sustainable as a raft made of popsicle sticks. “So many startups have great technology but no real go-to-market plan or a strategy,” says Saxena, who wanted to reach out to them. They think, ”We’ve got this cool product, so we can’t fail.” But it takes a lot more than a cool product to build a company.

Moreover this is an age of stiff competition and changing business models, where startups are usually faced with a multitude of challenges to build their new enterprises from ideas on a napkin. Some of the common challenges for startup companies include establishing a product development team, lack of financial support, and overcoming the lack of infrastructure and processes for product development, and an inability to rapidly plug into ancillary, yet critical, technology and go-to-market partners. The challenges faced by established technology companies that are trying to launch a new software product or enter a new market are also similar. Although, unlike startup entrepreneurs, established companies often struggle to competitively launch new products due to slower internal processes and structures.

Building software products is not something new to GlobalLogic. With compounded annual revenue growth averaging at over 90 percent in the past four years and nearly 3,000 employees, the company has been providing software product development services to both startup and established technology companies since 2000. The company offers deep experience across the full product development lifecycle for the following technology domains: mobile, telecom, VoIP, Web 2.0, open source, SaaS, financial, business intelligence, and quality assurance. The company has built up significant credibility realized from helping its clients rapidly launch nearly 1,000 innovative software products over the past seven years. Its new initiative, called GlobalLogic Version 1.0(SM), is to help technology companies address unique challenges they face while engineering and launching their version 1.0 products. Companies planning their version 1.0 products can reach out to GlobalLogic: Version1.0@globallogic.com

The time factor
Four months: That’s the narrow window of opportunity that a would-be Web 2.0 entrepreneur has to transform an idea into an actual product that’s available on the Web, insists Saxena. “Shorter time to market is the biggest advantage that startups have over their competitors,” he explains. “Put simply, it’s four months – or the game is over. If you have an idea but ponder over it for half a year, you might as well forget about it. On the Internet, if you can then you must; because if you don’t, someone else will.”

“You can always get more money, but you can never get more time.” It’s a credo that is repeated frequently by the technology entrepreneurs who partner with GlobalLogic – many of whom gladly give up equity in their companies for the chance to slice weeks or months off their product development and product marketing plans.

An ex-CEO of a public company had an idea that could use ‘social tools’ to provide better job matches for both active and passive job seekers. He had even managed to raise funds leveraging his past business success. He engaged a firm in the U.S. to execute his idea and at the end of six months all he had to show for his effort was a 40-page Microsoft Word document detailing the product specs. He had lost a considerable amount of time during which, to his chagrin, a competing product launch took place. He quickly turned to GlobalLogic and, within a month of partnering, had gotten a working system in place that he could use to invite users to give feedback. “Time waits for none,” insists Saxena. “If you don’t do it now, the opportunity will be gone forever.”

People
What does it take to move that fast to launch a software product? The answer is not mountains of cash or cutting-edge technology. To build a fast startup, says Saxena, you first need to hire people fast. More important than ‘time to market’, he says, is ‘time to hire,’ since the latter will determine the former. “An entrepreneur has only one job: to hire,” Saxena explains. “Starting a company is no longer about raising capital; it’s about raising teams. The single biggest challenge for any startup is finding the right people who can execute on all the different dimensions.”

GlobalLogic’s technology professionals specialize in software product development. Many built their career on software product design, development, and support working at product companies before joining GlobalLogic. The company, with professionals based in the U.S., India, Ukraine, and China, offers a large talent pool across multiple software domains. GlobalLogic’s clients can rapidly plug in to that talent, whether the need is in mobile, Web 2.0, SaaS, open source, financial, or embedded.

“Each product development team, called ‘Velocity Pack’, consists of members who have expertise in playing their positions, but at the same time trained to adjust their plays as the demands and requirements change,” says Saxena who continues, “Passion and adaptability are two important traits required to build a startup. Our approach to product development ensures that each team member takes the ownership for his part.”

Infrastructure
Saxena narrates experiences of several entrepreneurs who during the initial days of their startups focus on details such as phone systems and IT installation and office space and furniture and long-distance carriers – practically everything but the actual business. “For the first few months, entrepreneurs spend way more time than they should, or need to, on administrative activities,” says Saxena. “That time is time away from the more value added activities that an entrepreneur should be focused on. Taking that long will put you out of business.”

In addition to the physical infrastructure, brand new companies have to implement common development ‘infrastructure’, systems such as requirements management, nightly build, testing and deployment systems. The Version 1.0 offering provides access to GlobalLogic’s award winning platform from day zero.

San Francisco-based Stowe Boyd, a ‘parallel entrepreneur’, blogs on social media and how the next generation of people will work. Boyd says that in the next generation, public and private persona will come together into a common stream of work. With this idea in mind, he and two other co-founders based In New York and Grenada raised angel money and set out to build Workstreamr. The three co-founders don’t even have an official office. From day one they did not worry about hiring software developers. “As a startup we wanted to ensure the deterministic use of money we had raised. We also wanted to roll out the product in only a few months time. But setting up the development center, hiring the right software R&D talent, and integrating the team could have been time consuming and risky. As a result, we decided to approach GlobalLogic,” explains Boyd.

Phases
But the real magic begins as entrepreneurs working with GlobalLogic’s Version 1.0 offering get initiated into the Agile development process – GlobalLogic’s philosophy of time, which aims to take entrepreneurs and their ideas through a series of JAD sessions and iterations. “GlobalLogic Velocity™ is an attempt to apply Agile software development methodologies to the chaos of the earliest stage of a startup, and thereby gear toward the rapid launch of a quality product,” says Manish Rathi, Head of GlobalLogic Version 1.0 Delivery. Velocity is GlobalLogic’s open-source based method and platform for working with clients to optimize distributed software.

With time to market and quality being critical to the success of the startup, a well-defined engagement model is a key aspect. “The Version 1.0 engagement model involves six distinct development phases that include business plan and vision, storyboard, visualization, architect and release plan, alpha and beta release and version 1.0 product release,” explains Rathi. The engagement model is conceived keeping in mind the often overlooked elements – usability and branding.

In the first stage, GlobalLogic’s product management and usability experts work with the entrepreneur to clarify his or her business model and craft the product strategy. This period of reflection may sound as if you’re slowing down to go faster. But, according to Saxena it is absolutely critical: “It doesn’t matter how fast you run if you’re not heading toward the finish line.”

All of these discussions and decisions are captured in their Velocity Platform which functions as an electronic whiteboard. This provides their clients and partners with continuous visibility and iterative control. The company works collaboratively with the partners to determine the multiple intermediate milestones (iterations) required to meet a realistic product launch date. By creating a virtual extension of a partner’s operations the company delivers a more familiar and consistent work environment that will facilitate a faster and more efficient product release.

“For every iteration, we agree on a pre-defined set of goals for a weekly or monthly release cycle,” says Rathi.

Short design and conceptualization cycles, short development and release cycles, and ongoing reviews and communications ensure that partners have both the right level of control and the opportunity to correct or stay the course for the product launch.

“Besides, there is room for flexibility in the engagement model. Sometimes when a startup lands a customer or receives funding, it would like to move at a faster pace. Alternatively, it would like to stay steady or cool off”, explains Rathi.

“The real characteristic of the GlobalLogic Version 1.0 offering is in aligning to the partner’s goals and working with them toward their next step,” notes Saxena.

When Workstreamr’s Boyd contracted with GlobalLogic to build the social media site, he knew that they needed a Microsoft Windows-based, downloadable application somewhere in the future. As he started demonstrating the product, some of the early customers expressed a keen interest in such an application to accelerate product adoption.

“So the flexibility had to be there in the team, contract, and process,” explains Saxena.

Partners
There is one more core competence requirement for fast startups: They must pick fast partners. Sure, in a world powered by the Web, partnerships are a crucial asset for success. And there’s a strong temptation – especially for startups, which are eager for credentials and credibility – to partner early on with big-name firms that sound impressive to potential customers and the media. “Even if those companies are going to be your best customers, they won’t move fast enough,” Saxena argues.

So what is the alternative? In the last seven years, GlobalLogic has partnered with 140 emerging and established technology companies around a global product development service model supporting the full product development lifecycle. In an attempt to further reduce time to market, Version 1.0 brings in strong technology and marketing partners with expertise in areas such as SEO and SEM, hosting providers, and other common and reusable components. It is this pool of resource that a Version 1.0 client can look to tap into.

Advisor
Such acceleration would be difficult to achieve without the help of GlobalLogic’s Executive Advisor, comprising of C-level business professionals who are experts in an industry, domain, geography, or in launching new ventures.

The Executive Advisor acts as a sounding board on issues identified by the partners or co-founders. As the product is being built and released into the market, it is the Executive Advisor that will help the company think through the issues that can come up post release. These experienced individuals are at a stage in their professional lives where they look forward to mentoring on a volunteer basis to see young entrepreneurs succeed. The entrepreneur benefits by learning from their experiences and mistakes, thus avoiding the same old mistakes.

Capital
Money drives every business, and it is an important parameter for any company, no matter what stage it is in. GlobalLogic has formal arrangements with several venture capitalists like Sequoia Capital, Draper Atlantic (now New Atlantic Ventures), and NEA, all early investors in GlobalLogic. They, along with other principals at VCs that did not invest in GlobalLogic, including Valhalla Partners, Grotech Capital Group, SAI (China), and WI Harper are strong supporters of the GlobalLogic Version 1.0 offering. All these VCs see Version 1.0 as a valuable deal flow mechanism for themselves. VCs understand that these companies have significant leg-up on the technical side and, partnering with GlobalLogic, potentially 20 to 50 percent reduction in go to market times. This makes the investment more attractive from a pure risk reduction perspective. They scan business plans, and on an ongoing basis provide discussions and appropriate levels of funding based on the merit of the business. Startup business is inherently risky. By having these experts review the business plans, GlobalLogic is able to select companies with business plans that have a higher probability to succeed.

GlobalLogic has been at the forefront in recognizing that the changing ‘fabless’ business model of a startup requires a different delivery mechanism. The company made a decision to launch Version 1.0, helping software startups fill in the gaps by acting as head of engineering and, in some cases, as chief technology officer for these companies. They have carefully planned and built the necessary ecosystem, enabling young companies and entrepreneurs to fulfill their dream to create the next big thing.

Rajesh Jain is known as the man who almost single handedly brought on the dotcom boom to India after selling off his Internet venture, IndiaWorld.com, to Satyam for Rs 499 crore in 1999. He is, in effect, the first dotcom multi-millionaire that India produced.

Here is the full interview…