I flipped on the TV when I woke up yesterday to watch the news on KCCI like I always do. I caught the very end of a piece about Google building two facilities in Iowa. I didn’t believe my ears at first, I just assumed they were looking at Iowa as an option for building.
I got into work and went to the KCCI website. Sure enough, right on the front page was a story titled “Some Not Surprised By Google’s Move”. It was the top story of the day at the time. Here’s some of the article from the KCCI website:
DES MOINES, Iowa — It has been a well-kept secret until Tuesday.
Google Inc. is setting up shop in Iowa. The question is why.
The state’s reputation as a great place to live and work could have played a big role.
” I would like to begin with these four words: Google welcome to Iowa,” said Gov. Chet Culver in a news conference Tuesday in Council Bluffs.
The economic impact is predicted to be huge.
Google will invest $600 million in two new facilities, including a data center that is under construction in Council Bluffs.
The 1,100-acre site will house a data farm. The 200 news jobs are forecast to add up to $10 million a year to the state’s economy.
Google has a page dedicated to the Council Bluffs data center and there’s also a nice FAQ.
Google is currently taking applications for employees in the Council Bluffs data center. Needless to say, my resume will be on its way to them shortly, this position really caught my eye. Too bad I don’t have a degree of any sort, I’ll probably be overlooked for that reason alone.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Reinvigorate has released a tool called Snoop that will stream live web stats to your desktop. For those of you who have never heard of Reinvigorate, it’s a website analytics solution similar to Google Analytics. Snoop includes some pre-defined events, such as new visitors and notification of returning visitors. You can also setup custom events. Custom events can be created on any website that supports JavaScript. Snoop is available for Windows and Mac currently, I’m hoping they have plans to build a GTK2 interface for Linux.
Snoop interacts with your Reinvigorate account, displaying current visitors and the pages they’re viewing in real time. It even displays comments if a reader posts a comment. Here’s some features available in Snoop:
Real-time Notification
A dedicated asynchronous (non-polling) connection is maintained with Reinvigorate. You’ll know the instant someone makes a comment on your blog, posts in your forum, purchases an item, gets referred from another site, etc..
Audible Events
Each event triggers a unique sound. If you’re caught up in your work, or in another room, you don’t have to worry about missing events.
Name Tag Integration
Snoop features automatic integration with Name Tags so you’ll know exactly who your visitors are.
I’ve been using Snoop on my Windows desktop at work for the last week or so and absolutely love it. I really wish there was some sort of interface for Linux so I could watch visitors at home. I’m NOT going to install Windows at home just so I can use Snoop, although it is tempting. :)
Popularity: 12% [?]
