Google@Mcgill

Yes! We've done it. McGill is now using a Google Search Appliance as its main search engine backend, which is the main reason I have been so busy in the last while.

Despite early hardware issues and a few bugs I faced in the caching engine and XML APIs (most of which have been or are being addressed by the Google Enterprise team), I have to admit that it's been one of the most motivating and enjoyable projects I have handled at McGill.

You can try it out for yourself on our main search page.

We also enabled other areas, such as our advanced course search, and classified search.

This is of course only the tip of the iceberg, since the architecture is quasi-infinitely extensible through the feeds and OneBox concepts (both of which we already use). And as usual, I already have a head full of ideas on how to further leverage the enormous amount of digital content on campus.

Fun times ahead!

What Happens When...

What happens when you're enjoying your work a bit too much? Well, you end up working some more in the evening instead of spending some quality time with your... blog. ;)

I'll get more chatty again when I'm done with the projects I'm currently handling.

340,282,366,920,938,463,463,374,607,431,768,211,456

Ars Technica has a great article on IPv6 (via Slashdot):

As of January 1, 2007, 2.4 billion of those [IPv4 addresses] were in (some kind of) use. 1.3 billion were still available and about 170 million new addresses are given out each year. So at this rate, 7.5 years from now, we'll be clean out of IP addresses; faster if the number of addresses used per year goes up. Are you ready for IPv6?

If you're not in a geek reading mood, this post's title expresses the number of addresses IPv6 will allow for. C'mon, try and pronounce it! :)

Oops, the jig's up

From the source article, on ABC News:

[...] spring breakers, here's a thought: Before going online to post those pictures of you and your friends dancing atop a table at Senor Frog's, know that your debauchery will probably pop up on many more screens than you intended. Potential employers, school administrators and admissions officers, and vindictive exes can see them too, and decades from now, when college is a mere memory, those photos will still live on the Web.

When the mainstream press and the audience it targets both start catching on to this, you just know that 5,345,961 blogs, photo/video sharing communities and other social networking sites just closed and/or lost their venture capital today alone. Did I just hear a pop? Nah...