Four quickies from databases, telephone history, botnets, and disaster tech.
- MemCacheDB – a persistent storage engine for fast and reliable key-value based object storage and retrieval, with transactions and replication (via stinky). Joining Cassandra, Prophet, CouchDB, and many others in the “doing something new to make use of all this data” game. For an interesting counterpoint, read Not Drinking Kool Aid for an interesting counterpoint, though.
- True Story of the Telephone – a fascinating story of how Alexander Graham Bell didn’t invent the telephone, but stole it for love. Distrust most pat stories of invention—Scott Berkun (author of Myths of Innovation) has plenty more of these myths that are great heroic stories but aren’t actually, alas, true.
- Visualizing Botnet Spread – interesting animation showing the spread of a botnet by keeping track of IRC channel joins. (via mauricio)
- Solvatten – solar powered system for turning undrinkable water into drinkable (video below). (via mauricio)