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At Scalr, we’ve been happy customers of Amazon’s infrastructure service, EC2, since 2007. In fact, we’ve built our tools for EC2 because we saw an opportunity to leverage its flexibility to help AWS customers easily design and manage resilient services. But as competitors spring up, we always test them to see how they compare, especially in regards to io performance.

On a warm June day in San Francisco, the Scalr team attended Google I/O 2012. Google was rumored to be launching a EC2 competitor, which we were interested in for our multi-cloud management software. It launched. And boy did it sound good. You see, EC2 and GCE offer pretty much the same core service, but Amazon has been plagued by poor network and disk performance, so Google’s promise to offer both higher and more consistent performance struck a real chord.

Not ones to be fooled by marketing-driven, hyped-up software, we applied for early access and were let in so we could start testing it ourselves. Once we got in, we felt like kids in a candy store. Google Compute Engine is not just fast. It’s Google fast. In fact, it’s a class of fast that enables new service architectures entirely. Here are the results from our tests, along with explanations of how GCE and EC2 differ, as well as comments and use cases.

A note about our data: The benchmarks run to collect the data presented here were taken twice a day, over four days, then averaged. When a high variance was observed, we took note of it and present it here as intervals for which 80 percent of observed data points fall into.

API

First off, GCE’s API is beautifully simple, explicit and easy to work with. Just take a look at it. Their firewalls are called “firewalls,” vlans are “networks,” and kernels are “kernels” (AKIs, anyone?). Anyone familiar with Unix will feel right at home.

Fast boot

Second, VMs are deployed and started with impressive speed (and we’ve extensively used 10 clouds). It routinely takes less than 30 seconds to login as root after making the insert call to launch a VM. As a reference point, this is the amount of time it takes AWS to get to the running state, after which you still need to wait for the OS to boot, for a total of 120 seconds on a good day, and 300 on a bad one (data points taken from us-east-1).

Boot times are measured in seconds.

We don’t know what sort of sorcery Google does here, but they clearly demonstrate engineering prowess. That’s 4-10x faster.

Volumes

Those of you familiar with Amazon’s EBS volumes know that you can attach and detach volumes to any instance, anytime. On GCE, you can’t (at least not yet). This precludes you from switching drives to minimize downtime: attaching a volume on a running server allows you to skip the boot and configure stages of bringing a new node up, which is useful when promoting an existing mysql slave to master and you just need to swap out storage devices.

While GCE’s “disks” (as they call them) have that one disadvantage, they offer some unique advantages over Amazon volumes. For example, disks can be mounted read-only on multiple instances, which makes for more convenient fileserving than object stores, especially for software such as WordPress (see disclosure) or Drupal that expect a local filesystem. Disks are really fast too, and don’t seem to have the variable performance that plagued EBS before the introduction of Provisioned IOPS. See for yourself in the following benchmarks.

As you can see, GCE and EC2 are equivalent on reads, but GCE is 2-4x faster on writes.

Read/write speeds are measured in MB/s. Higher numbers mean faster throughput.

Network

A short note about multi-cloud. I’m talking here about services that span multiple clouds, such as replicating a database from us-east-1 to us-west-1, for disaster recovery or latency-lowering purposes, not the multi-cloud management capabilities widely used in the enterprise. I believe that first kind of multi-cloud is a myth driven by the industry’s less tech-savvy folks. I’ve seen too many people attempt it unsuccessfully to recommend it: what usually happens is the slave database falls behind on the master, with an ever-increasing inconsistency window, because the load on the master exceeds the meager bandwidth available between master and slave. Our friends at Continuent are doing great work with Tungsten to accelerate that, but still.

Google’s network is so fast, however, that this kind of multi-cloud might just be possible. To illustrate the difference in speeds, we ran a bandwidth benchmark in which we copied a single, 500 Mb file between two regions. It took 242 seconds on AWS at an average speed of 15 Mbit/s, and 15 seconds on GCE with an average speed of 300Mbit/s. GCE came out 20x faster.

Higher bandwidth is better and means faster up and downlinks.

After being so very much impressed, we made a latency benchmark between the same regions. We got an average of 20ms for GCE and 86ms for AWS. GCE came out 4x faster.

Lower latency is better and means shorter wait times.

This might allow new architectures, and high-load replicated databases might just become possible. Put a slave in different regions of the US (and if/when GCE goes international, why not different regions of the world?) to dramatically speed up SaaS applications for read performance.

Of course, unless Amazon and Google work together to enable Direct Connect, bandwidth from GCE to EC2 will still be slow. I also hear that Amazon is working on creating a private backbone between regions to enable the same use cases, which would be an expected smart move from them.

Multi-region images

We’re not quite sure why AWS doesn’t support this, but images on GCE are multi-region (“multi-zone” in their terms), that is to say when you snapshot an instance into an image, you can immediately launch new instances from that image in any region. This makes disaster recovery that much easier and makes their scheduled region maintenance (which occurs a couple of times a year) less of a problem. On that note, I’d also like to add that it forces people to plan their infrastructure to be multi-region, similar to what AWS did for instance failure by making local disk storage ephemeral.

So should you switch?

AWS offers an extremely comprehensive cloud service, with everything from DNS to database. Google does not. This makes building applications on AWS easier, since you have bigger building blocks. So if you don’t mind locking yourself into a vendor, you’ll be more productive on AWS.

But that said, with Google Compute Engine, AWS has a formidable new competitor in the public cloud space, and we’ll likely be moving some of Scalr’s production workloads from our hybrid aws-rackspace-softlayer setup to it when it leaves beta. There’s a strong technical case for migrating heavy workloads to GCE, and I’ll be grabbing popcorn to eagerly watch as the battle unfolds between the giants.

Sebastian Stadil is the founder of Scalr, a simple, powerful cloud management suite, and SVCCG, the world’s largest cloud computing user group. When not working on cloud, Sebastian enjoys making sushi and playing rugby.

Note: Data scientists from LinkedIn, Continuuity, Quantcast and NASA will talk about their hardware and software stacks at our “guru panel” at Structure:Data next week, March 20-21, in New York City.

Disclosure: Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of this blog, GigaOM. Om Malik, founder of GigaOM, is also a venture partner at True.

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FedInsider News is hosting a complimentary briefing on the federal data center consolidation and cloud computing efforts. Participants will hear the perspectives of Commerce, NRC, DHS, among other government entities. The event will be held March 20 from 8 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.

Registration is available at http://www.fedinsider.com/datacenter.

SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

• Scott Lewis, Former Publisher of Washington Technology; President of PS Partnerships
• Kirit Amin, Deputy CIO and CTO, Department of Commerce
• Jim Flanagan, Director, Office of Information Services, Nuclear Regulatory Commission
• Edward Rhyne, Program Manager, Cyber Security Division, Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate.

Venue:
immixGroup Education Center
8444 Westpark Drive, Suite 200
McLean, VA  22102
(Westpark Corporate Center at the corner of Route 7 & Westpark Drive)

Convenient parking lot under the building. Validation for parking provided.

For more information, visit www.fedinsider.com/datacenter  or by Phone 202-237-0300.

For more events, return to the Data Center Knowledge Events Calendar.

President Obama called for stronger action on climate change and support of clean energy research during his State of the Union speech, and now he’s showing his cards for how he might carry that out. On Friday Obama is expected to propose funneling $2 billion worth of federal leases for oil and gas companies into research and deployment of cleaner vehicles, reports the New York Times. At the same time, Bloomberg reports that Obama could also use a law from the Nixon-era to tell federal agencies that they need to consider climate change impacts before approving infrastructure projects like oil pipelines.

The moves show how Obama is getting creative at a time when Congress isn’t likely to approve budget increases for clean energy support, or other policies like a cap and trade program or carbon tax. The stimulus package, which injected some $90 billion into clean energy projects and incentives, has largely been spent or the funds expired, so clean energy companies and projects are facing a steep drop in federal support in 2013.

Yet, many will note that the moves are piece meal and not as aggressive as Obama originally proposed when he first ran for office. And some of Obama’s concessions to the natural gas and oil industry will likely anger environmentalists and some clean energy advocates. The Washington Post reports that the Obama administration plans to rewrite its proposal to regulate greenhouse emissions using the Environmental Protection Agency, making the proposal weaker and potentially delaying regulations.

The proposal for using $2 billion in federal leases will emerge over the coming weeks. Obama brought up this plan in the State of the Union speech, calling it an Energy Security Trust that will drive new research and technology to shift our cars and trucks off oil for good. Obama said “If a non-partisan coalition of CEOs and retired generals and admirals can get behind this idea, then so can we.”

The use of the infrastructure law is a new idea, and will no doubt prove controversial. A manufacturing association told Bloomberg that the notion had them “freaked out.” The law originally was used to protect water, air and soil from infrastructure projects that could have negative environmental effects.

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Two questions I hear a lot in the broadband world: How can public and private work together? How can we encourage non-adopters to subscribe to broadband? I think the following story answers both…

Through MIRC funding, KOOTASCA Community Action supported a project that sought to bring computers and broadband connectivity to Native American student families in the Deer River School District. They partnered with PCs for People and Paul Bunyan, the local broadband provider to make it happen.

There were 28 PCs for People refurbished computers available at no charge to these families along with a paid 10 month subscription for Internet service for 24 families through Paul Bunyan Communications. The families qualified for free and reduced price lunch. The project ended December 31, 2012.

As of January, 2013 the households picked up the cost of the Internet at the regular rate from Paul Bunyan Communications. To date in March only 4 households have dropped their Internet service from Paul Bunyan Communications….an 84% retention rate.

KOOTASCA helped to facilitate the project between PCs for People (a nonprofit), the school and the local provider. We’ve had stories of similar projects in Thief River Falls and other areas – but it seems like the kind of straightforward plan that bears repeating.

It’s been just a few weeks since iOS email app Mailbox launched and already it’s already been snapped up by a larger company. Cloud storage provider Dropbox on Friday announced it will acquire Mailbox. The company did not disclose the purchase price.

Co-founders Drew Houston and Arash Ferdowsi wrote on the Dropbox blog that they liked that Mailbox is “simple, delightful and beautifully engineered”:

After spending time with Gentry, Scott, and the team, it became clear that their calling was the same as ours at Dropbox—to solve life’s hidden problems and reimagine the things we do every day. We all quickly realized that together we could save millions of people a lot of pain.

Dropbox doesn’t replace your folders or your hard drive: it makes them better. The same is true with Mailbox, it doesn’t replace your email: it makes it better. Whether it’s your Dropbox or your Mailbox, we want to find ways to simplify your life.

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Continue reading…

JK Shin may have been pretty excited about the Galaxy S 4 launch yesterday, but he doesn’t seem to be quite as enthusiastic about Sammy’s Windows-based smartphones. As highlighted in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Shin clearly indicates that:

 ”Smartphones and tablets based on Microsoft’s Windows operating system aren’t selling very well. There is a preference in the market for Android. In Europe, we’re also seeing lackluster demand for Windows-based products”.

While he took some time to clearly express what we’ve all been thinking all along with Windows-based products, he also took some time to reiterate its partnership with Google and put to rest any potential rumors out there by stating that “we like Android and we plan to continue our good relations with Google. I don’t think it’s correct to say that there’s friction”. So there you have it folks— Samsung is content with Android, knows the market well and will continue to do its best to innovate and grow as a brand.

source: Wall Street Journal 

Come comment on this article: JK Shin takes time to highlight there’s no demand for Windows-based products and Samsung/Google are BFFs

Google created a minor shockwave last April when it introduced a new tool that caused millions of websites to tumble in its search listings. The tool, known as the Penguin algorithm, punishes sites that attempt to use dubious linking tactics  in order to increase their visibility. Now, a new report suggests that the company is applying the punishments with increasing severity.

According to a study by Portent, an internet marketing firm, Google is steadily decreasing the number of manipulative links it will tolerate before it downgrades a site. When Google first introduced Penguin, the algorithm would permit 80 percent of a site’s incoming links to be spammy before it took action; that number then dropped to 65 percent and then 50 percent by the end of 2012 (which is end range of the study).

To come up with the findings, Portend examined thousands of incoming links for 50 major websites, and the effect those links had on sites’ prominence in search listings.

If the findings are correct, the upshot is that companies will have to be even more cautious about search engine optimization (SEO) tactics that rely on external links. These links are one signal that Google uses to decide if a site is popular, which has led some companies to acquire non-organic links through trade, purchase or other means. In one famous example, JC Penney used SEO tricks to appear as the top search listing for a wide range of terms, including “bedding” and “area rugs” before Google took action.

In some cases, it may be unfair for a site to be punished for outside links — particularly, if they have control over the sites that are linking to them. To prevent this, Google offers a “disavow” tool that sites can use to indicate that they don’t want particular links to considered as part of their search score.

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“We may not yet have the flying car that science fiction promised us,” says Catarina Mota in today’s talk, given at TEDGlobal 2012. “But we can have walls that change color depending on temperature, keyboards that roll up, and windows that become opaque at the flick of a switch.”

Catarina Mota: Play with smart materialsAs Mota demonstrates, smart materials will allow us to make some very cool things. But not a lot of information is currently out there about how these materials are made, how they work, and how they can be used. This is why Mota co-created OpenMaterials.org, a website for the sharing of experiments, information, tutorials and DIY projects involving smart materials.

“Innovation has always been fueled by tinkerers,” says Mota. “So many times, amateurs — not experts — have been the inventors and improvers of things like mountain bikes, personal computers, airplanes.”

To hear some examples of how makers volleying ideas can lead to innovation, watch this talk. And below, Mota shares some of the smart materials gaining momentum on her site.

Conductive Inks are paints infused with conductive particles like silver and carbon. They are used to create both hand-painted and printed electrical traces on paper, and are at the base of one of the most promising branches of material science: printed electronics. Printed electronics allow us to create cheap, flexible and recyclable circuits using standard paper, a slightly modified document printer and conductive ink. The types of conductive ink currently available outside university laboratories are still too resistive to replace copper and other conductors we use for traces. However, conductive ink is a good material for creating sensors in any shape we want — by simply painting them. In the video above, see some experiments I’ve been working on to create variable resistance sensors using only conductive ink, paper and basic electronic components like resistors and transistors.

Muscle Wire is a shape memory alloy that contracts between 3 and 7% when an electrical current runs through it. While this material is not strong enough for heavier applications — like rolling up heavy blinds or pulling any significant weight — it allows us to create motion in a noiseless and smooth way for a number of other applications in which the use of motors is not perfect. On the video above, I used muscle wire to make two small paper wings flap when a handmade paper switch is pushed.

Thermochromic Pigments change color at a given temperature. The two most common types of thermochromic materials are based on either leuco dies or liquid crystals. At specific temperatures the liquid crystals re-orientate to produce an apparent change of color. Thermochromic materials can be triggered by body heat or used in conjunction with heating elements such as nichrome, steel thread or even simply conductive thread. Think: a baby’s bottle that changes color when the milk is cool enough to drink.

Electrotextiles include thread, fabrics and yarn with electrical properties. They are made by blending or coating textiles with metallic fibers and are available in many different weaves and textures. We’re only just discovering uses for these materials — but some of the most interesting, in my opinion, are for making a large array of sensors like the ones developed by Kobakant and pictured above: a zipper slider, a crochet squeeze sensor, a piezoresistive touch pad, an embroidered potentiometer, a knit accelerometer, and a tilt sensor. Conductive fabrics have also been used both by hobbyists and product designers to make objects like roll-up keyboards, jackets with controls for smart phones and electronics-enhanced garments.

Light Diffusing Acrylic is infused with colorless light diffusing particles. While regular acrylic only diffuses light around the edges, this material illuminates across its entire surface. On the example pictured above, we wrapped a strip of RGB LEDs around a piece of this material and made it cycle through several colors to demonstrate its light diffusing properties. Light diffusing acrylics are currently used for interior design and multi-touch applications.

Also, check out the Lotus Dome — an incredible installation built out of hundreds of “smart metals.” It comes highly recommended by TED’s Director of Design Services, Mike Femia.

Security firm Lookout reports that it has a seen a staggering increase in the number of NotCompatible detections this week. While not a new threat (it first appeared last May), the remote proxy malware has moved on from infecting Android devices through hacked websites and is now spreading via email spam.

Once installed, NotCompatible turns the infected phone into a proxy which is used to commit online fraud, such as through the purchase of concert tickets.

In the past five days alone Lookout says it has detected more than 70,000 infections, peaking at almost 20,000 detections per day between Sunday and Monday, with 95 percent of them located in the US.

The threat is currently being spread from hacked email accounts. It tricks unwary users into clicking a link on their phones which redirects the browser to an “Android Security site” that then attempts to download and install the malware. The emails to avoid mostly have the subject line “Hot News”, although I received one from a friend’s hacked account yesterday that was headed simply “Hey!”

If you open the link on a computer or iOS device, as I did (in a controlled experiment), you’ll be taken to a fake Fox News article on weight loss.

To avoid becoming infected, just employ the same commonsense you would when opening an email on your computer. Don’t click any unfamiliar links and don’t open any downloaded files unless you know exactly what they are. You can of course install an antimalware tool on your mobile if you want to be extra safe.

Photo credit: Lookout

HTC is wanting the launch of their One smartphone to be a success and has extended a special deal through April 4. For consumers in the market for a new phone, when you sign up online and buy the HTC One, you’ll receive a $100 Visa pre-paid gift card in the mail. To fully qualify, you’re required to send in your old smartphone and proof of One purchase. HTC doesn’t say how long it’ll take for the gift card to arrive, but you can likely expect at least several weeks after mailing your old phone and proof of purchase. Does this deal entice you to buy the new HTC One or are you more interested in another phone?

Come comment on this article: Buy An HTC One, Get $100 Visa Gift Card Deal Extended Through April 4

A revolution in information technology has transformed businesses around the globe over the past two decades. More recently, companies have discovered that technology-enabled data is an underappreciated but highly valuable asset.

A parallel transformation is now taking hold in the nonprofit sector. In fact, our research shows that the fastest-growing organizations are making serious efforts to track their results and learn from them. It’s an essential ingredient of scaling the impact of any venture — all the more so for social ventures where access to a decent education, basic healthcare, or clean water may be at stake.

College Summit, a nonprofit that helps increase college enrollment and persistence rates among low-income high school graduates, is a case in point. (College Summit is a previous client of my organization). Data collection and analysis is built into the organization’s DNA. And innovative technology soon will extend its reach without increasing its size.

College Summit partners with 180 high schools in 12 states and serve upwards of 50,000 low-income students in their quest for a college education. The organization offers a post-secondary planning course for ninth- and tenth-graders and guides juniors and seniors through the college selection and application process. It also provides teachers with annual training academies and onsite coaching. Just as importantly, College Summit seeks to create a college-going culture by recruiting and training “peer influencers,” seniors others kids look up to and who mentor classmates.

Numerous programs aim to boost college enrollment among low-income high school grads but what sets College Summit apart is its relentless pursuit of data to inform and guide its work. The organization’s data gathering system, developed by corporate supporter Deloitte, generates weekly reports at the school and district level. The reports track, for example, how many ninth graders have developed a postsecondary plan, which steers them to sign up for courses required for college admission. Among seniors, the system tabulates how many have written an admission essay, where they have applied, and how many have filled out the federal financial support application.

The data in these reports give principals and teachers the ability to track individual students’ progress. “The reports help schools focus scarce resources on the students who need it most,” says J.B. Schramm, College Summit’s founder and CEO. “Those who are falling behind get extra attention.”

But data collection doesn’t stop at the schoolhouse door. Ultimately, College Summit wants to measure its long-term impact. That means tracking students’ experience in college. Gathering that data proved to be a major challenge. It isn’t easy to follow students once they’ve left the program and to extract data from multiple colleges and universities. But it’s worth the effort. In a 2010 nationwide survey by Deloitte, 92% of high school principals and teachers said that having data on students’ academic performance in college was critical to evaluating the effectiveness of high school curriculum and teaching. But only 13% said they actually receive such information.

At College Summit high schools, educators now get reports showing where students enroll, the credits they earn, and the remedial courses they take. Educators use the information to make curriculum changes and improve future graduates’ chances of college success.

College Summit’s experience with postsecondary student performance data played a role in building congressional support for statewide data collection programs. In three separate acts since 2007, Congress has authorized funds to help states development postsecondary outcomes data for all high school graduates. As a result, all 50 states have committed to producing these reports and sharing them with educators and parents.

If data has been the story of College Summit’s early success, technology is poised to write a new chapter. After nearly two decades of successful program replication, “we reach only a small portion of the total demand among low-income students,” says Schramm. As a result, College Summit began to question how it could scale its impact without increasing its size. “Our model has been all about young people taking charge and making decisions,” says Schramm. “So the question became, how can we take that model and scale it up?”

The answer: Facebook. Next fall, in collaboration with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and Facebook, College Summit will launch 20 free, custom-designed apps on the social networking site that will help guide low-income students through college admission and on-campus success while providing students a platform for building supportive online peer groups. College Summit secured a $2.5 million grant from the Gates Foundation to support the app development project, called the College Knowledge Challenge. It kicked off last fall with two hackathons that attracted 160 app developers. From those, 20 winners have been funded to develop their projects — everything from an app that provides automated alerts for important deadlines, to one that guides students seeking to transfer from community college to a four-year university, to another that forms “personal success teams” to help students through critical steps in college preparation.

Schramm acknowledges that apps alone are no substitute for a supportive home and school environment. But for students who don’t have the benefit of such support, the apps may provide a much needed lifeline.

What data did to propel College Summit’s success to date, technology is poised to do for its future. The lesson here is clear. Together, data and technology put measuring and expanding social impact within reach as never before. It’s a lesson in the power of investing in “good overhead” that too few organizations — and their funders — take to heart. Yet it is at the very heart of tackling the world’s thorniest problems and winning.

Please join the conversation and check back for regular updates. Follow the Scaling Social Impact insight center on Twitter @ScalingSocial and give us feedback.

Scaling Social Impact
Insights from HBR and The Bridgespan Group

• We Need Open Data To Change The World
• Is Collaboration the New Greenwashing?
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• You Can’t Just Hack Your Way to Social Change

Those of you who are looking to get a more secure device can look forward to something new and exciting from Blackberry. It has announced that it plans on bringing its Secure Work Space for Android devices in June, which should bode well for those of you who happen to hear about a little something called Samsung Knox, but want to stay with your existing smartphones. In case you’re not familiar, Secure Work Space is a security solution that allows enterprise customers to separate and secure both work and personal data on employee smartphones— effectively creating a work profile completely independent of a personal profile that’s all on one device. The great thing is that the product is completely managed by BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, which frees users from the need of having to use separate phones or complicated virtual networks. No word on the cost yet, but further details will probably be out before you know it.

source: AllThingsD

Come comment on this article: Blackberry introduces its topnotch security software to Android

Drones are not exactly frightening. The little quadcopters that we’ve seen delivering pizza and tacos are actually kind of cute as far as heartless robots go.

Well, those cute little quadcopters have not been turned into heartless killers thanks to a simple additions by researchers at University of Pennsylvania’s GRASP Lab. They thought it would be a good idea to attach a claw onto the copter so that it can dive down and grab objects without ever slowing down. The maneuver was inspired by how eagles hunt by diving to grab prey.

What’s terrifying about this particular robot is that it can grab objects while moving at three meters per second. If it ever becomes big enough, it could pick you up off the ground before you even realize you’ve been captured by the robotic equivalent of a pterodactyl.

[h/t: NewScientist]

We always love updates for our apps, especially when they bring drastic changes for the better. Facebook’s newest update is definitely a big change, but it’s also pretty weird. Instead of getting the prompt to update your app from the Play Store, users are beginning to see a notification from within the Facebook app itself letting you know there’s an update available. The app then updates from within itself, no Play Store required. It’s a weird approach to take, especially for a major application like Facebook. Although, with Google’s foray into the world of social networking and web integration with Google Plus, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised to see Facebook attempt to distance themselves from their competitor’s market.

As far as the update goes, it’s actually pretty minor. It includes the ability to change profile photos from within the app, and you can now hide and mark postss as spam. It also comes with a new permission to allow the app to auto-update itself. According to Facebook’s support center, that’ll only happen over WiFi, but I’m not sure this is a direction everyone is going to be comfortable with. Anyway, we’d give you a Play Store link in the source and tell you to go download the app, but, uh… I guess that doesn’t work anymore. So let us know in the comments if your Facebook app has become self aware updates itself.

source: Facebook

Come comment on this article: Facebook updates their Android app… without using the Play Store

Within hours of Google announcing that they would be shutting down Google Reader on July 1st, a handful of petitions popped up that urged the company to reconsider.

Those petitions included a few on Change.org, a single-serving site called keepgooglereader.com, and even a White House petition on the We The People site. That latter was quickly removed by the administrators before it could garner more than a few hundred signatures. Clearly, telling Google to maintain Google Reader is outside the purview of the Obama administration.

Out of all the petitions, one has risen above the rest. That particular petition, hosted on Change.org, simply asks Google to Keep Google Reader Running. And in less than two days, that petition has already crossed the 100,000 signature mark. Its next goal is to hit 150,000, which is most definitely achievable considering it’s gaining a hundred or so signatures every few minutes.

Here’s the full petition:

Dear Google:

A few years ago — years, wow — Google Reader was one of my go-to social networks. It was an accidental one. I was using it for its intended purpose — aggregating and reading a lot of web content in one place — but it turns out, a lot of other people were doing the same thing. A lot. Many of which shared interests and when you added the amazing (amazing!) share and comment features, Google Reader blossomed into a wonderful experience for many of us, core to our day-to-day consumption of content online.

Unfortunately, you decided to kill those “extra” functions. I’m not here to ask you to reverse that (you should, though). In doing so, Google Reader’s day-to-day value declined, and I, like many, ended up using it less often. Instead of hitting the bookmarklet I have on my Chrome install three, four times a day, it’s now a once a day (okay, once every other day more often, recently) experience.

But it’s still a core part of my Internet use. And of the many, many others who are signed below.

Our confidence in Google’s other products — Gmail, YouTube, and yes, even Plus — requires that we trust you in respecting how and why we use your other products. This isn’t just about our data in Reader. This is about us using your product because we love it, because it makes our lives better, and because we trust you not to nuke it.

Oh.

So, please don’t destroy that trust. You’re a huge corporation, with a market cap which rivals the GDP of nations. You’re able to dedicate 20% of your time to products which may never seen the light of day. You experiment in self-driving cars and really cool eyewear which we trust (trust!) you’ll use in a manner respectful to our needs, interests, etc.

Show us you care.

Don’t kill Google Reader.

So it’s obvious that plenty of people are upset about Google’s decision. Although Google cited a decline in usage as the motivation behind canning Reader, the product clearly has a loyal and substantial following.

But will this incredible show of support for Google Reader make any difference? I wouldn’t hold my breath. Google has killed 70 products or features since instituting “spring cleaning” back in 2011, and Google Reader is simply one of those layers of fat that needs to be trimmed, in Google’s eyes. Google admitted that the decision was a tough one, but in the end they need to do this in order to focus on other, newer and more innovative products as not the “spread themselves too thin.”

And that very well mean sending resources to work on Google+.

If Google decides to go through with the kill, which it probably will, where does that leave RSS readers? Alternatives already exists, such as Feedly or Newsblur. You can bet that there will be a race to fill the massive void left by Google Reader’s departure. Take for instance Digg, who announced yesterday that they were prioritizing plans to build their own reader that will serve as a replacement for Google’s – API and all.

So, a hundred thousand signatures in less-than 48 hours is a big deal. Hell, it’s a landslide of support for Google Reader. Unfortunately for the signers, Change.org is not the We The People site and Google isn’t the White House. 100,000 signatures does not force Google to respond. But I wouldn’t use that as a reason to stop spreading the word.

Stranger things have happened.

Many women dream of someday becoming a princess. While only a select few women will get to live out that fantasy in reality, many more will do just about anything to get close to that dream.

The New York Daily News this week reported that women in New York are now requesting that plastic surgeons change their nose to match the one seen on Kate Middleton‘s face. Evidently, some women have become obsessed by the Duchess of Cambridge’s schnoz.

A plastic surgeon in New York interviewed by the Daily News stated that he had already created 100 Kate Middleton noses for women. The women in the article referred to the duchess’ nose as “adorable,” “perky,” and “feminine.” One woman noted that she liked the way the bridge on Middleton’s nose “swoops” and how its tip “doesn’t fall when she smiles.”

This isn’t the first trend for rhinoplasty, and it won’t be the last. Before the duchess’ nose became popular patients were often requesting actress Jennifer Aniston’s. Before Aniston, Nicole Kidman’s thinly-sculpted nose was awkwardly placed upon the faces of many women, so perhaps Middleton’s normal-looking nose is a step in the right direction.

Last night’s Samsung Unpacked event unveiled the Galaxy S 4 and one accessory, the Game Pad, caught gamers’ interest. Looking very reminiscent of an Xbox 360 controller, the Game Pad can attach to the S 4 for better game play on the phone’s 5-inch 1080p HD display. What’s particularly interesting though is that it works with devices up to 6.3 inches. If you’ve been following news around the Galaxy Note III, you’ll remember that it’s rumored to have a 6.3 inch Full HD display. We’re still months away from hearing anything concrete about the Note III, but in the meantime, you can check out the video below of the Samsung Game Pad in action.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Source: Samsung

Come comment on this article: Samsung Game Pad Accessory Hints At 6.3″ Galaxy Note III