NASA is developing a new integrated Cloud Computing environment they call NEBULA at NASA Ames Research Center. NEBULA is an open-source project, built from the ground up with common tools: Eucalyptus, JAVA, LDAP, Lustre, MySQL, Python, SAML, Subversion, and TRAC. It will provide high-capacity computing, storage and network connectivity, and use a ‘virtualized, scalable approach to achieve cost and energy efficiencies’.

According to the NEBULA website:

The fully-integrated nature of the NEBULA components provides for extremely rapid development of policy-compliant and secure web applications, fosters and encourages code reuse, and improves the coherence and cohesiveness of NASA’s collaborative web applications. It is used for Education and Public Outreach, for collaboration and public input, and also for mission support.

NEBULA extends the Software-as-a-Service to the realm of Platform-as-a-Service and Infrastructure-as-a-Service. In the process, slaying several classic conundrums of computational collaboration.

I wish them the best of luck.

(See also: NEBULA site)
(See also: InformationWeek: NASA Launches Nebula Compute Cloud)
(See also: Open Eucalyptus project)
(See also: Eucalyptus Cloud Computing presentation)

It’s been an interesting evening while Stephen Wolfram launches his new computational knowledge engine ‘WolframAlpha‘. There were some fits and starts, but I have been able to ask it some interesting questions.

The approach reminds me of Thinking Machines Wide Area Information Server (WAIS) and Gopher from the late 1980’s. I know that Stephen Wolfram worked at Thinking Machines and I don’t know if he was involved with the WAIS project, but it certainly was a fundamental influence on WolframAlpha. WAIS was ultimately sold to AOL in 1995, just as the World Wide Web was forming.

WolframAlpha is easily stumped. But then you ask it a question that fans out into an amazing array of results from wide and varied data sources. TEDChris has side by side comparison of seven queries given to WolframAlpha and Google. A helpful illustration of the differences between the two philosophies. When the answer isn’t a precise number, WolframAlpha will try to reduce the question to something it can answer precisely. If the answer is a precise or computed number WolframAlpha can produce an elegant and concise response, though much of the supporting data appears to be older sources than those revealed in similar Google searches. While powerful in certain domains (such as math, chemistry, census data), the result is a service that may produce what you need or nothing useful at all. Here are some funny queries of interest:

There is a certain level of hubris in the idea all knowledge can be contained, maintained, and computed centrally. WolframAlpha is a ‘come to the mountain’ experience. In contrast, Google’s shotgun response relies on the distributed nature of the internet, counting and weighing the edges between ideas, often responding with a myriad of links relying on the user to be the final filter.

Both systems have a place in my toolbox.

(See also: WolframAlpha: query interface)
(See also: Introducing WolframAlpha)
(See also: WAIS: Wide Area Information Server)
(See also: TEDChris: WolframAlpha vs Google)
(See also: TechCrunch: Putting Wolfram Alpha To The Test: Not Super-Impressed)

My daughter and I saw one of these vehicles at a neighborhood park. Not quite a car, a bit more than a golfcart, the Zenn is striking in its diminutive dimensions next to a standard American SUV. Personally, I don’t know how Canadians live with a car like this in a place even more severe than Minnesota. Equipped with a motorized rag-top and paper-thin doors it makes you wonder how you could survive a Canadian Winter, much less a collision.

According to the company website the vehicle is not for highway use. Apparently it meets or exceeds FMVSS500 standards set by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration for low speed vehicles. These are vehicles traveling at slower speeds on roadways limited to 35 miles per hour or lower. The same rules apply to mopeds.

It is interesting to note that while a variation of this car is sold in Europe with a diesel engine, vehicles of this type do not undergo collision testing or rating in the United States. There is barely enough metal to stop an errant bicycle, let alone SUV bumpers that are as high as the base of the passenger window.

We have a family of five and would need three of these just to get to church. Fully loaded, for small values of loaded, these vehicles run in the low $20k range. While I’m pleased to see electric options appearing the safety concerns with this offering outweigh potential savings.

At 22-26 MPG and gas at $2.25, I’ll keep my Volvo wagon a bit longer.

(See also: ZennCars of Canada)