Ofertas de verano
by Noel Barrera on May.29, 2011, under Moda, Tecnología
Ofertas de verano online
Las ofertas que este verano puedes encontran son diversas y con variantes de precios increibles desde luego se debé considerar que las ofertas son ofertas de verano mujer y ofertas de verano hombre.
Ademas las ofertas que en internet encuentras son mejores de las que puedes econtrar en las tiendas fisicas esto ha logra que la competencia entre las tiendas online se han muy variadas, personalmente creo que lo que debemos valorar de una tienda online es la confianza y en JeansyMas.es – Seguridad en tu compra la he encontrado, ademas de que los productos son los que te ofrecen y no imitaciones.
Sobre este punto IMITACIONES encontraras MIL, así que debes tener cuidado con precio calidad, una prenda que en el mercado cuesta 100 € y en una tienda online te la ofrecen por 20€ no puede ser ORIGINAL, así que ACOMPRAR POR INTERNET.
Nueva tienda de ropa online JeansyMas.es
by Noel Barrera on Abr.30, 2011, under Del Corazón, Moda
Una tienda nueva innovadora con productos originales y de gran calidad como levis JeansyMas.es north face y otros muchos darán precios insuoerables a sus clientes.
Las prendas son originales y las últimas colecciones de las marcas que venden, comenta el encargo de marketing de la compañia.
Desde luego tendremos que comprobar esto adquiriendo algún productos nosotros hemos visto algunos interesantes además de tener ofertas por su apertura:
501® Original Jeans – Dark Stonewash
Hemos visto más modelos pero en especial estos me han gustado mucho aun así es mejor que ustedes los vean y valoren, ademas de tener un sitio en facebook JeansyMas | Facebook
Sin más visiten el sitio y valoren los vaqueros – jeans – chaquetas – camisas – vestidos que ofrecen.
MySQL Workbench Introducing Utilities
by Noel Barrera on Ene.11, 2011, under Tecnología
MySQL has the well earned reputation for ease-of-use and “15-minutes-to-success”, since we continually focus making the server easy to use. MySQL Workbench provides the visual tools for database design, development, and administration. However, many DBAs prefer using the command-line, and there are many tasks that require the creation scripts for doing the job.
To make it easier to work with the server, the latest release of the MySQL Workbench—version 5.2.31—contain a set of Python scripts intended to make the life easier for DBAs by providing easy-to-use utilities for common tasks, which were introduced in the blog MySQL Workbench: Utilities. The set currently consists of just a few utilities, but will expand over time.
The utilities available in the Workbench are:
mysqldbcopy
Copy databases between servers.
mysqldbexport
Export databases to a file in different formats, including: SQL, comma-separated files, and tab-separated files (and some more).
mysqldbimport
Import object definitions and/or data from a file—in different formats, similar to mysqldbexport—into a database.
mysqlindexcheck
Check for redundant or duplicate indexes on a list of tables or databases. It can also generate DROP statements to
remove redundant indexes.
mysqlmetagrep
Search MySQL servers for objects containing fields matching a pattern.
mysqlprocgrep
Search MySQL servers for processes matching a pattern and perform actions.
mysqlreplicate
Setup replication between two servers.
mysqlserverclone
Start a new instance of a server to experiment with. This is used to test the utilities, but can be used whenever you need to set up a scratch server to test something.
mysqluserclone
Copy a MySQL user to one or more new users on another server
Finding stuff on servers with ease
In order to search for various things on servers—for example, searching objects and processes—there are two commands that can be used: mysqlprocgrep and mysqlmetagrep. The name “grep” is borrowed from Unix where the grep(1) commands that can be used to search inside files, but in this case you can search among processes and inside metadata on a server.
Example: searching processes using mysqlprocgrep
With mysqlprocgrep you can find all processes that match certain conditions and either just print them out, or kill either the connection or the query. So, for instance, to see all connections that have been idle for more than 2 minutes, we can use:
$ mysqlprocgrep –server=root:password@localhost –match-command=sleep –age=+2m
+————————+—–+——-+————+——-+———-+——-+——–+——-+
| Connection | Id | User | Host | Db | Command | Time | State | Info |
+————————+—–+——-+————+——-+———-+——-+——–+——-+
| root:*@localhost:3306 | 39 | mats | localhost | None | Sleep | 248 | | None |
+————————+—–+——-+————+——-+———-+——-+——–+——-+
In the example above, I would especially like you to note how the server connection information is provided. To provide information on what server to connect to and how, we have introduced a new syntax to represent the connection information which we call a connection specification:
user:password@host:port:socket
In the connection specification, the password, port, and socket are optional and can be excluded, which will make the default being used instead.
This is used instead of having separate switches (for example, –host and –user) that the server client programs are using. In addition to being easier to write, it also means that it is possible to provide multiple servers to command (where it makes sense, of course). You might be interested in knowing that both mysqlprocgrep and mysqlmetagrep accepts multiple servers.
If you now want to kill these idle connections, you can just add the –kill-connection option to the command, and the connection of all matching processes will be killed.
$ mysqlprocgrep –server=root:password@localhost \
> –match-command=sleep –age=+2m
In a similar way, if you have a long-running update from a special user (say, www-data), you can kill all the queries in one shot using the command:
$ mysqlprocgrep –server=root:password@localhost \
> –match-user=www-data –match-command=query \
> –match-state=updating –age=+1m \
> –kill-query
Example: finding objects using mysqlmetagrep
At times, you also find some odd reference to a column or index, you’re not quite sure, or you want to find out what objects are using a column named ‘db’. In those cases, mysqlmetagrep comes in handy.
The utility is used to find all objects that contain a field that matches the provided pattern. The pattern can be given either as a SQL simple pattern as defined by the SQL standard (this is what you usually use with LIKE), or using POSIX regular expressions (which is what you usually use with REGEXP in SQL). The default is to use the SQL simple pattern. So, to search for any objects having a column ‘host’, we can
use the command:
$ mysqlmetagrep –server=root:password@localhost –pattern=host –search=column
+————————+————–+—————+———————+————-+———-+
| Connection | Object Type | Object Name | Database | Field Type | Matches |
+————————+————–+—————+———————+————-+———-+
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | PROCESSLIST | information_schema | COLUMN | HOST |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | columns_priv | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | db | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | host | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | host | mysql | TABLE | host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | procs_priv | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | servers | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | tables_priv | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | user | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
+————————+————–+—————+———————+————-+———-+
Since the SQL simple patterns are default, this require an exact match and you will only find objects with columns exactly named ‘host’. To find all column containing the word ‘host’, you have to add wildcards to the pattern:
$ mysqlmetagrep –server=root:password@localhost –pattern=%host% –search=column
+————————+————–+—————+———————+————-+————+
| Connection | Object Type | Object Name | Database | Field Type | Matches |
+————————+————–+—————+———————+————-+————+
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | PROCESSLIST | information_schema | COLUMN | HOST |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | columns_priv | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | db | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | general_log | mysql | COLUMN | user_host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | host | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | procs_priv | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | servers | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | slow_log | mysql | COLUMN | user_host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | tables_priv | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
| root:*@localhost:3306 | TABLE | user | mysql | COLUMN | Host |
+————————+————–+—————+———————+————-+————+
Creating and configuring servers with ease
There are three utilites that I will just mention briefly, because they are not very complicated to use: mysqlserverclone, mysqlreplicate, and mysqluserclone.
To create a scratch servers using mysqlserverclone for testing something, it is as easy as:
$ mysqlserverclone –server=root:password@localhost \
> –new-data=/tmp/data
# WARNING: Root password for new instance has not been set.
# Cloning the MySQL server running on localhost.
# Creating new data directory…
# Configuring new instance…
# Locating mysql tools…
# Setting up empty database and mysql tables…
# Starting new instance of the server…
# Testing connection to new instance…
# Success!
#…done.
It will create a new server from the original, copy the existing databases, and and start the server. You can supply a new port using the –new-port, but if you do not do that, it will pick the default port 3307.
If you want to set up replication quickly and easily, you can do that using mysqlreplicate:
$ mysqlreplicate –master=root:password@localhost \
> –slave=root@localhost:3307 –rpl-user=repl_user:xyzzy
# master on localhost: … connected.
# slave on localhost: … connected.
# Checking for binary logging on master…
# Setting up replication…
# …done.
When setting up replication, the mysqlreplicate does some basic checking to ensure that replication will work. It checks that there is a server ID assigned and also checks that binary logging is enabled. If something is not right, it will abort the setup and report error.
The last utility that is useful in setting servers up is mysqluserclone. The utility is used to create new users based on an existing one. So, to create a new user ‘chuck’ with password ‘xyzzy’ on localhost from an existing user ‘mats@localhost’,
you can use the command:
$ mysqluserclone –source=root:password@localhost \
> –destination=root:password@localhost \
> mats@localhost chuck:xyzzy@localhost
# Source on localhost: … connected.
# Destination on localhost: … connected.
# Cloning 1 users…
# Cloning mats@localhost to user chuck:xyzzy@localhost
# …done.
Moving stuff around with ease
There are three utilities that can be used to move data around: mysqldbcopy, mysqldbexport, and mysqldbimport.
With mysqldbcopy, you can copy a database from one server to another, or several databases from one server to another. When copying a database, it not only copies the table definitions, but all associated objects such as triggers, events, routines, and also database-level grants.
With mysqldbexport you can export one or more databases into various formats, including (but not limited to) pure SQL, comma- and tab-separated values, and also a nice human-readable table.
With mysqldbimport you can import data in files into a database. In contast to using LOAD DATA INFILE, this will generate the INSERT statements to inject the data into the server.
The road ahead
The current set of utilities are just a small start, and we expect more utilities to be added over time and also improve on the existing utilities, so if you want to help, you can do that by:
* Downloading and try the utilities at http://launchpad.net/mysql-utilities
* Filing Bug Reports and Feature Requests at http://bugs.mysql.com/
* Joining the discussion at http://forums.mysql.com/list.php?155
We are very interested in feedback of any form—bug reports, suggestions for new utilities, suggestions for improving the existing utilities—so if you are a MySQL Expert DBA:
* Let us know how to improve our utilities
* Send us suggestions or ideas for new utilities
* Write your own utilities
* Contribute patches and/or new utilities
and if you are a Python programmer and/or developer:
* Let us know how to be more Pythonic
* Suggest improvements of the code
* Build and/or contribute additional utilities on top of ones we provide
Apple No. 1 en Tecnología / Microsoft No. 2
by Noel Barrera on May.28, 2010, under Tecnología
SAN FRANCISCO — Wall Street has called the end of an era and the beginning of the next one: The most important technology product no longer sits on your desk but rather fits in your hand.
The moment came Wednesday when Apple, the maker of iPods, iPhones and iPads, shot past Microsoft, the computer software giant, to become the world’s most valuable technology company.
This changing of the guard caps one of the most stunning turnarounds in business history for Apple, which had been given up for dead only a decade earlier, and its co-founder and visionary chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. The rapidly rising value attached to Apple by investors also heralds an important cultural shift: Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping technology.
Microsoft, with its Windows and Office software franchises, has dominated the relationship most people had with their computers for almost two decades, and that was reflected in its stock market capitalization. But the click-clack of the keyboard has ceded ground to the swipe of a finger across a smartphone’s touch screen.
And Apple is in the right place at the right time. Although it still sells computers, twice as much revenue is coming from hand-held devices and music. Over all, the technology industry sold about 172 million smartphones last year, compared with 306 million PCs, but smartphone sales grew at a pace five times faster.
Microsoft depends more on maintaining the status quo, while Apple is in a constant battle to one-up itself and create something new, said Peter A. Thiel, the co-founder of PayPal and an early investor in Facebook. “Apple is a bet on technology,” he said. “And Apple beating Microsoft is a very significant thing.”
As of Wednesday, Wall Street valued Apple at $222.12 billion and Microsoft at $219.18 billion. The only American company valued higher is Exxon Mobil, with a market capitalization of $278.64 billion.
The companies have comparable revenue, with Microsoft at $58.4 billion and Apple at $42.9 billion. But in their most recent fiscal years, Apple had net income of $5.7 billion, while Microsoft earned $14.6 billion.
Microsoft has more cash and short-term investments, $39.7 billion, to Apple’s $23.1 billion, which makes the value assigned by the market to Apple, essentially a bet on its future prospects, all the more remarkable.
Microsoft’s chief executive, Steven A. Ballmer, shrugged off the shift Thursday morning. “No technology company on the planet is more profitable than we are,” he said in New Delhi, where he had come to tout Microsoft’s cloud computing plans.
“On any given day, the stock market is a voting machine,’’ he said, and only ‘‘in the long run is it a weighing machine.”
Apple declined to comment.
Apple’s climb to the top of the heap cements the reputation of Mr. Jobs, who once operated in the shadow of Microsoft’s co-founder, Bill Gates.
“It is the single most important turnaround that I have seen in Silicon Valley,” said Jim Breyer, a venture capitalist who has invested in some of the most successful technology companies.
While Apple is at the top of its game, it faces a new and powerful rival in Google, which is battling Apple in mobile devices with its Android operating system, and mobile advertising.
Google, with a market cap of $151.43 billion, also appeared to leap ahead of Apple in a new potentially important area, Internet-connected televisions. And Google is steering consumers toward yet a new model of computing in which Internet applications, rather than iPhone or desktop applications, rule.
“The battle has shifted from Microsoft against Apple to Apple against Google,” said Tim Bajarin, a technology analyst who has been following Apple since 1981. “Apple has a significant lead. But Google is going to be a powerful competitor.”
Apple and Microsoft initiated the personal computing revolution in the late 1970s, but Microsoft quickly outflanked Apple and grew to be one of the most profitable businesses ever created.
A little more than a decade ago, Apple, which had pushed out Mr. Jobs in 1985, was widely believed to be on the path to extinction.
Michael S. Dell, the founder and chief executive of Dell computer, went so far as to suggest that Apple should shut down and return any money to shareholders. (The computer maker is now worth about a tenth of Apple.) Around the same time, Microsoft’s chief technology officer called Apple “already dead.”
But with the return of Mr. Jobs to Apple in 1996 — and an investment by Microsoft of $150 million — the company began a slow path to recovery. Apple’s rebirth began in earnest with the introduction of the iPod music players, and Mr. Jobs began to gain a reputation for anticipating what consumers want. The company elbowed aside Sony and came to dominate the music distribution business with the iTunes online music store.
It later upstaged Nokia, the dominant brand in mobile phones, by introducing the iPhone in 2007. And this year, Mr. Jobs shook things up again, with the introduction of the iPad, a tablet computer that has the potential to create a new category of computers and once again reshape the way people interact with their devices.
Mr. Jobs helped create “the best desktop computer, the best portable music device, the best smartphone and also now the best tablet,” said Steve Perlman, a serial entrepreneur who was an executive at both Apple and Microsoft and is now the chief executive of OnLive, an online gaming company.
As Apple grew increasingly nimble and innovative, Microsoft has struggled to build desirable updates to its main products and to create large new businesses in areas like game consoles, music players, phones and Internet search. Microsoft, which is a component stock of the Dow Jones industrial average, has lost half its value since 2000.
Mr. Ballmer said Thursday that while Microsoft has “some very good competitors,” the company is a very good competitor itself. Yet Mr. Ballmer seemed to concede that Microsoft needs improvement in some areas.
“Windows phone – boom! We have to deliver devices with our partners this Christmas,” he said. Feedback so far has been good, he said, but the company still has “a lot of work to do.”
Still, Microsoft is a hugely powerful and profitable company in the tech world. Its Windows software runs 9 out of every 10 computers, while more than 500 million people use its Office software to perform their daily tasks, like writing letters or sending e-mail messages. These two franchises account for the bulk of Microsoft’s annual revenue.
But Apple has the momentum. “Steve saw way early on, and way before Microsoft, that hardware and software needed to be married into something that did not require effort from the user,” said Scott G. McNealy, the co-founder and longtime chief executive of Sun Microsystems.
“Apple’s products are shrink-wrapped and ready to go.”
Heather Timmons in New Delhi contributed reporting.
Donde Dios y el Diablo vivieron algún día.
by Noel Barrera on May.19, 2010, under Moda
IS nothing sacred? Once, this neo-Gothic landmark in Chelsea was the Church of the Holy Communion, with Gilded Age titans like Cornelius Vanderbilt among its high Episcopal parishioners.
In the 1970s, its congregation having long moved on to more verdant pastures, the church became a drug rehab center. A decade later, it was Limelight, the nightclub-slash-den of depravity, its strobes and multiple video screens casting an unholy glow on throngs of revelers writhing on the dance floor in a great communal rave.
Today that fabled nightclub is a mall.
The Limelight Marketplace flung open its winglike doors this month to receive the faithful: tourists in scuffed Nikes, teenage boys in hoodies and slouchy jeans, lithe shoppers in pricey tracksuits — all gathered to gape at the fusion of theme park and treat shop housed beneath its roof. Far above them, where scaffolding once climbed, bathed in an infernal light, the walls are tarted up with white lacquer. And Limelight’s former bat-cave interior, once reeking of damp flesh and mildew, has given way to a fragrant retail multiplex scented with lavender candles.
Entering by a side door, one young woman patently ignorant of the place’s tainted past, glanced around bewilderedly. “I thought that this was a house of God,” she murmured.
Well, no, child. But it is a cathedral of sorts, consecrated these days to untrammeled consumption.
Limelight’s soaring nave, lancet windows and whitewashed beams now form the pristine backdrop to a dizzying warren of sweet shops and perfumeries, T-shirt stands and novelty stalls offering winged heart pendants, floppy beach hats, pastel-tinted peignoir sets and tins of Russian caviar.
The mall was conceived to encourage loitering and, presumably, the savoring of a radically scaled-down Disney experience. And so you find yourself trudging obediently up the narrow stairs (there are no elevators) and past a stained-glass St. Cecilia to pick up a perfumed soap from Caswell-Massey; then wandering down again to the charcuterie to stock up on olive-and-almond jam; then up a flight to sample a vial of Nasomatto Hindu Grass at Avery Perfumes.
This renovation, dreamed up by the developer Jack Menashe, cost $15 million. The project was conceived in the spirit of the meandering, hugely popular Chelsea Market on the western rim of Manhattan. Its treehouse-like leased berths, some measuring no more than 100 square feet, are home to about 60 vendors, their presence lending the new market the sketchily improvised feel of a crafts fair.
Commanding prime real estate on the ground floor near the entrance is Olatz, an outpost of opulence, the diminutive sibling to Olatz Schnabel’s shop of the same name in the West Village. The shop offers coral-bordered bed linens, monogrammed hand towels, Lana Turner negligees and the designer’s signature striped cotton pajamas.
Their price? You had to ask. As with many of the wares at Limelight, it wasn’t marked. But a salesclerk offered brightly that the pajamas would set you back a stinging $750.
Just as strenuously chic is the Hunter Boots shop, the first in Manhattan, with its covetable wellies, rubber clogs and combat boots in caution yellow, silver and sky blue. Less stylishly compelling is Silly Souls at the rear of the arcade, stocked with baby bibs and snap suits emblazoned with slogans like “Rock Star.”
A lingering recession seems but a distant memory in this marketplace. Deep-pocketed families are welcome, not to say solicited. Even Laddie and Spunker can indulge, at Sophie & Teddy’s Doggie Delight, in a packet of Freshbreath treats.
If a common thread unites the myriad disparate elements gathered under Limelight’s eaves, you miss it. The place seems haphazardly vetted. “Curated”? Forget it.
“It’s like a boy band,” said one dazed visitor. “You know, the kind where a group of gangly teenagers who never met and have nothing in common are forced together by some overbearing producer hell-bent on inventing rock’s next big thing.”
Never mind. Limelight’s real draw is meant to be the space itself, which ought to feel expansive. It does not. No amount of fresh white paint can dispel the sensation of being trapped inside a chambered nautilus. Succumbing, apparently, to a fit of claustrophobia, a small boy clutched at his mother’s hand as she searched vainly for the exit. “This is depressing,” he muttered with a scowl.
STILL, Limelight offers its distractions, not least among them a makeshift mezzanine-level photo studio where one can document one’s 15 minutes “in the limelight,” as a hastily mounted placard announced.
Crazy reality-show-worthy attractions abound; the other day they included the spectacle of Amanda Lepore, encased in pink sequins, tramping up and down the stairs, a camera crew recording every flicker of her strangely immobilized expression.
The rationale behind such retail madness? Hard to say. “What is the point of it all?” a bag-laden shopper was heard to grouse as she staggered toward the main door. Long sigh. “I guess it’s just more shopping.”
Un Cencerro tararea, pero podría ayudar a la eficacia de Google
by Noel Barrera on May.19, 2010, under Tecnología
Hey diddle diddle. Guess what the cow has done this time?
America’s dairy farmers could soon find themselves in the computer business, with the manure from their cows possibly powering the vast data centers of companies like Google and Microsoft. While not immediately intuitive, the idea plays on two trends: the building of computing centers in more rural locales, and dairy farmers’ efforts to deal with cattle waste by turning it into fuel.
With the right skills, a dairy farmer could rent out land and power to technology companies and recoup an investment in the waste-to-fuel systems within two years, Hewlett-Packard engineers say in a research paper to be made public on Wednesday.
“Information technology and manure have a symbiotic relationship,” said Chandrakant D. Patel, the director of H.P.’s sustainable information technology laboratory, which wrote the report. “And having these data centers locally will give farmers a new opportunity.”
Companies have historically tended to build their large computing centers — often called server farms — in or near large cities and industries. As this practice has continued over the years, it has become difficult for companies building the largest data centers to find enough cheap electricity and real estate to meet their needs.
The rise of higher-speed data transfer networks, however, has given technology companies a chance to move farther from large populations and still be able to get information to them as quickly as they need it. So companies like Google, Yahoo, Amazon.com and Microsoft have been engaged in a mad dash to find spots in the United States that have plenty of electricity and land. As a result, more data centers have been built in states like Washington, Texas, Iowa and Oklahoma. If those locations are near dairy farms, so much the better.
Rather than being an alternative energy convenience, this approach could benefit companies operating in countries like China and India that need to find an economical way to power their computing centers.
Back on the farm, dairy producers have increasingly been looking to deal with their vast collections of smelly cow waste by turning it into something called biogas.
To make biogas, a farmer needs to buy specialized equipment that runs the manure through an anaerobic digestion process, which results in a large quantity of methane that can be used as a natural gas or diesel replacement.
“The average cow makes enough waste per day to power a 100-watt light bulb,” said Michael Kanellos, editor in chief at Greentech Media, a research and publishing firm.
According to H.P.’s calculations, 10,000 cows could fuel a one-megawatt data center, which would be the equivalent of a small computing center used by a bank. Mr. Kanellos has tracked both the data center and green technology industries and agreed that there was some convenient overlap. Computing equipment produces a lot of heat as a waste product, and the systems needed to create biogas require heat. So, there is a virtuous cycle of sorts possible.
“The cows will never replace the hydroelectric power used by a lot of these data centers,” Mr. Kanellos said. “But there is interest in biogas, and this presents another way to make manure pay.”
While many strapped farmers initially tried to create their own biogas plants, they have since found that it’s more economical to sell their manure to a shared biogas producer.
“It turned out that the small projects didn’t make sense,” said Rocky C. Costello, the president of R. C. Costello & Associates of Redondo Beach, Calif., which provides design services for people looking to create biogas plants.
California and Texas could benefit from the manure idea, Mr. Costello said, because they have large numbers of dairy cows, ties to the technology industry and centralized biogas centers. California, Wisconsin, New York, Idaho and Pennsylvania were the top dairy producers last year; according to the Agriculture Department.
Still, Mr. Costello cautioned that this form of alternative energy faced familiar practical challenges. “This just becomes less enticing as the price of natural gas gets lower,” Mr. Costello said. “Natural gas is so easy to get.”
H.P. has long experimented with different ways to operate data centers more efficiently, including having robots that travel around buildings keeping tabs on the temperatures of computers.
Mr. Patel said his grandfather in India burned cow manure for fuel in his village; the hope is that a more modern take on this practice could help support the build-out of India’s technology infrastructure.
It would cost a dairy farmer about $5 million to purchase the equipment needed for the biogas system and $30,000 to run it each year, Mr. Patel said.
H.P. has yet to construct its own manure-burning system, but may consider one for data centers in California or Texas, he said. “Stay tuned,” Mr. Patel said. “We are pushing ahead.”
Hotmail más Guapo
by Noel Barrera on May.18, 2010, under Tecnología
At this point, Microsoft must have developed its own seminar for employees called something like Apologizing With Optimism: How to Convince People to Give You Another Try.
It seems that one product after another — Windows 7, Windows Phone 7, Bing and now a revamped Hotmail, due this summer — arrive with Microsoft admitting it could have done more with previous versions of its software, while promising people that things really are better this time around — honest. In fact, things are so good with Microsoft’s latest X that you’ll be willing to dump your beloved Y.
According to Comscore and Microsoft’s estimates, Hotmail ranks as the number one Web e-mail service worldwide with more than 360 million people using it. Yahoo trails with just over 200 million people and Google follows with just under 200 million people.
Of course, Hotmail suffers in the United States from a bit of a “perception problem,” as Microsoft vice president Chris Jones put it. People perceive that Hotmail is plagued by spam, has underwhelming storage, is missing a lot of features and is basically yesteryear’s e-mail service.
“This is partially because Hotmail has been around for awhile,” Mr. Jones said, celebrating Hotmail as the first Web e-mail service to hit it really big. “Of late, Gmail has been first with a big inbox, the first with IMAP and because of those firsts, it has good buzz going with it.”
More to the point, Mr. Jones admitted that, “There were features people expected to have in e-mail that we haven’t had.”
That’s the humbling apology.
The promise of a greater future — one which will have us all siphoning e-mail out of AOL, Yahoo and Gmail accounts — revolves around Microsoft’s realization of “how different e-mail is these days,” Mr. Jones said.
Gone are those dark ages when you just swapped messages with co-workers and college chums. Everyone has e-mail and that means a flood of photos, documents, status updates, spam and shopping messages pouring into your personal inbox.
Rather sadly, Microsoft has discovered that about 20 percent of all e-mail messages today consist of status updates from social networking sites. And so, “My dog is a pumpkin — yes!” and “Andy has been elected mayor of Krispy Kreme and 24 Hour Fitness” is officially the new spam.
This summer, Microsoft will roll out a retooled Hotmail that filters messages into four buckets — mail from people you know, mail from social networks, personal business and spam. So, with a quick glance, you’ll be able to gauge which messages are most important to you — likely those from people you know — and act on them first. You can also click a button to hide unwanted stuff.
“No e-mail service has really treated the mail messages differently based on who sent them,” Mr. Jones said.
Microsoft will add some new tools for viewing bulkier content like photos and documents as well. For one, it will let you flip through e-mailed photos in a slideshow within Hotmail rather than forcing you to travel off to another Web site or choose whether to save or view photos.
In addition, you can have photos stored in your Windows Live account and then just send links of photos in e-mails. If your friends click on a thumbnail, the actual photo will download from your Live account. Microsoft hopes this method of delivery lets people avoid sending a ton of bulky photo files to their friends and running into e-mail size limits.
As expected, Microsoft has managed to copy its peers as well with things like conversation threads, unsubscribing to newsletters and SSL support. On the threading front, Microsoft claims an edge over the competition by offering choice.
“People either love it or hate it, so we let you turn it on and off,” Mr. Jones said.
A father of young children, Mr. Jones monitors school e-mail lists to try and get a sense of what services average folk use for their personal messages these days. This anecdotal research has him convinced that people have varied tastes in the services and that there’s plenty of room for Hotmail to grow, particularly if it can pluck people away from a vulnerable AOL or cable company accounts.
The rather clear overall message was that Microsoft is hip and with it when it comes to e-mail, not overrun by spam, and a provider of large inboxes and a place where social networks commingle with online document storage in some sort of blissfully productive and yet playful consumer/worker paradise.
Or something like that.
Tommy regresa más Cool
by Noel Barrera on May.18, 2010, under Moda
RESCUE TEAM Emanuel Chirico, left, Tommy Hilfiger and Fred Gehring.
Once a preppy kingpin and then a megabrand designer of urban streetwear, with over $1.9 billion in sales of baggy jeans and colorful logo jerseys in the United States at his peak, Mr. Hilfiger, in the 1990s, was very cool. But then, about 10 years ago, he just wasn’t. People became more interested in his divorce and his dating life and his daughter’s reality television show than his clothes, all of which looked increasingly like the result of a designer who was trying too hard.
The situation had become so bad for Mr. Hilfiger that just a few years ago the company seriously considered selling his clothes at Wal-Mart. Magazines had stopped paying much attention to him. As had his customers — sales in department stores had dropped by as much as 75 percent.
So the $3 billion sale of Tommy Hilfiger to the clothing conglomerate Phillips-Van Heusen that concluded May 6 was significant for any number of reasons, not the least of which is that it suggests that the fashion elite may have underestimated Mr. Hilfiger.
The price was nearly seven times what Phillips-Van Heusen paid for Calvin Klein in 2003 and nearly five times what LVMH paid for Donna Karan in 2001, which has to give some satisfaction to a designer whose clothes once prompted the fashion critic of this newspaper to declare, “You wanted to get the S.U.V. out and run them over a few times.”
How did Mr. Hilfiger and his partners turn this around so dramatically? Step one: Admit they had a problem in the first place.
“We were oversupplying the demand,” Mr. Hilfiger said during an interview in his double-height office on the western shores of Chelsea, the walls covered with portraits of musicians and pop stars and a framed pair of blue jeans that once belonged to Marilyn Monroe. (Her cowboy boots are there, too.)
“The large logos and the big red, white and blue theme became ubiquitous,” he said. “It got to the point where the urban kids didn’t want to wear it and the preppy kids didn’t want to wear it.”
Mr. Hilfiger was smiling in his signature style, entirely sincere if not a little overeager, as he said this — “that big toothy grin,” as Jim Moore, the creative director of GQ, describes it — almost as if he was performing an act of contrition.
“I think I was living in denial,” he said.
Since he started his business in 1985, when he was 34, with Mohan Murjani, the Indian textiles magnate behind Gloria Vanderbilt jeans, Mr. Hilfiger has had the good fortune to team up with financial partners who enabled him to create the kind of world where living in denial can be an asset.
Few other designers would have thought another preppy brand could compete in a market long ago cornered by Ralph Lauren, but Mr. Hilfiger’s idea of a youthful twist on American classics — brightly colored oxfords and buttonholes stitched in green — was an immediate success.
That was helped by an audacious marketing campaign, which included a billboard in Times Square announcing his arrival as the next great men’s designer alongside those recognizable by their initials: CK, RL and PE (for Calvin Klein, Mr. Lauren and Perry Ellis). “The fashion press went absolutely crazy,” Mr. Hilfiger said. “They did everything in their power to bury me.”
His company went public in 1992, just as the designer became one of the first to embrace the burgeoning streetwear market. In a strategy coordinated by Hilfiger’s former top executives, Lawrence Stroll and Silas Chou (now investors in Michael Kors), the company added accessories, fragrances, a home collection and jeans, as well as franchises in Europe and Asia.
With that growth came expectations from Wall Street that Mr. Hilfiger could keep expanding. But as Tommy Hilfiger became more widely available, the label became less desirable. By the end of the ’90s, the company’s stock price had plummeted to $7.50, half its original value. Fortune magazine summed up the problems succinctly: “Now trendier brands (think Fubu) dominate urban fashion, while Tommy’s clothes fill bargain bins at Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s.” Mr. Hilfiger said he found himself following the orders of department stores, making stretch cotton poplin dress shirts, for example, because that was what was selling from other designers.
“And they wanted it for $49,” he said. “I would never wear that.”
The strangest thing about Mr. Hilfiger’s trouble was that his business overseas was just heating up, and new sales in Europe were making up for the loss of business in the United States. But that would ultimately mean a second chance for the brand.
Again, it was one of Mr. Hilfiger’s business partners who had sensed an opportunity. After seeing the collection’s rise in the United States, Fred Gehring, a former executive for Ralph Lauren and Pepe Jeans, had started a new company in 1997 as the Hilfiger licensee for Europe.
The collection, sold in more than 4,000 small stores from Spain to Germany, grew to more than $1 billion at the same time sales in the United States were falling. Part of the reason, Mr. Gehring said, was that Tommy Hilfiger in Europe was positioned much as the label had originally been in America, with bright, preppy clothes and premium prices, but none of the hype. They were not actually being designed by Mr. Hilfiger, but by a team in Amsterdam.
“I don’t know if we are super cool or anything like that,” Mr. Gehring said. “But we are cool enough.”
Sarah Lerfel, an owner of the influential Paris boutique Colette, has sold Mr. Hilfiger’s collaborative designs with the soccer player Thierry Henry and the estate of Keith Haring. “He was already well known here, but to do a collaboration with Thierry Henry was a good way to come into the French market,” she said. “Everybody loves Thierry Henry.”
50 Años de Dr. Martens
by Noel Barrera on Abr.08, 2010, under Moda
By the time Britain’s skinheads completed their devolution from hard-edged dandies to racist hooligans, their cherished Dr. Martens boots had gone viral. Before long, the list of D.M. devotees would span the length of the screw-up spectrum: “Mods, glams, punks, ska, psycho-hillbillies, grebos, Goths, industrialists, nu-metal, hardcore, straight-edge, grunge, Britpop” and on and on, says Martin Roach, D.M.’s de facto historian. Now, Dr. Martens is marking its 50th anniversary. To celebrate, the company has commissioned covers of 10 “cult” songs from acts like the Human League, Buzzcocks, the Pogues and even the Cold War Kids. The songs and music videos drop on Thursday at drmartens.com. For an exclusive-to-T taste, watch profiles of three of the cutting-edge acts involved in the project.
Verse bien en tres pasos
by Noel Barrera on Abr.08, 2010, under Moda
Tom Ackerman for The New York Times
BACK in the day, there were many choice slurs to run a fellow down, but somehow nothing was more damningly dismissive than to sneer that he wore a cheap suit. Then, of course, there came a new generation for whom the very term “suit,” cheap or no, was an even worse insult: a middle-management man who couldn’t think outside the boxy garb of Big Business.
But in the last decade, the suit, courtesy of designers like Miuccia Prada, Tom Ford and Thom Browne, has been transformed into an outfit with serious counter-cultural cred. Now, with the economy listless, even the cheap suit is brushing off its unsuave guise. And in the hands of youthful designers like Billy Reid and Sam Shipley and Jeff Halmos of Shipley & Halmos, and stores like Uniqlo and Topman, the cheap suit has become a garment that is as unfussy as jeans or chinos yet still has your back in an interview, at dinner or on a date.
This change is being driven as much by the guys buying suits as by the guys making them: youthful, inexpensive suits are one of the strongest selling items on the sales floor right now. According to the NPD Group, which tracks retail sales, suit sales in 2009 were almost exactly even with those of 2008 (a drop of just 0.01 percent), while sales of sport coats and jackets slid more than 13 percent. (Remember, gentleman reader, flat is the new up.)
“Less expensive suits, primarily bought by younger consumers, are faring best,” said Marshal Cohen, NPD’s chief analyst. “Men’s suits are a classic example of how aspirational consumers who had reached beyond their means are now coming back to more affordable prices — still pricey but not as extreme as over $1,000. Suits over $1,000 are still not in recovery mode.”
This is certainly the case at Topman. “They’re selling very well, particularly in the New York store,” Gordon Richardson, the design director, said of Topman’s slim, smart (and thrifty) suits. “What is so attractive is that it’s not about the old power dressing. It’s about looking good, and looking cool in a suit.”
Moreover, stylish upgrades are giving the cheap — or shall we say cost-conscious? — suit new appeal. No longer is a suit always a safe, sober investment buy. There are suits in pastel cotton twill, in black sharkskin, and in synthetic blends so high-tech they can practically do your taxes. They can suggest men’s clubs (with a vest or a self-belt), country clubs (with a bright color or a jaunty plaid) or nightclubs (with satin shawl lapels or a single-button closure). All told, today’s suit manages to embody a polished yet casual approach to dressing that, some 40 years ago, the leisure suit reached for and missed — by a mile.
Some young designers have actually been caught off guard by the enthusiasm and demand for inexpensive suiting. Ten years ago, new brands made a version of blue jeans their signature piece — now that piece is the suit.
“Back when we were at Trovata, we never had a real suit,” said Mr. Shipley, who was a partner in Trovata before founding Shipley & Halmos with Mr. Halmos. “With this brand, we found ourselves gravitating towards suits, since there’s so much you can do with fabric and cut and detail, and then they started selling really well. Now we’ve got guys coming back every season for a new one. That’s how our business has grown.”
Cost was a key part of the formula. “We try to keep everything under $1,000,” he said. “We’d rather take a smaller margin and get guys into good-looking suits.”
No small part of the suit’s new appeal lies in how it has been re-engineered to be greater than the sum of its parts. When a suit was intended for business dress alone, the jacket and pants were designed to be paired only with each other. You could try to wear that pinstripe jacket with jeans, but it didn’t really go.
“I remember, growing up, you were told to never bust up a suit,” said Mr. Reid, the designer of the Billy Reid collection. “Those times have definitely changed.” Now he makes his jackets a couple of inches shorter, narrowing the shoulder and raising the armhole, and slims the pants — some of the improvements that help make the two pieces work with other garments.
Josh Levin, an urban-planning consultant who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, owns two of Mr. Reid’s suits. “The suit coat itself is really versatile,” Mr. Levin said. “I can wear it with any number of pants. And when I wear it as a suit, I don’t feel stiff.”
On the contrary, it gives him a certain cosmopolitan élan and the freedom that he likes. “I spent my grad school years in Portland, Ore., and Denver, where dressing up in a suit is not well accepted,” he said. “Here, I’m checking out what other men are wearing, what looks good on them and how they’re able to pull it off. I used to feel so constrained about how I could dress, but here I don’t feel that way.”
Others, like the musician Justin Townes Earle, who has bought suits at Uniqlo and Billy Reid, have a soft spot for the shot of formality a suit gives a man. “I always wear a suit when I perform,” Mr. Earle said. “I like how it respects tradition.”
Best of all, costly suited fellows can’t snub you for having thrifty threads. Just like the old suits, the old gibes no longer fit.
