How The Internet Archive stores its data

March 26, 2009 @ 5:23 pm

internet-archive-story

Anybody who has used The Internet Archive knows that there’s a wealth of information and data stored there that is seemingly unfathomable to the average person. Essentially, it acts as a sort of Time Machine for the web allowing you to view just about any page on the internet beginning around 1996 until now. And even with a few pages missing here and there, the infrastructure needed to hold The Internet Archive together must be pretty impressive.

To show off their robust technologies, Sun Microsystems put together an interactive tour of how they manage to get The Internet Archive up and running smoothly and consistently. By using Sun’s server technology in their Modular Datacenters packed into shipping containers, The Internet Archive is able to continually udpate its database of the web while making sure the past is preserved without any failure or downtime.

A couple of interesting facts:

  • The Internet Archive grows at a rate of about 100TB every month.
  • The Internet Archive currently fits into one 20-foot shipping container, but additional containers can be added on the fly.
  • The Internet Archive database is currently about 3 petabytes in size.
  • The Internet Archive is one of the largest (if not the largest) digital archive in the world.

It’s a bunch of nerdy stuff I guess, but you have to admire how crazy and awesome these people must be to want to archive ALL digital data on the internet.

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Videos of the Hindenburg disaster

December 17, 2008 @ 2:12 am

hindenburg-fire

I know this is going to sound a bit ignorant, but I don’t really know much about the Hindenburg disaster beyond the fact that it was a big German blimp that ignited in the sky and soon thereafter crashed to the ground. I never knew that there was actual video footage shot from the scene of the crash despite having seen countless photographic versions of the same explosion in the sky.

And because I found this video reel so fascinating, I wanted to share it here in case any one (or more) of my readers are finding themselves in the same ignorant position that I am.

The first video below is a Universal Newsreel about the accident.

The second video (below) is the live radio broadcast recording of Herbert Morrison as he witnessed the horrific crash. The video is split in two parts; the first with his voice sounding very high due to inaccurate audio recording; and the second with his voice corrected to sound like he did in real life.

And the video directly below is another video, slightly different, with more close-up shots of the people running away from the wreckage on the ground.

The Internet Archive also has a very good quality video of the Hindenburg exploding along with shots of the aircraft flying over parts of New York City. I suggest you check it out there if you want to get the best footage of the scene (YouTube quality doesn’t quite cut it).

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