Twice a year, the world’s top 500 supercomputers are announced. The most recent winner is the Jaguar which pretty much wiped the floor with the competition, managing a performance benchmark 69% above the IBM Roadrunner which came in second.

Let’s take a closer look at the Jaguar, the fastest supercomputer in the world today.

Quick data about the Jaguar

• Performance: 1.759 petaflops (theoretical maximum: 2.33 petaflops)
• Processors: 37,376 six-core AMD Opteron 2.6 GHz
• Processor cores: 224,256
• Total RAM: 300 terabyte
• Total disc space: 10 petabyte
• System type: Cray XT5
• Operating system: Cray custom version of SUSE Linux

One petaflops is the equivalent of one thousand trillion operations per second, which means the Jaguar is capable of a theoretical maximum performance of 2,330,000,000,000,000 operations per second.

The computing power of the Jaguar is used by scientists to run simulations of climate changes and effects, supernovas, and a number of other compute-intensive applications.

The Jaguar Cray XT5 setup takes up 4,400 square feet (409 square meters), which is larger than an NBA basketball court.

Courtesy of: Pingdom

Google Wave is “a personal communication and collaboration tool” announced by Google at the Google I/O conference on May 27, 2009. It is a web-based service, computing platform, and communications protocol designed to merge e-mail, instant messaging, wikis, and social networking. It has a strong collaborative and real-time focus supported by extensions that can provide, for example, spelling/grammar checking, automated translation among 40 languages, and numerous other extensions.

Do you really understand CSS Sprite? The name might be a little misleading, because sprites aren’t little images like you might be picturing, a sprite is actually one big image. Have you ever seen the CSS technique where the “on” and “off” states of a button are contained within the same image and are activated by shifting the background-position?

Think of CSS Sprites as an extension of that technique. The difference is that instead of just two or three images being combined into one, you can combine an unlimited number of images into one. The origin of the term “sprites” comes from old school computer graphics and the video game industry. The idea was that the computer could fetch a graphic into memory, and then only display parts of that image at a time, which was faster than having to continually fetch new images. The sprite was the big combined graphic. CSS Sprites is pretty much the exact same theory: get the image once, shift it around and only display parts of it, saves the overhead of having to fetch multiple images

CSS Sprite Generator

1. CSS Sprites Generator v.0.0.2-alfa

This tool allows you to upload multiple files and generate a sprite out of them. It also gives you the CSS code (the background-position value) for each image in the sprite.

2. CSS-Sprit.es

3. Data URI Sprites

DURIS (Data URI [CSS] Sprites) is a new method to manage website’s background images. It’s aimed to replace classical CSS Sprites.

4. Spritr

This simple tool lets you upload multiple images and generates CSS code for the sprite.

5. Sprite Creator 1.0

This tool allows you to upload an image and create the CSS code for selected areas of the sprite.

6. CSS Sprite Generator

A Drupal module for building CSS sprites.

7. Projekt Fondue CSS Sprite Generator

This generator lets you ignore duplicate images, resize source images, define horizontal and vertical offset, define background and transparency color, assign CSS class prefixes and various other things. It also supports many languages. The source code is available for downloading and is covered by a BSD license. Want to run a local copy? Well, you can do that, too.

8. SmartSprites

A Java-based desktop application that parses special directives that you can insert into your original CSS to mark individual images to be turned into sprites. It then builds sprite images from the collected images and automatically inserts the required CSS properties into your style sheet, so that the sprites are used instead of the individual images.

CSS Sprites Tutorials

1. David Walsh Blog

2. e-House Studio: CSS Sprite Navigation Tutorial

3. Web Site Tips: CSS Sprites Tips

4. Peachpit: What are CSS Sprites

5. WebSite Optimization: CSS Sprites

6. A List Apart: CSS Sprites

7. Tutorial9: Building Faster Websites with CSS Sprites

8. Net Tuts: Video Tutorial on Exactly How to Use CSS Sprites

9. Victoria Web School: Video css-sprites-tutorial

10. Webolia: The Mystery Of CSS Sprites: Techniques, Tools And Tutorials

11. Kick Developer: CSS Sprite Tutorial

12. Blogging CSS: CSS Menus With Images – CSS Sprites

13. Line25: How to Create a CSS Menu Using Image Sprites

14. Coding Apple’s Navigation Bar Using CSS Sprites

15. Video How to Use CSS Sprites

I’ve tested many different ways and weblog clients to create blog posts more effectively, but know I seem to find the best way and I wanted to share it with You. Maybe technique will seem very simple to experienced bloggers, but at least for me it was something I wasn’t aware at start and found out just by testing.

At first I would suggest to use any desktop editing program, because coding article by hand in my opinion takes too much effort, which is not worth it really. I have been using Windows Live Writer for some time, where I like to get automatic SpellCheker, but now I am sticking to another free weblog client BlogDesk. In my opinion these are the best choices if You’re using Windows ( I don’t know how about Mac).

At first I also enjoyed that images are dynamically uploaded to server, while I didn’t reach some problems:

1. While images are uploading on server dynamically, it takes a lot of CPU and memory and if You’re getting some errors, like images accidentally change address (happened to me twice, though I don’t know real reason, but I got my lesson), You may also get server overload.

2. I am using WordPress, I don’t know what difference may it cause, but when uploading images, Blogdesk and also Windows Live Writer are creating unnecessary images, cropped in different sizes, even if I am using only original size.

So these were my problems. I am using a lot of images in my list articles, so it was pretty important. So I found solution, which maybe will be useful for You too. I am writing all of my articles on BlogDesk, also I add images to get better overview how everything will look like. When I am done, I go to source/code view ( View–>Source on Blogdesk), then select all code and copy it. Ctrl+a, ctrl+c. Yes, yes, I want to use Find and Replace feature. It’s built in on Notepad and several other text editors, but notepad owns every Windows user. I paste all code on Notepad and leave it there for now. I think for MAC users it should be similarly, You just need that built-in replace feature.

All pictures are kept in one folder at first, I always create new folder for each article and build little backup files for emergencies. So now open Your FTP client, go to place where You want to upload Your images, better create new folder for each article and do Your thing. If You are using WordPress, I would suggest to use path –> public_html(Your domain address)/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/Your-article-title-folder/.. and drop images here. It’s handy to separate Your files smart, so You can later easily manage them.

Ok, now let’s return to source code and use handy find/replace feature (I used my site and image path I had).

Idea is to find default image path and replace it with Your online version, so You upload only images You need and manually so Your server don’t get too busy too.

Make sure also Your cursor is active at the start of the post, so You don’t miss any image.

Just copy/paste Your current path and replace it with Your online version and hit “Replace all” button – easy and safe.

Now just paste whole code in new post HTML view and publish article, it’s simple as that.

One more suggestion. I know there are no easy way to convert simple text to headings in weblog clients. At least I have huge list articles and if I use headings, it is a lot more friendlier for SEO than just simple text in bold.

I just put all text I want to convert to headings in <strong></strong> tags, simply and then use the same find/replace feature.

First time I replace <strong> to <h2> for example, second time I replace </strong> with </h2>

I am really hoping this helped, though I am not too good giving tips than creating just list articles Let me know if this helped for You and if You have some questions please ask. Also if You know some more advanced way how to do this job, feel free to share.

Possibly this fall’s most hotly anticipated new cell phone, the DROID from Motorola lives up to the hype.

It has amazing sound, HD quality video playback and a 5 MP camera with built-in flash that takes great pics even in low level lighting, essentially doing away with the need to carry around multiple devices. But it’s the operating system that really makes this phone stand out. The Droid phone is so named because it is the first to utilize Google’s Android 2.0 system, which offers buyers a step up from the previous version of Google’s technology used in devices like the T-mobile Touch phones and the Samsung Galaxy.

So, is it an iPhone killer as the ads so cleverly claim?  Although the advertisements may be a little heavy handed—”Everything idon’t Droid does”—the phone really does stand toe-to-toe with the iPhone in a lot of ways. But more importantly for this loyal Verizon customer, it offers basically everything an iPhone does without having to switch to a slower, spottier service provider (I’m looking at you AT&T.) It doesn’t matter much if you have a phone with all the bells and whistles if you can’t get reception to make a phone call!

The thing I have fallen in love with is all of the amazing apps you can download to the Droid. Since it operates on a Google system, everything is open source and there are new applications being created on a daily basis. This phone can do everything from tell you how many calories you are consuming to help you find your way home with it’s Google Maps based GPS capabilities, and all simultaneously—which even the iPhone can’t do!

The only down side I can see to the Droid is it’s size. Weighing in a 6 oz. and almost a half-inch thick, there’s no way you’re slipping this phone into your back pocket. But considering all the real estate it will save in your purse (say adios to your lap top, digital camera and voice recorder) I think it’s more than worth it!

The Motorola Android phone is available for $299, plus a $100 refund,