The Cool and the unCool

I don't normally do a link roundup (that's what my del.icio.us feed is for), but there are a few links I've been storing up to discuss that deserve a few words.

The Cool

1. IBM z9 mid-size mainframe (links: IBM, El Reg)
   Some people are desperate for cost effective scaling + reliability, but getting all three of these with some (small a) applications is actually an incredibly difficult problem. Exhibit A is the brain power that it takes to make a serious search engine scale. The rule of thumb is that you can pick any two. If you're less cost sensitive than the average bear and you have very serious scale and reliability requirements then you could do much worse than look at mainframe hardware. Especially now that virtualised linux environments on mainframes are so de riguer. For people used to the constraints of Intel hardware, the difference is really outstanding - imagine being able to suffer a cpu failure then physically install a new one - all while your servers keep running. I wasn't aware that IBM offered a co-processing module targetted specifically at J2EE - that's pretty cool.
2. Reverse-capable C/C++ debugger for Linux (Links: Undo Software, LinuxPR)
   Speaks for itself. What's really great is that they chose to use gdb as the front end. Not only does that reduce the barrier to learning how to use it, all the traditional front ends will likely work with little change. Now on Intel, it should also take very little effort for Undo Software to make a MacOS X version that would work seamlessly with XCode (which uses gdb already)
3. Google Maps Geography Quiz
   Test your knowledge of the globe with this trés cool mashup
4. Tofu : Multi-column web browser for MacOS X
   Newspapers use multiple narrow columns for a reason. Now you can enjoy your electronic reading experience in the same form-factor with this free (alpha) viewer. I've tested it on PDF and html files, I assume it just subclasses an NS class of some sort.

And now for something completely different

From the recent exellent PCWorld article The 25 Worst Tech Products of All Time:

1. Microsoft Bob
   This links to a separate article about Bob including screenshots and discussion of the performance on modern hardware! I think Microsoft had stolen too much of the Sculley Kool Aid!!
2. Apple Bandai Pippin
   I saw a mad demo of some prototype set top box software from Apple which seemed like a good idea that went nowhere. The Pippin on the other hand - that never seemed like a good idea to me!