Damien Katz is the creator of CouchDB, a document-based database engine.  CouchDB is  something that really fascinates me, because it is designed to be distributed.
But what is more fascinating still is Damien’s story (30-min video).  He set out on his own, lived off of savings, and did something amazing.  I’m really glad it worked out [...]

Wolfram Alpha launched late Friday night.  What’s notable about WA is that it tries to actually answer your question, not simply find a page to answer it (so it’s an Answer Engine, as opposed to a Search Engine).  Looking at the High Scalability page, WA boasts over 10 trillion pieces of data and over 50,000 [...]