Jacobsen is one of the people in charge of handling all the Big Data collected by IceCube. In the video, shot this week at the O'Reilly OSCON 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon, John explains how they collect a terabyte of raw data per hour, then send everything to IceCube's remote research and backup facilities using a finicky satellite hook-up.

Antarctica is one of the least accomidating places on Earth to perform scientific research with computers. It's the driest place on the planet -- atmospheric humidity hovers around zero -- and bursts of static electricity can cause catastrophic harm to IceCube's data stores. The lack of humidity causes the server clusters' cooling systems to break down. And if something fails, a spare might take six months to arrive.]]>

John Jacobsen works for the IceCube telescope project, the world’s largest neutrino detector, located at the South Pole. The project’s mission is to search for the radioactive sub-atomic particles that have been generated by violent astrophysical events: “exploding stars, gamma ray bursts, and cataclysmic phenomena involving black holes and neutron stars,” according to the project website.

Jacobsen is one of the people in charge of handling the massive amounts of data collected by IceCube. In the video, shot this week at the O’Reilly OSCON 2010 conference in Portland, Oregon, John explains how they collect a terabyte of raw data per hour, then send everything to IceCube’s remote research and backup facilities using a finicky satellite hook-up.

Antarctica is one of the least accommodating places on Earth to perform scientific research with computers. It’s the driest spot on the planet — atmospheric humidity hovers around zero — and bursts of static electricity threaten the integrity of IceCube’s data stores. The lack of humidity causes the server clusters’ cooling systems to break down. And if something fails, a spare might take six months to arrive.

The interviewees are Mike Hostelter and Jonathan Stark, co-founders of appendTo, a consulting company that trains and supports jQuery programmers. The video was shot this week at O'Reilly OSCON 2010, taking place in Portland, Oregon through Friday.]]>

Here’s a short video about the future of jQuery, our favorite JavaScript library for creating rich, animated site interactions.

The interviewees are Mike Hostelter and Jonathan Stark, co-founders of appendTo, a consulting company that trains and supports jQuery programmers. The video was shot this week at O’Reilly OSCON 2010, taking place in Portland, Oregon through Friday.

In the interview, they talk a little bit about what’s next for the jQuery Core group — currently, jQuery creator John Resig is auditing mobile browsers to build more mobile features into jQuery, making it easier for JavaScript developers to make HTML5 iPad and smartphone web apps that are more “appy.” Also, there ultimately won’t be a separate pack for mobiles and desktops — the future of jQuery is one code library that works on all browsers and all devices.

See other OSCON 2010 videos on O’Reilly’s YouTube channel.

See Also:

• New Frameworks Give Mobile-Web Apps a Boost
• More Cool HTML5/JavaScript Video Players
• Get Started With JQuery