An interesting story in the New York Times today about how Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are all building giant data centers in Washington state to take advantage of cheap power, and to a lesser degree, proximity to customers:

Even before the Oregon center comes online, Google has lashed together a global network of computers — known in the industry as the Googleplex — that is a singular achievement. "Google has constructed the biggest computer in the world, and it's a hidden asset," said Danny Hillis, a supercomputing pioneer and a founder of Applied Minds, a technology consulting firm, referring to the Googleplex.

The design and even the nature of the Google center in this industrial and agricultural outpost 80 miles east of Portland has been a closely guarded corporate secret. "Companies are historically sensitive about where their operational infrastructure is," acknowledged Urs Holzle, Google's senior vice president for operations.

Behind the curtain of secrecy, the two buildings here — and a third that Google has a permit to build — will probably house tens of thousands of inexpensive processors and disks, held together with Velcro tape in a Google practice that makes for easy swapping of components. The cooling plants are essential because of the searing heat produced by so much computing power.

The complex will tap into the region's large surplus of fiber optic networking, a legacy of the dot-com boom.

If it's cheap power you're looking for, I have just the place for you -- Labrador. Consider the benefits:

• the Lower Churchill Falls project (yet to be built) is expected to generate 4,000 MV
• Churchill Falls is cool to cold, reaching an average daily maximum of 18 degrees in July and in fact, for much of the year, the daily average temperature is below 0
• It's less than 1500 km to NYC, the New England States and central Canada
• labour is available
• the government would be willing to make consessions

Issues uncovered while making this post:

• it would be nice to be able to dynamically update your Google Key OR at least post a message but not display it.
  
• the map extension is flaking out in "show" if there is no key
• it would be nice to be able to place multiple markers on the map AND to reference those markers from within the message body
• we need a cool way to add a degrees symbol (and other special characters)