Apple’s (AAPL) plans to build a North Carolina data center will result in a massive facility that could signal its next big initiative, one data-center expert says.

The company announced the billion-dollar project in June, following state tax incentives aimed at it, but has said little about its goals since. On Wednesday, an Apple spokeswoman said, “We’re looking forward to beginning construction on our new data center in Maiden, N.C., in the coming weeks,” but declined further comment.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

Google’s (GOOG) Eric Schmidt “resigned” from Apple’s (AAPL) board because Chrome and Android were encroaching on Apple’s core business, or so Steve Jobs says. But what if the opposite were true? What if Apple is encroaching on Google’s core business? Later this month, Apple is expected to break ground on a massive new data center in Maiden, North Carolina.

Read the rest of this post on the original site

For years, Attorneys General Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut have been leading a coalition of 49 states that were pushing MySpace to add technology to verify the age of its members. The attorneys general argue that age verification will help keep younger children off the site and therefore prevent them from being contacted by sexual predators and other unsavory characters.

Tomorrow, however, leading researchers in online child safety are expected to submit a report to the attorneys general stating that age verification technology is flawed and will not protect children from online dangers.

Following are excerpts of separate interviews with Attorney Generals Roy Cooper of North Carolina and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut, who led the charge for social-networking safety standards.

Read the rest of this post

Is Google too white? No, we’re not talking about the white home page that’s so bright it motivates some people to change its appearance to save energy. We’re wondering if it is too white, as in Caucasian, because so many white people use Google that it returns results that alienate the rest of the population.

Johnny C. Taylor thinks so. In April he launched RushmoreDrive, a search engine that returns results more targeted at the black community (it’s named after the North Carolina street where its offices are).

Read the rest of this post