Here are some the links I shared this week on twitter and facebook:

Cloud Computing

• Big news this week was of course the launch of Cluster GPU instances for Amazon EC2. There were blog posts by Jeff Barr The Cluster GPU Instance and James Hamilton HPC in the Cloud with GPGPUs, as well as my background posting: Expanding the Cloud - Adding the Incredible Power of the Amazon EC2 Cluster GPU Instances

• The Cluster Compute and the Cluster GPU Instances are now supported by Amazon Elastic Map Reduce.

• There was an excellent first benchmarking report of the Cluster GPU Instances by the folks at Cycle Computing - "A Couple More Nails in the Coffin of the Private Compute Cluster"

• The Top500 supercomputer list for November 2010 was released and an Amazon EC2 Cluster Compute Instance based cluster came in at #231

• The Amazon Web Services received ISO 27001 certification this week. As always more detail at http://aws.amazon.com/security

• In an in-depth article on Streaming Media Dan Rayburn analyzed the impact of Amazon Cloudfront move to GA: Amazon's CDN Gets More Competitive, Adds SLA, New Edge Locations, Lower Pricing

Science & Engineering

• Congrats to the Heroku team for officially serving 100,000 apps

• Understanding Throughput-Oriented Architectures - background article in CACM on massively parallel and throughput vs latency oriented architectures.

• Rails for Zombies - Learn Rails the Zombie Way - absolutely cool way to learn more Ruby on Rails.

• Found: first planet from another galaxy - 2300 light years from home - New Scientist

• From Airships to Waterslides - what is left of the dream that produced the world's largest free standing building - Smithsonian Air & Space

• The Bloundhound SSC project - an engineering adventure to break the 1,000 mph barrier in a car...

• The Big Idea: Biomimetic Architecture - The National Geographic came in the mail this week with a beautiful pull-out of Gaudí's Sagrada Família, the online version is only a summary.

• Physics and the limits of human perception - Why goalkeepers have trouble stopping long-range shots - Seed Magazine

My most interesting picture this week: A green, purple, yellow & orange Steinway

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Arts & Society

• A great podcast interview with Steve Levine on what defines Motown sound with many music samples

• The splintering of the fourth estate - Alan Rusbridger at the Guardian - It is seldom that online joyrnalists produce in-depth lonmg form pieces, this is one of them. (warning info snackers; this is long form)

• A Disappearing Number - part of the National Theatre Live fall series will be shown in Seattle on Monday 11/22

• The shortlisted artists for the Prix Pictet have been announced

Song of this week: Tom Waits' Invitation to the Blues