Lately Twitter has been cleaning house, raising money, doing interviews and actually talking to users. In a blog post last week they did a Q&A session, directly answering questions about Twitter’s architecture.

So I have a couple of questions, too, based on a couple of discussions I’ve had with people who say they’ve seen Twitter’s architecture.

• Is it true that you only have a single master MySQL server running replication to two slaves, and the architecture doesn’t auto-switch to a hot backup when the master goes down?
• Do you really have a grand total of three physical database machines that are POWERING ALL OF TWITTER?
• Is it true that the only way you can keep Twitter alive is to have somebody sit there and watch it constantly, and then manually switch databases over and re-build when one of the slaves fail?
• Is that why most of your major outages can be traced to periods of time when former Chief Architect/server watcher Blaine Cook was there to sit and monitor the system?
• Given the record-beating outages Twitter saw in May after Cook was dismissed, is anyone there capable of keeping Twitter live?
• How long will it be until you are able to undo the damage Cook has caused to Twitter and the community?

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Our sister publication Techcrunch UK noticed that a Location services API had been added to Google Gears. The developers behind Gears have been plotting out future API additions for a while, and those plans have included having Geo-data available to mobile app developers (see the spec here). We found out today that Google is backing up their Location API with a large effort to map out cell-phone towers and wifi hotspots, so that a users location can be pin-pointed more precisely.

While some cell-phones have an internal GPS, the data is inaccurate indoors and not available on all devices. The other non-GPS method for accurate location data is to use the location of cell towers. Google can store the lat and long of a particular cell tower in their database, and when their software in the future sees that cell tower on a phone, they know exactly where the phone is. To boot-strap the database, both Google and Apple have been using a company called Skyhook, who drive around pin-pointing the location of cell towers. By using this method Google bypasses the need to have deals in place with network providers for positioning data. In addition to cell-phone towers, Google is also mapping out Wifi locations to form a large rogue base station almanac, which is used for both additional accuracy in location calculations, and also to point users to the nearest available access point.

Once the database has been boot-strapped with initial data and launched to developers via an API, users of the service will further refine and improve the service by having devices submit information on towers and signal strength (along with location) back to Google. This means that over time, the service improves itself and will be able to work almost anywhere in the world, regardless of local regulations, network providers or restrictions.

It is expected that the service and associated data will be made available for free to developers using Google Gears (specifically the new Windows Mobile version). For developers of mobile applications, it means that they now have a very accurate way of not only calculating a users position, but also an easy way to pinpoint other locations as a basis for a location-based service. There is also an effort to develop and define a standard API for accessing Location data and services in the browser. As with local browser storage, Google is leading the way here by implementing first and then working with other browser developers on a standard.

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The Google Checkout/Ebay Paypal wars continue.

Ebay Australia currently allows merchants to accept credit cards, direct debit, money orders and checks for purchases, but from June 17 they want to allow only PayPal or cash on delivery. When the Australian Competition & Consumer Commission (ACCC) asked for public comments on the proposal a lot of of people responded. But an anonymous 38 page document that is highly critical of Ebay’s move was submitted on May 26, leading to speculation on who the author might be.

It turns out, the title of the document, hidden in the PDF metadata, gave a very good clue “Microsoft Word - 204481916_1_ACCC Submission by Google re eBay Public _2_.DOC.” An Australian named David Bromage first discovered it.

The document is still available on the ACCC’s website (and is embedded below), with the title stripped out. But the Australian newspapers are all over this now.

Google’s competing product to eBay, Google Checkout, is only available to merchants in the US and UK, so they don’t directly compete yet with PayPal in the Australian market. Apparently, that hasn’t stopped them from trying to keep their options there open.

In the document, Google says Ebay’s actions are anti-competitive, that the public benefits claimed by Ebay are “illusory” and that the proposal will result in significant public detriment. They also request that the ACCC ban Ebay from the action under the Australian Trade Practices Act.

Will eBay retaliate? Last year they temporarily pulled all Ebay advertising on Google after they announced a Google Checkout party at an Ebay event. If they get that mad over a party, I can’t imagine how they’ll respond to this 38 page treatise on the evils of PayPal.

The full document is below. And in other news, PayPal was finally able to fix that drop down menu bug that plagued users for over ten days and was ignored until the press and blogs started to pay attention.

Google Objection To Ebay AustraliaPayPal Proposal - Find Documents

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Meet LaterLoop, a new bookmarking tool that was recently featured at Google’s I/O conference.

LaterLoop’s core functionality is very similar to Instapaper, which we reviewed last January. After adding either a Firefox extension or a Bookmarket to their browser, users can click “Save For Later” whenever they come across an interesting site that they don’t have time to read. These pages are saved in a list of temporary bookmarks on LaterLoop’s site, which can be accessed at a later date from a normal browser or from a mobile device (the site currently supports Blackberries, Nokia smartphones, and iPhones).

The site has also just implemented a download function that allows users to save all of their bookmarked sites into a .zip file. This will be handy for people on the go looking to catch up on their reading during a flight. Unfortunately this doesn’t work on the iPhone yet, though we can probably expect to see something once Apple’s official application store launches.

LaterLoop isn’t exactly a novel application - similar functionality can be found from toread, Firefox’s Read it Later extension, PhoneFavs, and a number of others. But it has very intuitive interface, and Google’s endorsement of the app at their I/O conference speaks volumes.

LaterLoop is the latest offering from developer Gregor Hochmuth, whose other ventures include FlickrStorm and Mento.

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An influential coalition of Fortune 500 companies and environmental groups that was formed to support climate-change legislation has splintered over the Lieberman-Warner bill that is headed next week to the Senate floor.

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Katalyst Films founders Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg were in Silicon Valley today. They stopped by TechCrunch HQ (aka my house) before heading off to more important meetings with Dan Rosensweig at Quadrangle Group (and the former COO of Yahoo) and YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley.

The reason for the visit? They are preparing to launch new interactive web content (with an emphasis on the interactive part) and are doing a bit of a road show to see what Silicon Valley thinks of their ideas. I had a chance to see some of the content and hear their monetization strategy. And while I can’t say much yet, this is clearly going to be really entertaining stuff. Advertisers in particular are likely to flock to the platform.

The two decided to focus on the web after a trial run with AOL that began in 2006. That partnership eventually fizzled - rumor is the content was a little too racy for AOL’s taste.

The new content isn’t just entertaining, it’s highly engaging with users and they definitely have a monetization strategy that goes beyond display and pre/post roll ads.

And Kutcher won’t be trying to lock people into interacting with content under their rules. “If people steal our stuff, it’s fantastic” he said.

Suddenly Katalyst Films is doing more than producing video, they’re now building software. That means they need to hire more developers. Their most important hire is a new CTO, Kutcher said. Prepare your resumes.

Sorry for the teaser on this. More to come.

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Katalyst Media founders Ashton Kutcher and Jason Goldberg were in Silicon Valley today. They stopped by TechCrunch HQ (aka my house) before heading off to more important meetings with Dan Rosensweig at Quadrangle Group (and the former COO of Yahoo) and YouTube cofounder Chad Hurley.

The reason for the visit? They are preparing to launch new interactive web content (with an emphasis on the interactive part) and are doing a bit of a road show to see what Silicon Valley thinks of their ideas. I had a chance to see some of the content and hear their monetization strategy. And while I can’t say much yet, this is clearly going to be really entertaining stuff. Advertisers in particular are likely to flock to the platform.

The two decided to focus on the web after a trial run with AOL that began in 2006. That partnership eventually fizzled - rumor is the content was a little too racy for AOL’s taste.

The new content isn’t just entertaining, it’s highly engaging with users and they definitely have a monetization strategy that goes beyond display and pre/post roll ads.

And Kutcher won’t be trying to lock people into interacting with content under their rules. “If people steal our stuff, it’s fantastic” he said.

Suddenly Katalyst Media is doing more than producing video, they’re now building software. That means they need to hire more developers. Their most important hire is a new CTO, Kutcher said. Prepare your resumes.

Sorry for the teaser on this. More to come.

Crunch Network: CrunchGear drool over the sexiest new gadgets and hardware.

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