Facebook's latest engineering team hotspot: Boston

Summary: Reiterating the constant technical challenges in supporting a growing network of 1.19 billion users and counting, the new site lead declared Boston was "an easy choice."

Much like its international datacenter roadmap, Facebook is slowly but surely expanding its intellectual wealth and manpower on a geographic level.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based company is in the midst of opening another engineering office -- this time in Boston -- proving that Silicon Valley isn't the only hotspot for developers and engineers these days.

Ryan Mack, an infrastructure engineer who built much of the backend for Facebook's Timeline profile interface, will be the site lead in Massachusetts.

Reiterating the constant technical challenges in supporting a growing network of 1.19 billion users and counting, Mack explained in a blog post on Thursday morning that Boston was "an easy choice."

The tech community here is world-class, from the incredible academic institutions to the vibrant startup ecosystem to the bevy of global  companies who have teams here. We are thrilled to have found a new home here and hope we can help the community continue to thrive.

Our Boston team will start small, and will focus on challenging new infrastructure projects in areas like networking, storage, security, and language runtimes.

Boston marks Facebook's fifth satellite office dedicated to engineering. Additional locations include New York City, London, Seattle, and of course, Menlo Park. Facebook also had a temporary site set up in Vancouver earlier this year.

For any engineers in the area looking for a job, Facebook will soon have job listings posted.

Topics: Web development, Apps, IT Employment, Tech Industry, Social Enterprise

Rachel King is a staff writer for ZDNet based in San Francisco.

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Microsoft starts making its latest updated server wares generally available

Summary: Microsoft is rolling out the updated versions of Windows Server, System Center, Windows Intune and delivering complementary Windows Azure updates for the general public.

October 17 wasn't only the start of the general-availability rollout of Windows 8.1 and Visual Studio 2013. It also marked the beginning of the rollout of the latest updates to Microsoft's server wares.

Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials, System Center 2012 R2 and the updated Windows Intune (Wave E) all are generally available as of this week, too.

Microsoft is making free, 180-day trial versions of its latest server products available for download via its TechNet Evaluation Center. (The Windows Intune trial is free for 30 days.)

Microsoft also has made available a pre-built Windows Server 2012 R2 image in the Windows Azure Image gallery. The goal: To allow users to provision machines with the latest Windows Server release "in just minutes."

It also made Windows Azure Pack generally available. (It was in preview up until this week). Windows Azure Pack allows hosters and larger enterprise shops to run certain Windows Azure technologies in their own datacenters. The components in the Azure Pack include a management portal; service management programming interface; a Web sites service; a virtual machines service; and service bus support.

I've asked Microsoft when these updated server versions will be available in the Volume Licensing Center. No word back yet.

Update: Microsoft officials said the updated Windows Server and System Center versions are in the Volume Licensing Center as of October 17.

Microsoft released to manufacturing Windows Server 2012 R2 at the end of August 2013. The company allowed MSDN and TechNet subscribers to grab the RTM bits shortly after RTM (after user and developer outcry).

Here's more information on what's in the latest versions of Windows Server, Windows Intune (Wave E) and System Center:

Windows Server 2012 R2 and System Center 2012 R2: What's inside?

What's the latest on Windows Intune Wave E

Mary Jo has covered the tech industry for more than 25 years for a variety of publications and Web sites, and is a frequent guest on radio, TV and podcasts, speaking about all things Microsoft-related. She is the author of Microsoft 2.0: How Microsoft plans to stay relevant in the post-Gates era (John Wiley & Sons, 2008).

Strikes gold with latest iPhone color Apple, but joy is scarce

Summary: More people want to version the new Apple iPhone gold 5s expected by the company. It has already asked suppliers to increase production, according to a new report.

Photo courtesy Apple

The flagship Apple store on Manhattan's Fifth Avenue says a customer that I was expecting two weeks ago that cannot have an iPhone of 64 GB, golden color, you know that there is a problem.

The Cupertino company supply reports lacking its high-end iPhone 5s have sown the cycle of news in the last week, more or less. Now, a new report by Juro Osawa and Lorraine Luk of the Wall Street Journal indicates that Apple is already working to increase supply in response to stronger-than-anticipated demand.

"Apple Inc. has asked its suppliers to increase the production of the Golden iPhone 5 in a third additional after seeing strong demand, people familiar with the situation, said," writes the pair. "It is not clear if there are restrictions on supply of manufacture of the new iPhone".

It is precisely the narrative that plagues the company opening day of today, where several television reports have shown customers walking with empty hands after patiently waiting for the abnormal metal model. (In the Apple online store, shipping estimates range from 7 to 10 days for the silver and 21 to 28 days of gold).

It is an unusual outcome for the company, which in 2011 resisted offering an iPhone 4 white for sale after production problems derailed his ability to deliver the first day of availability. (It was on sale 10 months later.)

IPhone 5s, several reports suggested reduced the supply through the three colors (grey, silver, gold); why they decided to make it available in spite of this the company has with customers and analysts scratching your head this morning.?

No doubt it will soon discover what the true was hanging. We Meanwhile, we can only ask: will hold the emotion on the golden color, or simply it is preferred among enthusiastic early adopters? We are betting that "Grey space" wins in the long run.

Andrew Nusca is a contributor to CNET, ZDNet and SmartPlanet editor, ZDNet sister site on innovation. In 2013, its coverage will focus on business startups. It is based in New York.