While we haven't seen Microsoft's newest data center, we hear that it has 700,000 square feet of space, really, really high ceilings, and 40-foot stacks of server-filled containers. Thinking about the stacks may leave me with vertigo, but thinking about the ingenuity of the design leaves me impressed: Microsoft has built something which'll "deliver huge benefits in cost, energy efficiency and environmental sustainability."

All those containers are plug-and-play in a way, complete with corresponding bays, and can be set up by "as few as four employees" in hours. Yes, they've designed it so that moving 60 ton stacks of servers requires only four people. If that's not incredible then let's consider that the place has a huge focus on being energy efficient: Despite the facility having a 30-megawatt power capacity, steps have been taken to make it as economical and sustainable as possible:

[T]he Chicago site employs water-side economization [which takes] advantage of cool outside air to reduce the data center's reliance upon power-hungry chillers to produce chilled water. Air economizers introduce fresh air into the data center, while water-side economizers use cooling towers to remove waste heat.

Basically Microsoft is cutting down energy waste, saving on labor, and being all-around economical. While the modular, server-in-a-box approach might not get the stamp of revolutionary, the way Microsoft is approaching it is something worth paying attention to because it might just be what'll help "meet the demand for cloud computing at scale." [Data Center Knowledge]

Here you can see the network operation centers of Reliance Communications in India, Conexim in Australia, Lucent's Network Reliability Center in Aurora, Colorado, and Akamai's NOC in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

AT&T's center uses 141 giant wallboards to show the status of:

• 83,000 miles of fiber routes
• 538,000 miles of "backbone" fiber
• 47,000 cell sites serving 236 million people

This represents 14.5 petabytes of traffic every business day.

[Royal Pingdon]

With this installed, you can turn your Xbox on directly from your couch using the remote—or probably any universal remote—without having to run up and hit the power key. We wish our PS2 had this, since those three seconds of exercise are too much for our atrophied little hearts to bear. – Jason Chen

Remote [XIR]

Instructions [Awooga via eHomeUpgrade]

Before the bug was found and the whole shipment processs stopped, a small amount of tuners were already given to Velocity Micro, which allowed them to be first out the gate with a handful of CableCARD tuner PCs. So some people are already in HD heaven.

However, the bug on ATI's side has been fixed already (it was a very minor one), and the only reason you can't get a HTPC with CableCARD tuner support right now is because CableLabs—the guys who made the tech—has a five-week certification process. So it looks like late April/early May still. – Jason Chen

ATI stops shipping CableCARD tuners due to bugs, will resume soon [Engadget]

We inquired with Global Sky and they said their support is actually for the "One Follow Me" service from Microsoft that lets overseas workers communicate cheaply with their families back home. Microsoft themselves also said there have been no formal announcements about anything to do with Zune phones.

Rumor smashed. – Jason Chen

One Follow Me

Essentially the same app, we can browse our phone's files—both on-board memory and storage card—grab pictures off it, sync music and movies, and be directed to updates for our phone. There's, of course, contacts, calendar, email, tasks, notes, favorites, and files syncing just like before.

Not exactly a compelling reason to switch to Vista, but just one of the perks when you do. Check out more screens after the jump.

– Jason Chen

Windows Mobile Device Center [Microsoft via Pocket PC Thoughts via Crunchgear]

Nevertheless, your $4,595 will get you an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 processor, 2GB of RAM, nVidia GeForce 8800 GTX video card, 1TB of hard drive space, an NTSC tuner, an ATSC (OTA) tuner, and a 7-inch LCD on the front. Also, since Vista natively handles Xbox 360 and Xbox 360 Windows controllers, you can use this for your Games for Windows games as well. – Jason Chen

Product Page [Okoromedia via Crunchgear]

Code named "Orbit", this project is still beta and thus, still flakey. If you want to try it out, you can sign up for the here. All you need is a Live account, Vista Home Premium or Vista Ultimate, and a mouse, keyboard or remote. There's little practical use for this—why not just use a computer—but makes for a neat plugin for people who enjoy social networking in the living room. Weirdos. – Jason Chen

Nemo surfaces! Windows Live for TV in the wild [Liveside via PVRWire]