I've just uploaded an audio slideshow of the talk I gave at Gnip last week, covering why MapReduce really isn't scary and why you should be looking into it for your problems. I'll be refining this talk and going into more technical detail in further posts, but my first goal was convince people that they shouldn't be put off by the fog of mystery that surrounds the process. It's become incredibly easy and cheap over the last few years, and I regret not using it earlier. There's also some code to accompany the talk here.

OK, so I don't actually sing, but you should be thankful for that, just ask the folks who invited me over for a Karaoke New Year's party. They'd all come from the Phillippines, and I never knew it was so big over there, they were amazing performers. They kept hoping that maybe I'd be able to carry The Beatles being British and all. It wasn't pretty.