Tag Archives: julian thomas

Two 6000-year-old ‘halls of the dead’ unearthed, in UK first

The remains of two large 6000-year-old halls, each buried within a prehistoric burial mound, have been discovered by archaeologists from The University of Manchester and Herefordshire Council – in a UK first.

The sensational finds on Dorstone Hill, near Peterchurch in Herefordshire, were thought to be constructed between 4000 and 3600 BC.

Some of the burnt wood discovered at the site shows the character of the building’s structure above ground level-  in another UK first.

The buildings, probably used by entire communities, are of unknown size, but may have been of similar length to the Neolithic long barrows beneath which they were found – 70metres and 30m long. (more…)

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Pottermore, New Website Based on the Hugely Popular Harry Potter Books, Uses Windows Azure to Scale Up to 1 Billion Page Views in First Two Weeks

Windows Azure offered Pottermore the flexibility required to build a massively scalable website in just three months.

REDMOND, Wash. – June 6, 2012 – Eagerly awaiting the launch of Pottermore (www.pottermore.com), the website based on the popular Harry Potter stories, Brittany Talbot and her sister, Priscilla, raced to sign up when the site went live on April 14, 2012.

They weren’t alone. Within hours, thousands of Harry Potter fans were flooding the site and just two weeks after the Pottermore website went live, it received one billion page views, making it one of the most popular sites on the Web. To date, 10 million unique visitors have visited the site, with 25,000 new users signing up every day.

With Harry Potter one of the largest entertainment phenomena of all time, fans of all ages couldn’t wait to experience the world-famous stories, social, and interactive experiences the site offered. “I like being able to go up there and do potions and spells, and walk around where Harry was,” Brittany says. “I read the first book in the first week because I was so excited.” (more…)

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