Hi bird hats, here's some interesting reads:

There's a write-up about stackoverflow.com architecture here:
http://highscalability.com/blog/2009/8/5/stack-overflow-architecture.html

It is different in the sense that it uses an all-Microsoft stack and that the database is more scale-up than scale-out (SQLServer running on 8 cores in 48GB of memory).

Michael Stonebreaker has released "VoltDB", the product based on his HStore research (that's the "complete rewrite" paper):
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/25/voltdb_cloud_database_nosql/
and here:
http://www.voltdb.com/
Apparently VoltDB is going to use the open source road to carving out a place in the cloudDB market.

The the April 4 ACM paper in the "news" list is interesting, and mentions Jim's NimbusDB. I guess it suggests that Barry and Jim might be about ready to come out of stealth mode:
http://www.nimbusdb.com/NimbusDb.html

Barry Morris comes from StreamBase which is another Stonebreaker startup:
http://www.finextra.com/news/announcement.aspx?pressreleaseid=16694

I think it will be an interesting summer.

Paul