California

I've been in California for the last week and one effect that I've noticed is that a lot of web sites are more responsive down here than in Ottawa.

Of course this makes some sense - Ottawa is a long way from California, so the number of hops from me to, say, google.com, is much greater than it is here. Also, even if it was fiber all the way from my house in Ottawa to Google HQ, the speed of light still limits that to ~40ms.

When you're developing on a fast computer, it's easy to create software that runs well on your own system but runs slowly on what an average user might have.

A lot of "Web 2.0" happens in California, and it seems that living and working in California might be akin to having that fast computer: It's easy to create websites that run great in California but don't run nearly as well on the other side of the continent.

It's scary how fast Gmail responds here.