There are a variety of factors that have caused the stock to dip and rise since September, but Wednesday was particularly odd because there wasn’t any obvious thing that should be spooking Wall Street. Here are some financial analysts’ best guesses as to what’s afoot:

• Oracle Investment Research tells Barron’s it’s possibly related to firms imposing higher margin requirements on clients.
• Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray wonders if perhaps there’s some misinterpretation regarding expectations for the iPad going into 2013.
• There’s also speculation that Nokia landing a distribution deal with China Mobile could be a setback to the iPhone.
• Another theory: Investors may be unhappy that it’s looking less likely that Apple will be issuing a “special dividend” payout before the end of the year.

Apple has set itself up to have a monster sales quarter thanks to the way the company has timed its new product releases this fall. Will investors be assuaged come January earnings time? Maybe, maybe not. It seems like one of the biggest questions investors have isn’t about the current quarter, but what comes after: whether Apple has another “next big thing” in it, and what that will be.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Report: Monetizing Digital Content
• Forecast: Tablet App Sales To Hit $8B by 2015
• What Does the Future Hold For Browsers?

At GigaOM we fundamentally think that intelligent and simple design is one of the key solutions to simplifying this complexity, and creating a meaningful experience out of the connected world. Picture the elegant designs of Apple’s new iPhone 5, the Nest learning thermostat, Instagram’s mobile app, or Pinterest’s visual web experience — the leading web sites, mobile apps and connected gadgets are putting design first and foremost. To highlight this thesis, we’re holding our second annual RoadMap event on November 5th in San Francisco (tickets here). Some of our speakers include the CEO of Instagram Kevin Systrom, the CEO of Tumblr, David Karp, designers Yves Behar and Tony Fadell, and web pioneers like Obvious CEO and former Twitter CEO Evan Williams. Full speaker list here and we’ll be announcing more speakers in the coming weeks.

Pinterest, and its visual-dominant design, and social sharing elements have created a new paradigm for how users want the web to look: beautiful and emotional. And it turns out this design is also delivering a new type of e-commerce ecosystem. Instagram created a $1 billion valued company by enabling its community to make every day photos look gorgeous, and share those photos with friends. Social networks, and social mobile networks were not new ideas before Instagram and Pinterest, but these companies used smart design to create undiscovered value.

All our devices, including our cars, are getting a wireless data connection, and our content and data will be streaming among our hardware. But more important than giving people access to all this data everywhere all the time, devices will have to be designed to deliver just the data we want, and when we want it. Designers like Yves Behar, Scott Wilson and Tony Fadell are creating such gadgets — including wearables and body sensors — that use smart algorithms that add value and meaning to our connected lives. Ford is creating a connected car experience using these principles. Hear from these three designers at RoadMap as well as the CTO of Ford, Paul Mascarenas.

Design and experience have turned into a strategic focus for tech companies. Apple is now the world’s most valuable company, and its influence is being felt across the tech sector. Startups like AirBnB and Nest are being founded by designers.

Even looking to the creative sectors can help startups create products and develop stories around those products. Oren Jacob, the former CTO of Pixar, and now the CEO of ToyTalk, and Bobby Podesta, the former head animator of Pixar and now Chief Creative at ToyTalk will kick off our morning at RoadMap with insights into how to use storyboards to create inspiration.

We’ll announce more speakers at RoadMap in the coming weeks. We’re also creating a physical book on this topic to give away to all of the attendees of RoadMap! We have a limited supply of tickets, so register today for RoadMap on November 5th in San Francisco.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Takeaways from mobile’s second quarter
• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

The current Prineville data centers are 334,000 square feet, while the new one will be 62,000 square feet. The new one also won’t add any jobs to the region.

Adding on smaller facilities at these huge data center locations isn’t unusual. Apple is adding on a small (21,000 square foot) “tactical” data center at its North Carolina site, next to its 500,000 square foot iCloud data center.

But Facebook’s infrastructure will be important to watch. The company is in a growth phase and its number of servers have soared to an estimated 180,000, up from an estimated 30,000 in the winter of 2009, and an estimated 60,000 by the Summer of 2010. That’s one of the reasons why Facebook is now keeping close track of its energy, water and resource consumption of its data centers.

For more info on data centers check out:

• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• 10 reasons Apple, Google & Facebook chose North Carolina for their mega data centers
• The controversial world of clean power and data centers
• The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Dissecting the data: 5 issues for our digital future
• NewNet Q2: Google closes the quarter with a bang

Workers building out the power lines around Apple’s data center

Apple is building another, smaller, data center, next to its massive iCloud data center, in Maiden, North Carolina, according to the Hickory Daily Record. The new planned 21,030 square-foot, 11-room, data center will store clusters of servers; for comparison the current massive data center on the site is 500,000 square feet.

The Hickory Daily Record reporter also notes that the current plans at the Maiden site show both the new mini data center, as well as the “footprint for a larger data center that would run nearly parallel to the existing one and would t-bone the smaller one currently under construction.” Sounds like Apple has substantially more plans for the Maiden site, which could be one reason for some of the conflicting power numbers that Apple has announced and Greenpeace has been insisting on.

Other Internet companies have used this same model, called a tactical design or a tactical data center. Splitting up some of the servers into a smaller facility could enable Apple to do things like separate the servers for the various IT services it delivers and treat those servers differently, run the separate servers on a different power source or add on more servers in phases. These small tactical data centers are far cheaper and can be built more quickly. A 21,030 square-foot data center probably only consumes around 2.5 MW of power.

Apple chose North Carolina for its original massive data center because the state has some of the cheapest and most reliable power available. That power is mostly from coal and nuclear sources. Other Internet giants, Google and Facebook, have also chosen the region for their east coast data centers. Apple is also building huge solar and fuel cell farms at the Maiden site and says the entire site will be use 100 percent clean energy, through various methods.

To read my complete series on the mega data centers in North Carolina check out my four-part series this week:

• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• 10 reasons Apple, Facebook & Google chose North Carolina for their mega data centers
• The controversial world of clean power and data centers
• The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• NewNet Q2: Google closes the quarter with a bang
• How tomorrow’s mobile-centric data centers will look

This article is the second in a four-part series that we’re publishing this week.

If you live on the East Coast, there’s a decent chance that when you log into Facebook, the photos, comments and Likes that you see are being served up from a data center in the quiet, rural town of Forest City, North Carolina. Three months ago, Facebook flipped the switch on the first of two buildings here.

Facebook isn’t the only Internet giant that chose the so-called North Carolina data center corridor as home for one of its most important server farms. Within a couple-hundred-mile radius, Google and Apple have also built mega data centers, as have Wipro, Disney, AT&T and others.

Deciding where to build a data center has always been a complex decision. “We consider probably 50 different factors when we pick a site for one of our data centers,” says Tom Furlong, VP of site operations at Facebook. According to a GigaOM Pro report (subscription required), Microsoft has 43 criteria for its selection process.

But that decision has become increasingly complex as companies begin to factor in access to clean power and a growing population of Internet users in developing markets. Add to that decision the notion that webscale computing is fundamentally changing how servers are built

Around the Apple data center, substations are needed. Data centers consume a lot of power.

and connected and the decision becomes even more complicated. The data center has blown up, according to execs at our recent Structure conference.

We interviewed executives at some of the biggest Internet companies, as well as hardware vendors, economic development groups, and utilities to find out why North Carolina has emerged as a hub for data centers. Here are the 10 biggest reasons:

1). Low-cost power: You need to be able to offer electricity at the price of 4 cents to 6 cents per kilowatt hour before the data center operators will even talk to you, says Duke Energy spokesperson Thomas Williams. That’s how much it costs in North Carolina and that’s far below the national U.S. average. Part of the reason why the power is so cheap in North Carolina is because the electricity mix is 61 percent from coal, 31 percent from nuclear, and only 4 percent from clean power. Coal and nuclear are some of the cheapest forms of electricity generation.

2). Reliable and available power: These data centers are huge — as big as 500,000 square feet for Apple’s — and it’s tough to find places that have enough power transmission capacity available, says Facebook’s Furlong. The area around Charlotte, North Carolina (Duke’s headquarters), already had much of this capacity built out. As the textile industry in the area has contracted, and the local manufacturing and furniture production industries increasingly moved offshore, that has freed up capacity.

Because of that, Duke had extra industrial-sized capacity that was ready to be connected to the data centers, which commonly require energy of anywhere between 20 MW to as high as 100 MW. To put that in perspective Apple says its 40 MW of solar panels, and 5 MW of fuel cell power, will provide enough power for almost 11,000 homes per year.

Maiden, NC

3). Rural areas: A significant amount of North Carolina is rural, and that land is relatively inexpensive and available for large buildings and huge power substations. Data centers and populated areas don’t tend to go together; when they do intersect, they tend to lead to ‘Not in My Backyard’ push back from the local communities. Even in Maiden, a town of just over 3,000 people, about 60 miles northwest from Charlotte, residents are starting to complain about the construction of Apple’s solar farm — particularly the leveling of some 200 acres (over two locations) for the solar panels.

4).  Incentives from counties and the state: North Carolina law gives the state the ability to reduce sales tax on servers, says Furlong. That was a factor for all the Internet players that chose the area. When you have to buy new servers every three to five years those savings can add up.

North Carolina’s legislature approved $46 million in tax breaks for Apple, and local governments slashed Apple’s real estate taxes by 50 percent and property taxes by 85 percent, according to Greenpeace. Google (which was the first in the area, back in 2006) scored about $212 million in savings over 30 years, reported Bloomberg a couple years ago. That included tax breaks, infrastructure upgrades, and other incentives. Bloomberg reported that Google received “more than $1 million for each of the 210 jobs Google said it eventually hoped to create in Lenoir.”

Facebook’s data center

5). Available water: Water is always a factor when picking sites for data centers, and North Carolina has an abundance of rivers and moisture, said Facebook’s Furlong. Water is more crucial for some projects than others, like if it’s a warmer environment and the data center needs extra water for cooling. At the Forest City, North Carolina, site, Facebook is deploying evaporative cooling, which requires a mist spray of water to cool the air as it’s entering the data center.

Google has said that evaporative cooling commonly can use “hundreds of thousands of gallons of water a day,” and that’s why Google is looking at using recycled waste-water at some of its facilities. At Facebook’s data center in Oregon, it built a well onsite to provide water for evaporative cooling and that helps the company mitigate its use of the city’s water resources.

6). Fast deployment: Apple’s data center in Maiden was built within about a year from the time the site was selected, according to Scott Millar, President of the Economic Development Group for Catawaba County, which includes Maiden. That’s because the county had already developed a plot of land for a data center park. Likewise, Forest City also had a ready-to-go business park that it made available to Facebook for its data center. When searching for a site, we’ll “find that there are places where it just takes too long to build it,” says Furlong. My response to them is: “I’m sorry, my development horizon is just not that long.”

7). East Coast traffic: Internet companies are choosing North Carolina because they need a location close to the East Coast. The speed at which a web page is delivered is a major competitive factor for giant Internet companies — a couple milliseconds too slow can rule out a location. North Carolina can provide a quick enough web-serving turnaround for East Coast customers, as could many other locations close to the East Coast.

8). Close to an airport, major city: Data centers, like many big infrastructure projects, need to be accessible for employees as well as for goods and services. Access to the Charlotte airport and the city of Charlotte was a significant driver for the Internet firms. During the height of construction of the data centers, some 600 to 800 workers are involved, and during operation there can generally be 50 to 100 workers.

Workers building out power lines around Apple’s data center and solar farm

9). The Lemming effect: Catawba County’s Millar says there tends to be a clustering effect with data center operators. When one or two big ones come in, the others feel more comfortable following. That’s because the executive, or team, that has to pitch the data center location to the rest of the company and the board feels safer choosing a spot that has already been validated as a successful site. When making hundred-million-dollar – or even billion-dollar – decisions, it’s not surprising that companies try to de-risk the decision by following other companies, says Millar. Other resources in areas can be shared between data centers, like fiber data links.

10). The climate: While North Carolina isn’t exactly cold, Facebook’s Furlong told me that it was one of the only areas on the East Coast where it wasn’t so hot and humid to preclude open air cooling. That allows companies to get rid of the bulk of the power-hungry air conditioners that cool most data centers, and instead use the outside air for cooling, which uses a lot less energy. At the Forest City data center, Facebook cools the air as it enters with a water spray. For the rare occasion that the weather gets too hot or humid, Facebook has built a set of coils that cool the warm moist air as it enters.

Here’s the rest of the 4-part series this week:

• The ultimate geek road trip: North Carolina’s mega data center cluster
• The controversial world of clean power and data centers
• The story behind how Apple’s iCloud data center got built

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Locating data centers in an energy-constrained world
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution
• The future of mobile: a segment analysis by GigaOM Pro

Not surprisingly Apple and Nest share a similar design sensibility, and the Nest thermostat can also be controlled via an iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch or Mac. When Nest first launched its thermostat, I called it “a thermostat Steve Jobs would love.”

The Nest thermostat (in cooling mode).

Not to be too dramatic, but I think this is the most important move ever for a next-generation digital thermostat. Most consumers don’t care a lick about their thermostat and most thermostats are not ever programmed, which leads to major inefficiencies and wasted home energy. If Nest can make its learning thermostat a cool and coveted item (like the iPhone), it could change consumers’ relationships with thermostats and home energy and could lead to significant reductions in home energy consumption.

If you’ve been following Nest, then you probably know that thermostat giant Honeywell slapped it with a lawsuit earlier this year, alleging patent infringement. Nest responded to the lawsuit by bringing on Apple’s former Chief Intellectual Property Officer Richard “Chip” Lutton as its new vice president and general counsel.

Apple started selling Nest’s thermostat after the lawsuit was filed. The thermostat is also being sold via Best Buy and via Nest’s online store.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Ups and downs for cleantech in Q1
• Cleantech, meet connectivity: a new era of energy efficiency
• Connected world: the consumer technology revolution

Apple will actually use “Directed Biogas,” meaning that the biogas from the landfills will be cleaned and injected into the local natural gas pipeline, and the fuel cells won’t be directly running off of the biogas. But Apple’s biogas supplier will inject the equivalent amount of biogas that would be used by the 4.8 MW of fuel cells.

Biogas can come from various types of wastes including hog farms — which are prevalent in North Carolina — restaurants and industrial processes, and water treatment facilities. Biogas is created when organic matter is broken down in a closed anaerobic digester, or a landfill where oxygen isn’t present, and the gas is captured.

Biogas in many states is considered renewable energy because it is mostly methane gas and can be used in place of fossil fuels for heating, electricity or powering transportation. Methane is a greenhouse gas, and it is also being stopped from being released into the atmosphere in this process. Beyond Apple, Google and Microsoft are also interested in biogas projects.

Biogas is still a very small source of power in the U.S. According to the American Biogas Council, there are only over 160 anaerobic digesters on farms and about 1,500 more operating at wastewater treatment plants. Patrick Serfass, the Executive Director of the trade group the American Biogas Council, says that the biggest barrier to more companies utilizing biogas is awareness.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Smart Grid Apps: Six Trends That Will Shape Grid Evolution
• Green IT Overview, Q2 2010
• Report: Monetizing Digital Content

1. Gazelle: The website Gazelle is one of the easiest ways to sell off Apple gadgets that are slightly used but still in decent shape. Gazelle is buying good-condition, used iPad 2′s (64GB, with Wi-Fi, and 3G) for $330 ($350 for flawless, and $125 for broken). For a good-condition 16GB iPad 2 with just Wi-Fi, they’ll pay $240. Gazelle is easy to use because, depending on what you’re selling them, they’ll send you free shipping labels for FedEx or UPS, and even a shipping box. Then, when they confirm the item, they’ll send you a PayPal amount or mail you a check or Amazon gift card (you choose). The down side of Gazelle is that all that ease and convenience costs the company money, so they tend to pay less than you could sell an iPad 2 for on other sites.

2. eBay and Craigslist: Yes, they’re the obvious places, but in contrast to the ease and convenience of Gazelle, eBay and Craigslist require a lot of effort. However, in exchange for that effort, you can sell a good-shape iPad 2 for a higher price. The going rate for an iPad 2 with 64GB and both Wi-Fi and 3G on eBay is $425. The 16GB, with just Wi-Fi, is going for $250.

3. BuyMyTronics: A website called BuyMyTronics, similar to Gazelle, will buy your used and even broken Apple electronics and either resell or recycle them. As with Gazelle, shipping and getting paid is pretty easy. They’ll pay you $288 for a decent-shape iPad 2 64GB with Wi-Fi and 3G, and $192 for a 16GB iPad 2 with just Wi-Fi.

4. NextWorth: Like Gazelle and BuyMyTronics, NextWorth gives you a third option for an easy sale of a used, average-condition iPad 2. (When iPhone 4S launched, some of these reseller sites were inundated with too many old iPhones, and they were forced to cut the prices they’d pay for these. So check out all three of these sites before settling on a price.)

5. Back to Apple: Apple has a reseller and recycling program, and it’ll pay you for a good-condition Apple product, though you’ll generally get less than the sites described above and will be paid in Apple credits. That site is currently down (maybe getting ready for iPad 2 resales?), but we’ll update you with how much Apple will pay you for a used iPad 2, when the site goes back up.

6. Watch out for shady resellers and buyers: Make sure the site you choose to sell to, or the buyer you choose on eBay, is legit. The site called Cash for iPads just looks sketchy. Maybe it’s not, but be sure to read the reviews of the buyer before sending money (and particularly cash!).

7. So your iPad 2 is a brick: If your iPad 2 is totally broken and not functioning, there are still some decent options for you. For example, Gazelle will still buy a 64GB version with 3G and Wi-Fi for $125. But perhaps a better option for you is recycling: Apple will take back old broken iPads. Big retailers like Best Buy, RadioShack and Staples often have free recycling drop-off boxes at their stores — call your closest one to find out if they have that option.

8. The do-gooder option: If your iPad 2 is working fine, but you still plan to upgrade, there are many schools and charities looking for iPad donations, given that the iPad can be a solid teaching and communication device. Apple encourages customers to donate their old iPads to Teach for America Corps, while The HollyRod Foundation is asking for donated iPads for special-needs kids and families. iOS developer Steve Glinberg also created the iPad Recycling Program.

9. Don’t landfill it: The worst option you have is to open up the trash bin and dump it. That means, not only are you wasting precious materials that could have been recycled, but the chemicals from the battery and electronics will sit in the landfill and leach into the ground. Also, you’re wasting money.

10. Don’t sit on it: The second-to-worst option you have is to put it in the back of a drawer and let it sit there for years. Then you’re not taking advantage of the money you can get from reselling it, and the odds that you will actually recycle it drop over time.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• Controversy, courtrooms and the cloud in Q1
• A look back at mobile in Q1
• Why tomorrow’s iPad will need a battery breakthrough

But it would make sense if Bloom is involved. Last month, Apple unveiled that it planned to build one of the largest fuel cell farms at its data center in North Carolina. The planned 5 MW fuel cell farm is supposed to run on biogas (methane from organic waste) when installed, according to Apple. Bloom’s fuel cells are large boxes that suck up oxygen on one side and fuel (natural gas or biogas) on the other to produce power. That means that with the fuel cells (and a solar array that will be built) Apple’s data center will have a source of cleaner distributed power that isn’t coming from the local utility via the grid.

Bloom offers boxes capable of supplying 100 kW, which could translate into 50 Bloom Boxes being installed at Apple’s data center. Bloom has been in negotiations for similarly large-sized deals in the past, such as its negotiations in Delaware to build a 30 MW fuel cell farm (300 Bloom Boxes), and it has already installed 12 Bloom Boxes at Adobe’s campus in San Jose, Calif.

Apple is also touting the fact that its fuel cells will be run on biogas, and Bloom has substantial experience selling biogas-based fuel cells. Both Adobe and eBay are running their Bloom fuel cells on biogas. Bloom has also been the go-to fuel cell maker for Internet, telecom and computing giants’ experiments with fuel cells.

There are only a few fuel cell companies that even have the capacity to be in the running for such a deal. Beyond Bloom, there’s UTC Power, a division of United Technologies, one of the older fuel cell makers. UTC Power sells a 400 kW phosphoric acid fuel cell and says it has sold 50 of these 400 kW units to customers worldwide since 2009, according to its 2011 annual report. If you divide up Apple’s planned 5 MW (5,000 kW) fuel cell farm into UTC’s 400 kW integrals, you get 12.5 fuel cells — the math doesn’t exactly work.

FuelCell Energy could also be behind the deal, but FuelCell Energy tells me that “Apple is not a customer at present and there is not an FCE plant operating at the Cupertino facility.”

I’m not 100 percent sure of this news, but pretty sure. I’ll update this if I hear more or if I’m wrong.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• NewNet Q4: Platform mania and social commerce shakeout
• Defining Hadoop: the Players, Technologies and Challenges of 2011

The stock surge comes several weeks after Apple’s blockbuster earnings announcement, but also in the aftermath of a report about the substandard working conditions at the factories where many of Apple’s most popular products are made by third-party manufacturers. The outcry over the report prompted calls for boycotts and for others to petition Apple to build “an ethical iPhone.”

In any case, investors don’t appear to be fazed. Here’s what Apple’s stock has done in the six months since Tim Cook took over as CEO:

Credit: Yahoo Finance

Update: AAPL ended the day up just over 9 points, closing at $502.60.

Related research and analysis from GigaOM Pro:
Subscriber content. Sign up for a free trial.

• How emerging technologies will influence collaboration
• Analyzing the wearable computing market
• LTE changes everything; LTE changes nothing