All right all you big data nerds — it’s time to suit up for the NIST’s Big Data workshop slated for next week. The event will focus on what state-of-the-art core technologies will drive big data and how to ensure accuracy of big data processes. Read more »
Privacy was often an afterthought for small companies, but that’s changing in the era of big data. As TRUSTe’s CEO, Chris Babel has seen the impact privacy can have on a startup — for better or worse. Here, he offers tips on how to avoid the pitfalls. Read more »
A startup called Datahero launched on Thursday with a new cloud service that makes visualizing data as simple as a few mouse clicks, and $1 million in seed funding. The company’s ultimate goal is to make big data something you or I could do. Read more »
The U.S. government is investing billions of dollars in big data technologies and research, and now it has a team of industry executives from IBM, Amazon and elsewhere ready and willing to share their views on how it can best transition into a data-driven institution. Read more »
Solariat Founder and CEO Jeffrey Davitz has a message for anyone trying to leverage social network data to make money: “The fundamental problem with social is yes, it’s big data, but it’s mostly big, sucky data.” Targeting users means deciphering what they really want. Read more »
Roambi is becoming a tool for more than creating cool, interactive data visualizations or real-time business intelligence reports your boss or colleagues will read on their iPad. Now Roambi is aiming to be a mobile app development/ publishing service with a new feature called ESX Platform. Read more »
The greater Boston area’s bid to be the go-to big data hub will get a boost as Intel and MIT will announce the Intel Science and Technology Center for Big Data as well as bigdata@CSAIL, a research group for MIT academics and industry researchers. Read more »
As more “open data” comes online, finding the right data, managing its access and workflow, and fostering collaboration, is the problem startup Junar wants to attack with its new Open Data Platform. Customers can try it out for free, starting now. Read more »
When a data scientist crunched enough numbers to predict that Sweden would win this weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest, he felt fairly confident. But he didn’t expect that the biggest noise would be the inaccurate prediction that Malta would do well — something he’s now apologized for. Read more »
If you’ve ever wondered what big data means at an individual level, this realization about sums it up: “I could either keep dying my hair or retire a year earlier.” It’s those types of realizations Intuit hopes its heavy big data use will help uncover. Read more »
NoSQL databases like MongoDB, Cassandra or CouchDB are a key foundation for web startups. But those companies might be better served using an old-fashioned relational database when it comes to their bread-and-butter transactions, according to Thrillist CTO Mark O’Neill. Read more »
According to some researchers, web companies such as Google, Amazon and Facebook are doing the research world a disservice because they won’t make their datasets available for peer review. These researchers have a point, but privacy concerns might always trump openness where openness matters at all. Read more »
Consumers are feeling pretty perky about things going into Memorial Day, according to new IBM sentiment analysis. That means stores and hotels might have reason to smile over the holiday weekend, as people seem to want to travel — and shop — over the long weekend. Read more »
Big data is an intimidating concept for publishers who don’t collect much info about their customers already. A first step is to think about “data-driven decision making,” and little data, says bitly’s Hilary Mason. Read more at paidContent »
Record collectors have been using Discogs.com to catalog and trade their wares for years. Now, much of that user-submitted data is finding its way to Spotify and other online music platforms, thanks to a partnership between Discogs and the music data provider The Echo Nest. Read more »
Artificial intelligence has to be a siren’s song for application developers that want to strike it rich. It enables revolutionary apps suchs Siri, but it’s also very difficult to do well. A San Diego-based startup called ai-one wants to change that by giving apps brains. Read more »
According to some doomsayers, innovation is dead and Silicon Valley is just a muck pond where social media companies breed and reproduce like mosquitoes. That’s not entirely true, but the face of innovation has changed. Cloud computing has made innovation something anyone can do. Read more »
Even if you haven’t heard of LivePerson, chances are you’ve encountered one of its products while browsing online. It’s the company behind those pop-up windows offering real-time chat with a representative, and it uses big data to decide which visitors are worth what type of attention. Read more »
It’s neither easy nor glamorous — data scientists get all the love — but making sure your Hadoop cluster is properly configured and applications are running optimally is necessary, especially as applications move into production. Here are five tools to help you do it. Read more »
Howcast, a New York producer of quality how-to videos, has gotten to 1 billion videos streamed since launching in 2008. The company has leaned heavily on data to inform all its decisions and ensure that its collection of 15,000 videos can keep producing revenue. Read more »
There’s a principle of application design that beautiful means usable, but a new study out of Google suggests that while beauty doesn’t necessarily affect perceived usability, poor usability can negatively affect perceived beauty. Nobody wants a reputation as selling a product that’s both unusable and ugly. Read more »
Who needs a Ph.D. in statistics when you have the cloud? Machine learning is high data science, and it’s fast becoming something that anyone leverage to sell more handbags, or solve a research problem, or build the next LinkedIn or Facebook. Read more »
There’s nothing quite like a hypothetical about someone setting a whole block on fire after cutting off the fire department’s electric supply in order to slow its response. Is it comforting to know that smart people and smart analytics could help stop it from happening? Read more »
To address the fragmentation exploding across the digital advertising market, Luma Partners founder and CEO Terence Kawaja floated the possibility of an operating system for digital ad companies to use as a common building block for their products, just how mobile apps use iOS and Android. Read more »
Yahoo is looking to leverage its big data prowess with a new tool for marketers called Genome. It looks like an acknowledgement that while Yahoo might not rule the the web anymore, it knows a heck of a lot about analytics. Read more »
As the world once again starts analyzing Yahoo’s myriad woes after Sunday morning’s ouster of embattled CEO Scott Thompson, I’m left wondering if its investment in Hadoop didn’t aid in the company’s demise, even if it’s a way down the long list of Yahoo’s mistakes. Read more »
The IT hype machine has everyone jumping on the big data bandwagon. But before we start saving every scrap of data in the enterprise for fear that we will miss a nugget of insight, shouldn’t we focus on what we already have? Read more »
Applied DNA Sciences thinks it has created the perfect tool for identifying attempts to counterfeit or steal goods along the supply chain. It’s mobile meets cloud computing meets big data, and it begins with QR codes that mimic physical DNA signatures. Read more »
Paul Doscher, CEO of Lucid Imagination wants you to know that when it come to enterprise-class search, open-source Lucene is a contender. And a strong contender that can face off against Google, Amazon and Microsoft in the big data search arena. Read more »
We’ve heard an awful lot about lean startups lately. Now it’s time to focus on Phat Startups — companies willing to take big risks to solve big problems — like clean energy and nuclear waste remediation, according to Jamie Goldstein, general partner at North Bridge Venture Partners. Read more »
Market research firm IDC released the first legitimate market forecast for Hadoop on Monday, claiming the ecosystem around the de facto big data platform will sell almost $813 million worth of software by 2016. But Hadoop’s actual economic impact is likely much, much larger. Read more »
While the latest business trend is in tapping the power of big data, Personal.com is helping people find the potential in wielding what it calls small data, the private information they have about themselves. The company announced a new iPhone app Monday to further its plans. Read more »
In Oren Etzioni’s world, telling you where to buy a product is so 20 years ago. Today, Etzioni wants to tell you when to buy. Tomorrow, well, maybe he can let you know when you’re in the vicinity of a great deal. Read more »
Ask a VC about big data and she will probably tell you about visualization of the user interface. We’re talking about intuitive UIs that let users visually work with data using charts and tools, not algorithms. It’s hard to do right, but the payoff could be huge. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
Mortar Data and Bison Alternatives represented big data startups at Boston TechStars Demo Day on Thursday. While they were outnumbered by consumer-focused startups, they nonetheless show the appeal of harnessing big volumes and velocities of data for productivity and profit. Read more »
EBay is putting down roots in New York and has bought up a 35,000 square foot space. The retailer is announcing that it has purchased an entire floor in the Flat Iron district where it will house 200 people in a new technology center of excellence. Read more »
When your business is to insure farmers against the effects of bad weather, you’d better have some seriously accurate data on your side. Mother Nature, after all, can be somewhat unpredictable. The Climate Corporation thinks the answer is lots of data and lots computing power. Read more »
Data warehouse veteran Teradata announced on Wednesday it is buying German software company eCircle in an attempt to gain a stronger presence in fast-growing world of marketing data. The terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but this is the second marketing-specific acquisition Teradata has made in […] Read more »
Birst, a San Francisco-based business intelligence company with its roots in the cloud, has raised $26 million from Sequoia Capital, Hummer Winblad and DAG Ventures. The new money comes as Birst tries to become a BI heavyweight by pushing its way into the software world, too. Read more »
Bina Technologies emerged from stealth mode last week and is bringing an Apple-like business model to genomics. The company relies on its Bina Box to make genome analysis faster than ever before possible without the benefit of having a supercomputer and a research network on hand. Read more »
