Jeff Dean, a Google Fellow who helped develop some of the web giant’s most innovative infrastructure projects, says focusing on one problem at a time is crucial for success Read more »
OpenStreetMap shows off the last eight years of crowdsourcing map development in a series of striking images. Read more »
The past few days have seen a blizzard of leaks about surveillance activity by the government’s ultra-secret NSA arm, including data collection from phone companies and internet giants. Here is what you need to know about this developing story. Read more »
Months and months of the same data are pointing to one conclusion: iPhone and Android really can’t be compared. In fact, they’re on two different trajectories. Read more »
A recent study from MIT suggests the likelihood of face-to-face interactions within a city means more productivity. It seems to apply equally to companies and even data, which suggests engineers and architects of all types should take notice. Read more »
Google executive Eric Schmidt believes the world needs a platform for data about us in aggregate, even as companies are still trying to decide if they want to expose data externally. Read more »
Machine learning service BigML and open data service Quandl are collaborating to make it easy to build predictive models around economic data. More importantly, though, is how easy Quandl makes it to find and use data. Read more »
What kind of technology stack does the internet of things need? What about security? Or standards? In this week’s podcast we tackle the infrastructure needs of the internet of things. Read more »
Researchers at Cornell University have created a robog capable of predicting human gestures. In theory, smarter robots are better at everything, from pouring drinks without spilling to just seeming more human. Read more »
People are excited about the Scout device that tracks your vitals with a 10-second scan. But outside of the consumer promise, the company behind the Scout and others are also changing clinical trials. Read more »
Analytics provider Alteryx has raised another $12 million as it tries to make statistical analysis a more consumer-friendly experience. Read more »
Tableau had a successful IPO, closing the trading day up 64 percent and raking in $254 million. CEO Christian Chabot says the company is now set to make itself known around the world. Read more »
Tableau’s initial public offering is on Friday, and expectations are high. The company has inspired much of the next-generation analytics space, and how it fares could be telling about just how powerful the data movement is. Read more »
If the big data era is really going to revolutionize our world, visualizations that let more people make sense of data will be critical. Here are six startups trying to change how we interact with and look at our data. Read more »
Data-warehouse providers are quickly adding Hadoop distributions, or even their own versions of Hadoop, into their architecture, adding further cost advantages to collections of extremely large data sets. Finding the talent to manage this newly converged environment will not be easy, but it presents tremendous opportunity for companies willing to take some risk. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A new beta version of ScraperWiki makes it easy to relatively easy to scrape Twitter for certain phrases and get to work analyzing the data. It’s just one more way that data analysis is getting democratized. Read more »
Connected products are becoming more common. Which means that even after a product goes out the door, the company responsible can still keep an eye on it. That has big repercussions for business and consumers. Read more »
The U.S. government has reams of data locked away in agencies and even filing cabinets, but an executive order signed Thursday should make more of it accessible. Read more »
The confluence of better location data and audio-recognition could mean big changes to seemingly static industries such as retail and radio as they learn more about what customers really want. Read more »
The advent of big data is affecting Ford Motor Co. in some significant ways, from how it analyzes its supply chain to the features it puts into its cars. Read more »
A year after launching, data-analysis-for-the-masses startup Datahero is finally opening its doors to the public. All in all, it delivers on its promise with a service that’s both intelligent and intuitive. Read more »
IBM is reportedly in talks to sell it’s server business to Lenovo. As it ditches commodity hardware again, where is IBM’s fortune going to be made? Mobility and data. Read more »
Apple confirms the anonymized information may be kept “for up to two years.” But when Siri is turned off all the user data is deleted. Read more »
How are book publishers learning more about our evolving reading habits? Not surprisingly, ebook publishers are turning the industry toward thinking more about making data-driven decisions. Read more at paidContent »
More than a decade ago, Gracenote received some cryptic advice from Apple to buy more servers. What followed — the launch of iTunes and iPod — blew up Gracenote’s database to epic proportions and laid the groundwork for a metadata empire. Read more »
Many long-standing legal rules of engagement between publishers and consumers tilted the playing field in unexpected ways in the first quarter. The period also saw a major expansion in the amount and quality of original productions for web-based video platforms and a major move by chipmaker Intel to stake a claim in the digital living room. Read more at GigaOM Pro »
A conversation with a payments processing company that offers small businesses a side of data, got me thinking about how data may change your customer service experience and maybe distort markets. Read more »
After hearing about the applications of big data for better ads, song recommendations and social media analysis, nothing makes me happier than hearing about technologists coming together with non-profits to use data to fight human trafficking. Read more »
The SumAll Foundation, a non-profit effort by cloud analytics startup SumAll, is trying to change the world by showing non-profits how to get the most out of their data by thinking more like businesspeople do. Read more »
A data democracy built to last needs tools that empower everyone to work with data rather than relying on apps and data scientists. Tableau helped ignite the data revolution, and its IPO could help it keep going. Read more »
The solution for better and faster storage may lie in DSSD, a stealthy chip startup backed by Andreas von Bechtolsheim, that counts several members of the Sun ZFS team as founders. Read more »
Remember when Google drew together all its privacy policies last March? That move has now prompted investigations from privacy regulators across Europe, who say the company has ignored their recommendations. Read more »
Vasu Kulkarni isn’t an NBA star; he couldn’t even make an Ivy League basketball team. But Kulkarni’s startup Krossover is trying to change the nature of coaching, scouting and even fandom by testing people’s on-the-field sports intelligence. Read more »
A new research paper shows just how easy it is to identify individuals based on supposedly anonymous mobile-phone data, and this isn’t the first time supposedly anonymous data really wasn’t. But how do we balance the need for privacy with the value of these datasets? Read more »
A recent study found strong correlations between people’s Facebook likes and a number of personal characteristics such as sexual orientation and intelligence. But relying on correlations as proof of anything is a questionable practice. Read more »
The first week of the NCAA tournament is in, and the results would suggest that Nate Silver is yet again the man when it comes to predicting the things Americans care about. Read more »
Call it whatever you want — big data, data science, data intelligence — but be prepared to have your mind blown. Imagination and technology are on a collision course that will change the world in profound ways. Read more »
Natural language user interfaces show great promise for a variety of situations, but Nuance Communications CTO Vlad Sejnoha sees a need for standard formats if new entrants aren’t to be blocked as data sources. Read more »
IBM thinks the internet of things is about far more than changing the color of your light bulbs, in large-scale implementations it can prevent traffic jams, save lives and lower costs for cities. Read more »
Just like any company, the Central Intelligence Agency is trying to filter the massive amounts of data that are being produced by both people and machines, and find the signal in a growing volume of digital noise. Read more »
