Microsoft keeps consumer focus with purchase of Gears of War Xbox game and by renaming its cloud storage service “OneDrive.” 7 Mistakes Microsoft Made In 2013 (click image for larger view and slideshow) After announcing strong enterprise earnings last week, Microsoft made two announcements Monday that emphasized its ongoing ambitions to woo consumers: the official rebranding of SkyDrive, the company’s cloud storage service, as OneDrive; and the purchase of the preferred Gears of War game franchise. Microsoft agreed to rebrand SkyDrive in July, after a British court ruled that Microsoft’s use of the name violated an indicator owned by the British Sky Broadcasting Group. Sky Broadcasting claims ownership of the usage of “Sky” as a prefix. Microsoft similarly changed the name of the Live Tile UI in Windows 8 from “Metro” to “Modern” following a lawsuit filed by the retail group Metro AG. In a blog post, Microsoft GM for Consumers Apps and Services Ryan Gavin said the rebrand won’t affect... Read More »

Corona Labs hopes to make sophisticated interactive advertising easier to create and implement across multiple devices by making Corona SDK APIs embeddable. 10 Best Android Apps Of 2013 (Click image for larger view.) Corona Labs, maker of a Lua-based mobile development framework called Corona SDK, on Thursday introduced a version of its software called CoronaCards which might be embedded within other development frameworks to offer a cross-platform graphics layer. At first glance, the flexibility to embed CoronaCards within another mobile development framework comparable to Appcelerator, PhoneGap, Unity, or Xamarin seems to be redundant, like adding two slices of bread to an existing sandwich. Unity, the most popular the right way to create cross-platform games, already handles graphics quite well. But other popular development frameworks like Appcelerator have evolved with a spotlight on business apps, and CoronaCards might be used to give Appcelerator developers with access to CoronaCards’ animation and physics APIs. “We’re hearing from people using Appcelerator and PhoneGap [who] wish they may do richer... Read More »

Microsoft SQL Server, NoSQL, and the in-memory database wars are the highlights among this year’s headlines. Fuggedabout Hadoop. Databases are still the backbone of transactional and analytical applications, they usually stoked big reader interest in 2013. But times are changing, with a brand new breed NoSQL database and, ironically, the need for SQL querying on top of Hadoop being big themes this year. Measuring by the yardstick of page views — that’s admittedly skewed toward juicy headlines and Internet search-engine-ranking algorithms — here’s my personal number of top database headlines in 2013: 1. Microsoft SQL Server 2014: Final CountdownThe top-selling database by volume (Oracle tops revenue) has plenty of fans. This story looks under the hood of the second one community technology preview (beta) release to explain the in-memory capabilities and other new features expected with the subsequent release inside the first half 2014. 2. Why NoSQL Databases Are Gaining FansThe headline captures it. Need we are saying more? 3. MetLife Uses NoSQL For Customer... Read More »

Founded by big data pioneers from Yahoo and Google, startup unveils cloud-based offering built specifically for Hadoop users. 7 Super Certifications For IT Pros (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Spotting an emerging marketplace for cloud-based Hadoop, Silicon Valley startup Altiscale has officially launched Altiscale Data Cloud, a Hadoop-as-a-Service (HaaS) offering the corporate says is designed to free users from the complexities of deploying, managing, and scaling a giant data platform. In a phone interview with InformationWeek, Altiscale CEO and cofounder Raymie Stata, formerly chief technical officer of Yahoo, said the hot service helps simplify Hadoop for corporations that lack the expertise or resources to run the massive data framework without outside help. “We now have the world’s only purpose-built Hadoop cloud,” said Stata. “It is really Hadoop-as-a-service — not Hadoop as yet one more application slapped on top of a generic infrastructure-as-a-service.” [Too many companies fall back on incremental fixes. Here’s methods to foster creative change. Read Why... Read More »

Federal CIOs face many challenges processing petabytes of knowledge. But progressively more analytic tools offer new insights to enhance agency services with constituents. Every minute of each day, enterprises are flooded with digital data from email, social media sites, websites, and mobile apps. As an enterprise, the government is not any different. Federal agencies and other large organizations are already confronting the necessity to handle petabytes of information. All this data will stress an already overwhelmed system, nevertheless it may even create opportunities for greater engagement — citizen engagement, primarily. So as to require the government to rethink a number of its digital strategies. [ Putting big data on a ball: See NOAA’s Unique 3D Weather Tool. ] Many federal agencies have began to use mobile technology, social networks, and context-based services to create channels of communication, but these tools is probably not implemented in a method that meets the goal of effective interaction with citizens. By treating constituents more like consumers and customers, the... Read More »