Data analysis is a do-or-die requirement for today’s businesses. We analyze notable vendor choices, from Hadoop upstarts to conventional database players. Revolutionary. That almost always describes the knowledge analysis time by which we are living. Businesses grapple with huge quantities and sorts of data on one hand, and ever-faster expectations for analysis at the other. The seller community is responding by providing highly distributed architectures and new levels of memory and processing power. Upstarts also exploit the open-source licensing model, which isn’t new, but is increasingly accepted or even sought out by data-management professionals. Apache Hadoop, a nine-year-old open-source data-processing platform first utilized by Internet giants including Yahoo and Facebook, leads the enormous-data revolution. Cloudera introduced commercial support for enterprises in 2008, and MapR and Hortonworks piled on in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Among data-management incumbents, IBM and EMC-spinout Pivotal each has introduced its own Hadoop distribution. Microsoft and Teradata offer complementary software and primary-line support for Hortonworks’ platform. Oracle resells and... Read More »

From HealthCare.gov to the Galaxy Gear smartwatch, listed here are many of the year’s biggest letdowns. To quote a protracted-dead English author, “It was the simplest of times, it was the worst of times.” Indeed, 2013 had its share of fine times and tech innovation. More companies invested in private and public cloud services and began using data analytics to enhance bottom lines. Advancements in robotics got a lift as major players like Amazon and Google bought various robot companies (many call this progress, but it surely qualifies as a letdown in case your job is replaceable by a robot). The tablet craze continued this year as more sizes and designs hit the market. An influx of Android-based tablets helped reduce Apple’s tablet market share to about 50%. Apple also acknowledged that the iPad had to evolve by releasing the iPad Mini and iPad Air. Collectively, mobile apps and smartphones got better and more plentiful, and more employees found work-life flexibility with BYOD programs. So... Read More »

Apple patent application suggests the corporate is asking so as to add personal security measures to its mobile devices. 10 Best iOS Apps Of 2013 (Click the picture for a bigger view.) To mitigate the specter of “Apple picking” – a term cops sometimes use to consult cellphone theft — Apple’s next iPhone may include “attack detection mode.” The World Intellectual Property Organization has just published a patent application that Apple filed last June, titled “Mobile Emergency Attack and Failsafe Detection.” It describes how to set a mobile communications device to summon aid at the user’s behalf if the user fails to engage with the device. “While the device is in attack detection mode, certain events may cause the device to summon assistance automatically, even without further interaction from the device’s user,” the patent application states. “For instance, while the device is in attack detection mode, if the device’s user ceases to have interaction with the device in a specified manner for a minimum of... Read More »

Facebook will launch a standalone news reader app on Feb. 3. Here is what you ought to know. 7 Facebook Wishes For 2014 (Click image for larger view and slideshow.) Facebook unveiled Thursday morning its highly anticipated news reader app called Paper, which mixes content shared by your folks with news from quite a lot of publications. The app would be available for download on iOS devices within the US on Feb. 3. Paper is the primary app launched by Facebook Creative Labs, an initiative to develop and design new apps for phones. Here is likely the primary of many “new and tasty forms of mobile experiences” that Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg alluded to in its latest earnings call. Facebook reported Wednesday that it generates greater than 1/2 its advertising revenue from mobile. Facebook’s new concentrate on standalone apps and mobile is a natural and necessary next step for the social network, said Rebecca Lieb, industry analyst at Altimeter Group. They’re... Read More »

On the 25th anniversary of his proposal for the realm Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee wants Internet users to come back to the Web’s defense. On the Web’s 25th anniversary, the inventor of the sector Wide Web, Tim Berners-Lee, has called for the establishment of “a digital bill of rights to advance a free and open Web for everybody.” He’s established an internet site, webat25.org, to advance that cause. Berners-Lee’s post was published at the official blog of Google, a corporation that has long championed the internet as a free, open platform for innovation, and has fought meaningful battles against censorship, while it has weathered criticism for being below open with its Android mobile operating system and about customers’ advertising campaign data. It was Google in 2009 that proclaimed, “the internet has won,” an announcement arguably still valid from a platform standpoint. As Berners-Lee puts it, the net works with any information, on any device, with any software, in any language. Anyone can innovate on the net... Read More »