Useful Hadoop Webinar
September 11, 2012
Once you have your data, what do you do with it? Sys-Con Media has posted a webinar to address that question, it announces in “Talend Open Studio & Hortonworks Data Platform.” If Apache‘s open source solution Hadoop is your framework of choice, this webinar may be for you. The description reads:
“Data Integration is a key step in a Hadoop solution architecture. It is the first obstacle encountered once your cluster is up and running. Ok, I have a cluster, now what? Complex scripts? For wide scale adoption of Apache Hadoop, an intuitive set of tools that abstract integration complexity is necessary.
“Enter Talend Open Studio for Big Data.“Join us in this 60-minute webinar with Jim Walker, Director of Product Marketing at Hortonworks and Ciaran Dynes, Director of Product Marketing at Talend to discuss the different approaches organizations can take to avoid the complexity of uploading or extracting data from Hadoop.”
The webinar promises to cover the following: how to quickly load a cluster; how to use Adobe’s HCatalog; and how to create a script for Adobe’s Pig without having to write code. Check it out—you might want this one for your instructional library.
Talend and Hortonworks are both leading open source vendors, providing Hadoop-based middleware for data management and application integration.
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
MIT Algorithm Poised to Compete with Google
September 11, 2012
Can crowdsourcing kill Google? Folks keep trying. Now, OnlineMediaDaily tells us, “MIT Crowdsourcing Algorithm Competes with Google Search.” The MIT Sloan researchers, Professor Cynthia Rudin and her colleagues Benjamin Letham and Katherine Heller, have developed an algorithm that could give Google a run for its money. In fact, the technology is said to be similar to the recently discontinued Google Sets, for which some are seeking a replacement. This could be good timing for the academics.
Reporter Laurie Sullivan explains:
“MIT’s algorithm makes sense of posts from a variety of content across the Internet, based on the author’s expertise and Web site’s authority. It builds and reads many Web sites simultaneously, while pulling in information directly and indirectly related to the initial keyword. . . .
“The algorithm designs return queries instantly, with unrestricted access to a search engine, according to Rudin. ‘At the moment, Google prevents anyone from doing more than a few search queries a minute; but it is an artificial restriction that they can remove,’ she said.”
Interesting. Google may still have a leg up in one way, though, in its use of implicit social signals—those privacy-advocate-scaring calculations that glean a user’s age, gender, political leanings, and so forth. Rudin says such calculations could be added in, but her team has chosen to leave them out for now.
There’s no word when the rest of us will get to try out this new algorithm, but I would like to give it a shot. Best of luck to Rudin and her crew.
Cynthia Murrell, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Wolfram Alpha Shows the World Some Facebook Love
September 11, 2012
An exciting reveal from Wolfram Alpha is the release of the capability for anyone to do personal analytics with their Facebook data. Stephen Wolfram, creator of Wolfram Alpha, posted “Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook” on his blog recently, and tells us about the multiple possibilities of this data. The first round of capabilities lets users search and analyze their own Facebook history as well as their network of friends.
Wolfram asserts in the blog post:
“And today I’m excited to announce that we’ve developed a first round of capabilities in Wolfram|Alpha to let anyone do personal analytics with Facebook data. Wolfram|Alpha knows about all kinds of knowledge domains; now it can know about you, and apply its powers of analysis to give you all sorts of personal analytics. And this is just the beginning; over the months to come, particularly as we see about how people use this, we’ll be adding more and more capabilities.”
This free service generates a report that analyzes everything from a user’s check-ins and photos to responses to posts. Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook also allows you to share the data you gather on, you guessed it, Facebook. This extensive and impressive showing of love to Facebook is apparently just the beginning from Wolfram Alpha, which plans to add more features and capabilities as feedback begins to roll in.
Andrea Hayden, September 11, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Google Autocomplete: Is Smart Help a Hindrance?
September 10, 2012
You may have heard of the deep extraction company Attensity. There is another company in a similar business with the name inTTENSITY. Not the playful misspelling of the common word “intensity.” What happens when a person looking for the company inTTENSITY get when he or she runs a query on Google. Look at what Google’s autocomplete suggestions recommend when I type intten:
The company’s spelling appears along with the less helpful “interstate ten”, “internet explorer ten”, and “internet icon top ten.” If I enter “inten”, I don’t get the company name. No surprise.
Is Google’s autocomplete a help or hindrance? The answer, in my opinion, is it depends on the users and what he or she is seeking.
I just read “Germany’s Former First Lady Sues Google For Defamation Over Autocomplete Suggestions.” According to the write up:
When you search for “Bettina Wulff” on Google, the search engine will happily autocomplete this search with terms like “escort” and “prostitute.” That’s obviously not something you would like to be associated with your name, so the wife of former German president Christian Wulff has now, according to Germany’s Süddeutschen Zeitung, decided to sue Google for defamation. The reason why these terms appear in Google’s autocomplete is that there have been persistent rumors that Wulff worked for an escort service before she met her husband. Wulff categorically denies that this is true.
The article explains that autocomplete has been the target of criticism before. The concluding statement struck me as interesting:
In Japan, a man recently filed a suit against Google after the autocomplete feature started linking his names with a number of crimes he says he wasn’t involved in. A court in Japan then ordered Google to delete these terms from autocomplete. Google also lost a similar suit in Italy in 2011.
I have commented about the interesting situations predictive algorithms can create. I assume that Google’s numerical recipes chug along like a digital and intent-free robot.
SharePoint 2013 Looks to Improve the Web Content Management Experience
September 10, 2012
Niraj Tenany discusses Microsoft’s evolution in Web Content Management environments in the Netwovenblogs.com article, “Is SharePoint 2013 Ready for Prime Time Web Content Management (WCM)? You be the Judge!”
Tenany explains the development:
Microsoft acquired a company called nCompass back in 2002. nCompass’s Content Management System (CMS) become the foundation of the WCM capabilities in SharePoint. Since then, Microsoft has been adding features to support WCM in SharePoint.
The launch of SharePoint 2013 preview presents an interesting opportunity for companies to consolidate all of their web infrastructure to SharePoint 2013…this can provide a great of value to companies by reducing the overall management costs as well as having a focused team.
Tenany also provides a summary of SharePoint 2013 improvements to support WCM, including the ability to work easily with video content, multi-lingual site support, and analytics and recommendations.
When it comes to creating Web site content and managing a Web presence, organizations may also want to look closer at their site search. With no installation, configuration or maintenance required, Fabasoft Mindbreeze InSite is designed to intuitively find information on your site with a user friendly interface. Here you can read how InSite “recognizes correlations and links through semantic and dynamic search processes. This delivers pinpoint accurate and precise finding experiences.”
Philip West, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
Open Source Technology Embraced by Social Leader Twitter
September 10, 2012
Most Tweeters are likely not aware that they are using open source technology every time they use the social networking site. We get a good look at Twitter’s open source approach in the article “The Open Source Technology Behind Every Tweet” on Datamation. The article gives insight from Chris Aniszcyzyk, the open source manager at Twitter. Twitter technology runs on the Java Virtual Machine and uses Scala programming language.
The article informs us:
“Aniszcyzyk stressed that Twitter isn’t just a consumer of open source technologies, it also contributes, too.
At the the top of Aniszcyzyk’s list of Twitter’s open source contributions is the Bootstrap HTML framework. Bootstrap is routinely one of the most popular project on the GitHub open source code repository.
Overall, Aniszcyzyk says that Twitter now has over 80 projects on GitHub. Rather than list them all alphabetically, he detailed the anatomy of how a Tweet is sent and delivered using open source tech.”
Twitter is debatably one of the most prevalent and important companies of our time as social networking becomes king of the Web. This embrace of open source technology may mean big things to come for companies that specialize in this technology as they gain more recognition.
Andrea Hayden, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Big Data: Retail Savior or Slayer
September 10, 2012
TIME Business recently reported on Big Data in the article “Future of Retail: How Companies Can Employ Big Data to Create a Better Shopping Experience.”
According to the article, while Big Data is evidenced in a multitude of industries, it is highly noticed in the retail sector. Online stores like Amazon use the data they have collected from customers to create an individualized profile to recommend products that users may wish to buy based on the information gathered about products they have already purchased. A recent study found that Amazon reported 30 percent of sales were due to its recommendation engine.
Online retailers are not the only businesses utilizing Big Data to boost business. Traditional retailers are also turning to it in hopes of staying relevant. The article states:
“One company that hopes to give traditional retailers the kind of analytic tools available to ecommerce firms is RetailNext. The firm has developed a computer program that uses a store’s security cameras to give managers all kinds of information about how consumers interact with the store. Using this program, Retail Next can show exactly how many customers are in a given store at a time, which parts of the store they explore, which specific items customers spend a lot of time perusing — and which they do not. RetailNext can combine this information with other variables like staffing levels, weather, product assortment and placement to determine what does and doesn’t boost sales.”
Big Data certainly has the ability to rescue retail. However, the companies with honking data analytics systems may triumph. Who are the losers in the equation? Local stores in our opinion. Downtown Fairbanks, Alaska is a retail dead zone. Why? Ask a shop owner on Second Street.
Jasmine Ashton, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
New Google Search Algorithm Aims to Stop Piracy
September 10, 2012
Afterdawn.com recently reported on more changes in the Google search algorithm in the article “Just Search Reviews Google Anti Piracy Algorithm.”
According to the article, 2012 has been marked as a year of changes for Google’s search algorithm. The release of Google Panda and Google Penguin updates, which are responsible for targeting low quality link updates and spammers, have resulted in major changes to the algorithms affecting those who submit search queries.
However, Panda and Penguin are only two of the updates that Google has already made this year. The article states:
“The latest update, which is yet to be christened with an official name, is chiefly geared towards demoting sites in the search results that are continually linked to copyright infringement complaints. The new search results will be organised according to the current wide range of algorithm factors, but their order also take into account the number of valid copyright removal notices Google has received about a specific domain. Sites with a large number of notices should start to be placed lower down in the SERPs once the changes take effect.”
While Google has been criticized for using its latest algorithm to wipe out competition along with piracy sites, according to a recent statement from the Search Giant, this update applies to all websites even YouTube and Blogger which are owned by Google. I’m looking forward to see if Google holds true to their word or if this is just another scheme to stay on top.
Jasmine Ashton, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
High Speed Internet Access for Some
September 10, 2012
Many of us have come to see high-speed internet access as a given, kind of like electricity and indoor plumbing. However, TechNewsWorld informs us, “FCC Report Finds 19 Million Internet Have-Nots.” It is tough to search without a workable connection.
Yes, the FCC‘s Eighth Broadband Progress Report found that about 19 million Americans lack high-speed Internet access. Out in the boonies, 14.5 million folks go without; in tribal areas, nearly one-third of the population is out of luck, according to the Report. Compared to the rest of the world, we lag in both our rate of high-speed deployment and the overall speed at which the Internet is delivered. The article notes:
“The FCC appears to agree in its report that the situation is untenable, noting that broadband is essential to innovation, jobs and global competitiveness. . . . However, the FCC goes on to say in its report that a lot of progress has been made. It noted that ‘billions’ have been invested by the communications industry in broadband deployment, including next-generation wired and wireless services. Also, there has been an expansion of networks technically capable of 100 megabit-plus speeds to over 80 percent of the population through cable’s DOCSIS 3.0 rollout. Finally, it also said, LTE is steadily spreading via mobile operators.”
True, but that still leaves us relying on the actions of the private carriers, whose goal is to run a successful business, not ensure Internet access for all. While telecom law still does not recognize the Internet access as a “need,” like phone access, it probably should be. The question is—what will we do about it?
Cynthia Murrell, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
IntelTrax Top Stories: August 31 to September 6
September 10, 2012
The IntelTrax advanced intelligence system blog provides summaries of articles pertinent to the world of data analytics and security. This week, we learned how the analytics market is continuing to grow, as well as some companies that offer excellent tools to help your company grow along with it.
“Cristobal Addition Strengthens Digital Reasoning” spotlights an important new addition to the board of the Tennessee based text analytics powerhouse, Digital Reasoning. Cristobal Conde has a rich history of working in the information technology field.
He states:
“I’ve been in information technology since the late ’70s when you had to build your own database manager. When companies like Sybase and Oracle developed commercial database managers – they made sense of structured data and allowed thousands of applications to be built on top…There is a pressing need to do something similar in unstructured data, and I believe Digital Reasoning is the company best positioned to do this.”
While the United States has a wealth of data analytics solutions to choose from, the Asian analytic market continues to gain in power and importance. According to “Asian Analytics Changing Fast” the big data analytics market in India is expected to double to $680 million by 2015.
Patrick Roland writes:
“This piggybacks on lots of other Aisa-centric analytic news. While many nations are flexing their muscles in big data, some American companies are catering to the industry, too. One prime example is the Chinese language support of Synthesys recently announced to aid the burgeoning data market in China. We expect more and more as places like the Philippines and Hong Kong begin making strides just behind power players like India and China.”
According to “Business Intelligence on the Rise” BI is one of the fastest growing industries and therefore smart businesses are utilizing this technology as a tool for growth.
The article explains:
“The big data opportunity is one of the biggest growth propellants for analytics. The vast amount of data that is available for analysis is exploding, however, it is housed in multiple silos of information with little or no cross-channel analysis of how the data correlates. For forward-thinking enterprises, big data can create value. Whereas BI traditionally performs structured analysis and provides a rear-view mirror into business performance, big data analytics provides a forward-looking view, enabling organizations to anticipate and execute on the opportunities of the future.”
We obviously are living in a world where BI and data analytics solutions are becoming an necessary part of business. Digital Reasoning offers a smart BI solution called Synthesis that delivers automated understanding for big data. The results are saved time and money.
Jasmine Ashton, September 10, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext.
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