data

More on Microsoft's database-in-the-cloud service

LAS VEGAS--While Internet Explorer 8 demos, Silverlight progress and a Monkey Boy reprise from Steve Ballmer captured much of the attention at Mix 08--it was a database announcement that could be the sleeper announcement of the show.

What Microsoft announced was a database-in-the-cloud service where Web developers can store their data. Those attending the Mix show here were able to sign up for a beta test that is set to begin in three or four weeks, with a final version aimed to be launched by the end of the year, according to Dave Campbell, a technical fellow in Microsoft's … Read more

Presidential election insight via data visualization

Dow Jones Insight is applying text analysis to thousands of documents to measure trends, such as favorability and issue coverage of the presidential candidates over time. In the first example below, Dow Jones Insight parsed 26,435 documents, including English language newspapers, magazine, transcripts from broadcasts and news wire services.

Dow Jones is pitching the service as a generalized tool for analyzing the impact of media coverage, and targeting corporations, as well as political candidates, who need competitive insight. Other services, such as Nielsen BuzzMetrics and BuzzLogic, provide similar kinds of media analysis based on parsing a variety of document … Read more

Green the latest opportunity for consulting firms

We've seen Intel, IBM, Sun Microsystems, and others tout servers and other products that consume less energy than their predecessors. Now the consultants will get into the act.

Green IT consulting will mushroom into a $4.8 billion industry by 2013, according to Forrester Research. The firm polled 130 companies and found that only six used a green IT service provider, but that 6 percent more were planning on it, and another 18 percent were considering it.

Some of the beneficiaries could be firms like Accenture, Deloitte, and EDS, which will start to provide holistic advice on energy efficiency … Read more

Microsoft's supersize data center plans

We are in the midst of the digital land grab for Internet users. And a key building block to serve those billions of users on the planet is tens of thousands of servers in data centers processing the bits.

Nick Carr has received hints that Microsoft intends to build out two dozen data centers of about 500,000 square feet or more in size. He said that it was unclear as to when the data centers would be built.

Rich Miller at Data Center Knowledge gives the rumored 12 million square feet of data center space some context:

That's … Read more

Data-mining detects the disaffected

Here's another reason to get off that antisocial kick and get with the networking.

The Air Force is developing a data-mining technology meant to root out disaffected insiders based on their e-mail activity--or lack thereof, according to an article in this month's International Journal of Security and Networks.

The technology, based on something called Probabilistic Latent Semantic Indexing (PDF), scours an organization's e-mail traffic and constructs a graph of social network interactions illustrating employee activity. If a worker suddenly stops socializing online, abruptly shifts alliances within the organization, or starts developing an unhealthy interest in "sensitive … Read more

The iPhone alternative (for freedom lovers)

Minor update: Boost uses the Nextel/Sprint network, not Alltel.

Apple's iPhones seem to have a monopoly when it comes to usable mobile Web browsing. Until now, freedom-loving users not wishing to get into bed with Steve Jobs were, for the most part, out of luck. This article explains how to get an even better mobile Internet experience, without having to do business with either AT&T or Apple--with no contracts and no $60 per month bill just to surf the Net.

The iPhone is clearly the must-have device of the digerati. All of my colleagues seem to … Read more

Microsoft's massive openness pledge: APIs, protocols, data portability, community

Welcome to the free world, Microsoft. Today Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, announced that Microsoft is making several bold strides to make its software and its company more open, transparent, and community-oriented.

As a Microsoft admirer, critic, and competitor, I can't help but applaud the depth and breadth of this move (though not everyone thinks there's much to celebrate here). It is a banner day in the software industry (and proof that back-room bargains are the wrong way to achieve interoperability).

Ray Ozzie declared:

Customers need all their vendors, including and especially Microsoft, to deliver software and services that are flexible enough such that any developer can use their open interfaces and data to effectively integrate applications or to compose entirely new solutions. By increasing the openness of our products, we will provide developers additional opportunity to innovate and deliver value for customers.

Amen. But what does this mean? Four principal things:… Read more

AT&T, Microsoft win as ID theft bill eviscerated

Update: This blog post has been modified since it was first published. Click here for more details, or scroll to the bottom to see the original text.

A pro-consumer, bipartisan data-breach bill was stripped of most its provisions before its feeble remains were finally passed by an Indiana Senate committee on Tuesday.

This came after two weeks of intensive lobbying by AT&T, Verizon, Microsoft, and LexisNexis, all of which wanted to kill the bill. For the most part, they were successful.

In a blog post last week, I explained how I had worked with my state Rep. Matt Pierce (D-Bloomington) … Read more

Google to buy Plaxo? $200 million worth of data

Valleywag is suggesting that Google is buying (or has bought) Plaxo, the online contact-sharing service. According to Valleywag, it may be a pure act of friendship.

I think it's much more likely a pure act of data gathering, as Tim O'Reilly might suggest.

Plaxo would be an incredibly smart acquisition by Google. As of October 2006, Plaxo had 15 million users. While Plaxo has not been as widely used (or, at least, not as widely discussed) in the past year, that's a heck of a lot of personal data sitting on its servers, data that Google can … Read more