What is going on at Google? I’m not sure, and neither are the usual pundits. Last week, Google announce that Andy Rubin, the long-time head of the Android team, is moving to another role within the company, and will be replaced by Sundar Pichai — the current head of the company’s Chrome efforts. To quote […]
What do companies use Big Data technologies to analyze? Sales transactions. Social media trends. Scientific data. Social media trends. Weather readings. Social media trends. Prices for raw materials. Social media trends. Stock values. Social media trends. Web logs. And social media trends. Sometimes I wonder if the entire point of Big Data is to sort […]
Everything, it seems, is a game. When I use the Waze navigation app on my smartphone, I earn status for reporting red-light cameras. What’s next: If I check in code early to version-control system, do I win a prize? Get points? Become a Code Warrior Level IV? Turning software development into a game is certainly not […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. We were in trouble, and for a short time I thought my family’s lives were in danger. It was August 2004, and Carole, Michael, and I were on vacation in Palm Springs. With the temperature north […]
Just about everyone is talking about Big Data, and I’m not only saying that because I’m conference chair for Big Data TechCon, coming up in April in Boston. Take Microsoft, for example. On Feb. 13, the company released survey results that talked about their big customers’ biggest data challenges, and how those relate to Big […]
If there’s no news… well, let’s make some up. That’s my thought upon reading all the stories about Apple’s forthcoming iWatch – a product that, as far as anyone knows, doesn’t exist. That hasn’t stopped everyone from Forbes to CNN to the New York Times from jumping in with breathless analysis of the rumor. Turn the page. More […]
Cloud computing is seductive. Incredibly so. Reduced capital costs. No more power and cooling of a server closet or data center. High-speed Internet backbones. Outsourced disaster recovery. Advanced edge caching. Deployments are lightning fast, with capacity ramp-ups only a mouse-click away – making the cloud a panacea for Big Data applications. Cloud computing is scary. […]
Big Data can sometimes mean Big Obstacles. And often those obstacles are simply that the Big Data isn’t there. That’s what more than 1400 CIOs told Robert Half Technology, a staffing agency. According to the study, whose data was released in January, only 23% of CIOs said their companies collected customer data about demographics or buying […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Sandy Silverstein is a mensch. That’s what I thought, upon meeting him via Skype in early January 2012, and in person in Westport, Connecticut, later that month. Sandy oozes professionalism, competency, and yiddishkeit, which are vital […]
“In contrast to classical logical systems, fuzzy logic is aimed at a formalization of modes of reasoning that are approximate rather than exact. Basically, a fuzzy logical system may be viewed as a result of fuzzifying a standard logical system. Thus, one may speak of fuzzy predicate logic, fuzzy modal local, fuzzy default logic, fuzzy […]
Modern companies thrive by harnessing and interpreting data. The more data we have, and the more we focus on analyzing it, the better we can make decisions. Data about our customers, data about purchasing patterns, data about network throughput, data in server logs, data in sales receipts. When we crunch our internal data, and cross-reference […]
Today’s word is “open.” What does open mean in terms of open platforms and open standards? It’s a tricky concept. Is Windows more open than Mac OS X? Is Linux more open than Solaris? Is Android more open than iOS? Is the Java language more open than C#? Is Firefox more open than Chrome? Is […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. In our home, January 1 brings an important ritual – the changing of the calendars. We have pretty pictorial calendars in nearly every room of our home. Some rooms have multiple calendars. We have calendars of […]
In 1996, according to the Wikipedia, Sun Microsystems promised, Java’s write-once-run-everywhere capability along with its easy accessibility have propelled the software and Internet communities to embrace it as the de facto standard for writing applications for complex networks That was version 1.0. Version 2.0 of the write-once-run-everywhere promise goes to HTML5. There are four real […]
The subject line in today’s email from United Airlines was friendly. “Alan, it’s been a while since your last trip from Austin.” Friendly, yes. Effective? Not at all close. Alan, you see, lives in northern California, not in central Texas. Alan rarely goes to Austin. Alan has never originated a round trip from Austin. My […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Let’s explore four of the most commonly asked questions – usually posed in the parking lot on Sunday afternoons, which of course is where all the important Temple business is conducted… What’s wrong with the dome […]
Once upon a time, application programming interfaces were hooks that applications used to tap into operating system services. Want to open a port? Call an API. Need to find a printer? Call an API. Open a winder? Call an API. Write to a file? Call an API. Developers still use classic APIs of course. They […]
Tomorrow Americans will celebrate Thanksgiving. This is an odd holiday. It’s partly religious, but also partly secular, dating back to the English colonization of eastern North America. A recent tradition is for people to share what they are thankful for. In a lighthearted way, let me share some of my tech-related joys. • I am […]
So much I could write about today. The U.S. presidential elections. Intel’s new 60-core PCIX-based coprocessor chip. The sudden departure of Steven Sinofsky from Microsoft, after three years as president of the Windows Division. The Android 4.2 upgrade that unexpectedly changed the user experience on my Nexus phone. All were candidates. Nah. All those ideas are […]
Echosystem. What a marvelous typo! An email from an analyst firm referred several times to a particular software development ecosystem, but in one of the instances, she misspelled “ecosystem” as “echosystem.” As a technology writer and analyst myself, that misspelling immediately set my mind racing. Echosystem. I love it. An echosystem would be a type […]
This is one of a series of articles I wrote for the monthly Bulletin of Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Judaism is a communal religion. We celebrate together, we mourn together, we worship together, we learn together, we play together. The sages taught that you can’t study Torah on your own. We need ten Jewish adults, […]
It take a lot to push the U.S. elections off the television screen, but Hurricane Sandy managed the trick. We would like to express our sympathies to those affected by the storm – too many lives were lost, homes and property destroyed, businesses closed. Microsoft and Google had scheduled tech events for the week of […]
It is too early to praise Windows 8. It’s also too early to pan it. But it’s never too early to have an opinion. Mine is, “The one-size-fits-all UX paradigm doesn’t scale.” I’m a fan of the mobile Metro user experience – excuse me, the Windows Store app user experience. Since its release with Windows […]
It’s hard to get away from mobile development. Yes, not every organization is building apps for mobile devices. Yes, only a small number of developers within a typical organization are likely focused on mobility. The others are doing stuff like websites, databases, desktop apps, server apps, integration… That said, mobile development trends are fascinating, and […]
When you have billions of dollars in your piggy bank, you can go on a big shopping spree and hoover up some decent technology. According to BerkeryNoyes, an investment bank, there were 4,151 mergers and acquisitions in the online/mobile market between 2010 and the first half of 2012 – and the biggest shopper was Google, […]
Skeuomorph. I learned this word a few weeks ago, after a flurry of stories broke on various mass-media websites about an apparent kerfuffle within Apple about user interface design. A skeuomorph is a design element that looks functional, but is actually purely ornamental. The automotive world is rife with skeuomorphs. Fake hood scoops on sports […]
Stories about hacked or stolen password files keep coming. One of the most recent is a breech at IEEE.org – where 100,000 plaintext passwords were stolen a few weeks ago. The IEEE confirmed it a couple of days ago: IEEE Statement on Security Incident25 September 2012 — IEEE has become aware of an incident regarding […]
Interactive whiteboards! Ambient intelligence! A lot can change in 14 years! That’s the conclusion you have to reach after reading the latest iteration of the Computing Classification System, maintained and published by the Association for Computing Machinery. The ACM’s CCS has defined the computing field since 1964, and was last updated in 1998. This latest […]
My 2012/5773 Rosh Hashanah speech at Peninsula Temple Sholom in Burlingame, Calif. Hashkiveinu Adonai Elokeinu l’shalom, v’ha-amideynu malkeinu l’chayim, ufros aleinu sukkat sh’lomecha Grant, Eternal One, that we may lie down in peace and rise up again, O God, to life renewed. Spread over us the shelter of your peace The Hashkiveinu is one of our most […]
The tangible benefits of Big Data analytics are well known. You can read about them in the IT press – and also in business journals and the daily newspaper. Many books have been published about the “why” of Big Data. Conferences devoted to exploring the trends are happening everywhere. But what about the “how” of […]