My Reading Highlights 10/7 to 10/14

It has been an interesting week for reading about tech.  Below are some of the highlights that I came across.  One thing to note is over at ReadWriteWeb, founder Richard MacManus is leaving the company.  This site has been a long time favorite of mine and his presence will be certainly missed.  I certainly hope the new owners, SAY Media, will keep up the quality of the reporting on tech news and analysis.

ReadWriteWeb Death Watch:  In-House Datacenters
This was an interesting read in that I find myself managing three datacenters in my business.  All are a resource sync but most of my clients are not ready to move to a public cloud environment.  That said we are certainly heading that way.

Google's Neural Networks Advanced Artificial Intelligence

Not long ago we heard that Google had developed a large scale neural network to identify Cats in YouTube videos.  They are now turning that to enhance their voice search options on mobile devices (Android).  

Why the trick to analyzing Twitter data is more data

Derrick Harris provides an interesting look at the debate on whether Twitter data provides some real value for decision analytics.  In short yes but it needs to be combined with other data to make it more accurate and reliable.  Good read.  Especially the points on Twitter being ineffective at predicting elections.

It pays to know you:  Interest graph master Gravity get $10.6M

This is an interesting concept.  The ability to profile people and what they read and then tailor content delivery based on graphing a person interest.  This notion also feeds into the basic concepts that are popping up all over the place for digital personal assistants or tailored search results that are happening now with Android and Siri.  We are certainly looking at the start of a big tech push in this area.

Tech That Protects The President, Part 1: Data Mining

I'm looking forward to reading this 3 part series.  I few years back I had the opportunity to work on a new data system for the White House.  It was pretty interesting to see how politics and information collided   As an example everything that goes into the WH is logged and eventually put into records.  Imagine what that means when you are dealing with big data environments and the situation room.  So back on subject, it will be interesting to see how this series evolves.  The first part, Data Mining, really focuses on a tech called uReveal where it is used to sift through news articles, blogs, forums, etc to discover concepts that are troubling and alerts the user.  One interesting note here is the lack of discussion on privacy and how the Secret Service is handling that given all the inquires from Congress to DHS who are doing the same action.

Few enterprises are ready for the app economy's data explosion

This was an interesting read from GigaOm that discusses some of the challenges that are present on performing better analytics when considering the ever growing consumer use of APIs and apps in the digital economy.  Anant Jhigran lays out three new sources that are needed to get the complete view of our customers and business.

Oracle Team USA Capsize

This is my video of the week from San Francisco.  It combines two things interesting things that I follow:  Oracle and Sailing.  Here Oracle capsizes.  I'm sure I'll make a PowerPoint out of that picture someday.

My Weekly Reading Highlights: 9/16 /12 to 9/22/12

I'm sure most people are now tired of the iPhone 5 reviews, comparisons, and tear-downs by now.  I know that I am.  Below are the most interesting article reads for me over the last week, excluding iPhone 5 ones.  

Meet Kevin Reynolds, The Man Behind The Most Mindblowing News Service In The World

Joe Weisenthal provides a great description of the Bloomberg Spead Desk.  Here he describes it as a "a mindblowing operation that spits out real-time news headlines from all over the world, 24/7 to customers who rent their fabled terminals. 

3 Interview Tips for Hiring Outstanding Developers

Everyone who is trying to hire top notch SW developers knows it is extremely time consuming and a difficult task.  Chad Lilly lays out three interesting approaches in weeding out the best developers from the crowd of okay developers.  

ESPN builds a Twitter-style firehose for sports news 

At work we are all over mining data from twitter and other social media sources.  The Twitter firehose is a valuable source of information.  Now for the sports fans out there this is a perfect new source.  Ryan Kim describes the SportsCenter Feed as having over 1000 updates from ESPN per day.

Here's The Most Efficient Way To Work With A Virtual Team

During my work week I'm working with quite a few remote workers.  I see this trend increasing over time.  One of the challenges is how to virtually integrate these valuable contributors into the daily meeting, huddles, and discussions that occur throughout the day.  Vivian Giang and Max Nisen lay out three barriers we are working to address to success utilize remote workers today.

Digital Life Design

Anyone living in a large city knows the general hassles of movement from one point to another is a pain undertaking.  Jamillah provides an overview of the Digital Life Design conference in London where people are discussing improvements to what we refer to as "city habitats" through the use of data analysis or smart city initiatives.  

5 ideas to help everyone make the most of big data

Derrick Harris provides a run down on the IE Group's Big Data Innovation event.  He provides five thoughts from the conference that resonates not only with him but me as well.

Forget your fancy data science, try overkill analytic

No weekend reading is complete without a good article on Data Science.  Clearly a hot field these days in the big data analytics area.  Derrick Harris reviews an approach on Overkill Analytics.

24 Hours with the Galaxy Tab

BLUF (Bottom Line Up Front):  I'm really liking the device with its seamless integration of the critical apps that I use, as well as the form factor size.  It is really more convenient to carry around and use.  That said, it is easier to read long articles on the iPad 10" screen.

Most people would say that I'm a huge fan of my Apple iPad.  I've fully integrated into my work life using it at every meeting to help with productivity and keeping me organized.  It is the first item removed from my briefcase before taking a seat on an airplane and the last item I put down before turning out the lights. My MacAir Laptop isn't getting much use these days.

I would have to say that I was a little skeptical about a 7" pad; but I'm a heavy user of Google products such as GMAIL, Calendar, Docs, Reader, etc.  An Android device can make a lot of sense in my world, so I pick up a Samsung Galaxy Tab from Verizon 24 hours ago to check it out.

Taking it out of the box and getting the configurations setup were a piece of cake.  No more than 5 min before I was using it with key apps such as GMAIL , Contacts, Calendar, Talk, Reader and of course Google Voice.  Then came the next level of apps:  Evernote, ZumoDrive, Yammer, Twitter and Pandora.  All key to my day.  There was no difference in the performance of the apps on the Galaxy Tab vs the iPad.  All worked perfectly from the start, and BTW I'm liking the Verizon connection and performance.

I've read that there were issues with the resolution of the screen and that apps were not ready for a 7" form factor on Andriod.  From what I've experienced I cannot see any issues with their use.  The only drawback that I can see is the reading of articles such as the Economist magazine or PDF papers that just seem more practical on a larger 10" screen. 

My plan is to substitute the Galaxy Tab into my work routine over the next week and really kick the tires.  I'll be back with an update on how it performs.