Why not make your bike an object'art in your home? We also have an artist that transforms old CDs, an oddly placed cabin in San Francisco, and more.pump room chicago fun restaurants in nyc new york city tourism
Friday, March 2, 2012
The Week in Pictures: Classy Ways to Hang a Bike, CDs Turned into Incredible Animal Sculptures, and More
Why not make your bike an object'art in your home? We also have an artist that transforms old CDs, an oddly placed cabin in San Francisco, and more.
FIFA, AFC back Australia's football federation
"According to the AFC Statutes, only one national association shall be officially recognized in each country by the AFC," the statement said. [...] the AFC will only recognize and deal with FFA on all football matters concerning Australia. "At this stage FFA does not intend to respond to this farcical outburst, which is clearly intended to deflect attention from the real issue ? that Gold Coast United FC Pty Ltd under Clive Palmer has shown that it will not comply with the rules and regulations of the competition in accordance with the agreement they signed," Buckley said. The relationship between Palmer and the FFA has long been strained, and last month the Gold Coast owner was quoted in a newspaper describing the team as insignificant, the competition as a joke and rating rugby league as a better game.
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Thursday, March 1, 2012
?Glee? star denies slamming ex-girlfriend?s intelligence
“Glee” star Matthew Morrison has assured his ex-girlfriend, Kelly Brook, that he never uttered quotes attributed to him about her lack of intelligence. The actor has taken to Twitter.com to dismiss reports he told Britain’s Daily Mirror newspaper that the model/actress was “not the brightest bulb” in a recent interview. Morrison writes, “Woke up to a flurry of emails regarding Kelly Brook. Don’t always believe what you read. Kelly is a wonderful person and a good friend.” The 32-year-old beauty quickly responded with the tweet, “Thank you Matt.” Following the publication of the quote on Wednesday, Brook wrote, “I’ve had one motto I’ve always lived by – Dignity always Dignity [...]
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FBI director: Cyber-threats will become top worry
The director of the FBI says the agency needs the help of private-sector cyber-security professionals to combat what he believes is becoming the nation's No. 1 threat.
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Justin Bieber to celebrate 18th birthday by buying two multi-million dollar bachelor pads
TMZ is reporting Justin Bieber is going to celebrate his 18th birthday today by buying not one, but two Los Angeles mansions. Although they seem a little fuzzy on just which two he?s going to buy. From the story: Justin has been on a real estate hunt in L.A. for a while … but now, sources connected to the singer tell us he’s narrowed his search down to 3 pads. 2 of the mansions are in Calabasas, CA … home of the Kardashians, a few Jackson family members and Britney Spears. We’re told one of the estates Justin is eying has a $6 million price tag … the other’s on [...]
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Strata Conference 2012: The End of Big Data Hype?
The first day of the 2012 conference was dedicated to half-day tutorials and the all-day Strata Jumpstart. The Jumpstart sessions were geared for business leaders looking to see "how information can transform the enterprise."
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The over-arching theme for the Jumpstart sessions? As Rob May said on Twitter "be wary of the religion of data." That's not quite the message one might have been expecting in attending Strata, but it's a good one.
To be clear, nobody was saying "big data is over" or that it's useless. But the message from most of the speakers was that it's deeply important to know what data can do for you, and what it can't before you decide you've got to get you some Hadoop.
Marketers and Analysts
Avinash Kaushik, co-founder of Market Motive, says that we have enormous data, but very little insight.
Kaushik says that if you have a budget for data, spend 90% of it on people who can work with the tools and derive insight from the data, rather than spending the bulk of the budget on technology to gather data.
He also questions the need for real-time data. If you don't have the ability to act on real-time data, then don't try to gather real-time data. Instead, Kaushik argued for "right-time" that is available when decisions need to be made.
The exception? When "you can get rid of humans" in the decision-making process. If you can make decisions algorithmically based on real-time data, then it might be worth it. But, Kaushik says, "if humans are involved, you're screwed."
Ammo for the CFO
Continuing the theme of cautiously adopting big data, J.C. Herz spoke on "Ammunition for the CFO: How to be a Hard-Nosed Business Customer for Analytics." Herz, in particular, played devil's advocate to the question of whether companies need big data and analytics.
Herz is CEO of analytics company Batchtags. At the last Strata, says Herz, everyone came out saying "we've gotta get us some Hadoop" after being pumped up by the sessions extolling the virtues of big data without really understanding what they wanted. "Hold on cowboy," she says, "let's figure out what you want to accomplish before we 'get us some Hadoop.'"
One step companies need to undertake is a data audit. Companies may think they have "big data" but "sometimes it's not as big as you think it is." One company Herz worked with had bought into infrastructure to support "massive flows of data" but after spending millions of dollars "they had something like 2TB of data."
Companies need to know how much data they're working with, how fast it's being generated, and how many places the data is coming from.
Next question? Who owns the data? Who's taking responsibility for cleaning the data and making sure it's accurate? Who's in the position of saying 'no, you can't have it?" Herz described a few horror stories about companies that thought they had rich data sources, but when they really dug in they found that human laziness meant that the data was missing or inaccurate.
By the same token, companies need to ask who's going to do analysis on data. When you're deciding on a big data strategy, Herz says that companies need to decide exactly who is going to be doing the analysis, by name, and who they'll be reporting to.
Another question, are you using the data to make a decision – or avoid one? Herz says that analytics are good when management wants to make a decision, but it's a waste of money when companies are gathering data so that decisions can be put off.
Time is a resource, says Herz. One of the worst scenarios is when management gets the "big data religion" and throws "obscene" amounts of money at it, wants results yesterday. It doesn't work like that.
Companies also need to realize that data decisions "have consequences" says Herz. If you're embarking on a data strategy, Herz warns that companies need to understand that it might piss off a few people when the results come in, and you need to be OK with that. As Kaushik says, when humans are involved...
That doesn't mean that Herz is against companies embracing analytics, just that they need to be thoughtful when doing it.
When working with vendors about big data and analytics platforms, Herz says that companies should ask for three cost scenarios that factor in the "data iron triangle." The triangle is storage, cycles, and performance. Ask vendors to come up with three cost scenarios that minimize one corner of the triangle each. Most of the time you can make sacrifices in one area and get the results you want.
It's interesting to see just how fast big data is moving out of the hype cycle. If you're following along with Gartner's technology life cycle, we should be hitting the "trough of disillusionment" shortly. However, I think that's likely we're going to be skipping that or seeing a very abbreviated trough. It seems that a lot of companies are hitting "enlightenment" already and moving towards productivity very quickly.
Discuss
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Arizona sheriff probes Obama's birth certificate
America's self-proclaimed toughest sheriff finds himself entangled these days in his own thorny legal troubles: a federal grand jury probe over alleged abuse of power, Justice Department accusations of racial profiling and revelations that his department didn't adequately investigate hundreds of Arizona sex-crime cases.
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