Android Lollipop’s usage is slowly rising. Google just released its Android usage data, with Lollipop making its debut about three months since its public launch; the data showed about 1.6% of users are now using it. KitKat is still the most used version of Android with 39.7% of users, a slight increase from last month’s … continue reading
Hadoop has, for the most part, moved beyond the proof-of-concept phase and the initial chasm of adoption. More and more organizations are putting the open-source framework to work on mountains of complex Big Data. The next step in Hadoop’s evolution is getting a handle on governance. To that end, Hortonworks—the enterprise data platform provider and … continue reading
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently released a report urging companies to take concrete steps in order to protect Internet of Things’ (IoT) privacy and security. According to the FTC, the rise of Internet-connected devices poses huge security risks that could undermine consumer confidence. The report features a number of IoT best practices such as … continue reading
Oculus VR, the virtual reality startup acquired by Facebook for US$2 billion, is developing cinematic experiences specifically for its Oculus Rift VR headset. At the Sundance Film Festival in Utah, the new Oculus Story Studio, led by creative director and former Pixar animator Saschka Unseld, premiered its first short film, entitled “Lost.” Unseld, who created … continue reading
The Apache Software Foundation has announced Apache Flink as a Top-Level Project (TLP). Flink is an open-source Big Data system that fuses processing and analysis of both batch and streaming data. The data-processing engine, which offers APIs in Java and Scala as well as specialized APIs for graph processing, is presented as an alternative to … continue reading
This was the last year in which Big Data was an off-the-street term. As the year ended, Hortonworks was preparing to go public, with Cloudera preparing for the same outcome. Big Data will officially transition into being a big business this year. Thus, 2014 was the year when pilot projects went into production, or when … continue reading
We told you earlier this year that Microsoft was planning to open up its .NET platform with a foundation and multiple open-source projects. The arrival of this project was yesterday, thanks to Microsoft’s release of a preview version of Visual Studio 2015. Also in there was news of Visual Studio Community 2013, a free version … continue reading
Google’s Material Design gets another update Google is answering the comments and suggestions developers have been giving them about its material design by releasing another major update to the spec. One the biggest requests the company said it has received from developers and designers is quicker access to related developer documentation. Google has responded by … continue reading
Organizations today get that they have to collect data to stay competitive. They understand how to store it, retrieve it and slice it. The idea now is to understand the data itself, to detect patterns and trends that will help the organization get new customers or members, service them more personally and engage with them … continue reading
The rumors turned out to be true. Microsoft has officially entered the health-tracking wearable market, releasing the Microsoft Band smartwatch and Microsoft Health service. Available cross-platform on Android, iOS and Windows Phone, Microsoft Band and Health can track and provide insights into a user’s heart rate, steps, calorie burning and sleep patterns. Microsoft Health also works with … continue reading
Even if it’s not where they end up, Hadoop can be a great starting platform for a data-driven software company. That’s what San Francisco- and Taipei-based Fliptop found in 2009 when they launched a social media identity matching engine, ultimately employed by such companies as MailChimp, Dell, Toyota, Oracle and Nordstrom. Based on Amazon Web … continue reading
The spotlight turned to data analysis and real-world business use cases at Big Data TechCon, which winds down today in San Francisco. Talk was of day-to-day work and decision processes needed to support large-scale Big Data operations, with topics such as Hadoop, Spark, NoSQL and traditional relational databases, and how they can be leveraged for … continue reading
