Monthly Archives: August 2012

We know Big Data is big, but just how big? Facebook revealed that it processes over 2.5 billion pieces of content and 500 terabytes of data each day (and possibly has the single largest Hadoop system in the world). Read more at TechCrunch. (LINK)

Of course Facebook isn’t the only company taking advantage of Big Data. Lisa Arthur writes in Forbes this week about how eBay saved millions of dollars after turning its data analytics prowess to its internal IT operations. (LINK)

Nor is Big Data limited to the tech sector. An article in CIO reviews several recent surveys which show how C-level executives are increasingly leveraging data and data analytics to set their firm’s business strategy and make day-to-day decisions. (LINK)

And what is needed for more companies to take data analytics to the next level? Patrick Gray, a business consultant, argues in an article in CIO Report that the benefits from Big Data will require organizational changes, such as new hybrid team structures that bring together business, analytical and technical talent. (

Boundary, a San Francisco-based start-up, has developed software that maps and monitors the performance of cloud-based applications. (LINK)

Canada has lagged behind the OECD in productivity growth. Could Big Data be the solution? (LINK)

“If you had told me beforehand me what Dremel claims to do, I wouldn’t have believed you could build it,” says Armando Fox, a professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley. Both Wired and ITworld describe new data analysis tools, including Dremel, which allows software engineers to analyze multiple petabytes of data at “blazing-fast” speed. (LINK) (LINK)

Meanwhile, the development of these powerful Big Data tools is threatening the incumbent business-intelligence industry, according to Forbes. (LINK)

And, as Big Data’s growth continues, where are we going to store it all? (LINK)

For those of us confused by all this Big Data talk, Steve Lohr at The New York Times provides a primer. (LINK)

Finally, the Census Bureau has released a smartphone app that provides constantly updated statistics on the U.S. economy. …

MIT Technology Review describes a new mathematical technique developed at Cornell University that allows large data sets of personal data to be shared and analyzed while guaranteeing that no individual’s privacy will be compromised. (LINK)

Outgoing Census Bureau director Robert M. Groves warns that the agency’s current methods of collecting data are unsustainable. The agency should rely more on Big Data that is already collected by private industry, he says. (LINK)

Business Insider outlines the benefits Big Data is bringing to the world of small business lending by enabling banks to make more detailed and accurate assessments of risk. (LINK)

Effective monetary policy requires good financial data. In a blog post, Lisa Pollack at the Financial Times‘ Alphaville blog describes the European Central Bank’s struggles to obtain useful datasets from European financial institutions. (LINK)

In two articles out this week, Kevin Fogarty of InformationWeek outlines the challenges facing mid-size and big businesses as they adapt to the Big Data revolution. (LINK) (LINK)

Another article in InformationWeek introduces a Big …

Alistair Croll on O’Reilly Radar makes the argument that “Big data is our generation’s civil rights issue” and shows the fine line between personalization and discrimination. (LINK)

The Government Accountability Office presented testimony calling for updates to federal law to address privacy issues around data mining. In particular, some agencies believe that the Privacy Act does not apply to systems that do not retrieve personal information using a unique identifier. (LINK)

On the security front, CIO describes how some universities, like many enterprises, are using data analytics to improve both physical and virtual security. (LINK)

The Information Security Forum released a report this week that found half of the organizations  are using data analytics to detect security threats. (LINK)

In “Talk to Me, One Machine Said to the Other,” the New York Times describes the growing amount of machine-to-machine (M2M) communications and its implications for mobile networks. (LINK)

Data innovation is not possible without fast networks. How much does these networks cost? Community Broadband News offers  a look at the economics behind Google’s gigabit broadband offering …