How to Lie with Data
Back in the early Nineties, I was working on a Ph.D applying a tool called a Geographic Information System (GIS) to the challenge of modelling archaeological deposits under cities. For those of us worrying about these things, Mark Monmonier‘s then-newly published first edition of How to Lie with Maps was required reading. It wasn’t so much a handbook...
Infochimps CEO Jim Kaskade talks about acquisition and the big data opportunity
I first came across Infochimps as they set about building one of the early Data Market offerings. I recorded a couple of podcasts with CTO and co-founder Flip Kromer over the years, in 2009 and 2012, tracking some of the ways in which the company and the market were evolving. Since then the company has...
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Quentin Clark discusses data, data platforms, and more
The Data Platform Group at Microsoft does a lot, from SQL Server and their Hadoopey HDInsight offering through to Business Intelligence and analytics capabilities which sit in or on top of the humble Excel spreadsheet. I’ve touched upon pieces of this whole before, in a 2009 podcast on Azure with Amitabh Srivastava (then Corporate VP...
Is data-powered personalisation creepier when it happens offline?
Survey results, like infographics, make up a depressingly large part of the delay email deluge. And, like almost every infographic ever made, most of these surveys are a complete waste of time. They’re blatantly self-serving, and based upon laughably small sample sizes. Every now and then, though, one that’s a little more interesting will arrive....
Three days in Yorkshire
Unusually for me, I’ve found myself at reasonably local events over the past few days. Leeds last Wednesday to hear people discuss big data, York last Friday to talk about open data, and Hull today to check out the city’s impressive new work space. It’s easy to look beyond the local environment, and to assume...
Getting it right with data attribution
There have always, it seems, been people for whom attribution and citation really matter. Some of them passionately engage in arguments that last months or years, debating the merits of comma placement in written citations for the work of others. Bizarre, right? But, as we all become increasingly dependent upon data sourced from third parties,...
Seeking Simplicity’s Sweet Spot
Albert Einstein, you may have heard, was a clever man. He scribbled equations on blackboards, thought big thoughts, and all of that. But, allegedly, he also said Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler. These words have resonated with me recently, as I’ve heard pitches from one company after another, all...
Find the data, aggregate the data, make the data useful
I was in New York in March, taking part in GigaOM’s Structure:Data event. As usual on these trips, I spent the day before the event walking around the city, soaking up some air, getting rained on, using coffee to stay awake, and meeting with a number of local companies. Of the companies I met that...
Visualisation – the key that unlocks data’s value?
As the Big Data hype machine continues its relentless attempt to gobble everything in its path, new business units and entire new domains buying into the promise find themselves faced with unanticipated data volume and complexity. They see the potential for data-based decision making, but still face (short-term?) challenges in actually managing, analysing or interpreting...
To Dublin, in search of evidence
I travelled to Ireland last week, to attend the second meeting of the European Data Forum (EDF). The EDF provided travel support for my trip, and I am grateful to them for that. I was searching for evidence of ways in which smart use of data is having a transformative effect upon European businesses. Although some...
Doing the DataBeat
For the past two years, Ben Kepes and I have helped the team at VentureBeat assemble the programme for their annual Cloud Computing event, CloudBeat. It looks as though we may end up doing something similar with them this year, as CloudBeat moves from Redwood City to downtown San Francisco, and from November to September....
Is Infochimps running from the Data Market business?
Infochimps is one of the early champions of the data market business, and one that I’ve followed for several years. As I mentioned in my last post on the topic, the company has recently begun to pivot towards delivery of their (compelling) Enterprise Cloud big data analysis offering, with the company’s data market origins slipping further...
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