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 [...]
Discussing Data Markets in New York City
As part of GigaOM’s Structure:Data Conference (taking place in New York City on 20-21 March), Jo Maitland and I are going to host a Mapping Session on Data Marketplaces. What are they, what are they doing, why do they matter, and how does their future look? The session is intended to be highly interactive, so attendees [...]
Big Data as Core, Big Data as Context, and Big Data as Buzzword Bingo
It’s neither particularly newsworthy nor insightful to suggest that ‘Big Data’ gets everywhere these days, but two recent items reminded me of the gulf between credible execution of a big data play and the more questionable tacking of the big data meme onto an otherwise useful product. Christmas is coming. Which means skating, and pantomimes [...]
Data Journalism at The Guardian
UK newspaper, The Guardian, has done some pioneering work to use data, and to engage readers in exploring data to share their own insights. The paper’s Simon Rogers and Google’s Kathryn Hurley shared some of the lessons at the Strata conference. Rough notes follow. Not going to talk about big projects like riots and Wikileaks and MP’s [...]
O’Reilly’s Strata comes to Europe, with a very British opening
O’Reilly’s Big Data extravaganza, Strata, left its native U.S. for the first time this week, coming to London for two days of data; the big, the open, the structured, the unstructured, and the undecided. Whilst many of the companies and issues are the same, whether you’re in London, California or New York City, there are [...]
The next big thing: WeeData
‘Big Data’ has a problem, and that problem is its name. Dig deep into the big data ecosystem, or spend any time at all talking with its practitioners, and you should quickly start hitting the Vs. Initially Volume, Velocity and Variety, the Vs rapidly bred like rabbits. Now we have a plethora of new V-words, [...]
Thinking about Open Data, with a little help from the Data Hub
Continuing to explore the adoption of explicit Open Data licenses, I’ve been having a trawl through some of the data in the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Data Hub. I’m disappointed – but not surprised – by the extent to which widely applicable Open Data licenses are (not!) being applied. For those who are impatient or already aware of the background, [...]
Survey: How open is your data?
Back in 2006 as we rolled out the first public draft of the Talis Community Licence, the world of data licensing seemed a simple place. Today, the Open Knowledge Foundation‘s Data Hub contains 3,888 data sets, many of which are explicitly licensed with respect to the Open Definition. But many are still not explicitly licensed. Over at [...]
Thinking about Data Gravity
Dave McCrory introduced his idea of Data Gravity with a blog post back in 2010. The core idea was — and is — interesting, and got some traction from sites like ReadWriteWeb, ZDNet and GigaOM. More recently, Data Gravity featured in this year’s EMC World keynote. But beyond the observation that large or valuable agglomerations of data [...]
