Open is good – but encouragement better than mandate
Image via Wikipedia Openness is undeniably cool right now, at least if you move in the slightly odd circles that I do. Openly available scientific papers are disrupting the world of scholarly publishing (which may not be all good, but that’s a post for another day). Openly available university courses are finally beginning to work [...]
A conversation with Richard Wallis, an experiment, and a survey
Richard Wallis left Talis (my former employer) last month, and has set up as a consultant at DataLiberate. In this short podcast, Richard shares some of his thoughts on data, semantics, and ‘the power of the link.’ Our conversation is also an excuse for an experiment. I have been producing audio-only podcasts here and elsewhere [...]
CloudCamp London: the Big Data Special
Image by Kevin Krejci via Flickr The CloudCamp unconference returned to London for the 14th time this evening, regaling a capacity crowd in the Crypt below Clerkenwell’s St James Church with several hours of discussion and debate on the somewhat elusive topic of ‘Big Data’. Rather rough notes of the proceedings follow, after the break. [...]
Data Market Chat: Tyler Bell discusses Factual
Having received some $27 million in investment from big names like Andreessen Horowitz, LA-based Factual is one of the better funded examples of a ‘data marketplace.’ But Tyler Bell, the company’s Director of Product, is not sure that Factual necessarily fits most people’s perception of what a data marketplace should be. Focussed — for now — upon [...]
Data Market Chat: the podcasts are a-coming…
Image via Wikipedia To follow up on my Data Markets post earlier this week, I’m now scheduling a series of podcasts in which the conversation can — and will — delve an awful lot deeper. I’ve contacted representatives from most of the obvious data markets, some startups working in closely related areas, and several of the key [...]
Top Level Domain for data answers the wrong question
Image of Stephen Wolfram via Wikipedia British-born computer scientist Stephen Wolfram sees ongoing efforts to extend the Internet’s top-level domains (TLDs) beyond the familiar .com, .org, .uk etc as an opportunity to raise the profile of machine-readable data. In a blog post published yesterday, he argues that a new .data domain would increase “exposure of data on [...]
Nurturing the market for Data Markets
From Microsoft’s Azure Data Marketplace to the eponymous DataMarket, or InfoChimps, Factual, and Kasabi, there’s resurgent interest in the venerable business of collecting, curating, and commercialising data created by others. But despite investment and innovation, there isn’t yet the matching evidence for much use or — even — interest amongst prospective customers. In principle, at least, these data markets [...]
What is Really Holding the Cloud Back?
As I was listening to speakers at Structure Conference this year, something caught my attention and changed my thinking on cloud priorities. When IT decision makers are asked to rate the top challenges for cloud adoption, security always rises to the top. Security, security, security. At Structure, I heard something slightly different from Microsoft’s Satya [...]
June is San Francisco month
For real-world applications of Linked Data and the Semantic Web, the long-running Semantic Technology Conference is hard to beat. For getting a real handle on the Cloud Computing landscape, GigaOM‘s Structure Conference is also a leading light. Working across both areas as I do, these events tend to figure prominently in my calendar for the [...]
Strata Conference 2010: Building and Pricing the Data Marketplace
Pete Soderling of Stratus Security and Pete Forde of BuzzData led a session on Building and Pricing the Data Marketplace. Rough notes follow. What’s the Data supply business now? What’s a Data Marketplace? How do we get from here to there? Today, data is a $100Bn global market. But what is data, and why should [...]
Strata Conference 2011, Day 2 Keynotes
Day 2, and after yesterday’s tutorials the conference is really getting going. Here’s a stream of consciousness from the morning’s keynotes at this sold-out event. Conference chair Edd Dumbill is introducing things, talking about William Smith‘s nineteenth century map of geological strata in the British Isles, the rise of industrialisation, and the move to towns. [...]
Kaggle CEO Anthony Goldbloom reckons competitions ‘an amazing way to do data science’
Image via CrunchBase I had coffee this morning with Anthony Goldbloom, Australian CEO of Kaggle. The company describes itself as “a platform for data prediction competitions,” and seeks to solve big problems by hosting competitions that match data owners with a problem to (professional and amateur) data scientists with the time, creativity and skills to [...]
Curating a bit of the Cloud over at GigaOM Pro
Image via CrunchBase I’ve been a fan of Om Malik‘s boutique analyst site, GigaOM Pro, pretty much from the outset, and happily renew my subscription each year. The site covers a wide range of industry topics, and those Quarterly Wrap-ups are worth the fee all by themselves. I’ve written a few reports for them in [...]
The Semantic Link is open
At the end of last month, I wrote about the new Semantic Link podcast that I’m involved with for SemanticWeb.com. We recorded the first episode earlier this week and it’s now online, along with an introduction to the series from myself. Please do have a listen, and let me know what you think whilst I [...]
Is there a disconnect between Big Data and the Web of Data ?
Image via Wikipedia ‘Big Data‘ is currently capturing the imagination, attracting hype, investment and ambitious startups in almost equal measure. Kim and Eric Norlin’s excellent Defrag and Glue events have gained big-name company, with O’Reilly‘s Strata and GigaOM‘s Structure both set to arrive in the first quarter of 2011. Venture firms like IA Ventures have emerged, specifically [...]
