The Lack of Digital Diversity
October 27, 2015
Tech companies and their products run our lives. Companies like Apple, Google, and Microsoft have made it impossible to function in developed nations without them. They have taken over everything from communication to how we entertain ourselves. While these companies offer a variety of different products and services, they are more similar than different. The Verge explains that “Apple, Google, And Microsoft Are All Solving The Same Problem.”
Google, Apple, and Microsoft are offering similar services and products in their present options with zero to little diversity among them. For example, there are the personal assistants Cortana vs. Google Now vs. Siri, options for entertainment in the car like Apple CarPlay and Android Auto, and seamless accessibility across devices with Chrome browser, Continuity, and Continuum. There are more comparisons between the three tech giants and their business plans for the future, but it is not only them. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter are starting to resemble each other more too.
Technology companies have borrowed from each and have had healthy competition for years spurring more innovation, but these companies are operating on such similar principles that it is stifling creativity and startups are taking more risks:
“Without the dual pressures of both the consumer and the stock market, and without a historic reputation to uphold, small startups are now the best engine for generating truly new and groundbreaking innovations. Uber and Airbnb are fundamentally altering the economics of renting things, while hardware designers like Pebble and Oculus are inventing cool new technology that isn’t bound to any particular company’s ecosystem. Startups can see a broader range of problems to address because they don’t have to wear the same economic blinkers as established, monolithic companies.”
The article ends on positive thoughts, however. The present is beating along at a consistent pace, but in order to have more diversity companies should not be copying each other on every little item. Tech companies should borrow ideas from the future to create more original ideas.
Whitney Grace, October 27, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Braiding Big Data
October 26, 2015
An apt metaphor to explain big data is the act of braiding. Braiding requires person to take three or more locks of hair and alternating weaving them together. The end result is clean, pretty hairstyle that keeps a person’s hair in place and off the face. Big data is like braiding, because specially tailored software takes an unruly mess of data, including the combed and uncombed strands, and organizes them into a legible format. Perhaps this is why TopQuadrant named its popular big data software TopBraid, read more about its software upgrade in “TopQuadrant Launches TopBraid 5.0.”
TopBraid Suite is an enterprise Web-based solution set that simplifies the development and management of standards-based, model driven solutions focused on taxonomy, ontology, metadata management, reference data governance, and data virtualization. The newest upgrade for TopBraid builds on the current enterprise information management solutions and adds new options:
“ ‘It continues to be our goal to improve ways for users to harness the full potential of their data,’ said Irene Polikoff, CEO and co-founder of TopQuadrant. ‘This latest release of 5.0 includes an exciting new feature, AutoClassifier. While our TopBraid Enterprise Vocabulary Net (EVN) Tagger has let users manually tag content with concepts from their vocabularies for several years, AutoClassifier completely automates that process.’ “
The AutoClassifer makes it easier to add and edit tags before making them a part of the production tag set. Other new features are for TopBraid Enterprise Vocabulary Net (TopBraid EVN), TopBraid Reference Data Manager (RDM), TopBraid Insight, and the TopBraid platform, including improvements in internationalization and a new component for increasing system availability in enterprise environments, TopBraid DataCache.
TopBraid might be the solution an enterprise system needs to braid its data into style.
Whitney Grace, October 26, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
University Partners up with Leidos to Investigate How to Cut Costs in Healthcare with Big Data Usage
October 22, 2015
The article on News360 titled Gulu Gambhir: Leidos Virginia Tech to Research Big Data Usage for Healthcare Field explains the partnership based on researching the possible reduction in healthcare costs through big data. Obviously, healthcare costs in this country have gotten out of control, and perhaps that is more clear to students who grew up watching the cost of single pain pill grow larger and larger without regulation. The article doesn’t go into detail on how the application of big data from electronic health records might ease costs, but Leidos CTO Gulu Gambhir sounds optimistic.
“The company said Thursday the team will utilize technical data from healthcare providers to develop methods that address the sector’s challenges in terms of cost and the quality of care. Gulu Gambhir, chief technology officer and a senior vice president at Leidos, said the company entered the partnership to gain knowledge for its commercial and federal healthcare business.”
The partnership also affords excellent opportunities for Virginia Tech students to gain real-world, hands-on knowledge of data research, hopefully while innovating the healthcare industry. Leidos has supplied funding to the university’s Center for Business Intelligence and Analytics as well as a fellowship program for grad students studying advanced information systems related to healthcare research.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 22, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Genentech Joins the Google Enterprise Crew
October 22, 2015
Enterprise search offers customizable solutions for organizations to locate and organize their data. Most of the time organizations purchase a search solution is to become more efficient, comply with procedures for quality compliance, and or to further their business development. The latter usually revolves around sales operation planning, program research, customer service, contracts, and tech sales collateral.
Life sciences companies are but one of the few that can benefit from enterprise search solutions. Genentech recently deployed the Google Search Application to improve the three areas listed above. Perficient explains the benefits of enterprise search for a life science company in the video, “Why Life Sciences Leader Genentech Adopted Google Enterprise Search.”
“‘…we explore why life sciences leader Genentech executed Google Search Appliance. “No company is or should ever be static. You have to evolve,’ said CEO Ian Clark.”
Perficient helps companies like Genentech by customizing a search solution by evaluating the company and identifying the areas where it can be improved the most. They host workshops to evaluate where people in different areas must stop to search for information before returning to the task. From the workshops, Perficient can create a business prototype to take their existing business process and improve upon it. Perficient follows this procedure when it deploys enterprise search in new companies.
The video only explains a short version of the process Perficient deployed at Genentech to improve their business operations with search. A full webinar was posted on their Web site: “Google Search For Life Sciences Companies.”
Whitney Grace, October 22, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Algorithmic Bias and the Unintentional Discrimination in the Results
October 21, 2015
The article titled When Big Data Becomes Bad Data on Tech In America discusses the legal ramifications of relying on algorithms for companies. The “disparate impact” theory has been used in the courtroom for some time to ensure that discriminatory policies be struck down whether they were created with the intention to discriminate or not. Algorithmic bias occurs all the time, and according to the spirit of the law, it discriminates although unintentionally. The article states,
“It’s troubling enough when Flickr’s auto-tagging of online photos label pictures of black men as “animal” or “ape,” or when researchers determine that Google search results for black-sounding names are more likely to be accompanied by ads about criminal activity than search results for white-sounding names. But what about when big data is used to determine a person’s credit score, ability to get hired, or even the length of a prison sentence?”
The article also reminds us that data can often be a reflection of “historical or institutional discrimination.” The only thing that matters is whether the results are biased. This is where the question of human bias becomes irrelevant. There are legal scholars and researchers arguing on behalf of ethical machine learning design that roots out algorithmic bias. Stronger regulations and better oversight of the algorithms themselves might be the only way to prevent time in court.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Reclaiming Academic Publishing
October 21, 2015
Researchers and writers are at the mercy of academic publishers who control the venues to print their work, select the content of their work, and often control the funds behind their research. Even worse is that academic research is locked behind database walls that require a subscription well beyond the price range of a researcher not associated with a university or research institute. One researcher was fed up enough with academic publishers that he decided to return publishing and distributing work back to the common people, says Nature in “Leading Mathematician Launches arXiv ‘Overlay’ Journal.”
The new mathematics journal Discrete Analysis peer reviews and publishes papers free of charge on the preprint server arXiv. Timothy Gowers started the journal to avoid the commercial pressures that often distort scientific literature.
“ ‘Part of the motivation for starting the journal is, of course, to challenge existing models of academic publishing and to contribute in a small way to creating an alternative and much cheaper system,’ he explained in a 10 September blog post announcing the journal. ‘If you trust authors to do their own typesetting and copy-editing to a satisfactory standard, with the help of suggestions from referees, then the cost of running a mathematics journal can be at least two orders of magnitude lower than the cost incurred by traditional publishers.’ ”
Some funds are required to keep Discrete Analysis running, costs are ten dollars per submitted papers to pay for software that manages peer review and journal Web site and arXiv requires an additional ten dollars a month to keep running.
Gowers hopes to extend the journal model to other scientific fields and he believes it will work, especially for fields that only require text. The biggest problem is persuading other academics to adopt the model, but things move slowly in academia so it will probably be years before it becomes widespread.
Whitney Grace, October 21, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Vodafone Improves Search Management
October 20, 2015
More than 8,000 call center agents use Vodafone’s internal knowledge management platform dubbed AskVodafone to access client information. AskVodafone’s old system was not performing as well as it used, so the company decided to upgrade to Exorbyte. Motor Traffic runs down Vodafone’s upgrade process in the article, “Exorbyte Matchmaker Managed Over 2 million Searches A Month On The Platform AskVodafone.”
Vodafone wanted to shorten an agent’s processing time on phone calls. The solution required faceted search, keyword suggestions, more accurate search results, and information related to a caller’s issue. Exorbyte created an individualized solution for Vodafone and they were given the job:
“Through the experience with the Exorbyte solutions and, of course, the existing site license used in the company the contract has been awarded directly to Exorbyte. These Andreas Vieth, Product Manager Search: ‘Due to the long and successful collaboration with Exorbyte it was logical for us to continue with them in the modernization of AskVodafone portal and to develop synergies between these and the Exorbyte search on the Vodafone website.’”
The solution indexes over 25,000 Web sites and it has increased the center’s data quality and results relevancy. The end result is that over 8,000 calls and 50,000 searches performed on AskVodafone are resolved faster and with better information.
Whitney Grace, October 20, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Bye-Bye Enterprise Storage
October 19, 2015
Storage is a main component of the enterprise system. Silos store data and eventually the entire structure transforms into a legacy system, but BusinessWire says in “MapR Extends Support For SAS To Deliver Big Data Storage Independence” it is time to say good-bye to old enterprise storage. MapR is trying to make enterprise storage obsolete with its new extended service support for SAS, a provider of business software and services. The new partnership between allows advanced analytics with easy data preparation and integration in legacy systems, improved security, data compliance, and assurance of service level agreements.
The entire goal is to allow SAS and MapR clients to have better flexibility for advanced analytics within Hadoop as well as to help customers harvest the most usefulness our of their data.
Here is a rundown of the partnership between SAS and MapR:
“The collaboration makes available the full scope of technologies in the SAS portfolio, including SAS® LASR™ Analytic Server, SAS Visual Analytics, SAS High-Performance Analytics, and SAS Data Loader for Hadoop. Complete MapR integration delivers security and full POSIX compliance for use in “share everything architectures,” as well as enables SAS Visual Analytics to easily and securely access all data. With SAS Data Loader for Hadoop, users can prepare, cleanse and integrate data inside MapR for improved performance and then load that data in-memory into SAS LASR for visualization or analysis, all without writing code.”
Breaking away from legacy systems with old onsite storage is one of the new trends for enterprise systems. Legacy systems are clunky, don’t necessary comply with new technology, and have slow information retrieval. A new enterprise system using SAS and MapR’s software will last for some time, until the new trend buzzes through town.
Whitney Grace, October 19, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Sell Your Soul for a next to Nothing on the Dark Web
October 13, 2015
The article on ZDNet titled The Price of Your Identity in the Dark Web? No More Than a Dollar provides the startlingly cheap value of stolen data on the Dark Web. We have gotten used to hearing about data breaches at companies that we know and use (ahem, Ashley Madison), but what happens next? The article explains,
“Burrowing into the Dark Web — a small area of the Deep Web which is not accessible unless via the Tor Onion network — stolen data for sale is easy to find. Accounts belonging to US mobile operators can be purchased for as little as $14 each, while compromised eBay, PayPal, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon and Uber accounts are also for sale. PayPal and eBay accounts which have a few months or years of transaction history can be sold for up to $300 each.”
According to the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse the most common industries affected by data breaches are healthcare, government, retail, and education sectors. But it also stresses that a high number of data breaches are not caused by hackers or malicious persons at all. Instead, unintended disclosure is often the culprit. Dishearteningly, there is really no way to escape being a target besides living out some Ron Swanson off the grid fantasy scenario. Every organization that collects personal information is a potential breach target. It is up to the organizations to protect the information, and while many are making that a top priority, most have a long way to go.
Chelsea Kerwin, October 13, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
Savanna Offers Simplistic Search and Analytics
October 9, 2015
Thetus Corporation created Savanna, a collaborative all-source analysis platform based in a Web-browser. The company just released a brand new 4.5 upgrade to Savanna and it is guaranteed to keep users ahead of the competition with insightful information and business connections. Savanna 4.5 comes with some great improvements to search, upload and content management, and new ways to work with structured data. Virtual Strategy Magazine shares the details about the upgrade in “Savanna 4.5 Provides For Meaningful Analysis In Minutes.”
The most talked about feature in the upgrade is the new meaningful analysis:
“New avenues for structured data visualization in Savanna 4.5 allow analysts to uncover new connections between data, deepening their analysis and bringing new insights. The ongoing improvements to Savanna refine the analysis process by making it easy for analysts to search for and manage content, enhancing the overall Savanna experience. Licensed Savanna customers can expect new updates and enhancements on a regular basis.”
Also included in the upgrade is a more intuitive search layout with improved filters for content and source selection, more options to customize a timeline’s appearance, more options for structured data visualization, and integrated upload capabilities with faster upload and better classification.
Some of the new features are standard options in other analytics software, but Thetus has a good track for new business insights with its software.
Whitney Grace, October 9, 2015
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, publisher of the CyberOSINT monograph
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