So long, Flickr Pro.

I looked at the new Flickr site and, while I commend the Yahoo engineers for bringing it into 2013 to resemble Pinterest, MySpace, and other photo-rich sites, a lot of the simplicity I used to take for granted has been stolen away from me. I wasn't alone.[read more]

Big Data changes

When determining your criteria for price quoting, having the right data is essential. Market trends, customer profiles, and the effectiveness of certain marketing strategies are all pieces of information that you will need to set your prices in a way that maximizes your profits while still increasing your customer base.[read more]

Data processing / shutterstock

HStreaming is an analytics platform build on top of Hadoop and MapReduce. It allows analyses on unstructured and structured data in real-time, adding a significant improvement to Hadoop and MapReduce, as these tools are built for batch-processing.[read more]

20 Big Data resources / shutterstock

I'm very proud to have been selected today for Big Data Republic's list of the Top 20 Big Data Twitter accounts. With such Big Data practitioners, analysts and thought leaders like Kirk Borne, Hilary Mason, Pete Skomoroch, Mike Olson and Doug Henshchen on the list, I'm humbled to be listed at #3.[read more]

Internet of Everything

With smartphones, broadband, tablets, embedded sensors, and more bathing the world in Internet connectivity, we are watching the retail industry fell giants and create new ones in weeks and months instead of years. Here's a slideshare on how the Internet of Everything is changing retail.[read more]

Web traffic

If you are doing online marketing and using Salesforce, chances are there is some important information missing from your Salesforce organization. What about understanding your web site traffic, visitors, etc. directly inside Salesforce? Here are six things that you might be missing out on.[read more]

Big Data magic / DisneyParks blogs

Recently, Walt Disney announced the introduction of the wireless-tracking wristband ‘MagicBand’ to Walt Disney World. They aim to make the visit to the Walt Disney World in Orlando a more magical experience while in return record the complete data trail of the visitors.[read more]

KPI / shutterstock

The healthcare industry has a very large number of complex KPI. From research to patient care to operations and finance, KPIs and their management (metadata management, master data management) are critical to overall organizational success.[read more]

Decision management tool / shutterstock

Decision Optimizer is one of FICO’s Decision Management Tools and is designed to address some specific challenges in customer decisioning, particularly that there are often competing objectives and very large numbers of customers (and thus customer decisions) involved.[read more]

customer service / shutterstock

At its recent user conference, Interactions 2013, Interactive Intelligence (Nasdqaq: ININ) showcased its extensive product portfolio and its ambitious plans to improve the products both technically and functionally. To keep up with developments, I divide contact center systems and applications into five groups.[read more]

What's your Big Data strategy? / shutterstock

Earlier we discussed that big data should be a Strategy matter instead of an IT matter. Let’s dive a bit deeper into the reasoning behind this and find out who within the organization should be the sponsor for a big data strategy. It would be wise to have one high up in the organization.[read more]

Big Data milestones / shutterstock

Most IT observers prefer to talk about what’s coming, not what’s happened. But to make educated guesses about the future of the IT industry, it helps to understand its past. Here are three events that marked a quantitative and qualitative change in the growth trajectory of what we now call big data.[read more]

data management / shutterstock

Frequently, folks confuse the function and purpose of Master Data Management with Data Warehousing. I suspect the core of the problem is that when folks hear about the idea of “reference data” or a “golden record”, they have this mental picture of a single platform containing all of the data.[read more]

data visualization

Fifteen years ago, the presentation of data typically fell under the purview of analysts and IT professionals. Quarterly or annual meetings entailed rolling data up into now quaint diagrams, graphs, and charts. Today, data is everywhere. We have entered the era of Big Data and many things are changing.[read more]

Rick Smolen

SAPPHIRE NOW in Orlando was packed with examples of how Big Data affects all our lives. SAP Executive Steve Lucas was the host of an Intel-sponsored Big Data special interest group meeting at the conference; Rick Smolen, a former Time Life journalist, also spoke at the event.[read more]

database / shutterstock

Your messaging needs to engage. You need to make sure that you are communicating with relevance. Your marketing database is what will help you create this relevance. Here are seven key considerations to rejuvenate your marketing database.[read more]