Analytics

Internet companies are showing no signs of slowing down when it comes to innovation, specifically in the area of physical retail. Smartphones and tablets are the new darlings of e-commerce companies, and they now are being used to provide immersive and entertaining shopping experiences. Many of the...

The White House last week released a review of Big Data and privacy written by counselor John Podesta. The report stems from President Obama's January request to define for the administration what is new about the technologies in this space, how Big Data affects public policy, and how consumer priva...

The allure of Big Data stems from the ability to use advanced technology to manage and manipulate huge amounts of information. Not only that, Big Data offers the opportunity for unlocking information not previously available, and even not previously knowable. However, the software required to unde...

Google this week updated its terms of service with new language that more clearly spells out how it scans and analyzes user content, such as emails, to match it with targeted ads. "Our automated systems analyze your content (including emails) to provide you personally relevant product features, such...

There you are, strolling down the coffee and tea aisle at the supermarket when you get an alert on your smartphone that you can get extra points in the store's reward program if you purchase a certain brand of coffee. Are you annoyed -- or perhaps really vexed -- that you have been tracked with such...

Cloud computing has ushered in an emphasis on service-oriented, on-demand IT in the federal market. The shift from acquiring hard assets, such as computers, servers and even mobile devices, as well as software packages installed on those assets, has been gradual. However, the process has reached a p...

IBM on Thursday launched a set of software and consulting services to help fight fraud and financial crime. The so-called smarter counterfraud initiative draws from more than 500 fraud consulting experts, 290 fraud-related research patents, and the $24 billion IBM has invested in its Big Data and an...

During the heyday of the dot-com boom, then-HP CEO Carly Fiorina espoused a notion called "good enough" computing. Despite significant performance differences between x86 servers and Unix and other enterprise-class systems, the dramatically lower cost of x86-based products would cause organizations ...

News that Google is purchasing artificial intelligence company DeepMind for between $500 million and $650 million surfaced Monday. Google spokesperson Tim Drinan confirmed the deal but declined to provide further details. The first commercial applications of DeepMind, which was founded in 2011, are ...

Twitter has launched analytics for Twitter Cards to help users determine how well their media-rich tweets are performing on the network. Twitter Cards allow developers, brands and publishers to add photos, videos, deep links within their apps, content previews, and other rich media assets to their t...

Pardon the pun, but there's nothing elementary about IBM's Watson Business Unit. IBM's Watson initiative takes cognitive computing to the head of the class. IBM last week announced it was committing $1 billion and 2,000 employees -- as well as its considerable research and development talents and ma...

For IT industry analysts, autumn is a migratory time filled with trips to vendor conferences and summits. While their forms and locations tend to differ, most vendors use the time to delineate how their strategies, solutions and sales have progressed during the past calendar year and to discuss wher...

Innovation often comes slowly to the U.S. government. It has taken several years, for example, for federal agencies to get used to cloud technology -- and it will likely be several more before that technology is fully embraced at the federal level. That pace also seems to be the case for the federal...

The Obama administration's support of Big Data technology for more efficient and effective government operations was highlighted at a recent White House sponsored conference that featured presentations on more than 30 successful public and private sector projects. "Realizing the enormous potential o...

For e-commerce companies, the time has finally arrived. After months of extensive preparations, the holidays are here and the top business priority is to drive conversions. Many of these companies have applied valuable lessons from 2012 and previous years by implementing basic Web performance-optimi...