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5 reasons Google+ failed: One power user’s observations

Editor’s Note: The following is an Op-Ed post originally published by Thomas Hawk on Facebook.com, republished here with permission. Mashable has the top story out on Techmeme right now and it’s about Google+. It paints a pretty negative picture of Google+ as a failure of epic proportions for Google. I joined Google+ on the very first day it ...

Cloud data protection: Don’t assume you’re covered

It’s not uncommon any longer to see a company’s entire IT portfolio comprised of cloud apps. But is enterprise data safe in the cloud? The answer is yes, but with qualifiers. Vendors invest major portions of their budgets in security, but backup and disaster recovery is the white elephant that few vendors want to discuss, ...

Search stole the customer experience; AI is your chance to get it back

When search emerged as the dominate gateway to Web interaction at the turn of the century, it likewise transformed customer service, and not necessarily in a good way. It gave rise to the rapid acceleration of expectations and acceptance of self-help, with customers seeking answers to their problems on the Web, but it also took ...

Understand Hadoop’s limitations in order to realize its full value

A major issue facing Hadoop early adopters is… now what? While all the excitement about Hadoop is well justified, many people don’t fully understand its limitations – such as the difficulty of connecting and linking data across the cluster – and thus don’t use Hadoop to its fullest potential. you Early Hadoop adopters are starting ...

Why graph databases are perfect for the Internet of Things

Goldman Sachs recently posited that the Internet of Things, the so-called “Third Wave of the Internet,” will “transform the way we live and work” as it opens up “a host of new opportunities and challenges for companies, governments and consumers.” Meanwhile, Morgan Stanley recently predicted that within the next five years, some 75 billion connected devices ...

Designing data stores for the Internet of Things

The Internet of Things (IoT) has spurred a new world of connected devices. The most substantial impact of the data produced by this sea of connected devices will be the need to drive difference-making decisions for people and businesses. Computer systems will be pressured to analyze this data quickly effectively for timely decisions. “Perhaps the ...

It’s put-up-or-shut-up time for Big Data in retail

Although they haven’t necessarily figured out what to do with the data they have or think they need, retailers are moving forward with Big Data. “We are amassing massive amounts of data,” said Rob Schmults , vice president of e-commerce at Talbots, Inc. “With all the devices and the ways that people interact with us, sometimes ...

Antiquated technology holds back mobile shopping’s potential

Online merchants racked up $53.3 billion in sales during the 2014 holidays, an increase of 15 percent over the 2013, according to the Mobile Holiday Shopping Report Card. However, many e-commerce sites are having trouble handling this growth. Faced with the need to accommodate all kinds of desktop and mobile devices, they’re slowing down under higher ...

2014 connected home trends and what to expect in 2015

2014 has been a year of incredible innovation for the connected home. With lower hardware prices, increased bandwidth availability, abundance of cloud capacity, incredible sensor miniaturization, advances in wireless standards and an abundance of mobile devices and interfaces, the foundation is being laid for the Jetsons-style vision of the home. Here are the trends we’ve ...

How Software-Defined Access Networks bring service agility to operators

Software-defined networking (SDN) is generating big interest as a technology that makes networks programmable and less expensive to build and operate. SDN is achieved by separating the control and the data-forwarding functions of network equipment, and centralizing the control functions of multiple network elements. More generally, SDN is a framework for the automatic and dynamic ...