Mike Wheatley
Latest from Mike Wheatley
Big Money Data: Is It Really Worth It?
In an increasingly digital world, pretty much everything we do online creates an electronic record–each time we buy something, every time we add a friend or like something on Facebook, even when we schedule a visit to the doctor’s clinic–this data is being collected by someone. Organizations today are amassing thousands of terabytes of information ...
Origins of Malware Revealed
Malware has a nasty habit of popping up just about everywhere we dare to tread on the World Wide Web. In fact, it’s pretty much a given that so long as you have a computer and an internet connection, there will be worms, Trojans and viruses attempting to worm their way inside your computer. But ...
Pro-Assad Hackers Make Reuters Look Stupid
Oh dear. It seems that Reuters have lots to learn about security if they’re going to be taken seriously in future… The news agency has been left reeling after being hacked not once, but twice in the space of 24 hours, apparently by pro-Bashar Assad propagandists who posted a number of fake stories in support ...
Four Billion Hours of YouTube Viewed Each Month
We all know that YouTube is pretty popular these days, but do you have any idea just how popular it is? That’s hard to quantify of course, but let’s just say that if the latest estimation of over four billion hours of YouTube videos being watched each and every month is at all accurate, it ...
New Digg Doesn’t Have a Clue
Anyone checked out Digg.com lately? If you have, you may have noticed that the social news bookmarking website has had its guts ripped out as part of a total revamp following its takeover by New York-based Betaworks. Digg’s new owners can be commended for a couple of things. Having decided to revert to start-up mode ...
FBI Sentinel System Finally Goes Live, 6 Years and $451M Later
Finally, the FBI is getting with the times. It might be $26 million over budget and have arrived 30 months later the planned, but at long last the Sentinel case management system is up and running. Sentinel is a digital records storage system has been designed to replace paper files. The system, which uses a ...
Craigslist Puts Its Foot Down With “Exclusive” Terms
If you want to advertise something for sale on craigslist, you’re now going to have to make sure you don’t post it anywhere else. That only applies of course, if you give damn about the rules. Apparently, the online classifieds website has just added a new user agreement, which states that any listing posted on ...
Twitter Has 500 Million Users, But Most Are Worthless
Are there really 500 million users on Twitter, as the analyst group Semiocast claims? One of the problems of measuring usage on any social media site is that the frequency with which users “use” various different networks tends to fluctuate quite a bit from one person to the next. Add to that, we have the ...
80% of Facebook Ad Clicks Coming from Bots?
Businesses that want to advertise on Facebook had better think twice before getting their wallets out, following claims that as many as 80% of clicks on Facebook ads are coming from bots instead of humans. Limited Run, a start-up that offers a sales platform for musicians and record labels, says that it’s halting its Facebook ...
Census Bureau Unveils Public API For Apps Developers
The US Census Bureau has just made its wealth of demographic, socio-economic and housing data more accessible than ever before, with the launch of its first public API. Launched last Thursday, the API will surely lead to endless possibilities for developers of mobile and web applications. Developers will be able to access two Census Bureau ...