CircleCount helps you better understand Google+

2013-05-23 14:26:27 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 1 +1s)

New open source catalog and list of APIs on Data.gov

I invite you to visit Data.gov to see the new catalog for browsing U.S. open data: http://catalog.data.gov We have combined raw and geospatial data from many sources across the U.S. and presented it through an open source tool, CKAN.

In connection with the U.S. Digital Strategy we have also created a new list of government APIs: http://www.data.gov/developers/page/developer-resources

Find out more at: http://www.data.gov/blog/datagov-launches-new-catalog-and-apis

2013-05-22 17:14:38 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

+Roger Magoulas, +Jim Stogdill and I recorded this podcast yesterday, about the rise of in-memory databases.

#bigdata   #analytics  

2013-05-22 17:12:13 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

Foster Provost and Tom Fawcett's data science for business book will be published soon. In the meantime, you can pre-order it on Amazon http://www.amazon.com/Data-Science-Business-data-analytic-thinking/dp/1449361323

#datascience  

2013-05-22 17:01:09 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

It's been a while since I was a W3C-watcher, but change seems afoot.

2013-05-22 13:21:31 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

Strata London Call for Speakers ends next week - Apply by 28 May to present your best big data stories #bigdata #datascience  

2013-05-21 17:37:30 (4 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

Every Single GDL @ I/O Segment from I/O 2013, In One Place
#gdl   #io13   #developers   #android   #chrome   #drive   #ingress   #search   #maps   #wallet   #cloud   #dart   #gmail  

Last week was a whirlwind, starting with the incredible keynote, followed by three full days of sessions from Moscone Center in San Francisco. Between sessions throughout the first two days of the event, we delivered exclusive content and interviews on GDL @ I/O, including excellent guests like +Bradley Horowitz, +Megan Smith, +John Hanke, +Hugo Barra, +Baris Gultekin and more.

GDL @ I/O also showcased content from a wide array of products, including +Android, +Google Chrome, +Project Glass, +Google Drive, +YouTube, +Google Maps, +Google Cloud Platform +Google Wallet and more. 

If you’re like me, you know there’s good content in here youdidn’t get the chan... more »

2013-05-21 04:08:12 (11 comments, 4 reshares, 4 +1s)

The new locations feature in the Google+ app lets you select a circle to share your location with. I've been selective with mine, but a few people like +Leo Laporte are sharing more openly.

It's a bit confusing on Android right now as the maps app still includes Latitude and checkins.

2013-05-21 03:44:00 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Here's why Vic couldn't sleep last night!  A fresh new Google+ Android build that incorporates all of last week's goodness... and more.   Enjoy.

#googleplusupdate

edit 9:52am PST

For the sake of clarity - the new Android app will install on modern versions of Android (Froyo and above) with the advanced image editing features available on Ice Cream Sandwich and above.  Rollout in progress...

2013-05-21 03:12:11 (4 comments, 2 reshares, 8 +1s)

I've found one place where Apple still beats Google. The quality of the illustration for the PILE OF POO emoji. Well, hello there, little fella!

2013-05-20 21:11:02 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Via Reddit, I discovered this blog on programming the #Arduino with #Ada. Quite the trip down memory lane—I, and many others who studied at the University of York in the 1990s, had much of our software engineering instruction using Ada.

2013-05-20 02:28:31 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

"I almost had to mortgage my house to get the parts for Google I/O", says +Kipp Bradford of the +Data Sensing Lab, interviewed live with +Alasdair Allan on the Meet the Makers stage at Maker Faire today.

2013-05-19 18:46:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Maker Fair has three livestreams! Tune in if you can't be there.

2013-05-19 18:41:55 (6 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Well, this is gutsy. On the face of it, it propels Y! into the same universe as Facebook, Twitter and Google, with a social community of content generators.

More analysis is also available from +Mathew Ingram here: http://gigaom.com/2013/05/18/why-yahoo-acquiring-tumblr-for-1-billion-makes-a-certain-horrible-kind-of-sense/

The main impact on me is thinking that I probably need to find another home for my content that's currently on Tumblr. I really don't like Blogger templates, so it's likely time to go back to a self-hosted blog.

2013-05-19 18:21:42 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

An epic tale of the +Data Sensing Lab, from +Alasdair Allan. It all started so innocently as a conversation at OSCON last year…

2013-05-19 18:11:57 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 4 +1s)

Adorable.

2013-05-19 17:49:03 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

A summary of the cloud and data announcements from last week at Google #io13  — making the data store available outside of AppEngine is significant.

2013-05-19 17:39:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Nice start to an Ashes summer! #cricket  

2013-05-19 17:13:04 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Had fun writing this new #strataconf post on GraphLab, GraphX, & more: Improving options for unlocking your graph data http://goo.gl/NH5G7

2013-05-19 16:57:49 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 1 +1s)

Both the shield hardware and +Arduino software to manage it, will all be open sourced. However if you don't want to wait, or you're not comfortable soldering SMD components. The hardware we deployed at +Google I/O as part of the +Data Sensing Lab is now available to pre-order at http://datasensinglab.com/dslstore/.

2013-05-19 15:51:52 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 5 +1s)

Ted Nelson, the American academic who in 1963 coined the term hypertext, and is therefore viewed as one of the World Wide Web’s founding fathers, just released a 12-minute video with a big reveal at the end...

READ: http://bit.ly/10e5wQU by +Christopher Mims 

2013-05-19 05:01:51 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 9 +1s)

+Kenneth Cukier keynoting on the topic of big data at The Next Web, Europe.

2013-05-19 05:08:32 (2 comments, 4 reshares, 13 +1s)

Feeling a bit better about #hangouts now…

I like the "Snooze notifications" feature. This actually makes a bit more sense than managing my "available/away" status. 

The stored history is great, mirrored over every machine, and being able to jump into and drop out of a video call again is handy (I upgraded a text chat to screen sharing in a Hangout to help solve a problem).

I created an image from inside the hangout (screen snap) and that appeared in a gallery attached to the hangout in the G+ stream. I was impressed by that: it suggests that hangouts could be trusted for archived collaboration.

2013-05-18 20:46:49 (5 comments, 1 reshares, 12 +1s)

Thanks for the terabyte, Google!

I'm not sure if many Google I/O attendees realized this, but the Pixel comes with a terabyte of Google Drive storage for 3 years. I activated mime yesterday. Living with this terabyte could be a game changer. Let's see what I can fit there!

2013-05-18 20:23:05 (12 comments, 0 reshares, 8 +1s)

Removing presence indicators from the mobile version of #hangouts is a real problem. I'm not sure how this was omitted. Maybe all Googlers are online all the time?

It wouldn't be as annoying a regression if I could use in parallel with Google Talk. Being a good user, I've used the send feedback function to report this...

2013-05-18 15:44:41 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 7 +1s)

I love this photo from Education Day at Maker Faire.   We gave kids copies of Make Magazine in their "goodie" bag.  Look at them interacting.    (My devious plan to infect the next generation with a maker gene!)

2013-05-18 06:47:47 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

Really great article about the +Data Sensing Lab project at Google I/O in the Economist Babbage Blog.

2013-05-18 01:07:37 (2 comments, 1 reshares, 5 +1s)

What was missing from I/O...

Was a great show, but there were a couple of things that on reflection I noticed missing.

* I saw little on Google Apps: as an increasing user of the apps for business side of Google, it was a shame not to see or hear more about them at I/O. I hope this is a timing issue, not a confidence one.

* the 3rd party partners in the Sandboxes didn't seem to shine as much for me as my last visit (2011). They were really outshone by Google's own stuff.

2013-05-18 00:37:34 (18 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Shedding a small tear for the loss of "/me" on Hangouts. Also, bold, italic are ctrl-B, ctrl-I now, though asterisks and underscores are still the way to get this formatting in the main G+ posts.

2013-05-17 23:44:26 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Speaker for the crazy

Spurred by thoughts from +Larry Page's keynote at Google I/O, this is my first contribution to Medium. Every forum has a tone, and for me, Medium's invites more personal writing.

This small essay is about how I figured out I wasn't a genius, but can help bring their ideas to others.

2013-05-17 21:02:06 (0 comments, 2 reshares, 1 +1s)

Great overview of open licensing in academic publication, from Nature

2013-05-17 17:41:22 (0 comments, 4 reshares, 2 +1s)

Open data as having the same potential as GPS. Great analogy. via +Kenneth Cukier 

2013-05-17 16:45:45 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 0 +1s)

These robot bartenders felt like something from a 90s sci-fi film. They were just a little clumsy, and there's something sinister about seeing such obvious power being used for a task usually associated more with finesse than strength.

2013-05-17 15:02:46 (15 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

So, what's the right thing to say "hey, hangout me?"..."hang me out?"

2013-05-17 04:53:06 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Interested in App Engine for PHP?  The tech lead +Stuart Langley and PM +Andrew Jessup will be giving a live-streamed talk today at 4:25pm PDT today.

http://goo.gl/nESQW

2013-05-17 04:37:08 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 1 +1s)

I love this sculpture. Field Trip decided to show me it as I drove home tonight.

"Cyclisk - Santa Rosa Monument" discovered via Field Trip App. http://fieldtripper.com/c/uG2HfJhVNZc/

2013-05-17 04:35:44 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 0 +1s)

Added photos to Google I/O 2013.

2013-05-17 03:56:47 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 10 +1s)

Another I/O over for me, though there are still more sessions tomorrow.

I've been really impressed at the maturing of the Google cloud platform, and especially proud of everything the +Data Sensing Lab achieved with amazing work from Googlers, led by +Michael Manoochehri

Creating the lab has been an amazing feat of not just tech ability, but management, wrangling and sheer bloody mindedness. Much credit should also go to +Julie Steele who managed so much on the lab side.

The lab has captured the imagination of everybody here: seeing data go from hardware into the cloud and then analysis makes code seem so much more real.

2013-05-17 00:42:10 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 4 +1s)

Kim Cameron shows the location of the sensor motes at I/O.

2013-05-16 15:04:05 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 3 +1s)

During today's #io13  talk we announced that Android API version 18 (which will be landing in a few short months) will have developer APIs for Bluetooth Low Energy and AVRCP 1.3. 

The video of the talk should be posted soon, so you can see a preview of the APIs we shared. 

https://developers.google.com/events/io/sessions/326240948

2013-05-16 06:50:20 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

Feels weird to be at a conference and actually go home for the night: suspends the feeling of otherness. And believe me, at the #io13  after-hours party tonight there was a lot of "other"!

Happy to be heading back tomorrow, and still parsing today's happenings

2013-05-14 22:25:52 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 3 +1s)

Apple wants bank statements and passport photos from this UK customer to vouch for purchase... yet happily processed an $800 transaction in Boston, MA, earlier this week when somebody stole my credit card number. Go figure.

2013-05-14 21:59:28 (1 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

Love this story of Brosie the Riveter. Do read it in full. Hilarious, and a great outcome. 

2013-05-14 17:06:55 (0 comments, 0 reshares, 2 +1s)

Nominations for O'Reilly Open Source Awards close May 16 http://ow.ly/ktugP

2013-05-14 17:06:12 (7 comments, 1 reshares, 2 +1s)

A construction company has essentially destroyed one of Belize's largest Mayan pyramids with diggers and bulldozers to extract crushed rock for a road-building project, authorities have announced.

The head of the Belize Institute of Archaeology, Jaime Awe, said on Tuesday that the destruction at the Nohmul complex in northern Belize was detected late last week. The ceremonial centre dates back at least 2,300 years and is the most important site in northern Belize, near the border with Mexico.

http://gu.com/p/3fzky

Photograph: Jaime Awe/AP

2013-05-14 16:25:32 (1 comments, 7 reshares, 8 +1s)

Great article from +Kate Crawford on overreaching claims for big data. Glad to say that neither I nor my co-chairs for Strata +Alistair Croll and +Kaitlin Thaney espouse these myths. We try to deliver a view that combines the promise with the caveats.

Of course, it's human nature to want a silver bullet, and the media machine falls over itself to try and give us one.

2013-05-14 05:30:34 (1 comments, 0 reshares, 5 +1s)

The one I/O hope I'm entertaining

Really hoping we find out this week that Android's getting Bluetooth 4.0 low energy support... then my Galaxy Nexus can play with the Fitbit Flex. (Plus whatever crazy schemes +Alasdair Allan cooks up next.)

Yeah, I know, #firstwordproblem^2.

2013-05-13 21:05:59 (3 comments, 1 reshares, 6 +1s)

Best thing about Monday: the tip I learned from +Matt Cutts that you can re-open a closed Chrome tab with ctrl-shift-T.

Signed, a compulsive ctrl-W-er.

2013-05-13 21:01:35 (2 comments, 0 reshares, 7 +1s)

Great Vonnegut quote via +Matt Jones, I'll paste it here in full, about revolutions:

“The team must consist of three sorts of specialists, he says. Otherwise the revolution, whether in politics or the arts or the sciences or whatever, is sure to fail.

The rarest of these specialists, he says, is an authentic genius – a person capable of having seemingly good ideas not in in general circulation.

“A genius working alone,” he says, “is invariably ignored as a lunatic.”

The second sort of specialist is a lot easier to find; a highly intelligent citizen in good standing in his or her community, who understands and admires the fresh ideas of the genius, and who testifies that the genius is far from mad.

“A person like this working alone,” says Slazinger, “can only yearn loud for changes, but fail to say what their shaped should be.”
The third s... more »

2013-05-13 20:26:21 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 4 +1s)

POPULAR KID: Look at me! Big data is the hotness!
HADOOP: My data’s bigger than yours!
SCIPY: Size isn’t everything, Hadoop! The bigger they come, the harder they fall. And aren’t you named after a toy elephant?
R: Backward sentences mine be, but great power contained large brain.
EVERYONE: Huh?
SQL: Oh, so you all want to be friends again now, eh?!
POPULAR KID: Yeah, what SQL said! Nobody really needs big data; it’s all about small data, dummy.

2013-05-13 19:01:37 (0 comments, 1 reshares, 8 +1s)

Proud papa here! Great to see the +Data Sensing Lab spread from Strata and make a big splash at Google I/O. Should also give a great shout out to O'Reilly authors & editors +Alasdair Allan +Julie Steele +Rob Faludi and +Kipp Bradford as well as the Googlers mentioned in Michael's post.

As anyone who does anything with events and technology knows, this is seriously ninja stuff. If you think the demo gods taunt those who code live on stage, imagine deploying this setup! Good luck to everybody involved this week.