
Nara: Emulating the Brain to Make Smart Recommendations
We’ve all had that moment with online shopping where a website has made a comically poor recommendation. I’ve bought books on Amazon and immediately received emails recommending mens’ hiking wear. But a Cambridge, Massachusetts startup known as Nara are aiming to change all that. They’ve just released a SaaS solution

These Maps Show How Big Data Can Fight Climate Change
Following on from yesterday’s report on how Microsoft and Amazon are giving cloud computing grants to the data science eco-warriors of the future, another Climate Data Initiative-affiliated initiative. Yesterday saw the launch of the latest version of he Los Angeles Solar & Efficiency Report (LASER), a mapping tool fuelled by data

Red Hat Launches ARM Partner Early Access Program for Partner Ecosystem
Press Release: Red Hat, Inc., the world’s leading provider of open source solutions, today announced the launch of the Red Hat ARM Partner Early Access Program to enhance partner collaboration and facilitate partner-initiated system designs based on the 64-bit capable ARMv8-A architecture that include Red Hat software. The program will

OkCupid’s User Experiment: A Call-to-Arms for Data Transparency?
Back in June, it seemed like the whole of the internet had taken to their keyboards to write furious responses to the Facebook mood manipulation story. The reaction to the study was so profound, that Senator Mark Warner asked the FTC to intervene and investigate. Now, only a few weeks

Microsoft and Amazon Fighting Climate Change with Open Data and Cloud Computing
Open data is becoming an increasingly powerful tool; especially when it has cloud resources and analytics tools from industry leaders to back it up. Recent years have seen complex datasets on social media emotion expression, genomics, and even human history in its entirety released to the public. In light of

Twitter Jumps on Image Recognition Bandwagon, Acquires Madbits
The past few years have seen a flurry of computer vision acquisitions by industry-leading websites- Google got DNNResearch, Pinterest acquired Visual Graph, while Yahoo acquired not one but two image recognition startups- IQ Engines and LookFlow. Now, Twitter has entered the fold, announcing the acquisition of deep learning startup Madbits.

MapR Technologies Among First to Receive Big Data Competency Status by Amazon Web Services
Press Release: MapR Technologies, Inc., provider of the top-ranked distribution for Apache™ Hadoop®, today announced that it is one of the first to receive Big Data Competency status from Amazon Web Services (AWS). Now part of the new AWS Partner Network (APN) Competency Program, AWS has named MapR as a

Doing Analytics the Right Way with Actian’s Big Data 2.0 Clear Path Program
Actian Corporation have just unveiled their Big Data 2.0 Clear Path Program, designed to help jump-start analytics projects and aid them down the road to production. Designed in conjunction with Actian’s Centre for Excellence, the program provides a complete analytics roadmap, complete with blueprints, pre-built workflows and workshops to help companies

The San Francisco 49ers Harness Big Data to Boost Fan Engagement
The San Francisco 49ers recently opened their new $1.2 billion Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, which can seat 68,500 fans. They’ve also devised a novel way of finding out more about who exactly is filling those seats- a fan engagement programme called the Faithful 49, which offers fans exclusive incentives

Fujitsu and NCKU Partner to Nurture Skills and Build Analytics Platform
In Taiwan, the National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) and Fujitsu have signed a Memorandum of Understanding, that will see the two organisations building a cloud-based analytics platform and nurture talent in computational sciences. The MOU was signed by NCKU’s President, Dr. Hwung-Hweng Hwung and CEO of Futjitsu Taiwan Ikegami Ichirou,