iTunes, Outer Joins and the Ubiquity of Data

Feb 14, 2013 by Phil Simon

Although I have fancied myself an Apple guy over the last two years, two applications kept one of my toes in the PC pool: my accounting application and my iTunes library. I’m happy to say that that’s no longer the case: I recently made the final jump from the PC to the Mac. In this post, I’ll explain the data ramifications of the move.

What Does the Future of Big Data Have in Store?

Dec 20, 2012 by Phil Simon

Where do we store all of this data?

It’s a question that many CIOs are asking themselves these days. Relational databases just aren’t built to store petabytes of unstructured data. Today, the usual suspects include Hadoop and columnar, NoSQL and NewSQL databases. Yes, data storage costs have plummeted over the last fifteen years, but do we really need to store historical information?

Self-Quantification

Aug 16, 2012 by Phil Simon

A frequent topic of this blog these days is data tracking. Companies like Amazon, Apple, Facebook,  Google, and others are able to extensively log what we’re doing online so they can predict what we will do (or, perhaps more accurately, what we might buy.)

The Apple Data Dichotomy

Jul 26, 2012 by Phil Simon

In The Age of the Platform, I write about how Steve Jobs in 2007 changed the legal name of his iconic company from Apple Computer to Apple. Sure, Apple is just plain cleaner than Apple Computer but there was something else, something more profound going on–and Jobs damn well knew it. Apple was no longer just a “computer” company. In fact, it had become so much more.

On Apple and Customer Data

Dec 01, 2011 by Phil Simon

Data doesn’t really come to mind first when considering the historic legacy of Steve Jobs and Apple. Instead, people think of the following questions:

• Was Jobs gifted at recognizing design?
• Did he redefine industries?
• Did he rankle more than a few people both inside and outside of Apple?

The Gang of Four and the Data Chasm

Nov 10, 2011 by Phil Simon

Mashable recently ran a piece entitled “Why No One Company Will Ever Monopolize the Internet.” In it, Jonathan Rick writes:

The pace and power of web-fueled innovation is stunning. One day we’re swearing by Outlook, the next we can’t live without Gmail. These changes exemplify the beauty of the Internet – the possibility that greener pastures are but a click away.

Putting Data in the Middle

Nov 09, 2011 by Jill Dyché

In which Jill puts data in the center of the flywheel. And she’s in good company.

A 1982 photo of Microsoft founders Bill Gates and Paul Allen shows the young entrepreneurs pausing from a heavy-duty design session to smile for a reporter’s camera. Back then Microsoft was on the cusp of becoming a household name – the company announced a fresh logo design and hired a new president – but yachts had not yet been purchased, nor had foundations been launched. Call it the DOS Age of Microsoft, to be followed much later by the Bing Dynasty.