Year: 2013

• How Jeff Bezos crushed Diaper.com so Amazon could buy it (link)
• The Cloudera Model – Mike Olson (link)
• Counter point to above post: Build to Last – MapR’s business model (link)
• Does Open Source raise spell end of traditional SW (link)
• GE’s Jeff Immelt – Analytics Lessons Learned (link)
• Big Data to help you get in shape (link)
• Company of the week: DWave Systems – pioneer in quantum computing (link). Fascinating read about their technology here.
  • One day in future we  all will be benefitting from quantum computers in one form or other. Good to learn about the advancements being made in this field. Though there are “research” projects in the works, DWave is the first commercial attempt (that I know of) to bring quantum computing to the market. Take note Intel!.

Early Week Reading – Oct 6th, 2013

• Multi-Region DynamoDB (link)
• Software design defect cripples Health care website (link)
• Twitter does make money in data business – no news here! but interesting read(link)
• Interesting bio: Tracy Hall, who invented Synthetic Diamond (link). He was awarded $10 US savings bond by his employer GE, and GE went on to make billions using the materials created by this invention.
• Instant classic football – Broncos vs Cowboys (link)
  • Great game of football. Was a treat to watch, points raining down from both sides in the intense battle to win. Final 100 seconds literally changed the game.
• Alternative use for social media – Gangwars fueled by Social Media (link)
• Dark Valley of Hadoop or rather generally Big Data – good read (link)
• Innovation is not just about new products (link)

Amazon is going to release set-top-box for the holidays (link).

One more set top box from yet another vendor? Don’t we have enough already with Roku, AppleTV, Google ChromeCast and various devices from small players? I would like to see someone release a full-fledged TV DVR plus streaming device like SageTV(other than Tivo). I’ve been using SageTV and its Media Extender STP-HD300 for the last three years with no issues and loving it. I’ve spent zero dollar with Comcast or Dish since then.

SageTV uses desktop PC as the media server to control HD HomeRun, over-the-air TV tuner, using regular ethernet cables and streams live/recorded TV to the HD300 box sitting next to the TV/Home theater system. I don’t see a good alternative to this powerful system right now, and I’m worried if something happens to my computer or to the little wonder box HD300 (already 3 years old) I would end up either loosing access to TV altogether or cut my pride and subscribe to Dish/Comcast.

When Google acquired SageTV last year, the hope was that they’ll make it better by integrating more services, kill the Google TV  and replace it with “Google powered” SageTV. Whatever happened to that hope and to SageTV!!! Can someone take up the SageTV flag and help those occasional TV watchers save some dough? I don’t see any other option, short of Tivo that charges $15/m just for the service and TVGuide?  Give me choice folks!

• Why Surface RT failed and iPad didn’t (NYT)
• A telling lesson on why too many options is not necessarily a good thing
• Tiny lasers will speed up future computers (ars)
• Apple TV: Cooperating with content providers (NYT)
• Economics 101: Killing America (salon)
• Economics is not science, agree to that
• 10 mind blowing technologies that will appear by 2030 (io9)
• Why retailers ask for ZipCode when you checkout (forbes)
• Ofcourse for marketing purpose.. but can lead to unexpected consequences
• This debate never dies off
• Charcoal grilling is better than gas (wired)
• Gas grilling is better than charcoal (wired)
• Finance set to surpass tech as the most profitable industry (usatoday)
• Which investment is better: Hollywood or Siliconvalley (NYT)
• History of Apps pricing, why most apps are free (flurry)
• How Windows monopoly is getting destroyed (BI)
• Give me back my iPhone (slate)

• PivotalHD is available for download by SK (yours faithfully) (gopivotal)
• Pivotal ships Hadoop to masses – my first appearance in The Register (TheRegister)
• Social Media bubble is deflating (BW)
• Pivotal ships Hadoop distro complete with SQL (jexenter)
• Hey engineers – Your product manager needs a hug (aha.iohttp://blog.aha.io/index.php/hey-engineers-your-product-manager-needs-a-hug/)
• Practical introduction to Data Science skills (google)

• The Dropbox opportunity (link)
• Microsoft overhauls the Apple way (NYT)
• How to tell you’ve a lousy 401k (YahooFinance)
• Cars are fast becoming Smartphones on wheels (TR)
• You want to hide from NSA? Guide to nearly impossible (wired)
• Not even Hadoop is free of patent-troll attack (NYT)
• Warren: Human Bigdata engine (gooddata)

Mid-Week Readings:

• Unexpected use for Enron emails – BigData! (MIT Tech Review)
• Tech spending will reach $3.7 trillion in 2013, Gartner predicts (AllthingsD)
• How Apple and IBM learned to change with times (USANews)
• The essential WallStreet summer reading list (NYT)
• What’s wrong with technology fixes (BostonReview)
• Why doesn’t Apple enable sustainable business on the AppStore (Stratechery)
• Pandora paid over $1300 not $16 for playing one million songs (Link)
• How to give a killer presentation – a story of “lion lights”. Inspiring (HBR)