From the monthly archives:

January 2010

HM Government Opens Up Government Data to the Public

21 January 2010
Data.uk.gov web site listing of all data sets

The British Government has released data sets to the public for use in either the public or private sectors at data.gov.uk.
Previously, the governments of the United States, Australia, and New Zealand had created data sites for use by the public, including commercial use. The primary idea behind the release of these data sets is [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Team Digital Preservation and the Deadly Cryptic Conundrum

20 January 2010
Team Digital Preservation and the Deadly Cryptic Conundrum

“Team Chaos have struck again! But do not fear, Team Digital Preservation are on hand, in what could be their funniest adventure yet.”

This is the latest release (as of this writing) of a series of animations by Digital Preservation Europe that address the digital preservation problem. This team manages to make something that can be [...]

Share
Read the full article →

A Hat Tip to Cat Herders

19 January 2010
A Hat Tip to Cat Herders | Project Managers

A friend of mine emailed me this morning to say that I should have used wild kitties as the theme of this blog rather than wild horses. He does have a point.

This is a hat tip to anyone who has ever had to herd cats.
[Thanks, Michael N.]

Share
Read the full article →

Roger Magoulas Defines a Data Scientist

18 January 2010
Roger Magoulas Discusses Big Data and Data Science

Roger Magoulas, the director of market research at O’Reilly Media, defines a Data Scientist in the short video Big Data (part one), which is part of O’Reilly’s “The Future at Work” video series.

First, he sees a Data Scientist as someone with an amalgamation of skills that used to be reserved only for academic institutions [...]

Share
Read the full article →

“A Data Deluge Swamps Science Historians”

14 January 2010
Server cabinets at a data center

A few months ago, Robert Lee Holtz wrote an article in the Science Journal section of the Wall Street Journal where he discussed how the data deluge is swamping scientists and researchers.
The author addressed the particular issue of how curators store data for current and future access so that other scientists may access the data [...]

Share
Read the full article →

‘What part of “Give us our damn data” do you not understand?’

14 January 2010
Medical records on a shelf

CNN posted an article a few days ago that gives examples of patients and former patients who have had problems accessing (getting copies of) their patient data. I did not find any of the information about the difficulties in accessing personal data to be surprising.
I thought the author’s advice on how to gain access [...]

Share
Read the full article →

World Wide Mush? An Argument Against the “Internet as a Collective”

10 January 2010
Jaron Lanier, You are Not a Gadget

Researcher Jaron Lanier has an interesting article in last Friday’s Wall Street Journal entitled “World Wide Mush“. The article is a plug for his book, You Are Not a Gadget. Although the author does not specifically discuss large-scale data management, I am including it because he addressed “the collective” work of the Internet, upon which [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age

7 January 2010
Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age

I just finished reading the Executive Summary of a report out by the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Ensuring the Utility and Integrity of Research Data in a Digital Age. The report is entitled, “Ensuring the Integrity, Accessibility, and Stewardship of Research Data in the Digital Age“. The full report is available online for [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Cloud Computing in Plain English

6 January 2010
Cloud Computing in Plain English

While certain committee members at NIST work on the 16th version of the standards document that defines cloud computing, I decided to to do some (simplistic) research of my own regarding the term. What exactly does cloud computing mean? And how is this different/how has it evolved from an Application Service Provider (ASP)? I used [...]

Share
Read the full article →

Should Cloud Computing Be Called Swamp Computing?

5 January 2010
NC Swamp: Should Cloud Computing Be Called Swamp Computing?

David Talbot at Technology Review published an article recently entitled, “Security in the Ether“. The author writes that the efficiencies of cloud computing are also its weaknesses. Users’ access to all of the bells and whistles a cloud offers could also enable them to attack a specific target, once they were able to get onto [...]

Share
Read the full article →

← Previous Entries

Next Entries →