MediaFile

"I'm not interested in working on this unless it's going to be a multi-billion dollar idea. If I thought this would be a hundred million dollar company -- what's the point?" - Anonymous entreprerneur discussing his startup. Overheard in front of Ozo Coffee, Boulder, CO.

I'm in Boulder, Colorado for a few days this week to attend Big Boulder, a conference devoted to the social side of "big data." Gnip, the company hosting the conference, is one I've written about before. They're doing the plumber's work of connecting all the firehoses of raw, public user data from social media companies like Twitter and Tumblr up to clients that want to derive insights from the wisdom of these online crowds.

A quick note on the definition of "big data." Generally speaking, it's the sort of data set that's so huge, even running a simple report on it won't tell you anything interesting. For example, if you could ask the IRS for a list of all the 25-30 year olds in the U.S. that paid taxes last year, you'd get back a list, alright. But what would be useful about it? On the other hand, if you could filter that list by several other factors: did they pay capital gains, did they owe over six figures in taxes, what is their self-reported job title, and so on, you might end up with a list highly correlated to young, dot-com millionaires and billionaires, like Mark Zuckerberg. And you might cross reference that list against all the other data sets you can find on them: where they live, where they shop, where they travel, what they watch, eat and listen to. It's all out there.

Social media companies have woken up to the idea that their user bases are throwing billions of data points that have huge potential value, in aggregate. But to get to the point where big data is useful, the tooling around asking and getting the answers to those sorts of questions has to be very, very good.

That -- getting to the point where insights are derived from huge firehoses of content -- is where data science comes in, and where Big Boulder attendees get wildly excited about the potential for big data to change the way the world works. (There are plenty of skeptics on the other side of the coin too, that wonder if the phrase "big data" has simply become the latest marketing jargon in the tech industry, even as it has yielded insights in unsexy fields, like milk production, for decades now.)

What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet

Microsoft’s huge announcement Monday that it was going into the consumer computer business is a turning point for the Redmond giant – a real gloves-off, damn-the-torpedoes moment. It’s also perhaps a grudging nod to Apple and Steve Jobs’s view that hardware and software need to develop together to get it right. Until now Microsoft has ceded hardware issues to other companies – Dell, HP, Acer, Samsung, etc. Now it will compete with them.

But the notion that “The Surface” – Microsoft’s new tablet PC unveiled Monday but not expected on the market until the end of the year – will take on Apple’s iPad is misguided.

Lyor Cohen (right) with hip hop artist Kanye West last year.

Lyor Cohen, Warner Music’s chief executive for recorded music, thinks the long-suffering and depleted music business would do a lot better if it could just stop the bitter in-fighting and back-stabbing particularly among the major label owner rivals Universal Music Group, Sony Music and EMI.

“We should root for one another,” said Cohen speaking at the New Music Seminar in New York earlier this week. “We can all come together and support each other. That’s hugely missing from our business.”

Referring to an industry which hopes it has now hit rock bottom and is finally turning things around:

Radio journalist Nancy Mullane has gone behind the walls of California’s infamous San Quentin state prison to chronicle how life unfolds for five inmates convicted of murder.

Andreessen Horowitz Partner Margit Wennmachers introducing Don Cronk, Jesse Reed, Ed Ramirez and author Nancy Mullane

The five-year investigative effort by the freelance reporter and producer who does a lot of work for NPR is now chronicled in her book,  Life After Murder. 

When are facts just the facts– and when do they become scurrilous?

That’s the question created by venture-capital fund Kleiner Perkins in its bid to arbitrate partner Ellen Pao’s discrimination lawsuit against the firm — a turn of events which would sink the proceedings out of public view.

In a memo filed Tuesday in California state court Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers argues that in her May complaint, Pao included “provocative facts– many unnecessary to the pleading of her claims”. The firm gave the example of her relationship with Ajit Nazre, a former partner who left the firm earlier this year. Pao said he pressured her to sleep with him.

“These allegations were simply unnecessary to the retaliation cause of action that was pled,” the firm said in its memo (see  a page from the memo paomemo), adding it believed Pao’s goals were met when the allegations created a “media firestorm.”

Xerox CEO Ursula Burns has some strong opinions on Augusta National Golf Club’s policy of not admitting women as members.

“It’s ridiculous, it’s just absolutely ridiculous,” said Burns at the Reuters Global Media and Technology Summit in New York on Thursday.

Burns was responding to a question about the controversy that erupted in April over whether the all-male club would invite IBM CEO Virginia Rometty, who is both Burns’ corporate acquaintance and competitor, to become its first female member. IBM, along with AT&T and Exxon Mobil, are the three major sponsors of the Masters golf tournament, and while the past four male CEOs of the technology company have been offered membership at Augusta, the same courtesy has not yet been extended to Rometty.

The “Book of Longing”: spiritual screed or salacious smut?

A 2006 tract of love poems by Sixties crooner Leonard Cohen, of all things, has emerged as a key point of contention in the high-profile gender discrimination lawsuit that’s sent Silicon Valley into a tizzy.

When Ellen Pao, a junior partner at vaunted venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caulfield & Byers sued the firm last month, one of the juicier nuggets tucked in the complaint described senior partner Randy Komisar’s alleged overtures: On Valentine’s Day in 2007, the suit alleged, Komisar gave Pao a copy of the “Book of Longing” — featuring “many sexual drawings and poems with strong sexual content” – and proceeded to ask her out to dinner while his wife was out of town.

On Wednesday, the VC firm hit back in a 7-page response (attached below) with an age-old defense: Pao took it the wrong way.

In his first appearance at the World Wide Developer’s Conference as spiritual leader of the Apple faithful, CEO Tim Cook made it clear that he intends to not just further Steve Job’s vision but expand upon it. It’s never been more clear that Apple is intent on world domination.

Conspiracy theory? No. Try inescapable conclusion.

What else are we to make of Apple removing Google Maps from the iPhone? Google Maps was a core feature on the very first iPhone, but it will disappear in an iOS software update announced Monday at Apple’s developer conference.

Apple’s tension with Google is legendary. They began as friendly neighbors in largely complementary businesses – former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was even on Apple’s board. But after the introduction of the Android, Steve Jobs’s anger at Google’s entry into the mobile phone business was palpable.

PayPal, eBay’s online payments business, is online, heading offline and hopes to be on your TV soon.

PayPal announced partnerships with Comcast and Tivo on Tuesday that aim to get viewers shopping during commercial breaks, pauses and at the end of shows. The projects are in development stages right now, but the goal is to have the services up and running later this year.

“The living room, in particular the TV set and the DVR, is the last leg of the stool,” said Scott Dunlap, vice president of emerging opportunities at PayPal.

It’s not quite Minority Report but the Charleston Police Department in South Carolina aims to predict and prevent crimes from happening with the help of IBM’s data analytics tools.

To start the CPD wants to focus on reducing the number of burglaries in Charleston which it says often happen at similar times of day and in similar locations.

“The individuals committing these crimes tend to have predictable patterns, and incidents usually take place near their homes or familiar locations. In addition, property crimes are not displaceable crimes, which means the criminals won’t simply move two miles to another location’” the CDP said.