Interest in Big Data Increasing

Big data, as we know it, hit the scene in about 2001 so it is nothing new. Companies have been gathering this data for years, but recently there has been an explosion of interest in it like it's a brand new thing. This is mainly due to the fact that there are now new ways of analyzing the data.

Big data started out as a way to store a ton of information, but now it has transformed into something where companies are trying to use it in any way they can to benefit from it in different ways. So here is a list of a few reasons why this is happening.

1. Unstructured data is now readily available

Unlike traditional business insight that analyzes structured data, big data focuses on the unstructured data. This includes emails, videos, photos and posts on social networking sites. Millions of photos get uploaded to Facebook, millions of tweets go out every day, and businesses can use this information to understand their customers better. This helps with suggested sales and such.

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2. It has become incredibly cheap to store huge amounts of data

Unstructured data is becoming more pervasive, but tools like Hadoop, which is an open-source framework for storing large scale data, have developed so much in the last ten years or so. These type of tools underpin data processing for some of the worlds largest businesses with the most amount of data to store. It can take care of unstructured data way faster and way cheaper than the generation of tools that came before them.

3. Not only is it now cheaper to process all of this data, but companies are getting usable information out of it

Retail stores are really taking advantage of big data right now. You might ask what they are getting from it. Good question. They are using customer loyalty cards to gather information. This is a really good way to figure out what they sell and what to stock. Like for example, they might not stock a whole lot of low cost generic food brands... But if they see that their customers who spend the most at their store tend to buy it, then guess what they are going to stock more of? Low cost generic foods.

Loyalty cards and even debit cards really give a huge insight to each individual customer. There was a huge story about this last year actually. A Target customer got really mad when they sent his young daughter coupons to buy baby clothes. Because of the things she was buying, when they processed the data, it seemed like she might be expecting a baby soon. It seems like kind of a mess up on their part, but it's actually really smart overall.

4. Big data analytics could lead to productivity gains in four sectors

If big data analytics go mainstream then retail chains and manufacturing companies could see a huge increase of $325 billion to their annual GDP thanks to increased efficiency. Healthcare and other government services could also see a ton of productivity gains as well, as much as $285 billion in the next five years.

5. Big data analytics saw a huge increase in venture capitalist funding in the last 12 months

Venture capitalists have started to check out the possibilities with big data analytics as well. In the last year alone, they have invested about $1.37 billion into different companies. This is an increase of 217% above the last period. This is because big data is now enterprise ready, analytics tools are open to pretty much anyone and can be used very easily, and all of the analyzing can be done in real time.

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Microsoft Reveals Every Version of Windows 10

Windows has not yet decided to give us an exact release date for Windows 10 except the fact that it will be some time in the summer. But, they are revealing all of the different versions of the operating system that will be available when it is done. They are calling Windows 10 Home the "consumer-focused desktop edition". This is the one that is going to come installed on most of the home PCs and laptops, and it is going to have pretty much all of the neat features, like the new Edge browser, Hello face recognition, and all of the built-in universal apps. There will also be a "Pro" edition like the versions before that will come with a bunch of business software and the ability to connect to domains and take advantage of the business updates for Windows.

With the release of Windows 10 across all the different platforms like PCs, smartphones, tablets, and the Xbox One, Microsoft is also renaming the Windows Phone. The new name is officially "Windows 10 Mobile". It is going to have touch optimized versions of Office and support for a new Continuum for Phone feature. This is going to support phones and small tablets that are less than 8 inches in size. There is also going to be a version of Windows 10 Mobile called the Enterprise edition that will be designed for big businesses to license the operating system on smartphones and small tablets.

Those are the main editions that are going to be coming out, but on top of them there will be a few others like Windows 10 Enterprise, Windows 10 Education, and Windows 10 IoT Core for smaller gateway devices. In total there are 7 different editions of the operating system for a bunch of different devices. Since this is going to be the last version of Windows and they are just going to build on it from here on out, we can also expect to see huge updates and different additions some time around fall of this year. And from there on out, who knows what kind of sweet updates we will see.

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New Ways to Store Big Data on Azure from Microsoft

Azure is going to have a new data warehouse service. It's called a "data lake" service that is going to store a huge amount of data and give the option of running an "elastic" database that can store sets of data that vary in size. Scot Guthrie, Microsoft Executive Vice President of the cloud and enterprise group, unveiled these new services at the companies Build 2015 conference in San Francisco.

The Azure SQL Date Warehouse is going to be up and running later this year and is going to give companies a way to store petabytes of data. This will allow the data to be easily consumed by data analyzing software like Microsoft's Power BI tool for data visualization, the Azure Data Factory for data orchestration, or the Azure Machine Learning service.

One thing that makes this data storage service different than the rest is that it has the ability to adjust to fit the amount of data that actually needs to be stored. You can also specify exactly how much processing power you need to be able to analyze the data. The service builds on the parallel processing architecture that Microsoft developed for its SQL Server database.

This new cloud service is made for companies and organizations that need to store massive amounts of data so that it can be analyzed by different analysis platforms like Hadoop. It could also be super useful for Internet of Things systems that might create huge amounts of data. The amount of data you"ll be able to store is absolutely endless. So you can see how this would be helpful. There is literally no limit.

The company also updated the Azure SQL database service so that customers can pool their Azure database and reduce their storage cost and prepare for new activity. This means that you can  manage your storage at a lower cost.

All of this is going to be very useful for running public-facing software services where the amount of space used can fluctuate a whole lot day to day. With most services like this, you'll generally pay for your peak storage space no matter how much of it you are using at the time. This means that you can cut your costs, probably in half, and literally only pay for exactly how much you are using at any given time.

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Microsoft Will End Support for Windows Media Center with Release of Windows 10

Windows 10 is coming out this summer, but it will not run Windows Media Center, Microsoft's major software used for PCs. If you've already seen the early stages of Windows 10 then you would have noticed in the preview versions of the system that Media Center wasn't compatible with it. "We can confirm that due to decreased usage, Windows Media Center will not be part of Windows 10," a Microsoft spokesperson told PCWorld via email. Media Center hasn't had any significant updates in almost 6 years and in Windows 7 and Windows 8 it was nearly the same, so ending it shouldn't come as much of a surprise to anyone.

With the release of Windows 10, Microsoft has decided to drift away from the whole idea of having your computer run everything in your living room and turning it into an entertainment hub. The Idea of having your computer connected to everything in your house was pretty cool and it would certainly be convenient. The problem with it though is that it would be a huge pain in the butt to set everything up, and the possibility of something going wrong is very high. But while everything was working, it would be super cool.

The idea, though, never really caught on. It doesn't make sense for most people these days, and it is too much to worry about. With smart TVs and smartphones, you pretty much have access to any TV program or movie ever. Having a PC dedicated to the living room just isn't worth it. It isn't 1998 anymore.

There are still plans to put software in the living room from Microsoft. The plans just don't involve a computer anymore. The company offers a Miracast-powered TV dongle called the Wireless Display Adapter, which lets you project your phone's screen onto your TV. This makes more sense to me than all of the other complicated stuff and having a dedicated living room PC just for entertainment.

Another A/V type is the Xbox One that offers different TV-centric features like digital TV tuner capabilities and multiple apps like Netflix and Sling TV.  Of course a PC is much more customizable, but it's not everyone's first choice. If the new Steam Machines from Valve become more popular, they could be used for HTCP purposes on top of their PC gaming functions.

If you are running an HTCP with Windows that relies on Windows Media Center, don't bother upgrading it to Windows 10. If you have no choice but to upgrade your current HTCP, then just go with a Windows 7 or Windows 8.1 PC. If you don't really care for losing Media Center, then you could go with the Plex Media Server or XBMX, which works with Windows and Linux, as well as Raspberry Pi.

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Google Looking to Increase Internet Speeds with QUIC Network

Google has been stress-testing its QUIC (Quick UPD Internet Connections) network protocol the past quarter. Right now, about half of requests from Chrome to Google servers are being set through QUIC and the company says it's leading to a greater performance improvement over TCP resulting in an increasing amount of traffic.

QUIC supports multiplexed transport over UDP while also giving security comparable to TLS/SSL. It is also cutting down on latency by relying on UDP instead of TCP. As of now the only real concern with latency-sensitive services like Google Search is how the UDP-based QUIC outperforms TCP by establishing connections with servers its already communicated with, without any hassle or extra round trips to the server. QUIC gets the better part of TCP in poor network conditions.

“The standard way to do secure web browsing involves communicating over TCP + TLS, which requires 2 to 3 round trips with a server to establish a secure connection before the browser can request the actual web page,” Google wrote in a blog post Friday.

When re-transmitting a packet, packet sequence numbers are never reused. This helps figure out which packets have been received as well as not having to worry about your internet timing out. QUIC over TCP has helped save a second off of the Google Search page load time for the slowest 1% of connections. This helps sites like YouTube, for watching videos online. Viewers have reported 30% fewer rebuffers using QUIC to watch videos.

Google also wants to ask if the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), with some changes like the wire format and dissociate the current plan from SPDY and moving to QUIC-over-HTTP2, will make the protocol an Internet standard. Google wants to continue increasing traffic over the protocol, with the overall outcome of entrusting it with all the traffic from Google clients to Google services.

Google is expecting good things to come from this so we'll see how it all plays out in the end.

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Windows 10 Release Date Spoiled by Partners

At the end of January, Microsoft released the Technical Preview of Windows 10, which is an unfinished build that Microsoft lets its enterprise partners try out ahead of the final release so that they can provide feedback. The actual release date of the operating system has been kept under wraps, until now. During an earnings call AMD slipped up and announced that Windows 10 will launch at the end of July.

If you're thinking about or planning to get the new Microsoft Surface 3 tablet coming out soon then this should help you lean more towards actually getting the tablet. When Microsoft was announcing the new Windows 10. they never gave a specific time frame. Microsoft only mentioned it was launching this summer.

During the call, it was reported that AMD President and CEO Lisa Su stated, "What we also are factoring in is, with the Windows 10 launch at the end of July, we are watching the impact of that on the back-to-school season, and expect that it might have a bit of a delay to the normal back-to-school season inventory buildup."

AMD makes processors that power some Windows laptops, and is considered to be Intel's biggest rival in the space. If Su is correct, we can probably expect to see Microsoft's various hardware partners show off new tablets, laptops and desktops that run on Windows 10 in the coming months. Windows 10 will be a free upgrade for Windows 8.1 and Windows 7 users, and it comes with a new Start menu that also shows you tiles from the Windows "modern" user interface.

Microsoft is focusing on two different types of app experiences in Windows 10; desktop apps, and "universal" apps that work the same across smartphones and tablets. Microsoft says the new Surface 3 will be running Windows 8.1 until Windows 10 is released. Now if you wanna upgrade your Surface Pro 3 to the Surface 3, then shortly after your Surface 3 will upgrade a bit more to Windows 10.

Keep on the look out for the Microsoft Surface 3 coming out in May and then shortly after for Windows 10 releasing at the end of July.

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A Unified Windows Store is Coming with Windows 10

Microsoft is trying as hard as possible to make Windows 10 the best operating system yet thanks to the less-than-enthusiastic response to the launch of Windows 8. In an attempt to wipe our memories of everything involved with Windows 8 Microsoft is looking to unify as much as possible.

The next version of Windows is said to be a unified operating system for all of Microsoft's devices. The operating system is said to be designed in such a way that it will look, feel and function in the exact same way on every piece of technology, whether it be a desktop PC, laptop, tablet or smartphone.

There will be different interfaces across the different platforms, with "universal" apps that are able to be scaled across all screen sizes. Well now, Microsoft has announced that the Windows Store is going universal as well. The company recently confirmed that the store in Windows 10 will be your one-stop shop for apps, games, music, movies and TV shows.

These functions were distributed across apps in Windows 8. The Xbox Music app allowed users to purchase songs and albums, the Xbox Video app allowed users to get videos and general apps and games were found in the Windows Store. The unified store will take all of these things and combine them into a single app store.

There have been hints about a unified app store circulating around the internet for a while now, right after Microsoft added a dormant "Movies & TV" option to the beta version of the Windows 10 Store Beta. You couldn't actually use the page but it was still there.

The pages for movies and television should be live no for most Windows 10 Technical Preview users in the US. The preview OS now allows you to rent and purchase movies and TV shows from the Store Beta and even watch them from the Video Preview App. Microsoft does warn, however, that the current version of the movies and television option in the technical preview is functional but unfinished, missing things like cast and crew information and videos can only be streamed, not downloaded. In addition to that, you may also have problems with frequent Store crashes.

Music is the one thing that is currently missing from the beta, though Microsoft says it is planning on releasing that in the coming weeks, probably around Microsoft's annual Build conference on April 29. The Build conference is when Microsoft plans on sharing more information about the plans for the unified app store.

Unification is huge for Windows 10 as it should make finding everything you need way easier. With everything in a single location you will no longer have to go open up multiple different app stores. Microsoft has a lot riding on Windows 10. The success of this release really needs to go off without a hitch as people are still upset over Windows 8. To see what Windows 10 looks like in the Technical Preview check out the video below.

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