links for 2010-07-26: Phillips claim of acquisitions not true?; LA's move to Google hits a few road bumps; "Mac guy" no longer Apple fanboy?; Dell drops Ubuntu

• Did Oracle hand Charles Phillips a PR written pink slip? - Charles said they'll spend $70 million, then Larry's PR said no.
  
• Los Angeles' move to Google Apps continues with a few hiccups - They've made progress but didn't meet a June 30 deadline to get everyone on Google.
• Why this "Mac guy" will dump Apple fanboy club card - Competition is good for the consumer.
  
• Dell dumps Ubuntu loaded machines - "“The reason why they’re not on our main pages is because Ubuntu systems are primarily targeted towards advanced users and enthusiasts...” ... if I’m an advanced computer user, what are the odds I’ll order a computer by phone before using the internet?"

Visualizing your data with Tableau Public

As I've written before, I have a passion for data and oftentimes, particularly with large amounts of data, visualizing it is an extremely important part of understanding it.

As part of my computer ratings, I've created performance charts for awhile now and they are very useful in being able to see how a team has performed and any trends there may be.  You can see examples from my 2010 Superbowl Preview or BCS Championship Preview.

I've created these using Google Charts using a series of scripts to extract the data from my ratings system and format it into the appropriate URLs, but after learning about Tableau Public I've been wanting to give it a shot to see if it was easier or offered other benefits and with summer arriving finally had a chance to.

I created the charts for a few teams from last years college football season and the process was very straight-forward.  All I had to do was to create a CSV file of my data, import it into Tableau Public Desktop, then with a little drag and drop and configuration, create the charts.  It is then simple to publish to the web.  Here it is (click the image to get a full screen version):

This was definitely a lot easier than what I've been doing before.  As the 2010 football seasons start, I'll be trying it out more and seeing what else I can do with it and hopefully automate the generation of the charts as much as I have with Google.  Give it a try yourself!

links for 2010-07-22: Twitter to build own data center; Apple iPhone 4 fallout; Firefox Home; Ellison doesn't get the Warriors

• Twitter to Build Data Center to Beach the Fail Whale - Seems to support the theory that cloud is a great way to start, then you go to hosted as you grow, but ultimately at large scale, owning your own data center is needed.
• Apple's iPhone 4 fallout: The smartphone "industry" fires back - "Apple has always taken pride in offering a premium product to customers willing to pay a premium price. That set it higher than the others. But clearly in the iPhone game - and now in the crisis management game - Apple is looking more like a rookie, instead of a global powerhouse."
  
• Firefox Home hits the iPhone: Looks handy - Interesting.  I've been using Chrome as my browser but may have to give this a try.
  
• Ellison Beat Out in Record Warriors Sale - I'm surprised, but he apparently made his best offer too late.
  

links for 2010-07-19: HP closing campus; iPad didn't meet expectations

• HP to close Cupertino campus - Consolidating in Palo Alto.
• Why I’m Craigslisting My iPads - Seems to have had wildly unrealistic expectations.  Wanted full blow Excel?  Flash?
  

links for 2010-07-17: OpenSolaris Discontent; Open source or not?; Motorola Droid X self destructs; WinPhone 7 just an iPhone 1 knock off

• OpenSolaris Governing Board Threatens to Shoot Itself In The Head - Interesting point of view on how things were with Sun and are with Oracle regarding OpenSolaris.
• Choosing Whether to go Open Source - Huh? "That explains why using open source for production in mission-critical environments, particularly where security is essential, has been relatively rare."  This premise is shot down moments later with this: "About 90% of our servers are running Linux. They're certainly as secure as the Windows world"
  
• Droid X actually self-destructs if you try to mod it - The majority of users won't know or care, but it will be interesting to see if techies avoid the device and this backfires on Motorola.
  
• Windows Phone 7: Don't bother with this disaster - Not a good sign: "Microsoft's demos of its great mobile hope shows Windows Phone 7 to be only a tepid knockoff of a 2007-era iPhone"
  

Amazon further integrates Simple Notification Service with AWS

I've always been interested in messaging systems and had some fun learning about AWS's SNS and then building a simple Cloud Event Processor that utilized it earlier this year.  Amazon had already provided out of the box integration of SNS with the Simple Queue Service (SQS) but has now introduced integration with S3 so that you can get notifications for certain S3 Reduced Redundancy Storage events.

Asynchronous programming at work.  Good stuff!

links for 2010-07-13: iPhone 4 Apple's Vista?; Consumer Reports on iPhone 4; Google's master Android plan

• Is the iPhone 4 becoming the Windows Vista of Apple? - The author makes a bunch of good points.
• Lab tests: Why Consumer Reports can't recommend the iPhone 4 - They blame the new antenna, not AT&T's network for dropped calls.
  
• Google's master Android plan: We're all mobile app developers now - Do we really want "everyone" to be a developer?
  

links for 2010-07-09: EMC and Data Management; Returning software licenses; Android takes market share from everyone; Follow HTC-Columbia in the Tour De France

• Is EMC Moving To Tackle Data Management Market? - "I’m going to recommend to EMC that they acquire both Informatica and TIBCO and challenge IBM for world domination of the information management market."
  
• Approaches to Return Shelfware - Great idea if you are the customer, but what is in it for the vendor?
• Android takes market share from everyone - Android up 4 points to 13% while all of RIM/Apple/Microsoft/Palm shrink 0.4 to 1.9 points.
• Follow HTC-Columbia in the Tour De France on Google Maps - Very cool app.

links for 2010-07-02: IBM defaults to Firefox; AT&T-Apple class action suite; Apple fesses up on reception

• Saying it out loud: IBM is moving to Firefox as its default browser - 400,000 employees "encouraged" to use it as their default.  That's a big step.
  
• The Apple-AT&T class action suit should have come years ago - How about rather than bog the court system down, just like the author did, return the device if it doesn't work for you!  "I suppose I could have dragged them to court myself when I was one of those disgruntled iPhone owners who suffered from poor iPhone reception in the San Francisco Bay Area. But instead, I chose to return my device and move on."
  
• Apple can't fix iPhone reception, will start telling truth about signal strength - How can this statement be true?  "Upon investigation, we were stunned to find that the formula we use to calculate how many bars of signal strength to display is totally wrong."  The phone has been out for years and people have been complaining the whole time, and you just got around to checking the formula?
  

links for 2010-07-01: iPhone to Verizon rumor (again); Brown University goes Google; SQS Updates; Open Source Licensing; Steve Jobs on the Enterprise; Database Migrations Easy?

• Verizon to Start Selling iPhone in January [REPORT] - This report seems to be a bit more credible than ones of the past, so will it really happen?
  
• Brown University has gone Google - "Our students were really the ones that led us down the Google path. They knew these tools would work because they already used them in their non-school lives."
• New: Free Tier and Increased Limits for Amazon Simple Queue Service - Some incremental updates making SQS a little more valuable.
  
• Open Core the new Dual License - He still advocates pure open source and using telemetry and data as ways to generate incremental revenue.
• What Steve Jobs hates about the enterprise - So Apple will just rely on the consumerization of IT as their way into the enterprise?  Is this an opportunity for Microsoft to capitalize on RIM's weakness?
  
• Database Migrations Are Finally Becoming Simpler - Compatibility layers make sense.  I knew EnterpriseDB had been doing this for some time, I didn't know IBM was too.  Oracle, your move.