HW #6

Scott Palmerino

Professor Lawson

M.I.S

February 29, 2012

How Payvment Uses Facebook's Expanded Open Graph

What does it mean when a Facebook user clicks "like" on an item for sale--that they have it and like it, or that they would like to have it? Christian Taylor, CEO of Payvment lets us know; Like' never worked for us the way it worked for other mediums," Taylor said. Liking a link to a news story or video may be fairly clear, but in shopping, "'like' is ambiguous," he said. That's why the expanded vocabulary of Open Graph actions Facebook announced recently was so important, he said. As part of a select group of Facebook application developers working with the company on pilot projects over the past few months, Payvment was able to define "want" and "own" buttons that now appear next to each product listing. Even though he added “want” and “own” the business still has like for those who want to use it or have used it. Open graph is Facbook’s model for intergrating external apps and allowing them to execute authorized actions against user and business accouts. At the same time that it introduced its new Timeline user profile in September, Facebook introduced a few of new Open Graph verbs, basically to allow media sites to write to the news feed when someone read an article or listened to a certain song. Some of these also took advantage of a "frictionless sharing" model, in which, for example, Spotify will automatically post to the Timeline every song the user listens to through the service. Facebook worked closely with Payvment to make sure there would be no repeat of Beacon, a social shopping feature Facebook introduced in 2007 and withdrew when users protested it was sharing data about their online purchases without their consent. "This could be a replay of Beacon, if done wrong," Taylor said. Overall this was a good article. It was explained very well. I think what Christian Taylor did was very good for his business. Sounds like his business and himself are heading in the right direction.

H.W Blog 6

Ryan Mulvey

Prof. Lawson

Blog 6

Does E-Commerce On Social Networks Pay Yet?

By: David F. Carr

 December 27, 2011

What  this article is about , is a E-Commerce firm called  ShopIgniter . What Shoplgniter does, according to the article is “ShopIgniter is one of several specialists in embedding e-commerce experiences inside Facebook, allowing a product catalog or selected promotions to be displayed inside a Facebook app or business page, with a full shopping cart and checkout experience. Ideally, these products also take advantage of the nature of the medium, providing opportunities for consumers to "like" products, share them with their friends, and perhaps get access to special deals as a reward for their evangelism.” This company’s whole objective is to market their products, catalogs and adds on social networking websites, such as face book. This is a huge technological achievement because when you click on the add or catalog it takes you to a different page, and if you decide you want to purchase the item , you can then click add to cart. In the article is states “What ShopIgniter introduced back in October was tighter integration with the Facebook Wall and the whole mechanics of posting and sharing products. It meant social shoppers could now add to cart and checkout right within the post stream, rather than clicking a link that takes them to a page on another website or even another location within Facebook.” This is huge for this company but its even better for the buyer. It makes shopping online that much easier. This company believes that the secret to this is to create new experiences around an online product rather than doing it in a conventional way. Another big advantage to this new way of buying products is that you will be more willing to buy a product knowing and seeing that your friend bought it or liked it. This is an awesome way of taking advantage of what this company has in front of them and trying to innovate new ideas. It will make it so much easier to the consumer, and that’s all that matters these days.

H.W Blog 5

Ryan Mulvey

Blog  homework 5

Prof. Lawson

Security Trends To Watch In 2012

By Mathew J. Schwartz  InformationWeek
January 17, 2012 09:45 AM

This article is about; how, when, and why businesses, companies and even personal hand held devices get hacked. It talks about how information security has changed and how it’s not an if you’ll get hacked or breached, but when you will. It sates in the article that “According to the "2011 Data Breach Investigations Report" from Verizon, for example, the number of attacks launched online against businesses between 2005 and 2010 increased by a factor of five.” These increases of cyber attacks are huge. Businesses have to be able to tell when they are breached, how they are breached and how to fix it. A lot of companies are not capable of this, and that’s the problem. In the article it states “The new mandate, then, is not just to maintain killer defenses, but also to have the right technology and practices in place toquickly detect when the business has been breached, and then to block the attack and ideally identify how the breach occurred and what might have been stolen.” What this means is that they don’t only have to find away to tell when they’re hacked but what information and important data was stolen. Many companies go wrong, because they think they are not a target for these attacks and they have nothing to offer, but they are wrong. No one is exempt from these cyber attacks.

            Another  big point in this article is that it talks about that a lot of these attack are occurring on Windows systems and Android Handhelds.  This is because their networks don’t have the antivirus protection that it should have and it leaves their networks extremely vulnerable.

The article also touches on the fact that  PC’s are at more of a risk for these attacks than Smartphone’s, but companies have to still take the responsibility and take more rigorous actions to protecting these devices, because attacks can still happen. In the article it states “ If mobile devices aren't under attack to the extent that PCs are, mobile devices still carry a well-known security risk: they tend to get lost or stolen. That fact alone should be reason enough for businesses to take a more rigorous approach to securing mobile devices.”

All of these problems with cyber attacks can be very devastating to many companies and business. Companies and business now have to spend a lot more money on protecting their network and new software to figure out how to fix these problems.  

China E-Commerce to Pass U.S in 2015 - HW#6

I read the Businessweek article titled China E-Commerce May Pass U.S. in 2015, Boston Consulting Says written by Bloomberg News on November 22, 2011. This article was an incredibly interesting read. Although I’m sure everyone is aware of China’s growing economic power, many Chinese citizens face problems with poverty. However, as the Chinese economy continues to grow, more and more e-commerce transactions are occurring through China. The current value of e-commerce transactions in China is at $314 billion.

The article states that since 2008, E-commerce in China has essentially quadrupled. Chinese citizens are using beginning to use the internet more and are buying and selling products online. Chinese harsh geography makes typical “brick and mortar” retail stores difficult. Many of the more rural citizens have a difficult time travelling for their goods. This means that e-commerce is even more of a convenience in China than in some other parts of the world.

China has the largest population of people in the world and some of the lowest costs of manufacturing currently available. The shipping rates in China are also extraordinarily cheap – six times cheaper than shipping costs in the United States. All of these facts added into the already growing Chinese economy (and richer per-capita incomes) allow for e-commerce to take hold very quickly and strongly in China. Internet malls are also beginning to form and may very soon make up a very large part of the Chinese economy.

The conclusion was that China will be able to surpass the United States in e-commerce sales by 2015. This is very important because China’s economy has already been noted to be growing at a ridiculous pace and surpassing the United States in e-commerce sales will be a huge step in overtaking the United States economy.

But I do not believe that China’s e-commerce growth is all bad. Many of this growth is in purchases rather than sales. This means that while China’s economy grows the United States economy will also reap the benefits of a huge market. The challenge will be in making products in the United States (or at the very least controlled in the United States and outsourced to China) that will be cheap enough to be sold and shipped to China (rather than the Chinese buying from their own sellers).

HW #6

The title of the article that I chose to read was “Why Pinterest Trumps Facebook at Social Commerce, For Now” written by Forbes author Jeff Bercovici. This article talks about why social media sites (mainly Facebook) should not be selling products. Pinterest a new website that offers users a collage like set up allows for users to post their products on their page, allowing everyone else to look at them and purchase items. It also allows for users to post photos allowing friends and others to comment on them.

Facebook in return wants to setup an e-commerce section on their website. As if Facebook does not already have enough money coming in, through games, music, and other income sources they now want to add a shopping section. Many analysts say this will not work for Facebook. They compared the situation to a bar scene. Facebook is a bar where you can go and catch up with old friends or potentially meet new people. You do not want to go shopping when you go to a bar and this is the exact reason why a shopping section on Facebook would not be successful. Pinterest is a new website gaining new users quickly and Facebook is worried that they will lose users to Pinterest because users have the ability to make purchases and look at products on their website. “for any company that has an e-commerce presence, they absolutely have to be paying attention to Pinterest.” This quote came from a Gap executive.

I agree with this article and what the analysts had to say about Facebook. I believe that if Facebook tries to update once again and try and ell products online, Facebook will just become a complete mess. Facebook is constantly updating its home page it is really annoying for users. Many users have been switching over to Twitter, rather than Facebook. If Facebook is not careful it could become the new MySpace and quickly be wiped off of the social media market. If Facebook decides to add shopping to their website I will personally stop using Facebook.

Homework #6

The article that I read about explained why this new craze Pinterest is dominating over what Facebook’s expectations were for their e-market. Facebook has tried to be successful with the selling of products on their website but something seemed to not be clicking just the right way. Now a study comes out that shows that Pintrest is blowing the competitors out of the water with sales of items once people visit their website.

As many people start to lose faith in Facebook for e-commerce they are starting to warm up to Pinterest, which many people did not see coming. What might the reason be people may ask? One person’s opinion was that Facebook can be compared to a club atmosphere, you do not go to a bar or clubs to buy things you go to socialize. This can also be how you view Facebook, the idea when Facebook was created was to socialize, meet new people, and keep in touch with people that you may have lost touch with, never was their intentions to provide a shopping center for users. Now that this new idea is out they expect for the users to automatically grasp on to the concept, which just is not the case. With Pinterest people visit the website with the intentions that they are going to buy something; many people compared it to an arts and crafts store. Since they go to the site that is a shopping website it is more common for people to purchase items.

I personally think that Facebook should stick to what they are good at. They are good at social networking and keeping people in touch not shopping. So why try and change something that is working? Well Mark Zuckerberg has the intentions of making Facebook a social layer that overlays all of our lives. Although Facebook rules over 20% of the ad markets on the internet that just is not good enough for him. We will have to see what he has up his sleeve if he thinks he is going to be able to overcome everything!

Homework #5

The article that I chose was IBM Analytics Help Memphis Cops Get 'Smart', by Rachael King. The main objective of this article was focused on the new technology that is becoming regularly available members of law enforcement. There has been a new software developed which actually can predict and give exact locations as to where crimes have occurred or where they have a high probability of occurring. The software is also capable of notifying authorizes of what kind of crime has occurred or is going to occur. This is all due to the new HTC Corp cell phones. These new smartphones are allowing authorities to send in and receive criminal records and activity through a common database. The article offers an example stating how the software is efficient; A Memphis police officer arrived to a crime scene where there was an ambulance taking away an injured person who was the victim of a shooting of which just occurred. The police officer whom arrived on the scene used his new HTC Corp. smartphone to send all the data straight to the database, the crime scene was able to be broken down into different categories; the type of crime, the location, a potential suspect, and the real victim. According to recent data the crime rate in the Memphis area has decreased due to this new software. It has really given law enforcement the “upper hand” on criminals, by revealing criminals patterns and habits. By having software that allows officials to potentially stop a crime before it occurs shows that our technology has improved tremendously and continues to improve every day. The overall goal is to become technologically advanced within all states of the US, this would help lower or crime rate drastically or even one day potentially abolish it.

Kelley Blue Book taps data analytics tools to improve car valuation

      The article that I read was titled “Kelley Blue Book taps data analytics tools to improve car valuation” and I found it to be very interesting. The article was about changes that Kelley Blue Book made to its car valuation process. Prior to these changes, they would value cars based on the previous sales of the vehicles along with other factors and educated guesses and update this information every four to five months.

            To backtrack, Kelley Blue Book is a company that places a value on new and used cars so that users may look up the value of their vehicle or a vehicle they are looking to purchase based on mileage, options, and vehicle condition. This helps users to make better decisions and get a better price on the vehicle they are interested in getting. The site also offers reviews on cars reliability and other factors that will assist the user in deciding which vehicle to buy.

            The new system that they adopted is a data analyst system that uses historic data of car values and bases the value of the vehicle on far more components than previously. This new system has done many things to make the company a stronger and more accurate company in determining a cars value. It has taken the job of one sole person and distributed it among 23 people making the job of those at Kelley Blue Book much less stressful. This new system is also much more cost effective and actually costs the company less, using terabytes of data rather than megabytes, allowing for a more cost effective and much more accurate way to value cars.

                                                     

             I found this article to be very informative and being a user of Kelley Blue Book, this knowledge has reassured me that the information and values in which they are giving me. With that said I believe that even though they already have many loyal users, this new system and more accurate car valuation will further instill user’s confidence in the site as well as attract new users to their now more accurate valuation of cars. 

Dan DeLuca Hw 5

The article that I read was called “How Big Data Is Changing The Way We Lead”, which was written by Dan Woods on February 1st, 2012. The article was about how data is effecting the way organizations were now running their businesses. The article described how big data allows for clarity in a company which allows for faster and easy decision making. Also in the article the author describes how data adds clarity to decisions; “Data adds clarity, and clarity of vision in big decisions is the cornerstone of success. Data really parts the clouds from the vision, if you will”. Also in the article the author discusses Finally at the end of the article the author describes how much data we have, and the importance of it for it to be helpful to us; “We live in a time where we empirically know so much more about everything that happens around us than we have ever known in the entire history of the world,” I thought that this article was very interesting especially that it does affect our daily lives. I feel that every day we in our own lives use data to determine feature events. For example, if you look at the college’s retention rate you could input the data of previous years to potentially estimate how many students we would lose for the upcoming year. However one thing that we need to know about data is that it’s not always the most reliable source. For instance if we were to use the wrong data or use data that didn’t have to do with the topic like for example retention we may get numbers that would have nothing to do with the actual numbers. I do however think that although there may be some problems in regards to data if used importantly can be very valuable. There are a lot of companies that rely on data; “When you build a whole business around that, it is tremendously powerful. I think that’s behind the fascination about data-intensive businesses like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn. They are truly building a value system around data”. I believe that when used right data can be extremely important.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/danwoods/2012/02/01/how-big-data-is-changing-the-way-we-lead/

Written by Oliver Allen

Homework #5

Big Data Brings Customer Challenges, Opportunities To Banks

By Bryan Yurcan, Bank Systems & Technology

February 10, 2012 10:59 AM

This article is about the McKinsey Global Institute, which estimates the US Banks and capital markets by collecting quintillion bytes of data. These companies have been collecting customer’s data for many years accumulating to a large amount of stored data. The information saved gives prime opportunity for the customers to have excellent experience and retention. Although this is very nice, there are many complications that come with this, and that is that they need a simpler way to access the right data since there is so much of it. Data comes in very little use if you do not use it or do not know how to use it. BBVA compass is a company developing tools to better use the to centralize its data and build master data sets. I believe this article is a power representation of what technology is taking in today, as they advance to higher and more advanced stages. With this new effort companies can now use large-scale master data sets to logically represent the information a customer my need within the bank. Financial services have been getting better due to this support, which I believe will help develop new “mining” aspects of finding better ways to keep and organize data. Data is the key success to helping companies in this day and age has developed into a more complex, as customer service is the key to some success in businesses. With more people thinking about customer service, a company can go from bad to popular in jus the change of how it helps customers through support and simplicity. A bank can accumulate a mass amount of data and what better way can a bank use this information without the help of a service software that organizes the data and how important it is. I believe this can advance the computer world far beyond benefiting just banks, as many major corporations need software to take data and analyze then process it within seconds. With new programs being built and created, more customer satisfaction will be created and companies will prosper.

Homework # 5

10 cool social media monitoring tools

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/283368

This article discusses the importance and useful tools of social media sites that measures the amount of Internet traffic on your particular page or site. These monitoring tools the entire page owner to measure data and demographics by the amount of traffic brought to their page. Among the top ten cool social media monitoring tools is hoot suite. 

http://hootsuite.com//

“Hoot Suite allows users to monitor multiple social networks from a single dashboard and create customer reports from more than 30 supplied modules. Users can also incorporate Facebook Insights and Google analytics into their Hoot Suite dashboards. The Pro and Enterprise versions of Hoot Suite allow multiple contributors without requiring password sharing. The Enterprise version of Hoot Suite costs $1,499 per month.” I think this is extraordinary because if you are running an online database it allows you to actually see results. Example: Web page this allows you to see if it is effective to consumers. Another social media monitoring site I found was Raven Tools.

http://raventools.com/

“Raven Tools uses data from Social Mention to uncover links to your brand's mentions or any keyword that you specify. A positive, neutral, or negative rating can be assigned to each mention. You can try out Raven Tools free for 30 days.” I think this is great this allows you actually see how you are doing. Feedback on a customers experience or thought of company.

The last socials media-monitoring tool on 10 cools sites was

Unilyzer http://www.unilyzer.com/

“Unilyzer makes it easy to see which campaigns are working best on which social networks. Unilyzer retrieves data from a wide variety of social media platforms and analyzes that data using easy-to-read graphics. For example, Unilyzer will tell you which visitors are "sticking" and from where users are coming. Unilyzer also measures social media marketing efforts over time, tracking network size, growth rate, and referral visitors.  Uniscore determines the quality of your social networking presence in areas including quality of social networks and referral rates.” I like this because it shows you exactly how well your ad campaigns are doing.

            I find these very useful as a Marketing Major. I feel these would be important sites for me to be familiar with because social media is very big in the advertising/marketing world. 

Homework 5

The article I chose was Kelley Blue Book taps data analytics tools to improve car valuation.It was published on September 1st 2011 by Computerworld. The article talks about how they used to measure car values and discussed their old method and compared it to their new method. In their old method they used megabytes but now they switched to terabytes. Terabytes allow them to get vey accurate information to base their valuation of off. They went from updating car values every five months to once a week. This is a drastic improvement and will greatly help consumers make more accurate decisions on purchasing a car. They even claim that they could update the values every day if they wanted to. Their new technology on analyzing data is becoming very precise and accurate. Kelley Blue Book has always been good at measuring car valuations but switching from megabytes to terabytes put them on a whole new level of accuracy. Technology keeps advancing as discussed in class. We talked about how computers changed since the 90s and this is a great example on how technology keeps advancing with the times. Technology will only continue to evolve as time goes on and what we think is new today will soon be obsolete. Just ten years ago we had big tvs, computers and cd players. Today we have flat screen tvs, computers and iPods that fit way more songs than cd players. However ten years ago those things seemed new and irreplaceable. I am very curious and excited to see where technology will be in another ten years. I am doing this assignment with an iPad and it is crazy to think how the iPad will probably be replaced by something that makes it obsolete in another ten years just like the cd player was. My point to all this is the Blue Book value changed just like all those things. I think they set the standard for car valuations as I am not aware of any competitors they have. Using terabytes allows them to have more accuracy which ultimately helps the consumer.

The Even Spookier Side of Data Analytics

September 08, 2011

Government intelligence agencies are some of the biggest buyers of low-cost technology to track users' moves on the Internet

In this article it discusses how the government is purchasing low-cost equipment for analytical comprehension of any person in the in the environment of none other than cyberspace. The scary part is that intelligence agencies are now funding analytical startups. Hadoop, for example is a software that is very prominent to this venture. Another important aspect of this is that they are building their own analytical tools as well. This seems to be how the market can be very low-priced. “Two years ago the National Security Agency talked publicly about creating a new type of technology that would grab “essentially every kind of data there is.” Technology is on its way to more and more advances each and every year that is leading us to the path of having a completely different perspective of what “privacy” really is. This is something that is so powerful when fully developed it could be potentially harmful because of the responsibility that needs to be held within the controllers of this technology. Earlier in time, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called for a 42 million dollar proposal to further be able to analyze social media to a fine point. To me this is outrageous, there is no need for protocols like this and they are just doing this to open the doors of people’s personal information or material online and for better advertising. This is the big business’ way to try to stay ahead of their competition and to get more personal with their clients and other consumers around the globe. “We must eliminate our current reliance on a combination of luck and unsophisticated manual methods,” the agency said. The agency involved wants more concrete facts and it seems that they might be close enough to actually cross the line.

Hello all,
My article is about the Obama administration and how he is trying to crack down on medical marijuana.  Despite promises to the contrary on the campaign trail, the Obama administration has announced an escalation in its war on legal medical marijuana dispensaries in California and elsewhere.  The question, Franklin points out, is whether patients will purchase their marijuana legally and safely at a dispensary or whether they will turn to an inevitably dangerous and violent black market. Will we regulate and tax marijuana sales or spend billions fighting a never-ending war on drugs?  
Kampia also noted that the policy would cause needless suffering in many patients who would no longer have access to medical marijuana. No doubt many medical marijuana patients do use the drug for recreational purposes, but that doesn’t change the fact that many very real patients will suffer due to this administration’s efforts to strangle medical marijuana in its cradle.  The Obama administration’s refusal to live up to its promises and its inexplicable decision to push medical marijuana back into the violent black market is yet another blotch on the administration’s already abysmal record on prohibition. Furthermore, there is simply no justification for this move, which creates unnecessary violence and wastes  taxpayer dollars on something that has been overwhelmingly supported at the polls. In a democratic effort to create legal and safe access to marijuana in nine states in this country, voters have spoken.   The federal government and the Obama administration have refused to listen. 

homework 5

Marcus Leary

2/25/12

MIS

Drug makers Mine Data for Trial Patients

            Drug companies have hard times trying to get patients to help with the required testing needed for new drugs. If they didn’t get patients to do tests, they would be appending too much money and taking a long time to research new medicine for the hospitals and they would also fritter away months of patent protection. That process would allow any rivals to catch up. One remedy that they have come up with is to pay the hospitals to let them have patient records so they can choose who would be the most compatible for their test.

There are five big drug makers, who are led by the company Pfizer, will have 13 different hospitals from different parts of New York send them information on their patients. John Murphy, who was a senior director of clinical analytics for Quintiles Transnational, had said “this is going to be a game changer, making medicine into a science and less of an art.”

            The program goes by the name PACeR, which is short for Partnership to Advance Clinical Electronic Research, is one program among many other company and other organizations that seek away to earn a profit off of the flood of clinical data that is being obtained electronically. There are a few other companies other than Pfizer that are funding the project. Those other companies are Merck, Roche, Johnson and Johnson and Bayer Healthcare. Quintiles and oracle are two companies that are helping with the development of the system.

            Federal law forbids the disclosure of patient information that hospitals have on their patients. The only way for drug companies to get help in their tests for their new product, they give money to PACeR and PACeR goes to the hospital and inquires about the info. Each inquiry costs range from 50,000 dollars to 200,000 dollars.

            Doctors and hospitals are into the idea because they turn into attractive research partners for the projects that are going on. The director for clinical innovations at Pfizer, David Leventhal, said that an every day delay on a phase three project would cost 1 million dollars and it would usually last for 90 days. David also said “Even if that number is only 25 percent right, it’s still a compelling message.”

Homework 5

Chris Barchard
Professor Lawson
Management and Informational Systems
February 24, 2012

Homework 5

I chose the article "Kelley Blue Book taps data analytics tools to improve car valuation" published on September 1, 2011 by Jaikumar Vijayan. Kelley Blue Book is a popular website that car buyers use to find estimates for how much a vehicle is really worth. Until recently, the numbers were largely educated conjectures that Kelley analysts arrived at by running a handful of car sales and other metrics through a rudimentary pricing algorithm. KBB is now using sophisticated data analytics tools to sift through volumes of historical and current data to arrive at what company executives say are far better car valuations. Dan Ingle, vice president of analytic insights technology at Kelley Blue Book said, "We went from using megabytes of data to using terabytes of data."About two years ago, the company started using a new IBM Netezza Twinfin data warehousing appliance, which it supplemented with a second similar system last December. The two systems together, with software from Information Builders and MicroStrategy, form the core of Kelley's new data warehousing and business intelligence capabilities. KBB's efforts to mine social media and Web data such as Web logs and clickstream data have also greatly improved the company's ability to forecast ad inventory, gauge customer sentiment and predict user behavior. This has turned KBB from a legacy book-publishing company to an analytics-driven operation. Hushman said, "We could do it on a daily basis if we wanted to."

I chose this article because I thought it was interesting that small and midsize businesses are now using such high tech data systems. To improve from updating every few months to once a week is a huge step, and obviously its been a very helpful adjustment. I assume the customer satisfaction has drastically increased since the advancement. The amount of information KBB can now process is exponential compared to the low numbers that were being processed by the previous system used. I was also surprised to see that KBB was one of the first SMB's to start using much more powerful analytic systems. Below I have provided a link to the new and imporsed Kelley Blue Book website.

http://www.kbb.com/

Can smart city tools reduce crime rate?

The article that I came across and read is IBM Analytics Help Memphis Cops Get 'Smart'. In this article, the main point/goal is to decrease the crime rates in certain cities with smart city tools. These smart city tools are Software that enables IBM to find patterns in crime data. There are thousands of so-called smart-city projects aimed at improving urban services around the world.

Memphis is the main city that this article focuses on as well as it's  huge focus on using smart city tools to reduce crime. Memphis University Professor Richard Janikowski is a strong believer of smart tools decreasing crime rate. He states,“It’s not Minority Report—we can’t look at someone’s head and their genes and say they’re going to commit a crime,” “But can we forecast what’s going to happen and where it’s going to happen? Yes, we can.”

The article explains of an incident that happened in Memphis involving the Memphis Police Department. Lieutenant Paul Wright responded to a shooting scene in Memphis’s Frayser neighborhood. After he responded to the scene the ambulance was pulling away with the victim. He then whipped out his HTC Corp Smart phone and recorded a police report. Within the next hour, the confidential information was scoured by International Business Machines (IBM) software, helping the Memphis Police Department determine whether the incident was part of a wide spread pattern.  

Crimes such as robberies, burglaries and forcible rapes in Memphis fell to the lowest level in a quarter-century in 2010. This statistic just proves that the software is working. A side note would be since public safety is so important to people, The population in cities has increased. I bet in the next couple of years that this technology in smart city tools will be picked up by more and more cities.

IBM is realizing how big their software is and the potential it has to grow. That being said "IBM announced plans to buy Curam Software Ltd., a Dublin-based maker of software that helps cities manage social and health-care related services." Lastly, Sales of smart city-related technology is projected to rise to $57 billion in 2014 which is 23 billion more than last year. This projection is according to researcher IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts.

Police stations around the country are investing in this software. This will help policemen as well as keep the public safe. Time will only tell where this software and technology will take us.

Commentary: How Big Data Is Changing The Way We Lead

I read the article How Big Data Is Changing The Way We Lead, written on February 1^st, 2012. The article was about how data is changing the way organizations are run. It mentioned that rather than using the rather typical low-management to high-management structure which includes middle-management, recent advances in computer data analyses allow for companies to remove the middle-management.

Big data allows for clarity in a company. This allows for faster, easier decision making. Data can often eliminate inner turmoil in a company because it provides hard facts and predictions. The predictions that data can make are much more powerful today than they ever have been in the past. Data can be and is used in a variety of different ways depending on the corporation and every corporation has some sort of use for data analysis.

Data is an integral part of a company and turning that data into knowledge and wisdom is incredibly important. The police can use their data to predict crimes. Companies can use their data to predict sales and other economic events. The importance of data as recent has increased because computers are widespread and data is easily collected by companies.

While the article presents a bright future for data analytics, it’s also important to understand its downfalls. Data can’t predict things outside of its own reach. For instance, a company imputing the wrong data (or simply not inputting the right data) will incorrectly predict future events – or simply not predict events that could be used in a helpful manner. Companies may not know what data to record or how to convert the data they do record into knowledge or wisdom. This could present problems for companies that get stuck recording data that isn’t important or use the wrong data to predict important things.

Meanwhile, some companies thrive on using data. Companies like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn are data-intensive and use it to reach their audience, improve their product, and advertise. Companies that functioned as these data-intensive companies do were not possible years ago but data-intensive companies are likely to increase in popularity in the future.

The article that I chose to read and comment on was IBM Analytics Help Memphis Cops Get 'Smart', by Rachael King.  This article was focused on the new technology that is becoming available to police men and women.  There is a new software out that can now actually predict where crimes are likely to take place, what kind of crimes are committed, and what kind of people are likely to commit those crimes.  This is all due to new HTC Corp. smartphones that police men are using to send in crimes to a database used to keep track of all criminal activity.  For example, the article begins by describing a scenario where a Memphis police officer arrived to a crime scene where an ambulance was taking away someone who was tbe victim of a shooting.  The police officer used his HTC Corp. smartphone to send the information straight to the database where the crime scene is broken down into the type of crime, the location, who the suspect could likely be, and even the actual victim.  All of the information gathered and entered into this new software helps indicate what crimes could potentially be a part of a widespread pattern.  This technology has definitely showed excellent feedback.  Criminal activity numbers have been down in Memphis ever since this software system has been implemented in the Memphis Police Department, making it pretty evident that the new technology has helped police officers predict where crimes may occur or maybe even stop them before they happen.

In my opinion, this is a huge step in not only the world of technology, but also in the world of fighting crime.  This new software is just another example of how our world is growing so rapidly in terms of technological advancement.  If this technology continues to expand become utilized by police departments around the country (or even the world), there will be a whole new outlook on how we fight crime.  There is evidence showing that with the knowledge of where and what crimes are taking place, who is committing them, and who is being victimized, that we will be able to predict more and more crimes before they happen.  This is a huge step for our society and our technological world.

If you were to decide to sell your car, you would more than likely log onto Kelley blue book to have them evaluate what your car is worth. But KBB has recently made some major changes to the way they determine what your car is worth in its condition. The way Kelley previously evaluated the price of a car was through a database which used a “rudimentary pricing algorithm”. But that is no longer the method Kelley uses; KBB has developed a system of evaluating what a car is worth by using a complicated program which sift through historical and current car information to help better the accuracy of what your car is truly worth. "We went from using megabytes of data to using terabytes of data" for estimating car values, said the vice president of analytic insights technology at Kelley Blue Book. There new system of retrieving data was developed through IBM and it allows them to better retrieve new and old information. The program is called the Netezza Twinfin data warehousing appliance, and the program makes it much easier to update and analyze information on cars. Before Kelley devised the Appliance, they updated car information every 5 months, but with Netezza, they are able to update information for over 20,000 cars each week. Also, to help better price cars, Kelley has began mining social media and web data to help better predict user behavior and make Kelley better known on the internet. Kelley is not the only company using these analytical applications; many larger companies have also began using these methods. It has become common for large and small businesses to use these types of programs because the technology is so readily available “Driving the trend is the growing availability of relatively low-cost, specialized tools for analyzing large sets of structured and unstructured data, according to an upcoming study by The Data Warehousing Institute”. These types of programs that Kelley uses are designed to generate the best possible evaluation for the user, and it can also help Kelley with their credibility of the company as a whole.

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/283368

If you were to decide to sell your car, you would more than likely log onto Kelley blue book to have them evaluate what your car is worth. But KBB has recently made some major changes to the way they determine what your car is worth in its condition. The way Kelley previously evaluated the price of a car was through a database which used a “rudimentary pricing algorithm”. But that is no longer the method Kelley uses; KBB has developed a system of evaluating what a car is worth by using a complicated program which sift through historical and current car information to help better the accuracy of what your car is truly worth. "We went from using megabytes of data to using terabytes of data" for estimating car values, said the vice president of analytic insights technology at Kelley Blue Book. There new system of retrieving data was developed through IBM and it allows them to better retrieve new and old information. The program is called the Netezza Twinfin data warehousing appliance, and the program makes it much easier to update and analyze information on cars. Before Kelley devised the Appliance, they updated car information every 5 months, but with Netezza, they are able to update information for over 20,000 cars each week. Also, to help better price cars, Kelley has began mining social media and web data to help better predict user behavior and make Kelley better known on the internet. Kelley is not the only company using these analytical applications; many larger companies have also began using these methods. It has become common for large and small businesses to use these types of programs because the technology is so readily available “Driving the trend is the growing availability of relatively low-cost, specialized tools for analyzing large sets of structured and unstructured data, according to an upcoming study by The Data Warehousing Institute”. These types of programs that Kelley uses are designed to generate the best possible evaluation for the user, and it can also help Kelley with their credibility of the company as a whole.

http://www.livebinders.com/play/play/283368

HW #5

I chose the article How Big Data Is Changing The Way We Lead published on February 1, 2012 by Dan Woods.  This article is from Forbes.  Dr. Michael Rappa, the Institute Director, trains students to be data scientists and uses data to run a large organization at The Institute for Advanced Analytics at North Carolina State University.  Rappa said, “Data adds clarity, and clarity of vision in big decisions is the cornerstone of success.  Data really parts the clouds from the vision, if you will.”  At Google, many of the functions are support by data analysis instead of middle management.  After looking at relevant data and analysis, the decision you have to make is easier.  At the Institute for Advanced Analytics, the management team uses metrics to track the progress of all significant initiatives.  This allows them to see how they are progressing every day instead of waiting until the end of the year to see the numbers.  Rappa also stated, “What is really fascinating to me is that when you’ve built a team around this culture of data, there is a kind of energy and focus that makes things move in a way that is just profound.  When you build a whole business around that, it is tremendously powerful.  I think that’s behind the fascination about data-intensive businesses like Google, Facebook, and LinkedIn.  They are truly building a value system around data.”  Sometimes there are disputes about how to understand the story the data is telling you, how to model data and how to interpret it.  There are all different kinds of organizational structures because you can get faster decisions without middle management.  Rappa also said that we know more about everything that happens than we have before.  I agree with that.  I think it is good that they can see how they are progressing by using metrics at the Institute because that will only help them get better.  A faster decision allows things to work smoother and allows them to fix problems quicker.  I think that Michael Rappa is doing a great job at training students to be data scientists.

HW #5 IBM Analytics Help Memphis Cops Get 'Smart'

The article that I will be discussing is called “IBM Analytics Help Memphis Cops Get 'Smart'”, it was published on December 5^th 2011 and the article was written by Rachael King and the source of the article was from Bloomberg Businessweek.

This article takes place with the Memphis Police Department and it revolves around Lieutenant Paul Wright who responded to a shooting scene in Memphis’s Frayser neighborhood. After he responded to the scene the ambulance was pulling away with the victim.

A few seconds later, a nearby police officer pulled out a smart phone and was able to file a police report. He did so on his HTC Corp Smartphone. Within the next hour, the confidential information was scoured by International Business Machines (IBM) software, helping the Memphis Police Department determine whether the incident was part of a wide spread pattern.  

The largest city in Tennessee is taken part in one of more than 2,000 so-called smart city projects aimed at helping urban areas, from San Francisco to Rio de Janeiro, use data analysis to cut crime, pollution and traffic congestion. Over a decade, cities will invest $108 billion in related tools, according to Pike Research, creating a windfall for software makers such as IBM, device manufacturers like HTC and Siemens AG, Europe’s top engineering company, Bloomberg Businessweek.com reported.

Memphis has been focused on reducing crime by using this smart phone technology. European cities like London, are using this technology to deal with population growth problems in the city. Last year, about 50.5 percent of the world’s population, or 3.5 billion people, lived in cities, according to a March 2010 report from the United Nations. By 2050, the urban population is forecast to rise to 69 percent.

With the increase in the population in cities worldwide, there will be an increase in crime as well. The sale of smart city-related technology may rise to $57 billion in 2014 from $34 billion last year, according to researcher IDC in Framingham, Massachusetts. With that being said Police stations across the country are investing in smart technology to help them out on the field.  I think this is a great idea because it will help out the officers a lot of they can get information about suspects and crimes right to their phone. It’s also easier to put everything in a program on your phone and then upload that information to the computer instead of taking notes.

The smart technology is a great idea for officers as it will make their life’s a whole lot easier.