Big data is a trendy term for the ever-expanding cloud of information that’s online and increasingly searchable. Some researchers say it could change the way medical research is done and the way individual doctors make medical decisions. Others say big data raises too many big questions — especially when it comes to medicine.
Category Archives: Big-Data
Uber Responds to Senator Franken’s Privacy Concerns
The hail-a-ride start-up responds to concerns that it does not handle its rider data seriously enough.
Feds Proposed the Secret Phone Database Used by Local Virginia Cops
A Virginia-based law enforcement data sharing ring, which allows signatory police agencies to share and analyze seized “telephone intelligence information,” was first proposed by federal prosecutors, according to new documents obtained by Ars. Federal involvement suggests that there could be more such databases in other parts of the country.
“It’s unsurprising to see the feds encouraging local law enforcement agencies to create these localized databases,” Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told Ars. “In fact, there’s a whole division within the Department of Justice that focuses on educating and advancing local law enforcement interests, the National Institute of Justice. And so I would imagine there are others.”
As Ars reported last month, according to a memorandum of understanding (MOU) first published by the Center for Investigative Reporting, the police departments from Hampton, Newport News, Norfolk, Chesapeake, and Suffolk all participate in something called the “Hampton Roads Telephone Analysis Sharing Network,” or HRTASN.
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Twitter Will Now Let You Search Every Tweet Ever Sent
Twitter is soon making it possible for users to search through every one of the half-trillion tweets sent over the past eight years.
Big Data Companies Agree: Farmers Should Own Their Information
Farmers depend on “Big Data” these days, but some worry the companies collecting information about their operations might misuse it. New privacy guidelines are supposed to protect farmers’ interests.
Americans Have ‘No Control’ of Data
A survey from Pew Research suggests that Americans have little confidence about their online privacy.
Microsoft Wants To Mine Data Like A Social Network
Microsoft is going social. With more than a billion people using Office, the company hopes to gather data and create social tools to help users be more productive in their workplaces and lives.
Bits Blog: Workday to Put Employees Through a Big Data Analysis
The same kind of data analysis behind a Netflix movie recommendation will analyze how people are working in your office.
Facebook Government Requests Up 24%
Requests by governments for Facebook’s user data are up by nearly a quarter in the first half of the year compared to the previous six months.
Appeals Court Is Urged to Strike Down Program for Collecting Phone Records
A conservative legal activist urged a federal appeals court Tuesday to strike down the National Security Agency’s program that collects Americans’ phone records in bulk.
Researchers Tap Web Chatter To Figure Out Who’s Sick
With the help of online data, doctors and public health officials are tracking the spread of illnesses and predicting where they might strike next. The analyses also provide clues for prevention.
Domino’s Becomes A Tech Company That Happens To Make Pizza
Advancements in online and mobile orders have become key ingredients for the company’s recent success. Domino’s innovations include an online pizza tracker and a voice-ordering app.
IBM and Twitter Forge Data Partnership
IBM and Twitter announced a far-reaching alliance to apply data from the microblogging service to solve business problems.
Bits Blog: IBM Teams Up With Twitter to Give Business a Gauge Powered by Social Media
The partnership seeks to harness Twitter messages as a way for businesses to make decisions based on real-time trends among the social network’s users.
How Tech Can Protect You From Big Data
As our digital trails explode, privacy is being eroded. Two heavyweights in predictive analytics debated whether it’s possible to use data-mining technologies and protect privacy at the same time.
Mac OS X Yosemite Sends Location, Search Data to Apple
Two steps toward privacy, one step back.
While privacy advocates lauded Apple for the company’s decision to default to encrypting data on its latest mobile operating system, iOS 8, the technology firm faced criticism on Monday after independent researchers discovered that its latest operating system, Mac OS X Yosemite, is configured to send location and search data whenever a user queries Spotlight.
Spotlight is the company’s search feature for Mac OS X. The capability doesn’t just search a user’s computer, though; it also sends information to Apple and Microsoft to return searches from the companies’ services, according to Fix-MacOSX.com.
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UK Builds Child Abuse Image Database
The UK is creating a national database of images of child sexual abuse seized during police raids on paedophiles and sites that trade in the content.
Twitter Users Respond to ‘Experiments’
The social media site tests ways to make timelines “interesting or entertaining” and releases Audio Card.
SMS Service Could Spot the Next Ebola Outbreak Zone
An Australian doctor is raising funds to launch an SMS service in West Africa that sends people to the right medical facilities based on key words used and crunches that data to look for the next outbreak spot.
“During my missions with Médecins Sans Frontières I have always noticed that no matter how distressed the populations we served, someone always had a mobile phone,” Mohamad-Ali Trad, who has a masters in public health and tropical medicine, tells WIRED.co.uk. “We did some research and actually found out that most areas traditionally considered under-resourced do have a mobile phone coverage.” As mobile penetration on the continent continues to rise, SMS money transfer services like M-Pesa are common in parts of East Africa, and Western Union is hoping to capitalize on penetration in Western countries to launch its payment service with MTN.
It is also certainly not the first time an SMS service has been used during a period of emergency or outbreak. Even in April, as Ebola began to creep from Guinea to its neighbors, SMS messages were used to raise awareness about symptoms and protective measures. A similar system has been used in the past during cholera outbreaks, most recently in Mozambique in 2013.
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Bits Blog: IBM and SAP: A Cloud Pact That Solves Problems and Holds Promise
A partnership between the two giants suggests that the demand for cloud-delivered software from mainstream corporate customers is accelerating.