May 10, 2015

Emotion and Cognition
Ask people today how they think the mind works and odds are good that they will describe a computer. They will talk about accessing memory or they will talk about processing data. They will talk about sending off a request and computing results. Or they will talk about acting on input to produce a specific output. We think of our brains as having a separate processing unit and separate memory. Data is input, stored in memory, and when processed appropriately correct answers should appear. For example, if we understand the operation called multiplication and are given two different numbers such as 7 and 6 we should return a correct result, 42. The concept of short-term memory and long-term memory is also very similar to the computer model of long-term disk drive storage and short-term cache/RAM memory.


Mobile ads take center stage as smartphone becomes leading search tool
Even the latest generation of larger smartphones, or "phablets," including Apple's iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung's Galaxy Note 4, have a lot less screen space than laptops and external monitors, and clicking through multiple pages can be very annoying, so Google started rolling out new mobile-friendly ad formats. When users search for something on their phones, Google increasingly shows a panel, or carousel, of listings from advertisers at or near the top of mobile search results. Users can swipe across to see more listings, and when they click them advertisers pay Google for the traffic.


Chief data officer: Insight into a crucial role for the exabyte age
Both CIOs and CDOs support business needs, whether in enterprise, commerce, or academia. If using performance metrics to manage IT relies upon accurate data, that means the CIO will depend on the CDO to get it right. "The CDO is responsible for working with the business lines to define business rules and roles around data, in addition to aligning the organizational strategy around data," said Casey. "The CIO is responsible for implementing technology architectures, infrastructures, and policies in support of business and data needs." Inside or outside of the public sector, the CDO can also help other executives and managers by bridging internal silos. "The role is complementary to CIO and CTO by helping organizations capitalize on data," said Speyer. "The CDO will rely on the CIO for IT and infrastructure support.


Can big data solve the amnesia of public outrage in Taiwan?
Big data expert Hsieh Bang-yen lamented the collective amnesia of Taiwanese society in a recent opinion piece for China Times. Major news events that affect people's lives and property become wiped from the public consciousness as soon as the media hype dies down and people find the next thing to get upset about, Hsieh wrote. Hsieh said local media, the government and anyone who desires social progress should harness the emergence of big data to reinforce the influence of scandals and high-profile news stories that otherwise get swallowed in the country's news cycle to force the government to implement reforms. We agree with this suggestion but the problem is how to make the best use of big data in this regard.


Enterprise-architectures for the real world
Remember Stafford Beer’s warning about POSIWID – that ‘the purpose of the system is [expressed in] what it does’. If, in designing a system, we fail to understand and work with what’sactually going on, we’ll end up with whatever system happens to emerge from the real real-world context – which, as in that example above, is often pretty much an unmanaged mess. For some (most?) people in our discipline, their ‘enterprise’-architectures may never stray much beyond the nice safe bounds of a data-centre or suchlike – which is fair enough for them, I guess. But for those of us whose enterprises necessarily extend beyond such comfortable constraints, we need architectures that can work with such enterprises as they really are – which can be, uh, quite a bit different than everyday IT-architectures…


The Relationship of Architectures - Part 2
The Enterprise Architecture encompasses the stages of transforming the design structure of the enterprise into detailed executable components. Input to this stage is the result of applying the management disciplines and formatting them in a manner useful to the enterprise architect. This is the ‘construction’ and ‘Execution’ part of bringing an enterprise structure into existence. If there is a specific solution that is used such as a type of technology or software package then the solution architecture idea is used. This approach is typically used when the solution is an IT solution. The enterprise architecture is driven by the use of development, engineering, project management, other disciplines, and tools that lead to a business specific solution.


Information Governance Tips with the Business User in Mind
Unstructured data typically includes Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, PDFs, media text files, emails, audio files and images. ... Further complicating the issue is that this data is often created and saved over a multitude of repositories like ECM systems, shared drives, desktops, cloud environments, etc. According to Rob Hamilton, vice president and digital market leader, Recall, corralling unstructured data is possible, but it cannot occur if IG decision-makers create policies that drastically impact business user workflow. If policies make their job significantly more difficult, they'll find workarounds for managing data that may put the organization at risk. The following suggestions can shrink the amount of unstructured data, help maintain compliance and gain buy-in from those most impacted by IG policies.


Deploying Microservices to AWS at Gilt: Introducing ION-Roller
As the old environment is still available during the rollout and the software is still running, we can safely rollback to the older version of the software at any point. Unused old instances are removed after a configurable period of time. Due to this delay, we can still rollback for a period of time after the rollout has completed. Our goal is to continuously monitor the health of the endpoint, and automatically revert to the old version if issues are detected; we will use Amazon’s CloudWatch alarms to signal that a rollback should be performed. ... ION-Roller supports the concept of canary releases via configuration of the traffic migration process. After a new version is deployed to the initial set of instances, the process stops, allowing for release testing against production traffic. Rollout will continue after a configurable period of time.


Enterprise Architecture: The Key to Unlocking the Value of Convergence
As the number of connected devices and “things” grows, the amount of data produced will increase too. From 2012-2020, the amount of data created is projected to double every 2 years. All this data creates complexity, especially when it comes to transforming that data into valuable information for decision makers. This complexity, along with new business models and strategies, is driving IT transformation. EA can help simplify things and manage the data so that organizations can capture the potential business value of IoE and digitization. Enterprise architects also need to look at business transitions that are occurring. Trends such as globalization, new opportunities for growth and productivity, and increased security and regulatory compliance are all things to consider.


Goldcorp vice president: ‘Simplify your IT strategy’
“Simplifying IT leads to improved performance at the operational level while at the same time reducing costs and risk” – Luis Canepari, vice president of IT at Goldcorp. Gartner’s definition of IT strategy is clear: “IT strategy is about how IT will help the enterprise win … and is an integral part of the business strategy.” Simple. Concise. Meaningful. With technology innovation occurring at a rapid pace, it can be difficult to decide on which vendors and platform architectures will lead to success. Thus, creating a clear and thoughtful IT strategy as the foundation on which to build is essential. ... Team dynamics are important as well explained Canepari, “having a mix of long-serving Goldcorp leaders and new faces allows for new ideas with minimal disruption.”



Quote for the day:

"Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future." -- Paul Boese

No comments:

Post a Comment