Teradata grabs Hortonworks by trunk
Teradata doesn't want to be an elephant, it wants to ride them.
The data warehousing pioneer has been loath to create its own distribution of the Hadoop data muncher – most likely because of the shortage of deep Hadoop skills out there – and has been partnering to lash the open source MapReduce program and file system to its Aster Data SQL-MapReduce hybrid and its Teradata data warehouse appliances.
A year and a half ago, Teradata partnered with Cloudera, the upstart company founded by several of the key people at Yahoo!, where Hadoop was invented, to provide a pipe linking Hadoop clusters to Teradata warehouses.
Since that time, a number of other distributions of the Hadoop stack have been launched to compete with Cloudera's CDH3, including MapR Technologies' M3 open source and M5 open-core, which is resold by EMC's Greenplum data warehousing division as MR Enterprise Edition, and the Hortonworks Data Platform. Hortonworks is a later spinout of techies from Yahoo! who worked on more recent projects at the search engine and media company. Neither Cloudera nor MapR are committed to open sourcing all their goodies, but Hortonworks is. It is not clear how important this is to Teradata or its customers. Read more...
Kiwi open sourcers invade Aus
New Zealand open source digital media company SilverStripe is ramping up its presence in Australia, selecting Victoria as its Australian headquarters and hiring 50 new staff.
Privately held SilverStripe was launched in 2000 providing open source content management systems and a web development services. It says its tools are now used by around 20,000 web developers globally.
New positions created by SilverStripe will include project architects, new code designers and developers, creative directors, art directors and system integrators in areas such as quality assurance, network security, server and website administration and support. Read more...
With Google out, Twitter inks search deal with Yandex
Just months after Twitter and Google failed to reach an agreement for Realtime Search, the microblogging site has inked a deal with Russian search engine firm Yandex.
Yandex announced Monday that the deal enables it to access Twitter's full feed of public tweets real time and work them into its search results.
Twitter and Microsoft signed a similar deal in the summer of 2009 to add tweets to Bing search results.
A few months after Twitter hooked up with Bing, it inked a similar deal with Google. Read more...
Wi-Fi Passpoint standard could end hotspot sign-on hassles
The Wi-Fi Alliance will launch a program to simplify the use of Wi-Fi hotspots in July, making it easier for both users and mobile operators to get off strained cellular networks.
Users of smartphones, tablets, cameras and other Wi-Fi-equipped devices will be able to get onto hotspots without entering usernames or passwords, the group said in a white paper released on Tuesday. The paper outlined the program, called Wi-Fi Certified Passpoint, and said the first phase of certification tests will begin in July. A second phase beginning next year will add more features. Read more...
Ubuntu Android add-on designed to replace PCs
Canonical has unveiled software that will give Android smartphones the ability to run full desktop computer sessions on computer monitors and television sets.
"The processors at the heart of smartphones are approaching the power of low-end laptop processors, so we use the horsepower to power a desktop experience," said Canonical founder Mark Shuttleworth. "If you link your phone to a computer monitor and keyboard, then the phone can drive a full desktop session."
The company launched the software, called Ubuntu for Android, at the Mobile World Congress, being held this week in Barcelona. Read more...
Intel pondering becoming a chip foundry
Intel is exploring whether it can branch out as a foundry by opening its chip manufacturing facilities to more third-party customers, the company said on Tuesday.
Intel has expanded its chip-to-order business by signing up additional customers to take advantage of its 22-nanometer process facilities, company spokesman Chuck Mulloy said. Intel's upcoming PC chips are already being made using the 22-nm process, and laptops and desktops with the chips are expected to become available in a few months.
Intel in the past has exclusively retained manufacturing facilities for its own chips, but late last year said it would make FPGAs (field-programmable gate arrays) for Achronix Semiconductor. Another FPGA product designer, Tabula, on Tuesday said it would have its products made on Intel's 22-nanometer process. Intel's Mulloy said the company has even more customers, but couldn't reveal their names. Read more...
Oracle again waives extended support fees for E-Business Suite
Oracle has given customers running version 12.0 of its E-Business Suite software a reprieve from extended support fees, which would have kicked in this month, increasing the maintenance payments they were already making.
The waiver runs through January 2015, according to a recent post on an official company blog. Customers are still required to meet minimum patching baselines, according to Oracle.
Last year, the vendor previously waived first-year extended support fees for E-Business Suite 12.1, covering June 2014 through May 2015. It also granted a waiver on extended support fees for EBS 11i for the period spanning November 2010 to November 2013. Read more...
NASCAR racing team turns to Google+ Hangout to prep fans for Daytona 500
We’ve seen quite a few genius uses of the Google+ Hangout feature, including a question and answer session with President Barack Obama and 24-hour concerts from musician Daria Musk. For those who are doubting Google’s social features, the Hangout feature is getting traction from some interesting figures and brands and it’s becoming harder to deny that Google has a hit on its hands.
It’s also hard to deny that coming face to face with your favorite public figure beats out any other social medium we have at our disposal and NASCAR has taken notice and one of the more popular teams is holding two live “hangouts” on the Google+ platform. Read more...
Think you can design a better Windows 8 logo? You might win this contest
There’s been a lot of controversy surrounding the redesigned logo for the upcoming release of Windows 8. Although Microsoft routinely adjusts its Windows logo every few releases, the latest redesign has been quite radical. Some hate it, some love it, and everyone seems to be a little surprised.
The logo was designed by the highly renowned Paula Scher of Pentagram, and kicks aside the famous glossy flag for an angled set of blue windows. The concept makes perfect sense and aligns well with the Metro UI, but many still find it chucks years of brand recognition into the trash. Read more...
Google, Microsoft butt heads over IE privacy skirting
Google yesterday countered Microsoft's contention that it's skirting Internet Explorer's privacy protection, saying it's "impractical" to comply with IE's rules.
One privacy researcher said there was enough blame to apportion to both Google and Microsoft.
The latest dustup over Google's privacy practices began early Monday, when Microsoft's top executive for IE accused Google of circumventing the browser's default privacy defense so that Google's ad network could track IE users' online movements without their permission.
Microsoft's charges were similar to ones made last week after the Wall Street Journal said Google was sidestepping the privacy protection of Apple's Safari, which is bundled with Mac OS X and is the only authorized browser on the iPhone and iPad. Read more...