Software : tech. magazine reveals the apps breaking into Apple's walled garden

tech. magazine reveals the apps breaking into Apple's walled garden
Using Hadoop in big data analysis
Siri was meant for Android phones before Apple stepped in
Updated: Twitter beefs up embedded tweets, short Vine videos could come soon
Updated: Pebble Smartwatch units skipping out to early backers today

tech. magazine reveals the apps breaking into Apple's walled garden

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With news that Amazon has released an Apple-friendly version of its MP3 service in the US, this week's issue of tech. magazine looks at other apps and services that are giving Apple a run for its own money.

From Spotify to Facebook Messenger, Apple is slowly but surely letting others into its eco-system that can essentially replace its own apps. But does more choice actually make for a better experience? tech. explains all.

Also in the issue, the crazy world of Kim Dotcom is investigated, alongside the entrepreneur's new service Mega, all the latest news on why Sony may be delaying the PS4 and expert opinion focusing on Mozilla's new phone offering, Firefox OS.

Reviews, videos and celebrations

tech. also joins Intel in celebrating the birthday of Professor Stephen Hawking and asks the question: do we really need Siri in our lives?

As always, the issue is packed with the week's best videos and this issue there are in-depth, interactive reviews of the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 11 and the Nikon 1 V2 and a preview of Microsoft Surface Pro.

Speaking about the latest issue, editor of tech. Marc Chacksfield said: "Ever since the FFC told Apple that is must open up its devices to rival apps, Apple has had to stand back and watch others create services for iOS that can replace the company's own offerings.

"Now that one of its biggest rivals, Amazon, is taking advantage and showing that all you need is help from HTML5 to stop Apple taking a chunk of money from sales, it's interesting to see how others will open up iOS to the masses.

"Oh, and let us know if you get the high score with our playable 'iOS Invaders' cover!"

Grab the latest issue of tech. from iTunes now. And don't forget that you can still get five issues free when you sign up for a subscription.

Using Hadoop in big data analysis

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As the quantity of data collected by businesses continues to expand, new forms of data management are developing to identify commercial opportunities, and big data analysis is becoming a core business function.

It's well understood that data has value, but extracting that value is proving to be difficult. A survey by technology services firm Avanade showed that 85% of respondents reported obstacles in managing and analysing data. These included being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of data, security concerns and not having enough dedicated staff for the analysis. Also, 63% of stakeholders felt their company needed to develop new skills to turn data into business insights.

"Big data has gained a top spot on the agenda of business leaders for the real value it has begun to create," said Tyson Hartman, the company's global CTO and corporate vice president. "Today, the technologies and skills used to leverage big data for business purposes have reached a tipping point – new types of data supported by better tools to leverage it, enable companies to find financial and competitive benefits."

The most widely used tool in mass data analysis is currently Hadoop, an open source software framework that supports the running of applications on large clusters of hardware. It enables the management and analysis of any kind of data from log files to video, and can facilitate the analysis of decentralised data across a number of storage systems.

IBM has identified a number of business advantages for Hadoop. Firstly, it is scalable: new nodes can be added as needed, without having to change data formats, how data is loaded, how jobs are written or the applications on top.

Secondly, it is cost-effective, making it possible to run parallel computing on commodity servers and sharply cutting the cost per terabyte of storage. In turn, this makes it affordable to model all your data.

It is also flexible, operating free of schema and able to absorb any type of data, structured or not, from any number of sources. Data from multiple sources can be joined and aggregated in arbitrary ways enabling deeper analyses than any one system can provide.

Finally, it is fault tolerant, so that when you lose a node, the system redirects work to another location of the data and continues processing without missing a beat.

In its eBook about understanding big data, IBM states: "Hadoop is generally seen as having two parts: a file system (the Hadoop Distributed File System) HDFS and a programming paradigm (MapReduce). One of the key components of Hadoop is the redundancy built into the environment. To understand Hadoop, you must understand the underlying infrastructure of the file system and the MapReduce programming model."

Business case

We're now at the point where, when business and the IT managers look at upgrading their data management and analysis systems, they're asking whether Hadoop is the answer.

The key to successfully deploying the framework is to clearly understand the goals for the installation. IT managers need to be vigilant that Hadoop does not become another highly complex system to manage that yields few real insights, and it is vitally important to understand its ecosystem.

For instance, most installations of Hadoop will use the Flume framework to handle the data streams that Hadoop will produce. Using Sqoop, a tool for transferring bulk data between Hadoop and structured datastores, is necessary to connect the Hadoop output with standard SQL databases. This makes it easier to query large data silos using familiar tools.

In addition, Zookeeper is used to manage data that could be spread over a large number of data silos, and provides a centralised management system for use across clusters of data. These tools are freely available.

Digital IQs

PwC's fourth annual Digital IQ survey said that companies need more than ever to make the technology they are employing work harder.

"Raising a firm's Digital IQ means improving the way it leverages digital technologies and channels to meet customer needs," said John Sviokla, principal at PwC.

"The core of the ecosystem for innovation has moved from inside the firm to out in the marketplace. Customer and employee expectations are being shaped by this new, dynamic and exciting environment—if you miss this trend you will be increasingly irrelevant to the market."

In an age of big data, Hadoop is becoming a key technology that can deliver real value to its users; but it is not a panacea. There are security issues, and it requires specific skills to set up and maintain an environment using Hadoop.

There are alternative systems, but none take the same holistic approach as Hadoop, which has emerged from the integration of a group of projects on big data analysis on an open source platform.

Dell's white paper, Hadoop Enterprise Readiness, provides a good snapshot of how important it is to businesses that need robust data analysis.

"In short, leveraging big data analytics in the enterprise presents both benefits and challenges," it says. "From the holistic perspective, big data analytics enable businesses to build processes that encompass a variety of value streams (customers, business partners, internal operations, etc.).

"The technology offers a much broader set of data management and analysis capabilities and data consumption models. For example, the ability to consolidate data at scale and increase visibility into it has been a desire of the business community for years. Technologies like Hadoop finally make it possible."

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Siri was meant for Android phones before Apple stepped in

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Ask Siri where she was born and she'll say that she was "designed by Apple in California," but that's only the half truth. She almost belonged on Android phones.

The brains behind this voice-activated personal assistant had signed a deal with American carrier Verizon in the fall of 2009, according to a lengthy Huffington Post feature.

The objective was to make Siri a default application for all of the carrier's Android smartphones, which are of course powered by Apple's chief rival, Google.

Apple, seeing the potential in Siri, didn't just make a counteroffer, it bought Siri, Inc. This ensured exclusivity and killed any hope of Siri for Android phones in the future.

The most interesting part is just how far Verizon's deal for Siri is said to have gone.

"Somewhere in the vaults of the wireless giant, there are unreleased commercials touting Siri as an Android add-on," reported The Huffington Post.

Before Siri for Android, iOS phones

Truthfully, Siri should credit the United States Department of Defense and its $150 million budget for its origin.

Apple's artificial friend was spun out of a five-year, 500-person project by the Pentagon and Menlo Park, California's non-profit research institute, SRI International, according to the expose.

The undertaking was "by any measure, the largest AI program in history," said lead researcher David Israel.

As a start-up, Siri, Inc., initially launched its application as an independently developed iOS application before it was pulled from the App Store.

Apple then bought the 24-person company for a reported $150 million to $250 million.

Siri updates in the future

Siri was updated with the launch of iPad 4 and rollout of of iOS 6 last year, adding new languages and the ability to open third-party apps, look up personalized sports stats, and send tweets.

In addition to expanding the way this personal assistant app is a "do engine," Apple is looking to tweak the responses that Siri gives to commands.

The company is searching for a new writer to invoke a little more personality into its voice-activated application.

One thing that Siri will never properly respond to are questions about her almost-in-the-bag deal with Verizon that would have brought her to Android handsets.

She'll just play coy and direct users to the nearest Verizon stores in the area. Sly.

Updated: Twitter beefs up embedded tweets, short Vine videos could come soon

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Updated: Vine will launch soon, perhaps even tomorrow, but according to sources speaking with AllThingD's Peter Kafka, the video sharing company's flicks won't end up on Twitter.

Instead, when Vine launches, it will land on Apple's App Store. It may find its way to Twitter, but not in a fully integrated fashion, Kafka noted.

According to the sources, there won't be any Twitter branding on Vine even though it is owned by the company.

Original story continues below...

Good news for bloggers, web journalists and frequenters of the Information Superhighway: Twitter has updated its 'Embed Tweet' option to include attached media and web articles.

Now, instead of the embedded tweet appearing with links to non-text features, attached items like photos, YouTube clips and article summaries from websites will be present.

The change will benefit news sites, who are increasingly gleaning and reproducing news from the Twitter feeds of celebrities, notable web users and Twitter users who witness important events first hand.

The 'Embed Tweet' option appears for all Twitter.com users within the More menu underneath each tweet. Selecting the option brings up a simple piece of HMTL code, which can be inserted into an article.

Faster loading

Twitter added on its official blog that retweet and favourite counts will also appear within the new embedded tweets options and they will also load faster than previously within websites.

Product Manager Brian Ellin wrote: "Embedded Tweets display photos, videos, article summaries and other content shared in a Tweet, just like you see on twitter.com.

"You can also view retweet and favorite counts to better understand engagement, and we've made some tweaks to the design so that embedded Tweets are easier to read."

Twitter taking on Instagram?

Meanwhile reports on Wednesday suggested that Twitter is about to launch a short video service as a (sort of) rival to Instagram.

Twitter bought up the Vine service, a New York based start-up that was yet to launch, in October last year and now the Australian Financial Review reckons it will be relaunched Down Under in the coming weeks.

The idea behind Vine was to display portions of video recordings, trimmed down into six second clips, like so, from the company's co-founder Dom Hoffman.

The battle to be the elusive "Instagram of video" has sparked a number of new apps, services, and start-ups. all seeking that big payday. So far, the likes of Viddy, Tout and Socialcam haven't really caught on in the same way.

Twitter has declined to comment on the reports.

Updated: Pebble Smartwatch units skipping out to early backers today

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Updated: Whatever was holding up Pebble's iPhone app is apparently no longer an issue as the company was able to push out its app for iOS just as the first phones started shipping.

The app is free, though needs a Pebble watch to work.

Original story continues below...

Kickstarter phenomenon the Pebble Smartwatch has today started shipping to its army of backers.

The first 500 e-paper watches are off the production line and are now being distributed to those who committed to the project first.

Pebble, which syncs with a user's smartphone via Bluetooth to show incoming calls, messages, notifications and more, attracted more than 69,000 backers, so it may take a while to fulfil all orders.

The company now aims to get production up to 2,400 watches a day, making use of the $10,266,845 it raised to make Pebble one of the most successful crowd-sourcing projects ever.

Working out the kinks

In a post on the Kickstarter page, the company said: "Pebble will start shipping today! We'll be sending out the first batch to the very first backers this afternoon. There are still some kinks and issues that we need to work out, but I'm glad to say we've made it this far."

The company had initially hoped to start shipping in September, but the incredible success of the project meant deliveries were delayed until the new year.

In today's post, the makers also offered an update on the accompanying smartphone apps, which will allow users to download software updates and customise watch-faces.

The Android app is coming on Thursday, but the iOS version has been held up in the notorious App Store approval quagmire.

Pebble added: "Pebble iOS App is not yet available in the App Store. We submitted two weeks ago and have been responding to reviewer feedback.

"For the moment, iOS users who receive Pebble early will be able to do notifications/Music control but will not be able to install watchfaces or upgrade to the latest PebbleOS until the app appears in the App Store."

Yahuui Blog

Thursday, January 24, 2013