13 posts and columns on data mining

eBay Is the Most Recent Bay Area Transplant to Seek Access to Seattle’s Talent Pool

in Commerce on January 12 at 6:00 am PT

The e-commerce giant has joined a growing list of companies willing to brave the rain in order to gain access to a deep pool of technology engineers in Seattle.
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Voices

May the Best Algorithm Win…

in News on March 16, 2011 at 12:00 am PT

Amid a larger effort to use medical data to improve health care, one company is trying something new: offering $3 million in prize money for the algorithm that can best predict when people are likely to be sent to the hospital.

Exclusive: Seeking Better Search Results, eBay Finds Experts at Bing and Facebook

in Commerce on January 31, 2011 at 1:00 pm PT

EBay has hired two search experts away from Facebook and Microsoft Bing as it prepares to roll out new features on its site, we have learned.

AngelPad, an Incubator for Entrepreneurs With Credentials

in Social on November 11, 2010 at 11:12 am PT

AngelPad, the new incubator from former Googlers, held its first end-of-session Demo Day last night at its offices on a dead-end alley in San Francisco’s SOMA district. It was a familiar format for those who have been to Y Combinator and TechStars Demo Days, and indeed just about every one of the hundred or so investors in the room is a frequent presence at those events.

Convenient Directory of Least-Private Facebook Members Now Available

in Social on July 28, 2010 at 10:40 am PT

Facebook users may have control over how their information is shared, but they don’t always get to decide where and in what form that information is shared unless they proactively choose to. Case in point: The torrent of account details for more than 100 million Facebook users that surfaced today.

Yahoo Dramatically Expands Twitter Relationship in Next Stage of "Project Rushmore" (Complete With Cutesy Bird Puns)

in News on February 23, 2010 at 5:42 pm PT

Yahoo announced tonight that it is dramatically expanding its relationship with Twitter, integrating it broadly through its Web site, much in the same way it did recently with Facebook.

Twitter Talking Separately to Microsoft and Google About Big Data-Mining Deals

in News on October 8, 2009 at 12:48 am PT

Is there gold in them thar tweets? Maybe so, because–according to sources familiar with the situation–Twitter is in advanced talks with Microsoft and Google separately about striking data-mining deals, in which the companies would license a full feed from the microblogging service that could then be integrated into the results of their competing search engines. Sources said a number of scenarios are being discussed to compensate Twitter for its huge and potentially valuable trove of real-time and content-sharing information, generated from the data stream of billions of tweets from its 54 million monthly users.
GoldMiner

Whoops. False Positive. Sorry ‘Bout That … Heh Heh.

in News on October 13, 2008 at 12:00 am PT

It figures. Not only are the predictive data mining and behavioral surveillance efforts through which the government hopes to identify terrorists a threat to privacy, they don’t really work, either. In a 352-page report published last week, the National Research Council said data mining and behavior detection aren’t nearly as useful as their proponents claim.

Xobni Can Make Good Old Email Even More Useful

in Personal Technology on July 30, 2008 at 6:20 pm PT

Xobni is a new, free plug-in module for Outlook that has some flaws, but Walt Mossberg finds that it turns the email experience from one that was organized by messages and dates into one that is organized by people and relationships.
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