msoftnews

Tweet GigaOM’s Mathew Ingram recently riffed on a superb piece by Stijn Debrouwere about the cargo culting of analytics in newsrooms. Stijn argued that publishers have aped tech companies by bringing data into their newsroom, but, having little idea of what to do with the data, are using it as more totem than tool, unable to distinguish what is measurable from what matters. In my experience at Chartbeat, I’ve seen…

Tweet New companies like Uber and Hailo are shaking up the taxi industry with GPS-based apps that allow customers to summon a taxi to wherever they’re standing. Wildly popular in San Francisco, these so-called “e-hails” have been catching on in New York City, too. New stats from the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission show that customers made 117,000 total e-hail requests in June but, in a curious side note, the e-hails…

Tweet One of the interesting tidbits we heard this week was the fact that Microsoft has been building datacenters in parking lots. Even more interesting? They don’t put a roof on the datacenter. Read more…      Neowin

Tweet Since the first trickle of Google Glass hardware began filtering out to the general public, the company responsible for the heads-up display sent out a message to the world: “These are going to chosen ones, and the rest of you will have to wait.” Unfortunately, with more people poking, prodding, and forming their opinions about the device in the months that followed the hardware’s initial distribution, that divide seems…

Tweet Health researchers are able to access and analyze your electronic health data, insurance claims and other kinds of traditional health information. But they’re largely locked out of the growing mounds of health and fitness data generated by Nike Fuelbands, Fitbits (see disclosure), Jawbone Ups and other devices and apps. The various companies offering Quantified Self-type devices could open up their data through APIs (and several do for developers) or…