Tech companies come and go. There are always tech savvy entrepreneurs with big ideas looking to fill a need in the market and investors looking to get the huge returns that only come from investing in tech startups. But tech is risky, markets are volatile, and oftentimes what seems like a good idea is not always as good once implemented in the real world. A good example of this is the dot com boom and subsequent bust in the early 21st century. You could get funding on a back of the envelop business plan. Billions of dollars were invested in tech startups with big ideas and big dreams. Many of these dreams were shattered when investors realized they were not getting the same returns they had hoped.
“NoSQL” has been thrown around a lot lately, but what exactly does it mean? It is a generic term that describes any data management system that does not use SQL as a query interface. Early on the positioning was much more aggressive, but more recently this has been softened so now NoSQL is commonly quoted as meaning of “Not only SQL”; in other words, one of many tools.
Accenture is deploying its digital diagnostics engine, which scans websites to identify performance problems and structural deficiencies, into the Windows Azure platform. This news was announced at the third annual Microsoft 2010 Asia High Tech Summit in Tokyo.
Yahoo's BOSS platform lets external developers build custom search engines on top of the company's search infrastructure and the latest news is it will shift to a fee-based model in early 2011. In its new version, BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service) will also give developers various options to generate revenue.
Solid ontologies are important in every use, however when dealing with medical records and medical care, it takes on a whole new level of importance. Project HealthDesign is a good example. It is a project that capitalizes on advancements in information technology to investigate how soliciting patients’ observations of daily living could improve care for chronic illnesses.
Reaching across the waters, the French national library BNF has chosen Microsoft’s Bing to improve access to the 1.25 million documents on the Gallica digital library. It covers works that are in the public domain.