Who needs an awards show to tell us what movies and actors fans prefer when we have Twitter? In yet another partnership with the USC Annenberg Innovation Lab, IBM is turning its skills in social-media sentiment analysis to Hollywood awards so the world can see which movies and stars are generating the most buzz on Twitter. IBM has done similar analyses of both the World Series and the Super Bowl, and although they’re no doubt part of a marketing effort to demonstrate its big data prowess, the projects are pretty fun and rather insightful.

It’s new Senti-meter, which appears as part of the Los Angeles Times‘ interactive and ongoing awards section called “The Envelope,” ranks movies, actors and actresses based on the number of tweets about them and the sentiment contained in those tweets. For example, as of its last update on Jan. 28, the Senti-meter showed Hugo dominating in number of tweets, but Midnight in Paris generating the most-positive reaction. The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, however, appears to have the best balance between number of tweets and positive tweets.

It’s easy to take fan sentiment with a grain of salt if you’re a movie critic, but if you’re a studio, being able to quantify the types of movies and stars fans prefer could mean big bucks. When I spoke with IBM SVP of IBM’s Software and Systems Steve Mills in October, he told me IBM expects to do billion in analytics revenue by 2015, and he expects social-media analysis to be a big driver of that growth.

Anyone into betting on the various awards shows might find this particular project useful, too. It’s hardly predictive analytics, but the masses might know something: although the New England Patriots were favored in last week’s Super Bowl, sentiment swayed in the last few days to New York Giants quarterback — and eventual winner — Eli Manning from Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

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We’ve seen Nikon’s successor to the D700 slip out a few times this past winter, but this latest leak and its bevy of press images might just be the real deal. According to Brazilian site ZTOP, the company’s set to officially debut its 36.3-megapixel D800 tomorrow. So, what’s on the spec list? Well, it looks like those rumors were true, as this high-end DSLR apparently boasts that aforementioned CMOS sensor capable of 7360 x 4912 resolution and the ability to toggle ISO from 100 – 6,400. As you’d imagine, this high-end, digital light box also comes equipped with the ability for full 1080p30 HD video capture, recording content in either H.264 or MPEG-4 formats. Naturally, there’s also a 3.2-inch LCD viewfinder onboard so you can sift through your sizeable gallery of stills. While we still caution you to take this news with a nigh invisible grain of salt, it’s likely all will be revealed in one day’s time. Check out the source below for additional shots.

Nikon D800 slips out for an early bird preview, to be officially unveiled tomorrow? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:05:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jim Baum, IBM Netezza, at Structure Big Data 2011

IBM shares were trading up Tuesday morning after it reported strong first-quarter results yesterday. While Big Blue got a profit boost from recently released mainframe products, it also gave us some indications for the future growth of the cloud and big data. Mark Loughridge, IBM’s senior vice president and CFO for Finance and Enterprise Transformation, said IBM is still on track to double its cloud revenue in 2011 compared with the year before.

Because IBM’s definition of cloud can be pretty loose (i.e., it sells a lot of software, servers and services that conceivably could be labeled as cloud) take that with a grain of salt. However, here’s what we can learn:

The private cloud business is doing well. So much so that Loughridge said, “In private cloud, IBM’s average transaction size more than tripled from a year ago.” It also released new software to create private clouds during the quarter.

New products can keep revenue growth up. IBM has made more in the first of 2011 in cloud than it did the year before and said it had 2,000 cloud wins to date, but some of that success comes from new products such as the new private cloud software mentioned above as well as the “IBM Smart Cloud” infrastructure as a service product that launched also during the quarter.

New markets help boost growth too. IBM saw strong growth in emerging markets such as Brazil, Russia, India and China (the BRIC countries) but also growth in cloud deployments in places like Africa. Many emerging economies are turning to cloud computing as they build out their IT infrastructure, leapfrogging the legacy client server paradigm. IBM appears to be benefitting from this trend.

Big data is big business. IBM’s business analytics software grew by double digits for the seventh consecutive quarter. The company’s distributed database products experienced double-digit growth in the base business, and Netezza’s transactional volumes were up 70 percent versus a year ago,according to Loughridge’s prepared remarks.

Is it time to say sayonara to Sun gear? IBM’s Power brand of servers are winning over the competition, especially the former Sun boxes now owned by Oracle. Loughridge said that IBM had 250 competitive displacements that resulted in more than 0 million of business. About 60 percent of these wins came from Oracle’s legacy Sun-installed accounts, and 30 percent came from HP-installed accounts–a ratio holding steady from the previous quarter.

So there we have it. IBM has long been seen as a bellwether for the overall IT industry and for business spending on technology in general, and now it can help us predict the future for the cloud and big data.

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IBM outs integrated circuit that’s made from wafer-size graphene, smaller than a grain of salt originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 09 Jun 2011 15:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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IBM scientists have created the smallest 3D map of the earth – so small that 1000 maps could fit on a grain of salt*. The scientists accomplished this through a new, breakthrough technique that uses a tiny, silicon tip with a sharp apex — one million times smaller than an ant — to create patterns and structures as small as 15 nanometers at greatly reduced cost and complexity. This patterning technique opens new prospects for developing nanosized objects in fields such as electronics, future chip technology, medicine, life sciences, and opto-electronics.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

US $70.33 End Date: Saturday Feb-11-2012 15:26:01 PST Buy It Now for only: US $70.33 Buy it now | Add to watch list

One great thing about the internet is the number of people offering advice. Of course, sometimes you need to take that advice with a grain of salt, but photography advice is usually safe. Case in point; BBC’s Wildlife Magazine published a series of Photo Masterclasses in 2006/2007. The information still holds true now (theory rarely changes) and is definitely worth a read.

As a photographer myself, I’m constantly trying to find information of new techniques and practices to make my photos better. That’s why I love it when an organization like the BBC shares information like this on the ‘net. The classes cover the best practices for shooting in many different situations, including everything from shooting plants to shooting in the arctic. They are all available in the PDF format, and you can download them for personal use. I’ve only had time to read a couple of them, but they are very well written and worth your time.

[via LifeHacker]