The Smartphone Hub

Commercial Hadoop champion Cloudera is building a connector to enable movement of data between Netezza’s data warehousing appliance and Hadoop clusters built atop Cloudera’s Distribution for Hadoop (CDH). It’s the latest instance of an analytics vendor integrating Hadoop support (via a Cloudera partnership or otherwise) and further evidence that Hadoop has legs as a commercial technology for big data analysis.

Netezza already supported Hadoop within Netezza’s TwinFin appliance, but this partnership goes beyond support and aims to actually make the data movement and transformation process easier.

For data warehousing vendors, the decision to add Hadoop support is all about customer choice. Hadoop clusters are ideal for storing large volumes of unstructured data, processing it and making it ready for analysis, whereas appliances like TwinFin are limited in scale and focus on analyzing standard data types. When the two are combined – especially via specifically designed connectors like in this case – analyses can be carried out across all the data in the combined environment.

What’s a bit interesting about this partnership is that it’s with Netezza. I understand that Cloudera and analytics database vendor Greenplum were working together, but there’s no telling how the EMC acquisition affected that work. Given the depth of this partnership – technology, sales and support – it’s possible Cloudera has all but settled on Netezza as its data warehousing sidekick for the time being.

Of course, it’s neither the first nor the last time we’ll see Cloudera – much less Hadoop, in general – involved in some type of integration efforts. As organization of all types are bombarded by Big Data, business intelligence, database and data warehousing vendors all realize that Hadoop support is becoming a must-have, and it seems safe to say that Hadoop has finally made the journey from search engines to mainstream businesses.

Photo courtesy of Flickr user Elizabeth Ann Collette.

Check out the rest: GigaOM

These days, just about everything makes its public debut in Beta form. Google launched Gmail into an immediate state of notability with its Beta strategy, and chose to hang on to the tag for years for good measure. Online games have more players in their Beta period than the games of yesteryear ever had. There’s a joke to be made here about Apple managing to sell a few million iPhone 4s before it was out of Beta, but I’ll leave that flamewar fuel (mostly) untapped for tonight.

Sooner or later, all good Betas must come to an end. The latest product shedding its Beta skin? Opera Mini for Android.

If you’ve been using Opera Mini 5 for Android for a while, the sans-Beta 5.1 build won’t seem too much different. Same proxy-powered compression magic speeding up browsing and cutting down data usage, same tabbed interface, same PC bookmark syncing functionality — in fact, outside of a few minor tweaks and a laundry list of bug fixes, the only new feature warranting the bump from 5.0 to 5.1 is official support for devices with big ol’ screens, like the HTC Evo 4G and the Moto Droid X.

Alas, that means that at least one worthwhile feature is still missing from the application: multi-level multi-touch pinch/zoom support. Yeah, that’s a mouthful. In other words, it lacks the ability to zoom as much or as little as the user wants by way of the now familiar pinching/zooming gestures. Like its iPhone twin, this build does support multi-touch zoom in some sense; it’s just all or nothing, fully zoomed or not zoomed at all. It may seem trivial, but that little discrepancy is make or break for some.

With that aside, the little bit of time I’ve spent with 5.1 has been nothing but pleasurable. It’s lightning quick, and has been stable as a rock so far. Between Android’s already solid default browser and other alternatives like Dolphin and Skyfire, it’s getting waaay too hard for me to recommend just one — so I’ll let you do it. What browser are you using on Android? Let us know in the comments below.

Check out the rest: MobileCrunch

Apple has deleted at least six threads talking about Consumer Reports’ iPhone 4 tests. Customers on Apple’s support boards were discussing the publication’s negative report, which demonstrated that the design flaw could affect all users. [Updated] More »

Check out the rest: Gizmodo

Apple has deleted at least six support forums’ threads on Consumer Reports’ iPhone 4 antenna problem test. The messages discussed the publication’s findings: Consumer Reports can’t recommend the iPhone because they found out the design flaw could affect all users. More »

Check out the rest: Gizmodo

Apple issued a support statement over the weekend regarding its Time Capsule data backup solution—some of them have been breaking well before they should. But it’s OK, models from between Feb and June 2008 can be replaced, free. More »










Apple – Time Capsule – Backup – IPhone – Time Machine

Check out the rest: Gizmodo

“This update amends the internal management of SMS functionality, and enhances SMS transmission stability.”

With this simple note, HTC’s European support site has announced a software upgrade for the HTC Touch Pro2 and HD mini that enhances SMS transmission stability. If you have one of these phones you might want to scurry over to the support site and get updating! Note that this update is suitable for ROM versions less than or equal to 1.36.XXX.X.

Check out the rest: Windows Mobile News copy

WebOS’s first update since the HP/Palm merger closed has just started rollin’ out to handsets the world over.

The update improves the browser and security of the OS, but — more importantly — introduces final support for apps developed using Palm’s PDK. This is a first for the Palm Pixi.

Pee dee whatnow?

Oh, the PDK is Palm’s Plug-In Development Kit, which forms part of the webOS SDK. Basically, it means developers can port C/C++ applications over to webOS. The big push from Palm/HP here is that this means 3D gaming support for the platform.

What’s that? A big “yay!” from the Palm owners out there? Aww… you make me feel so happy.

Sprint owners should see the update very soon (they’ve already started pushing it your way), but Verizon owners will have to wait a little bit longer for the big red update door to open. Sorry guys.

[via Phone News]

Check out the rest: MobileCrunch

Looks like those Russian spies who’ve been lurking around the US recently aren’t so different from you and I. They also have to deal with incredibly crappy tech support representatives, long wait times, and stupid suggestions. More »










Russia – Espionage – Government – Facebook – United States

Check out the rest: Gizmodo

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Here, the Mercury Seven astronauts examine their “couches”—essentially molded exoskeletons that helped support the gravity pressure of launch. More interesting to me: the bygone era when it was commonplace to wear a tie into space. [NASA] More »










NASA – Space – Technology – Astronaut – United States

Check out the rest: Gizmodo