A trillion tiny robots in the cloud: The future of AI in an algorithm world

(c)iStock.com/davincidig

It’s not words, but how we say them that speaks volumes. By analysing your tone of voice, a new computer algorithm can predict whether your relationship will last, and it arguably does so more accurately than professional therapists.

Now, I’m not here to advise you on couples therapy. What I’m interested in is how algorithms like this one are going to change the way we live and provide a massive opportunity for the cloud...

21 December 2015 | Infrastructure

Why the Tomb Raider publishers created their own database as a service

Picture credit: "Tomb Raider - Transport", by "Anthony Jauneaud", used under CC BY NC / Modified from original

In the past 25 years, one of the most proprietary technologies that has come to market is cloud computing. That’s the claim I made to the editor of this very publication back in July. The cloud’s promise of flexibility may prove to be a Trojan horse of vendor lock-in as you move up each layer of the vendor’s stack, consuming not just infrastructure, but...

3 September 2015 | Data & Analytics

Why the cloud wars are good for you: Google’s NoSQL database and the battle with Microsoft and Amazon

(c)iStock.com/TARIK KIZILKAYA

Google is creeping up your data stack. In response to Microsoft’s recent Azure DocumentDB announcement Google has released Cloud BigTable into the wild. Cloud BigTable is a managed NoSQL database service based on a version of BigTable used internally for more than decade. Last week Google announced the database would be made available to the masses, and could even be accessed through the Apache HBase API (take that, Hadoop vendors!). It’s a...

20 May 2015 | Data & Analytics