Ajay's Management / Technology gyaan
Musings of an IT Project Management consultant
Friday, June 13, 2014
Football World Cup - Impact on Work
Thursday, June 5, 2014
Quick Thoughts on Wearable Technology
Thursday, May 8, 2014
Quick Thoughts on Mobile UX
Tuesday, May 6, 2014
JIRA (not Jeera)
Friday, April 18, 2014
Republishing Stuck Blogger Posts
This post is slightly off-topic for this blog but it can be classified as technical and also, I want to share this workaround with other users of the Blogger Android app. I managed to find it on the Google Product Forums but it's not an easy one to reach.
Sometimes, especially while traveling, you lose your net connection just before you hit "Publish" on a post. This causes the post to be forever stuck in "publishing" status. You aren't able to republish it even after your net connection gets restored, because the post is "greyed out" in the app.
In such cases, you can use the below workaround after your net connection is restored:
"User would need to use both thumbs as you are trying to force the system to do something with one while clicking on the affected post at the same time. User can hit any published/draft post with left thumb and follow it quickly with tapping on affected row with right thumb. It should happen quickly so that the published/draft post actually doesn't get the tap and rather the affected post row registers a tap event." Now edit the post just like any other draft and publish it.
Friday, March 28, 2014
3D Printing for Dummies
Thursday, March 27, 2014
Big Data for Dummies
Where does Big Data Come From: Wikipedia says, "Data sets grow in size in part because they are increasingly being gathered by ubiquitous information-sensing mobile devices, aerial sensory technologies (remote sensing), software logs, cameras, microphones, radio-frequency identification readers, and wireless sensor networks." According to McKinsey, "The increasing volume and detail of information captured by enterprises, the rise of multimedia, social media, and the Internet of Things will fuel exponential growth in data for the foreseeable future."
Who works with Big Data: Again from Wikipedia, "Scientists regularly encounter limitations due to large data sets in many areas, including meteorology, genomics, connectomics, complex physics simulations, and biological and environmental research. The limitations also affect Internet search, finance and business informatics." Another category of Big Data users are law enforcement agencies across the world who have to work with multiple local databases containing different categories of information about various criminals and terrorists.
Why Big Data Matters: McKinsey maintains that "From the standpoint of competitiveness and the potential capture of value, all companies need to take big data seriously." SAS believes that organizations can analyze Big Data "to find answers that enable 1) cost reductions, 2) time reductions, 3) new product development and optimized offerings, and 4) smarter business decision making". They have given the example of UPS who started analyzing Big Data in the 1980s, long before the term was coined, and used it to achieve major savings.
How to work with Big Data: Since Big Data can't be processed by traditional database management tools or data processing applications, a new set of applications have evolved to specifically deal with Big Data. Some examples are Hadoop (by the Apache Foundation), MongoDB and Splunk. From a hardware point of view, practitioners of Big Data analytics prefer the faster and cheaper Direct-attached storage (DAS) over the traditional shared storage architectures such as Storage area network (SAN) and Network-attached storage (NAS).
Whether Big Data matters to You: Some companies claim that Big Data analysis is the hottest new practice in the field of BI today. McKinsey predicts that "By 2018, the United States alone could face a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 people with deep analytical skills as well as 1.5 million managers and analysts with the know-how to use the analysis of big data to make effective decisions." Clearly, if you an IT employee at a technical or lower-to-middle management level, knowledge of Big Data analytics could help you in the future.