Big Data

Last week in Barcelona, Huffington announced a visionary partnership with Hewlett Packard (HP) called HP Earth Insights. This program will revolutionize the way we monitor, report and understand the health of ecosystems. Environmental scientists across the globe will be able to put their field research findings into mobile HP tablets through communication applications and analyze and share that data in visual, user-friendly dashboards that reveal tropical changes in near real-time. HP Earth Insights will help us link tropical forest data with other data repositories at the Smithsonian Institution and Wildlife Conservation Society, and connect the dots to further populate a measure of tropical forest biodiversity known as the Wildlife Picture Index. Before this program, there was a significant lag between the collection of data and the publication of it where more data is collected. The ability to quickly synthesize the telltale signs of ecosystem decline -- and getting that information into the hands of leaders in time for them to make informed decisions -- has become a priority for CI and its partners. This is why the HP Earth Insights partnership is so ground-breaking.

Tracking

Do you like being tracked online? I am sure that you all have heard all the horror stories about how much money these companies are making off of the information that they have about you and even your family. To be perfectly honest, it is a tad bit annoying when you are online and the ads that you see which can get a bit pushy sometimes are related to what you are searching for. The one thing that you have to remember that there is no way to get around being tracked. It will always happen, whether you are using email or internet fax or just trolling around the web. Third-party tracking is where the questionable practices come in, but even those practices have some upsides. If you are tracked by your preferred retailer, you may start seeing ads for products you may actually be interested in. You may get deals or sales in ads directed toward you. Less spammy and more personalized advertisements may make you despise that drop-down advertisement a little less, especially if it is something you’re inclined to look into further. As good as that sounds, there is no real line that is drawn as to where it stops.