Link Collection — December 18, 2011

• Five big data predictions for 2012 – O’Reilly Radar

  FINALLY! –> Streaming data processing: “Over the next few years we’ll see the adoption of scalable frameworks and platforms for handling streaming, or near real-time, analysis and processing. In the same way that Hadoop has been borne out of large-scale web applications, these platforms will be driven by the needs of large-scale location-aware mobile, social and sensor use.

  For some applications, there just isn’t enough storage in the world to store every piece of data your business might receive: at some point you need to make a decision to throw things away. Having streaming computation abilities enables you to analyze data or make decisions about discarding it without having to go through the store-compute loop of map/reduce.

  Emerging contenders in the real-time framework category include Storm, from Twitter, and S4, from Yahoo.”

  tags: bigdata streaming realtime

• Smart Innovators Value Smaller Teams Over Better Processes – Michael Schrage – Harvard Business Review

  “They work very hard to stay very small. Even top-tier talent is turned aside or denied. The emphasis has shifted from “how do we successfully scale the team?” to “how do we successfully scale the team’s influence and deliverables?” Instead of seeing an explosion of virtual teams, what’s emerged are teams cleverly using digital and social media to extend their reach both inside the enterprise and out. Key suppliers and channels are contacted on an “as needed” basis”

  tags: innovation teams hbr

• Clive Thompson on Why Kids Can’t Search | Magazine

  “Today the question is, why can’t Johnny search?

  Who’s to blame? Not the students. If they’re naive at Googling, it’s because the ability to judge information is almost never taught in school. Under 2001’s No Child Left Behind Act, elementary and high schools focus on prepping their pupils for reading and math exams. And by the time kids get to college, professors assume they already have this skill. The buck stops nowhere. This situation is surpassingly ironic, because not only is intelligent search a key to everyday problem-solving, it also offers a golden opportunity to train kids in critical thinking.”

  tags: information literacy criticalthinking

• Don’t Let What You Know Limit What You Imagine – Bill Taylor – Harvard Business Review

  “Many organizations, she argues, struggle with a “paradox of expertise” in which deep knowledge of what exists in a marketplace or a product category makes it harder to consider what-if strategies that challenge long-held assumptions. “When it comes to innovation,” she writes, “the same hard-won experience, best practice, and processes that are the cornerstones of an organization’s success may be more like millstones that threaten to sink it.” “

  tags: innovation hbr

• Scott Aaronson – Quantum Computing Promises New Insights – NYTimes.com

  The goal in quantum computing is to choreograph a computation so that the amplitudes leading to wrong answers cancel each other out, while the amplitudes leading to right answers reinforce.

  tags: quantum computing

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.