Useful Reference and Websites
Another Article on Boom of Data Related Industry
Apple Planning to Invest $1 Billion in New Data Center and Other Facilities in Reno, Nevada
Mike Folks, an Apple spokesman, said the company planning for the project to become operational later this year.
“We’re looking at a 30-year relationship,” Folks told commissioners.
The data center, codenamed “Project Jonathan”, is said to be planned to generate nearly 600 construction jobs and as many as 41 direct and 200 contractor jobs upon opening.
Apple currently operates a major data center in Maiden, North Carolina and a much smaller one in Newark, California near the companies headquarters. Apple is also investing $250 million in a new data center in Prineville, Oregon.
Update: Apple has issued a statement to AllThingsD confirming its intent for the area.“We hope to build Apple’s next data center in Reno to support Apple’s iTunes Store, App Store and incredibly popular iCloud services,” Apple spokeswoman Kristin Huguet told AllThingsD. “If approved, this project would expand our presence in Nevada and create hundreds of construction jobs over the next year, plus permanent jobs at the data center which will add to our existing total of nearly 400 employees in the state.”
An interesting article about travel sites charging more to mac users
Travel shopping site Orbitz is offering more expensive hotels to Mac users because the company found Mac users prefer more luxurious rooms, reports the Wall Street Journal.
Orbitz noted that it was is not showing different prices for the same room to different users, but was presenting pricier hotels more prominently to Mac users than those using Windows. Users can rank hotel options by price and get the same listings no matter what platform they are using.
Orbitz found Mac users on average spend $20 to $30 more a night on hotels than their PC counterparts, a significant margin given the site’s average nightly hotel booking is around $100, chief scientist Wai Gen Yee said. Mac users are 40% more likely to book a four- or five-star hotel than PC users, Mr. Yee said, and when Mac and PC users book the same hotel, Mac users tend to stay in more expensive rooms.
“We had the intuition, and we were able to confirm it based on the data,” Orbitz Chief Technology Officer Roger Liew said.
The WSJ goes on to note that the average household income for adult owners of Macs is $98,560, according to Forrester Research, versus $74,452 for a PC owner. The paper also says that some high-end hotels see bookings from Mac users hugely out of proportion with their user share on Orbitz.
The targeting efforts are part of Orbitz’s “predictive analytics” efforts — using gathered data to offer more tailored results to shoppers in order to generate more revenue.
Useful info about SAS certificates
Hi all,
For those who are interested in getting a job related to business intelligence or business analytics, SAS certificates could make you look GOOD.
Here is one exam you can consider taking:
http://support.sas.com/certify/creds/dm.html#t4
Just for your information.
Kevin
Interesting Article on Beer and Diapers
http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_tips_beer_diapers_data_warehouse.htm
Two Useful MySQL eBooks
Hi All,
Here are two useful MySQL reference books that you might find handy, especially when you forget the syntax!
MySQL Cookbook: this one can only be opened in windows environment
Complete MySQL Reference: fine for both windows and Mac OS
Example of Systems Analysis
Hi All,
I am attaching a general systems analysis report, it was an academic essay I wrote last year in about two hours. In this report, I start with the “documentation” from academic literature, and the marketplace it self, to try to assess the current deficiency of the feedback system of some online marketplaces. In this way I try to come up with “problem statements”, and then utilize focus groups, interviews and surveys to get an idea of what the problem is. It gets into a bit of systems design (as implications of the analysis). Please keep it a useful reference material, you may want to refer to it in the future when you are doing similar type of work. The analysis can become more sophisticated but please try to understand the main idea.
Data Analytics to Predict Behavior
Here is another interesting article about data analytics.
Data, Data, Data
Here are a few articles from the Economist highlighting the opportunities and challenges of data.
Yili Hong
Kevin Yili Hong