Autor: HCFG

Splice Machine, a startup promising a SQL-on-Hadoop database that can handle both transactional and analytic workloads, has closed a $15 million series B round of venture capital from InterWest Partners, along with Mohr Davidow Ventures. Supporting transactional workloads would put Splice Machine in a good position among the glut of companies and projects letting users perform SQL operations on Hadoop, because most are strictly for analytics. The big question for Splice Machine, though, might be whether companies actually want to run transactions on that data or whether they’re willing to stick to a tried-and-true database for that.

James Dean crashed his Porsche and died nearly 60 years ago, but the “Rebel Without a Cause” star is still causing trouble today — this time over social media. A recent lawsuit in Indiana pits the licensing company CMG against Twitter and an unknown rebel who runs the @JamesDean account.

The @JamesDean account, which began in 2009 and now has over 8,000 followers, is a fan tribute that offers facts, quotes and pictures. Here’s a sample screenshot from a year ago:

The licensing company now wants to put a stop to all this. In its complaint, via the Hollywood Reporter, CMG demands that Twitter identify whoever is behind @JamesDean. The company also makes a laundry list of civil and criminal complaints, including trademark infringement and conversion.

So far, Twitter is refusing to play ball. In response to an email complaint from CMG last year, Twitter wrote: “We’ve researched the reported…

VoIP migration is being recognized for its cost advantage and flexibility. It allows increased efficiency as it manages a single data network instead of separate voice and data networks. Moreover, VoIP has given rise to new technologies and options including –  instant messaging/chat, PC to PC, presence/availability indicators, PC to phone, find me/follow me calling, phone to phone calling, click to dial, web conferencing, collaboration etc. Unified Communications have given companies the freedom to collaborate and communicate with more convenience.

Although VoIP has several advantages, you need to take the right steps in order to set up a VoIP network from an existing telephone or data network. It has to be executed correctly so that it works flawlessly. Care must be taken to avoid any degradation of service that could impact call quality. Compare Telecom has listed eight key steps to ensure successful migration from legacy voice technology to VoIP…

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Signals from the U.S. Justice Department and the Federal Communications Commission are making Sprint(s s) and its SoftBank owners reconsider any possible bid for rival T-Mobile(s tmus), the Wall Street Journal reported Sunday. Merging two of the four remaining nationwide mobile carriers was always going to be a difficult sell, but the Journal reports that Sprint CEO Dan Hesse and SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son were surprised at the amount of resistance they encountered in recent talks with regulators. New FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler has told Gigaom he doesn’t want to see the current level of mobile competition in the U.S. reduced. That doesn’t rule a Sprint-T-Mo deal out entirely, but it doesn’t look good either.

Rackspace(s rax) has long had an open-source bent, but it was focused on the OpenStack cloud project it helped create. As of last week, the San Antonio, Texas-based hosting and cloud provider said its employees can contribute to any and all open source projects that have an “established open-source license.” Van Lindberg, Rackspace VP of intellectual property for the company, blogged about the decision here.

What this policy shift means is that “Rackers” can contribute even to projects that might compete with what Rackspace is doing. However, if they want to do so,  but corporate guidelines require that tell Rackspace why they’re going that route. Oh, and the work must be done on their own time.

The Structure Show

Check out what Ford(s f) data scientist Mike Cavaretta has to say about what big data can mean to the design and sale of cars. Also Derrick Harris and I…

CoreCell Technology, the developers behind AeternoBlade, have revealed on Facebook that the game will be arriving on the Nintendo 3DS eShop on February 18th, with a $14.99 price tag. If you’re unsure about the game then there’s a demo on the Nintendo 3DS eShop which you can try out for free.

AeternoBlade follows protagonist Freyja’s quest for revenge, the lone survivor of a village that the devilish-looking Beladim burned down, presumably for funsies. As Freyja stumbles away from the blazing remains of her village, a stranger gives her the Aeterno Blade, which allows her to manipulate time. This lets players rewind their way out of deaths and slow down time in general. Besting enemies supplies Freyja with one of four orb types, which can be used to upgrade abilities or regenerate health, magic or Ultimate Points. Magic serves as the resource for time manipulation, while Ultimate Points fuel larger attacks.

As publishing tools have become cheaper and more distributed, many have benefited from this ongoing democratization of distribution — whether it’s Twitter (s twtr) users posting newsworthy updates from war zones, or would-be authors publishing their thoughts on Medium. That’s the power of a platform that allows anyone to publish. It’s when the line blurs between platform and publisher that things start to get tricky, not just for writers but for readers as well.

In a recent post at Re/code, Jonathan Glick of Sulia — which is itself both a social-media platform and a publisher — came up with a rather ugly portmanteau of a word to describe this phenomenon: he called them “platishers,” a term that not unsurprisingly unleashed a storm of ridicule from media insiders on Twitter.