Articles by Nick Kolakowski

• The Abandoned Shopping Cart: Crafting a Better Customer-Monitoring Experience

  Brick and mortar retailers can’t offer customers the shopping convenience of an e-commerce website, but they can offer a smoother shopping experience, especially when store management can physica…
• Microsoft Issues Its Own User-Data Transparency Report

  [caption id="attachment_8648" align="aligncenter" width="618"] The data broken down in Microsoft's new transparency report.[/caption] Not to be outdone by Google, Microsoft has released a “2012 L…
• Apple Leads Cloud-Storage Market: Strategy Analytics

  [caption id="attachment_8639" align="aligncenter" width="618"] Apple's iCloud was used by 27 percent of respondents to Strategy Analytics' recent survey.[/caption] Pop quiz: which company leads t…
• Google’s Schmidt Says Android, Chrome OS Will Remain Separate

  [caption id="attachment_8631" align="aligncenter" width="550"] Google's Chrome OS.[/caption] Google’s Chrome OS and Android will remain separate platforms, according to executive chairman Eric Sc…
• Google Fiber Expands to… Olathe, Kansas

  [caption id="attachment_8619" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Kansas City is increasingly speedy, thanks to Google.[/caption] Olathe, Kansas is the next recipient of Google’s high-speed broadban…
• Amazon Building Private Cloud for CIA: Report

  The CIA has signed a cloud-computing contract with Amazon worth $600 million over the next decade, according to Federal Computer Week. FCW drew its information from unnamed sources. Amazon execut…
• Apple Hires Former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch, Crusher of iPhones

  [caption id="attachment_8611" align="aligncenter" width="618"] This didn't end well for the phone.[/caption] Why did Apple hire former Adobe CTO Kevin Lynch as vice president of technology? Adobe…
• Web-Connected Devices Top 500 Million in the U.S.

  Sometimes it feels as if nobody leaves the house without a smartphone and tablet in tow. “Here, let me show you something,” a friend will say, whipping out one screen or another to display the la…
• Filling Out Your NCAA Bracket Using Heavy-Duty Analytics

  A couple years back, a college-basketball enthusiast took me aside and—in a sign of our eternal friendship—confided his secret for filling out his annual NCAA “March Madness” bracket: he let his…
• Is there a buck in Apache Hadoop?

  [caption id="attachment_8560" align="aligncenter" width="500"] A bubble's always pretty until it pops.[/caption] Is there a buck (or two) in Apache Hadoop, the open-source framework for crunching…