Metrics matter. In business they measure sales, they measure profits, they measure brand health. Marketers measure their reputations, their ad recall, and their shares-of-market. They measure tweets and shares and all sorts of social networking outreach. Big Data was invented just to measure all the things marketers have come to measure. Although marketers haven't yet located the silver bullet, really smart marketers have caught the glint. They measure the consumers' emotional engagement with their categories and brands. [More...]

December has become consistent with the Chinese curse, "May You Be Born In Interesting Times." We are up to our armpits in wars, and each is very different. Qualcomm and Intel are fighting for 5G control, and Intel is tearing itself apart. Microsoft passed Apple in valuation, largely because it has not been focusing on Apple. Canadian authorities just arrested the daughter of the Huawei founder, at the request of the United States, cratering the stock market again, and setting up a potentially costly chain of events. [More...]

Deepin 15.8, released last month, is loaded with more efficient layout tweaks that give the distribution greater functionality and maturity. Deepin, based in China, shed its Ubuntu base when with the 2015 release of version 15, which favored Debian Linux. That brought numerous subtle changes in the code base and software roots. Ubuntu Linux itself is based on Debian. The chief distinguishing factor that accounts for Deepin's growing popularity is its homegrown Deepin Desktop Environment. [More...]

Salesforce has announced the addition of IoT Insights to Field Service Lightning. The new tool permits signals from IoT devices to show up directly on Salesforce Service Cloud and Field Service Lightning mobile app consoles, alongside CRM data. Service organizations can draw on those signals to anticipate and diagnose issues remotely, determine the source of the problem, and dispatch field service agents with the right skills and equipment to address the problem. It lets businesses reduce administrative work and focus on higher-value projects. [More...]