Too Big to Scale

Residents in Boston, Massachusetts are automatically reporting potholes and road hazards via their smartphones. Progressive Insurance tracks real-time customer driving patterns and uses that information to offer rates truly commensurate with individual safety. Google accurately predicts local flu outbreaks based upon thousands of user search queries. Amazon provides remarkably insightful, relevant, and timely product recommendations to its hundreds of millions of customers. Quantcast lets companies target precise audiences and key demographics throughout the Web. NASA runs contests via gamification site TopCoder, awarding prizes to those with the most innovative and cost-effective solutions to its problems. Explorys offers penetrating and previously unknown insights into healthcare behavior. How do these organizations and municipalities do it? Technology is certainly a big part, but in each case the answer lies deeper than that. Individuals at these organizations have realized that they don't have to be Nate Silver to reap massive benefits from today's new and emerging types of data. And each of these organizations has embraced Big Data, allowing them to make astute and otherwise impossible observations, actions, and predictions. It's time to start thinking big. In Too Big to Ignore, recognized technology expert and award-winning author Phil Simon explores an unassailably important trend: Big Data, the massive amounts, new types, and multifaceted sources of information streaming at us faster than ever. Never before have we seen data with the volume, velocity, and variety of today. Big Data is no temporary blip of fad. In fact, it is only going to intensify in the coming years, and its ramifications for the future of business are impossible to overstate. Too Big to Ignore explains why Big Data is a big deal. Simon provides commonsense, jargon-free advice for people and organizations looking to understand and leverage Big Data. Rife with case studies, examples, analysis, and quotes from real-world Big Data practitioners, the book is required reading for chief executives, company owners, industry leaders, and business professionals.

Industry luminary Robert Pozen offers his insights on the future of U.S. finance The recent credit crisis and the resulting bailout program are unprecedented events in the financial industry. While it's important to understand what got us here, it's even more important to consider how we should get out. While there is little question that immediate action was required to stabilize the situation, it is now time to look for a long-term plan to reform the United States financial industry. That is where Bob Pozen comes in. Perhaps more than anyone in the industry, Pozen commands the respect and attention of the public and private sector. In this timely guide, he outlines his vision for the new financial future and provides actionable advice along the way. To Pozen, there are four high-priority problems that must be addressed, and this book puts them in perspective Analyzes alternative models for government stakes in banks Recommends a new board structure for large financial institutions Examines the importance of broader Fed jurisdiction over systemic risks Proposes a way to revive the securitization of loans With Too Big to Save, you'll learn the likely future of the finance industry and understand why changes have to be made.

Ever since Jurassic Park we thought we knew how dinosaurs lived their lives. In this remarkable new book, Brian J. Ford reveals that dinosaurs were, in fact, profoundly different from what we believe, and their environment was unlike anything we have previously thought.In this meticulous and absorbing account, Ford reviews the latest scientific evidence to show that the popular accounts of dinosaurs’ lives contain ideas that are no more than convenient inventions: how dinosaurs mated, how they hunted and communicated, how they nursed their young, even how they moved. He uncovers many surprising details which challenge our most deeply-held beliefs – such as the revelation that an asteroid impact did not end the dinosaurs’ existence.Professor Ford’s illuminating examination changes everything. As he unravels the history of the world, we discover that evolution was not Charles Darwin’s idea; there were many philosophers who published the theory before him. The concept of continental drift and plate tectonics did not begin with Alfred Wegener a century ago, but dates back to learned pioneers hundreds of years before his time. Ever since scientists first began to study dinosaurs, they have travelled with each other down the wrong path, and Ford now shows how this entire branch of science has to be rewritten.A new dinosaur species is announced every ten days, and more and more information is currently being discovered about how they may have lived: locomotion, hunting, nesting behaviour, distribution, extinction. Ford brings together these amazing discoveries in this controversial new book which undoubtedly will ruffle a few feathers, or scales if you are an old-school dinosaur lover.

Based on author David A. Grier's column «In Our Time,» which runs monthly in Computer magazine, Too Soon To Tell presents a collection of essays skillfully written about the computer age, an era that began February 1946. Examining ideas that are both contemporary and timeless, these chronological essays examine the revolutionary nature of the computer, the relation between machines and human institutions, and the connections between fathers and sons to provide general readers with a picture of a specific technology that attempted to rebuild human institutions in its own image.

Кремовая формула Powermatte Lipstick такая легкая, что на губах напоминает бальзам. Матовое покрытие тоже очень комфортное: не ощущается, не стягивает кожу и не подчеркивает рельеф. Оттенок Too Hot To Hold — тот самый красный, который можно носить каждый день. Применение: Нанесите средство на губы по направлению от центра. Для большей точности используйте кисть. При необходимости сочетайте с карандашом подходящего оттенка.

The dismal truth about hedge funds and how investors can get a greater share of the profits Shocking but true: if all the money that's ever been invested in hedge funds had been in treasury bills, the results would have been twice as good. Although hedge fund managers have earned some great fortunes, investors as a group have done quite poorly, particularly in recent years. Plagued by high fees, complex legal structures, poor disclosure, and return chasing, investors confront surprisingly meager results. Drawing on an insider's view of industry growth during the 1990s, a time when hedge fund investors did well in part because there were relatively few of them, The Hedge Fund Mirage chronicles the early days of hedge fund investing before institutions got into the game and goes on to describe the seeding business, a specialized area in which investors provide venture capital-type funding to promising but undiscovered hedge funds. Today's investors need to do better, and this book highlights the many subtle and not-so-subtle ways that the returns and risks are biased in favor of the hedge fund manager, and how investors and allocators can redress the imbalance. The surprising frequency of fraud, highlighted with several examples that the author was able to avoid through solid due diligence, industry contacts, and some luck Why new and emerging hedge fund managers are where generally better returns are to be found, because most capital invested is steered towards apparently safer but less profitable large, established funds rather than smaller managers that evoke the more profitable 1990s Hedge fund investors have had it hard in recent years, but The Hedge Fund Mirage is here to change that, by turning the tables on conventional wisdom and putting the hedge fund investor back on top.

A blueprint for reinventing the core of your business Value in the next phase of the digital era will go to those companies that don't just try digital but also scale it. Digital@Scale examines what it takes for companies to break through the gravitational pull of their legacy organizations and capture the full value of digital. Digging into more than fifty detailed case studies and years of McKinsey experience and data, the authors, along with a group of expert contributors, show how companies can move beyond incremental change to transform the business where the greatest value is generated—at its core. The authors provide practical insights into the three pillars of digital transformations that successfully scale: reinventing the business model, building out a business architecture from the customer back into the organization, and establishing an 'amoeba' IT and organizational foundation that learns and evolves. This is the ideal guide for all leaders who recognize the power and promise of a digital transformation.