Phil Simon

Wednesday I attended the second annual Data Science Summit, hosted by Greenplum. The general topic of data science has intrigued me for quite some time, but I've had very few chances to talk to people actually in the field -- i.e., those who are turning theory into practice....

With its market valuation exceeding $500 billion and its new iPad receiving fantastic critical reviews, you might think that all is well in Apple World.

Well, you'd be wrong.

There are now more than 600,000 apps in the AppStore and it's getting tougher and tougher for Apple to police its...

An interesting Forbes piece on teens fleeing Facebook asks if teens will leave the social network in droves?

Perhaps, but Facebook won't exactly facilitate the transition to a new network. Remember that Facebook closes its application programming interface (API) to many sites for different reasons. In this case,...

Nowhere is it written that you have to watch videos on YouTube or write emails on Gmail. I've been pretty pro-Google and, a few weeks ago, I wrote a post on this site in defense of the comapny's new privacy policy. I argued that those who use Google's platform have...

Google recently announced that it will soon start more closely stitching user information together. Effective March 1st, Google will monitor user behaviors, habits, preferences, concerns, desires, and activity closer than ever before. Information gleaned from YouTube (say, watching a Rush video) may be used to place...

Last week, the inevitable finally happend: Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang finally stepped down from the company's board. Whether the once dominant tech company can right the ship under new CEO Scott Thompson is anyone's guess. Insiders say that, with Yang out of the way, at least...

I just returned from CES 2012 and have had time to digest my first trip to the industry's dog and pony show. In a word, it was a little overwhelming.

After a few days of reflection, though, my mind seems stuck on one thing -- specifically, which companies weren't in...

CES 2012 is in full swing. Yes, there are too many gadgets, gizmos, and doohickeys to count. There are ultrabooks, ridiculously thin TVs, and tablets galore. But beyond the hardware, there's an underlying current at the biggest tech event of the year: the platform.

Case in point: just about every...

Recently, Netflix launched a new app for the iPad. Good news, I suppose, but does that ultimately change the future of the company?

I for one think that, come a year from now, Netflix as we know it will be no more.

Why the pessimism?

There...

It's that time again -- time to look around the corner and make predictions about the new year. Here are 10 technology and business trends that will affect businesses and consumers alike in the coming year.

The continued proliferation of platforms
We have entered the Age of the...

We have entered a new age -- the Age of the Platform. Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google (a.k.a. the 'Gang of Four') have done nothing less than pioneer a fundamentally new way of doing business. By engaging users, consumers, and partners in entirely new ways -- and by...