Big Data’s big promise

By Gail Balfour
Backbone Magazine

Almost every company, large or small, has more data than it knows how to handle. And it can be downright overwhelming. Think of how many e-mails you read, answer and store in a day. Throw in your financial reporting, your corporate data, daily transactions and other core business information, and the list goes on, year after year. On the surface, these massive stores of data may seem like a burden, or even a liability. But what if you could use that information to make wiser business decisions, or predict problems before they happen? Does your data have a lot more value than you realize?

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Here’s why your website doesn’t rank higher

By Gail Balfour
Backbone Magazine

Have you ever Googled your own company? How about searched for terms that are related to your products or services? If you have, you may have noticed how difficult it can be to get your Web site to appear at the top of the search engine’s results page, or even on the first few pages. Yes, you are competing with countless other businesses worldwide, and a lot of other noise online, but is that why you appear so far down the list? Maybe it’s time to take a closer look at what you could be doing differently.

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Cybercrime: A global epidemic nobody’s really talking about

By Gail Balfour
Backbone Magazine

Your credit card information is likely sitting on a hard drive somewhere in eastern Europe, and criminals may choose to use it at any time. At least, that is what Joseph Menn’s research suggests. Menn, a Los Angeles-based journalist and author of the non-fiction book Fatal System Error, gave a sobering keynote at the mesh conference held in Toronto earlier this year. His message: cybercrime is a global epidemic and it’s a war we probably will not win.

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