I went to a most interesting meeting of the Big Data London group, at the new Google Campus, on 23 April 2012.

The sessions covered:

• Ade Oshineye (pictured) gave an introduction to the knowledge graph [1.3MB PDF] (relevant links), with particular reference to schema.org. He also spoke of the historical move from the web of pages, to the web of data and now to the web of knowledge.
• Doug Cutting gave an introduction [844kB PDF] to the Avro data serialisation system.
• Tim Estes spoke on automating understanding of human data at scale [7.0MB PDF]. He argued against trying to map the world and in favour of human’s teaching computer systems, and said he took a Wittgenstein approach to his work.

Big data is obviously a big subject! This was the first time I’ve attended this group, and intend to go to further meetings to explore this fascinating subject.

• The Cult of Done Manifesto [Bre Pettis] Some interesting advice – however, as one of the comments says, it may not be applicable in all circumstances: “Let me know when you design an airplane, or automobile, or CAT scanner, or fire extinguisher, or elevator, or SCADA system, or microwave oven using this method, so I can be certain never to use it”.
• Designing for your least able user [BBC Radio Labs] Epic post by Micheal Smethurst on “usability, accessibility and search engine optimisation from an information architect’s perspective”. Excellent.
• What is the Open Platform? [guardian.co.uk] Good move by The Guardian: Content API and Data Store.
• Newspapers and thinking the unthinkable [Clay Shirky] What is the future for newspapers?

• MPs, step away from the internet [Charles Arthur - Comment is free]
• Music beta and linked data [BBC Radio Labs]
• Gears, BrowserPlus, and Web 3.0, baby [Yahoo Developer Network blog]
• Things to consider when using WordPress as a CMS [Devlounge]
• Oh happy day – the new Delicious is here [Delicious blog]
• Londoners not paying for Oyster Card failures [Going Underground's Blog]

• Phoenix Mars Lander delivers soil sample to microscope [NASA]
• Yahoo! succumbs to the power of Google [Observer]
• I’m searching for Google alternatives [Guardian]
• Semantic web – why bother? [Tom Scott]
• How to publish linked data on the web [Freie Universität Berlin]
• BECTU’s response to PSB review [BECTU]