Interest in big data continues to grow in terms of both downloads of connectors to software packages and in software infrastructure to power big data, primarily in the form of NoSQL databases and Hadoop-related extensions, according to a report.

The report, released today to coincide with the Hadoop Summit in Santa Clara, Calif., comes via open-source business intelligence provider Jaspersoft. The second-quarter report measures demand for popular data sources for storing, analyzing, and visualizing big data and uses stats from the JasperForge community site.

Key findings:

PALO ALTO, Calif.--This is a big-data week in Silicon Valley, kicking off last night with a Churchill Club event here called "The Elephant in the Enterprise: What Role will Hadoop Play?" and featuring a high-powered group of big-data executives.

Hadoop, the open-source software that has emerged as the de facto standard for big data processing, may be what tips enterprise in the favor of open source. The desire to get more data and find value in it has become a business priority, and Hadoop is playing a major role in making sense of data.

And while the … Read more

VMware today announced a new open-source project called Serengeti, which enables enterprises to quickly deploy, manage, and scale Apache Hadoop in virtual and cloud environments.

VMware says it is working with the Apache Hadoop community to contribute extensions that will make Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS) and Hadoop MapReduce projects "virtualization-aware" to support elastic scaling and further improve Hadoop performance in virtual environments.

In case you've been living outside the big data vacuum, open source Hadoop has emerged as the de facto standard for big data processing and is packaged up in a few different distributions by … Read more

The June 12 Microsoft TechEd keynote was billed as being all about Windows 8 for business. But the only bit of new information shared during the hour-and-a-half presentation was a quick glimpse of branding for the next version of Office, codenamed "Office 15."

During a demonstration on stage of Windows on ARM, director of program management Linda Averett showed a quick glimpse of what Excel on the device. The software was identified as a preview of "Office 2013 RT" (with the "RT" representing Windows RT, the final name of Windows on ARM).

(A screen … Read more

Apple's cheaper-but-better MacBook Air isn't good news for ultrabooks.

Ultrabooks surfaced last year as a niche product in response to the Air. And now Intel, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Dell, at el are trying to mainstream the skinny laptops.

There's one problem. Apple just cut the price and upped the processor specs on the MacBook Air today.

So, is Apple still standard bearer and ultrabooks just pretenders to the lightweight laptop throne?

Only time and market-share numbers will tell.

Spec check: $1,099 11.6-inch MBA: The high-end model has dropped to $1,099 from $1,199 and packs … Read more

Asus probably wins the smorgasbord award at Computex for showing off the widest range of tablets and hybrids.

Yet another in a collection of Android and Window 8-based designs is the Tablet 810, which runs Windows 8 on top of Intel's yet-to-be-officially announced 32-nanometer dual-core "Clover Trail" Atom chip.

"The Netbook is back, this time in the guise of a tablet computer with a keyboard dock," wrote CNET Asia.

That's not exactly a compliment as Netbooks of yore (circa 2009) were invariably slow. In short, they attempted the impossible: running resource-intensive Windows 7 on … Read more

The cheapest version of Research In Motion's BlackBerry PlayBook has been discontinued.

RIM today told CNET in an e-mailed statement today that the company has decided to stop "making the 16GB model of the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet." However, the company was quick to point out that the 32GB and 64GB models will remain on store shelves and will continue to be manufactured.

"We continue to remain committed to the tablet space and the 32GB and 64GB models of the BlackBerry PlayBook continue to be available from our distributors and retailers around the world," the company … Read more

The next-generation Internet technology called IPv6, vastly more accommodating than its predecessor, began arriving for a small but significant fraction of Internet users today.

Several technology powerhouses are trying to encourage adoption the IPv4 sequel through an Internet Society event called the World IPv6 Launch that began today. (Well, actually it started at 5 p.m. PT yesterday -- blame the time-zone complications of global events.)

But start it did. The organizers want to keep tabs on the IPv6 performance during this sensitive introductory phase, and their data shows the arrival of IPv6 connections.

I use the IPvFoo Chrome extension … Read more

With all the Windows 8 hoopla at Computex, it's easy to forget that Microsoft's next operating system isn't a price panacea for consumers.

Acer Chairman JT Wang said Wednesday that the initial crop of Windows 8 devices will be pricey enough that they will be more suitable for "developed economies" like North America where "where purchasing power is strong," according to a report in Taipei-based DigiTimes.

And that means they'll have to be competitive with anything Apple has on the market in the September-October time frame when Windows 8 is projected for … Read more