Set to be released later today, the latest Digital Goods Spending Report by analyst firm VG Market and in-game monetization provider Playspan, shows that the burgeoning market for virtual goods is still just scratching the surface of the enormous opportunity ahead.

July's report reveals that 75 percent of the respondents (a sample size of 2,221 respondents was polled) have used real-world money to pay for virtual goods, and that roughly half expect to continue to spend about the same amount of real-world cash over the next 12 months.

Additionally, women over the age of 25 are stepping up … Read more

A new developer survey report from open-source business intelligence vendor Jaspersoft shows that there has been minimal fallout from Oracle's acquisition of Sun Microsystems, and that Java and MySQL seem to be doing just fine in their new home.

These results contrast with the latest developments of the OpenSolaris project, which, under Oracle's watch, has seen its Governing Board threatening to disband.

MySQL and Java have a strong presence in modern open-source software stacks, both in the enterprise and in Web shops. Interestingly, the survey report suggests that, thanks to Oracle's commitment to Java, as part of … Read more

Despite the fact that the state is constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, California remains at the top of the venture capital heap churning out the most deals with the most dollar volume in the second quarter of 2010.

A new report from private company research firm CB Insights reveals that California companies took more than 50 percent of total venture dollars in the second quarter with financings breaking the $3 billion funding mark and more than half of those funds going toward health care and Internet companies. In addition to California, two other states--Massachusetts and New York--accounted for … Read more

I was in Japan last week for a number of meetings related to brand development and disruptive software and found myself less intrigued by the overwhelming array of Japanese mobile phones and more interested in the handheld game consoles from Nintendo and others.

It's not that there aren't a plethora of mobile phones that have all kinds of cool features, but that since generally those phones can't be used in the U.S. (and most don't offer English interfaces) the game consoles became a lot more interesting.

One of the news items I was late to … Read more

Ricoh, the Japanese digital office solutions company, is announcing a new iPhone app from its Quanp subsidiary. The app provides 10GB of free cloud-based storage, the ability to share files up to 500MB, uploading and management of photos and videos taken on an iPhone, and a potentially cool local sharing function with other nearby iPhone users.

The Quanp app rose to No. 2 on the Japanese App Store in the Productivity category after its release in Japan earlier this month. It's now available in the App Store for users in the U.S.

There are a vast array of choices for cloud storage, including a number of products that address the need to manage files from a mobile device. One interesting angle of the Quanp product is a function called "Flick File," which allows you to send files back and forth via Bluetooth. It reminds me of the old days of beaming business cards to Palm devices, or more recently of the Bump social-networking application.

I've been watching Ricoh's Quanp organization work its way through the ins and outs of Silicon Valley for the past year and a half. Their online storage service--they call it "visual" online storage due to the fancy 3D interface of their PC client--has potential to help handle the deluge of data we are creating at home.

The vast majority of computer users don't have great backup habits, and with more and more people embracing mobile devices and data usage rates on smartphones skyrocketing, the lack of backups is only going to get worse. With cloud-based storage that can sync with a PC, much of the hassle is removed from the backup equation.

In Japan, mobile phones are ubiquitous: people use them to enter subways with a quick swipe, to pay for things in vending machines, and to manage paperless boarding passes in airports. Japanese conglomerate Sharp leads in cell phone market share with 26.2 percent, and Apple has the largest American corporate presence with 4.9 percent. … Read more

Puppet Labs announced on Thursday that Adobe Systems is publishing code for managing Hadoop on the Puppet Forge community development site. (Disclosure: I am an adviser to Puppet Labs.)

Puppet is an open-source data center automation and configuration management framework aiming to provide system administrators a platform for consistent, transparent, and flexible systems management.

The necessity of data center automation and management tools (often grouped into the DevOps category) is becoming ever more apparent, as cloud principles and large-scale systems that process data in a parallel manner continue to emerge.

Case in point: Hadoop is an open-source platform powering hugely … Read more

The massive amounts of data being created on the Web and the rise of cloud computing together make an ideal environment for alternative database technologies to thrive. And the Web is often proving to be just an entry point for bleeding-edge technology to be tested out before it starts heading into the enterprise.

NoSQL databases and associated operational-data technologies based on nonrelational approaches to data management and manipulation continue to be top of mind for big Web shops and are slowly starting to make their way into enterprise IT infrastructure.

I've spoken with a number of vendors roaming the NoSQL space over the last few months and there seems to be one common thread that they push: traditional relational databases are expensive, bulky, and simply not ideal for this new era of Web technology.

On Wednesday, a new NoSQL database joins the fray: Membase. Launched as an open-source project under the Apache 2.0 license and co-sponsored by NorthScale, Zynga, and NHN (Korea's top online gaming portal), Membase is optimized for storing the data behind interactive Web applications.

Membase says it is 100 percent compatible with Memcached, the de facto standard for distributed object caching behind Web applications. Basically, Membase is as easy to use as Memcached but also stores data.

According to James Phillips, NorthScale co-founder and senior vice president of products, the thousands of organizations that use Memcached (18 of the top 20 most visited Web sites including Twitter, Facebook, and Google) have a demand for a solution that looks like Memcached but acts like a distributed, highly available, high-performance, elastic database technology. … Read more

This week Cloudera, a provider of software and services for the Apache Hadoop project, is set to announce a partnership with Quest Software to develop, support, and distribute an Oracle connector for Hadoop.

Hadoop is the popular open-source implementation of MapReduce, a powerful tool designed for deep analysis and transformation of very large data sets. It enables its users to explore complex data, using custom analyses tailored to users' information and questions.

Code-named "Ora-Oop," the connector will provide connectivity between Cloudera's Hadoop distribution and Oracle through an interface that allows for bidirectional, scalable, and functional data transfer … Read more

In a recent conversation about predictive analytics, I learned how Wal-Mart Stores uses statistical modeling to better understand the habits and tendencies of its customers--and how businesses can use this data to drive competitive pricing to dominate a market.

Imagine that same type of customer intelligence, delivered almost instantaneously, into the hands of store managers on-site or corporate executives on their iPhone or iPad.

That's what Medallia, a provider of customer feedback and performance data software, aims to provide with a new offering this week on the heels of the new iPhone 4 announcement. Medallia gets its information from … Read more