(Read more: Who's viewing your Instagram, and profiting from it?)  The week in "big data is a bunch of baloney"  In this week's edition of all the buzz about big data is a bunch of @#$@%^$&^$!, John Horgan writes in a Scientific American blog, "We've heard a lot about how 'Big Data'—which as far as I can tell is just data mining in a glossy new wrapper—are going to revolutionize science and help us create a better world. These claims strike me as all too familiar. They remind me of the hype generated in the 1980s by chaos and in the 1990s by complexity (which was just chaos in a glossy new wrapper). Chaos and complexity enthusiasts promised (and are still promising) that ever-more-powerful computers plus jazzy new software and math were going to crack riddles that resisted more traditional scientific methods."  In fact, Horgan argued that big data is harming science by attracting the best and brightest minds to profits instead of taking them on a quest for scientific truth. Oh, that's rich (bad word choice)—I mean, naive.  Meanwhile, big data is making the world a better place  To protect businesses from viruses and "data-stealing Trojans," there is only one solution, writes Dan Hubbard, chief technology officer of OpenDNS, in a piece for USA Today. "We need to capture a massive amount of data from the Internet, which is the source of cyber attacks. To yield the most reliable results, researchers must cast a wide net that is distributed across geographies, sectors, segments and protocols. Data diversity plays a critical role in our ability to accurately identify attacks."  So, basically, since we have moved our entire lives online and as a result made ourselves and all of our data vulnerable to online attacks, we need to use big data to limit those attack opportunities. Now there's a virtuous—or is it vicious—cycle of profits for you, John Horgan.
Google search is great for basic information, but not personalized answers to questions. Lo and behold: Google's ask-a-human-being video service.