ReadWriteWeb

"Big Data" is a hot topic these days, but there hasn't been a lot of discussion about the specifics of what will most likely be one of the biggest sources of data: newly web-connected devices in the home and workplace.

I spoke this week with Bill Zujewski, Executive Vice President of Product Strategy & Marketing at M2M (machine to machine) platform company Axeda. Axeda is one of the most successful companies to date in the early M2M market and whenever I get a chance to speak with Zujewski, I ask him for as many real-world use cases for M2M connectivity as I can. The company's examples are fascinating, this time about M2M-produced big data used in the cloud.

The next time you have to get an MRI or CT scan you might not know it but if the equipment is made by GE it is phoning home. No, the actual scan data is still between you and your doctor, but the broad stats of when and where the scan was taken is reported back to GE. In the true spirit of the Internet of Things, everything has an IP address, even an MRI machine. The analysts at GE have created some interesting data visualizations. About 125,000 scans are taken each day around the world with their equipment, and you can see time series information and other interesting stats on their blog.

Alicia Eler explores the "Not On Facebook" movement. Jon Mitchell explains why Google Drive won't be a Dropbox clone. Path uploads your entire address book to their servers without permission. All of this and more in the ReadWriteWeb Weekly Wrap-up.

After the jump you'll find more of this week's top news stories on some of the key topics that are shaping the Web - Location, App Stores and Real-Time Web - plus highlights from some of our six channels. Read on for more.

Today's cartoon may well be an exercise in envy. I'm using an iPhone 3GS, and it'll be another 14 months (or 424 days - not that I'm counting) before I'll be eligible for a free upgrade to a phone that lets me use that Siri-esque magic.

And voice-control easily the feature I'm most drawn to right now when I start looking covetously at other, more advanced, less diesel-powered Androids and iPhones. (Yes, this Mac fanboy is tempted by Android... even though my investment in iOS apps probably exceeds my retirement savings. Those things better appreciate in resale value over time, or my retirement isn't going to come much before age 103.)

"A cute baby dolphin for your weekend-viewing pleasure" a Facebook friend of mine writes. Under the text, I see a link to an imgur-hosted image of that amazingly adorable marine mammal. Suddenly, my day is feeling a lot better. Did I just catch a mood... on Facebook?

A new study by Facebook data scientists shows that Facebook users can spread emotions to their friends through messages, posts and status updates. It suggests that emotional contagion happens quite frequently on the world's biggest social network. Facebook's Chief Data Scientist Adam Kramer presented these findings at the Society for Personality and Social Psychology on January 27, 2012.

"It's time to rethink how emotional contagion works, since vocal cues and mimicry aren't needed," said Kramer.

In the two weeks I have been using Wisdom, an iPad and iPhone app that gives you detailed demographic data about your Facebook friends, the number of users has gone from just over 4 million to just under 6 million. Part of that rapid growth is most likely attributable to an extensive advertising campaign on the iPad version of the New York Times (which is where I first heard about it).

Alexia Tsotsis, who writes for TechCrunch, had this advice on Twitter earlier today: "Good tech blogger rule of thumb: Avoid using 'API' in headlines when/if you can." Usually, I'm all thumbs myself, but I can't find this particular rule on them anywhere. I suppose I'm not a blogger after all.

Or perhaps I just know my audience. The first rule of communication, as I have taught and been taught (both quite repeatedly, and often) is, "Know your audience." The API has become the principal communications tool of any company that does business digitally. Therefore, professes Netflix Director of Engineering Daniel Jacobson, when designing your API, you should identify, evaluate, and serve its audience just like with any other communications tool.

Sometimes the "Like" button is not as clear cut as it seems. Even Zuck would agree.

ZDNet reports that a Facebook design flaw has accidentally convinced some readers that Zuckerberg is endorsing Republican Party presidential nominee Mitt Romney.

The awkward "Liking" took place earlier this week. Zuck "liked" a story by Salon.com's Farhad Manjoo, who posted the following status along with a link to mittromney.com: "Try, just looking at the Romney logo without seeing the word MONEY." When that image shows up on users' news feeds, however, it appears as if Zuck "liked" the Mitt Romney link rather than Manjoo's comment, coupled with a link to the Romney website. Whatever happened to the "Like" button making things simple?

The tablet revolution. The post-PC era. The smartphone explosion. Whatever label you want to apply to it, personal computing is changing. People are spending more time with smaller devices like tablets and smartphones and less time on desktops and laptops. This been evident for awhile, but the trend is still relatively young and the data points are only just beginning to trickle in.

For evidence of this shift, look no further than Apple. The company just reported an absolutely bonkers financial quarter, in which it sold 37 million iPhones and 15.4 million iPads. The two products now make up 72% of Apple's quarterly revenue and the consumer demand shows no sign of letting up.

Facebook's social graph of you isn't you. It's an approximation and an extrapolation based on little clues you've left lying around the Web. Using your Facebook or Google identity gives those services more data points about what you do, but that doesn't mean it substitutes for whom you are.

The central thing wrong with the social Web is that users don't own their identities. Users share themselves with identity services - like Facebook and Google - that then act as representatives of the people using them. Facebook and Google allow other sites to rent those identities. But when you log in to a new service using Facebook Connect, you are actually constraining your identity to the Facebook version of it, though you're expanding Facebook itself. Do you want to be the same version of yourself everywhere else as you are on Facebook? Or Google?

Red Hat has been involved with OpenStack development for some time. Unlike the bulk of companies involved, however, Red Hat has gone about its work quietly and without "officially" joining the effort. Red Hat still isn't saying exactly what it hopes to get from OpenStack contributions, but Brian Stevens did divulge a bit about the company's involvement.

Stevens is Red Hat's CTO and vice president of worldwide engineering. Right now, he says Red Hat has no "confirmed" product plans for OpenStack but the company is "just finding additive ways where we can get involved in the community and help move OpenStack forward."

For those of us that came of age during the 1980s and after, the threat of nuclear oblivion has never seemed to be a real threat. The dangers of AIDS, economic failure, terrorism have loomed large in the lives of Generation X, Y and the Millennials, but very few of us ever had to hide under our desks during a bomb drill or watch Dad obsess over the backyard underground bunker.

In 2003, Japanese artist Isao Hashimoto created a time-lapse video map of every nuclear bomb explosion in the world between 1945 and 1998. There were 2053 explosions in that time, including the tests that the United States made during the "Manhattan Project" and the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that ostensibly ended World War II. The 14-minute long video (below) is a beautiful and terrifying look at the nuclear era that defined world politics, warfare and humanity for more than half a century.

Reuters reports that a Tennessee couple who "defriended" Jenelle Potter on Facebook were murdered by her father and another man.

"This is just senseless," said Johnson County Sheriff Mike Reece told Reuters. "We've had murders, but nothing like this."

Jenelle Potter, 30, is one of those types who you just don't mess with. She is a Facebook fanatic who stays home with her parents and is constantly on Facebook.

"Once you've crossed her, you've crossed her father too," Reece said.

With all the attention focused on Facebook and Google, it's sometimes easy to forget how many people visit Yahoo on a typical day. The site has over 700 million users and gets a massive amount of page views each day. As the company struggles to figure out what its future focus should be, one thing they've prioritized highly is content.

Every day, Yahoo displays about 13 million different news story combination on its homepage. Those stories are personalized based on demographic data and reading behavior, and the company keeps track of what kind of stories do well with which groups of people.