If you’re not familiar with David Milch’s work, you’re missing some of the best TV ever: “Hill Street Blues,” “NYPD Blue,” “Deadwood,” “Brooklyn South.”  “Deadwood” has to be one of my all-time faves.

So Milch’s foray into horse racing, it turns out, wasn’t simply a fictional exercise.  He’s also been a race horse owner himself.

The first episode, like a good long 1 1/4 mile race, got off to a slow start, but by the end of the episode you could see some momentum building.

We’ll see how the race for ratings for “Luck” pans out in the weeks ahead.

In the meantime, PGA golfer Kyle Stanley simply ran out of luck, or skill, or something at the Farmers Insurance tournament at Torrey Pines (San Diego, CA).

They were playing the South course over the weekend, one of my faves, and Stanley strutted into the 18^th hole in his last round with a three stroke lead over Tennessean Brant Snedeker.

However, Stanley’s luck faded when he hit what seemed like a beauty of a shot over the water and behind the pin on the par 5 18^th. However, the English he put on the ball spun it all the way back to the edge of the green and into the water.

Stanley then hit is now 5^th shot into the green, and three putted for an 8, bringing Snedeker back into the tournament in a playoff that took them both back to the tee at 18. They tied on the first playoff hole, so they returned to the par 3 16^th, where Snedeker sent his tee shot over the green next to the TV tower. He got a good drop (actually, a placement), and proceeded to chip within 6 feet.  No gimme, but a makable turning putt.

Stanley plopped his tee shot onto the short side of the green, then put his putt also within 5 or 6 feet. Snedeker was ruled out, and in his ever impatient style, dropped his putt directly into the cup. Stanley, however, slid his putt past the hole, and it was painful to watch him realize a tournament that was his wire-to-wire, had suddenly dropped beyond his grasp.

If that’s the kind of drama we’re going to see in week 4 of the 2012 PGA Tour, then I can’t wait for next week…and to find out who else’s luck might run out!

And once again, I’ll have to follow the global, economic bouncing ball remotely via the blogosphere.

And once again, no better place to do so than the NY Times Bits blog.

Nick Bilton posted a scintillating post about Davos this morning, and he suggested this year’s hot topic in Switzerland would be data…and lots of it!

Even “Big Data,” as we at Big Blue have come to define it, but in Bilton’s case describing Davos, the big data discussions aren’t limited to the tech meetings.  He writes:

Meetings here this week include: “From data to decisions: How are new approaches to data intelligence transforming decision-making?” “Data deluge and citizen science.” “Incidents from digital crime to massive incidents of data theft are increasing significantly, with major political, social and economic implications.” “How is big data being used to uncover individual and collective human dynamics?”

Bilton also points out, however, that where big data is being discussed, privacy can’t be far behind, which is why Google’s Tuesday announcement about the change in its privacy policy and use of personal information couldn’t have been more timely.

Is it just me, or is Google purposely taunting the U.S. Department of Justice?

In the Google Blog, Alma Whitten, Google’s director of privacy, product and engineer, explained the change:

The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.

Our recently launched personal search feature is a good example of the cool things Google can do when we combine information across products. Our search box now gives you great answers not just from the web, but your personal stuff too. So if I search for restaurants in Munich, I might see Google+ posts or photos that people have shared with me, or that are in my albums. Today we can also do things like make it easy for you to read a memo from Google Docs right in your Gmail, or add someone from your Gmail contacts to a meeting in Google Calendar.

Great, so let me make sure I got this straight: Google’s gonna collapse 60+ privacy policy statements into one, collapse all these different services I signed up into a single service, and that way, all the stuff I look at can be more uniformly monitored and targeted against so that Google can sell more ads and change the terms of our service agreement several years after the fact!??

Rock on!  I’m glad the Google Borg has my best interests in mind.

Can you hear the clarion charge of the Google “Do No Evil” Light Brigade?

Of course, back across the pond in Davos, things don’t appear to be so cut and dry.

Bilton also spoke with Viviane Reding, the European justice commission, who presented in Brussels yesterday new regulations that would implement “one sweeping data protection regulation that would apply to all of Europe.”

Bilton explains:  “The new regulations are part of the discussion at Davos as these new rules would drastically affect the way companies operate and collect data. For example, one component of this legislation will require companies to communicate to users why they are collecting this data and how long it is being stored on company servers.”

That, of course, would include companies from around the globe, including the Goog.

At IBM, our focus has been less on simply gathering more data, and instead helping our customers learn how to do more with the data they already have, even as they prepare for the inevitable onslaught of gathering more.

This would be an opportune time to hand you over to the IBM Big Data web site, where you can find videos and other assets about how IBM customers are capitalizing on the opportunity and challenges of big data.

I haven’t disappeared to another planet.  Just another city.

And speaking of cities, we’ve got some serious competition going on for the “IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year,” many of whom have been working on technologies that help improve the conditions and operations of cities around the globe, which are facing growing and substantial challenges.

According to the United Nations, the global population is expected to reach 9.3 billion by 2050, with most of the growth occurring in urban areas.

This rapid population increase requires new approaches to complex challenges cities face such as aging infrastructure, the need for better healthcare systems, traffic and overpopulation.

IBM is working with a new generation of entrepreneurs, helping to drive the creation and development of new ways to address these challenges with advanced technologies such as analytics, cloud computing and mobile computing.

SmartCamp Global Finals: Entrepreneurs In Action

Next week, I’m going to have the rare opportunity to see some of these finalists’ technologies at the IBM SmartCamp Global Finals competition in San Francisco.

Technologies that enable skin cancer detection on a mobile device…help commuters avoid traffic…deliver better shopping experiences…all will be on display next week in the city by the bay.

Here’s some background, in case you missed my posts on this effort last year: IBM SmartCamps are designed to help entrepreneurs bring innovative new solutions to market quickly by providing mentoring and access to advanced technology and expertise.

The nine finalist startup companies will meet with IBM and the venture capital community from Jan. 31 to Feb. 2 in San Francisco to vie to be named the IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year.

The finalists, with solutions designed to solve problems facing cities, were selected from nearly a thousand startup companies that applied to IBM startup events in 2011.

As the world becomes more connected through trillions of sensors, the ability to transform data into insight that can better monitor, manage and predict potential issues and opportunities is critical. Each startup participating at the SmartCamp Global Finals has created software that is designed to analyze large volumes of data.

The finalists are:

• BitCarrier: BitCarrier’s traffic management solutions analyze real-time traffic information, providing current travel times, estimations on congestion rates and accident alerts (winner, SmartCamp Barcelona).
• C-B4 Context Based 4Casting: CB4 has created a context-based system for identifying and analyzing hidden data patterns in large-scale data warehouses. The system is particularly suited to the retail trade and customer relations management (winner, SmartCamp Tel Aviv).
• ConnectM: ConnectM’s machine-to-machine technology uses advanced analytics to collect information from disparate systems to provide business intelligence. The solutions are developed specifically for the telecommunications, utilities and transportation industries (winner, SmartCamp Bangalore).
• IDXP: IDXP’s consumer behavior solution installs sensors in stores and shopping carts to help retailers understand consumer behavior (winner, SmartCamp Rio de Janeiro).

• Localytics: Localytics’ real-time analytics service provides makers of mobile phone and tablet applications with a better understanding of peoples mobile application preferences and tendencies (winner, SmartCamp New York City).
• Palmap: Palmap’s mapping solution provides mobile users with instant information for indoor activities such as navigating airports and shopping malls (winner, SmartCamp Shanghai).

• Profitero: Profitero helps online retailers maximize profits via competitor analytics (winner, SmartCamp London).
• SecureWaters: SecureWaters’ patented technology continuously monitors, detects and identifies toxins in surface water. An early warning alarm system alerts clients to potential issues (winner, SmartCamp Austin).
• SkinScan: SkinScan’s mobile application enables users to scan the moles on their bodies to measure skin cancer threat levels. They also offer a cloud infrastructure for medical histories of patients and doctors (winner, SmartCamp Istanbul).

Goin’ To California With An Entrepreneurial Achin’ In My Heart

Speakers at the IBM SmartCamp Global Finals will include California Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom, leading venture capitalists and investment bankers including Bill Reichert, Promod Haque, Guy Kawasaki, and John China, IBM Watson Solutions General Manager Manoj Saxena, and Gerard Mooney, general manager of IBM Smarter Cities.

Past winners from IBM SmartCamp competitions have captured the attention of the venture capital community with nearly $50 million in investments, and have expanded to new global markets.

For example, Streetline, which was named 2010 IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year as the winner of the 2010 SmartCamp World Finals, received a $15 million round of venture capital funding, and built several new products including a smart parking analytics offering based on IBM Cognos platform.

The solution is a combination of Sensor and Software applications from Streetline and IBM that allows a city to reduce congestion by quickly matching citizens with vacant parking spots. CEO Zia Yusuf will share his experiences with this year’s SmartCamp finalists, along with other past SmartCamp winners.

Park, Watch, And Vote

People can vote for their favorite finalist to determine the People’s Vote Award winner for the IBM SmartCamp Global Finals.  Go here to view each of the finalist videos and to vote.

To watch the final presentations from the companies and hear from venture capitalists and entrepreneurs at the event visit www.livestream.com/ibmsoftware on Thursday, Feb. 2, 2012. 

Live blogging of the event will be available at www.asmarterplanet.com.

Join the conversation on the event, entrepreneurs and technologies that make the planet work better at People for a Smarter Planet on Facebook and on Twitter at hashtag #IBMSmartCamp.

Billy’s Brewery said it all for this Sunday of National Football League Championship games: Beer, Beer, Football, Beer.

Although by the end of the day, I’m sure many fans would have evened things out a bit and wrote instead: “Football, Football, Beer, Shakespeare.”

It was that dramatic a day in the NFL.

Now, mind you, as reported in this blog a few weeks ago, my Dallas Cowgirls have long been out of it.  But I’m not just a fan of one team, I’m a fan of the game.  And as any fan of the game must do, they must carry on and watch the professionals do what they do.

And boy did they do it yesterday.

I’ve not seen that dramatic a back-to-back series of NFL Championship games since I was probably a toddler, and I don’t really remember those.

So let’s start with the New England Patriots and the Baltimore Ravens. And let’s begin with the end, the missed 32 yard field goal by Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff.  What should have been an easy chip shot to tie the game 23-23 and send both teams into OT, curved left like a bad Todd Watson hooked drive and veered well left of the uprights.

As I joked on Twitter, I’d love to listen to some local Baltimore sports radio talk this morning, as it just had to be brutal. Cundiff would be well served to not show his face around town, at least for a few months.

That dumb luck aside, the Ravens should have won the game. The Pats were hardly at their best, and it was their defense that saved them.  Tom Brady, their celebrated QB, was inconsistent, laser-like on some passes, sloppy on others.  He threw no TDs and two interceptions, and just looking at the data, earned a season-low 57.5 passer rating.

Surely he’ll have to do better in the Super Bowl.

I will give Tom Brady this: When it was time to dive into the endzone for the Pats to go up from 16-20 to 23-20, Brady literally dove right in, head first. Hard core leap for the TD, Brady.  Maybe you deserve that Brazilian supermodel after all.

Now, flash West out to Candlestick Park, where relentless rain left a sloppy field for the New York Giants and the San Francisco 49ers, just the way I like my NFC Championships.

My money was on the Giants from the get go, but I knew not to count the 49ers out, especially with young, hungry quarterback Alex Smith, who struck first on a 73-yard touchdown pass to Vernon Davis with just 7:11 left in the first quarter.

The 49ers went on to stop a Giants first down, earning great field position before running a silly, accident-waiting-to-happen-in-the-rain reverse, the fumble from which Kyle Williams was able to recover.

By halftime, the Giants had eaked out a 10-7 lead, but this was still anybody’s ballgame.

In the third quarter, Vernon Davis struck again, this time in a 28-yard TD catch that put the 49ers up 14-10.  The ghost of King Lear could be heard howling from the underbelly of Candlestick Park, the rain and wind screaming as the plot thickened.

In the fourth quarter, Eli Manning threw a deep pass to Mario Manningham for another TD, but not three minutes later San Francisco responded with an Akers 25 yard field goal.

17-17

And then the heavens truly opened up the Greek chorus appeared as the game went into overtime.  The Giants’ Steve Weatherford punted downfield, and 49er Kyle Williams’ knee brushed the ball, and the Giants recovered the “fumble.”  After the official review, it was the Giants’ opportunity to seize the moment.

And kicker Lawrence Tynes didn’t disappoint.  Once again, just as he did with Green Bay four years ago, he planted a 31-yarder between the uprights and, once again, the Giants will be facing the Patriots in a SuperBowl.

One can only hope that William Shakespeare continues to look down from the heavens in that rematch from four years ago.

But I didn’t leave before I had the opportunity to interview key IBM Collaboration Solutions market researcher, Carol Galvin, and senior consulting strategist, Catherine Lord, on the business opportunity and market landscape around social business.

If you’re trying to get a better understanding of “where’s the beef” around the social business opportunity, this is a great place to start. Let me just share one whopper of a sound byte that should capture your attention: The social business market opportunity is expected to reach $99 billion by 2015!

A special thanks to Scott Laningham, my remote videocaster-in-chief, who stopped working on his skateboarding bulldog videos long enough to help produce this video via Skype from Dolphin Studio 8004 (better known as my hotel room).

The headline: Systems and Technology Group reported an 8% decline in revenue, but IBM Software segment revenue was up 9%.  Technology and business services (GBS) both rose 3%, and revenue in the BRICs grew 7% as reported. Revenue in the Americas was up 3%, while in EMEA growth was at 1% and Asia at 2%.

• Diluted EPS:
  • GAAP: $4.62, up 11 percent;
  • Operating (non-GAAP): $4.71, up 11 percent;
• Net income:
  • GAAP: $5.5 billion, up 4 percent;
  • Operating (non-GAAP): $5.6 billion, up 5 percent;
• Gross profit margin:
  • GAAP: 49.9 percent, up 0.9 points;
  • Operating (non-GAAP): 50.2 percent, up 1.1 points;

• Revenue of $29.5 billion, up 2 percent as reported, 1 percent adjusting for currency;
• Software revenue up 9 percent;
• Global Technology Services revenue up 3 percent;
• Global Business Services revenue up 3 percent, 2 percent adjusting for currency;
• Services backlog of $141 billion, up $4 billion as reported, up $5 billion adjusting for currency, quarter to quarter;
• Systems and Technology revenue down 8 percent.

Full-Year 2011:

• Diluted EPS, up double-digits for 9th consecutive year;
  • GAAP: $13.06, up 13 percent;
  • Operating (non-GAAP): $13.44, up 15 percent;

• Net income:
  • GAAP: $15.9 billion, up 7 percent;
  • Operating (non-GAAP): $16.3 billion, up 9 percent;

• Revenue of $106.9 billion, up 7 percent, up 3 percent adjusting for currency;
• Free cash flow of $16.6 billion, up $300 million;
• Growth markets revenue up 16 percent, up 11 percent adjusting for currency;
• Business analytics revenue up 16 percent;
• Smarter Planet revenue up 47 percent;
• Cloud revenue more than tripled 2010 revenue.

Sir Tim Berners-Lee graces the audience at Lotusphere 2012 with a brief history of the World Wide Web, and some suggestive comments about its imminent future.

I’m talking about none other than Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web.

And how ironic that Sir Berners-Lee was speaking to the Lotusphere faithful about the open, semantic Web on a day when so many are protesting the controversial Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA, as it’s come to be known) as a means towards protecting intellectual property online.

(If you’re interested in learning more, Google has put up a landing page to explain their perspective on the legislation, but in the meantime, properties ranging from Wikipedia to BoingBoing have gone dark and silent in protest.)

As for Berners-Lee message, it was both history lesson and reminder from the past that’s what past is prologue. After Vinton Cerf invented TCP/IP to create the “internetwork” of all those computers, it was Berners-Lee who figured out a way to link all those computers in a more user-friendly (through the HTTP protocol via the WWW).

Now, we’re moving ever closer to the Semantic Web, where not only people, but machines, can understand instructions so we’re eliminating even more friction and sharing that much more information.  Berners-Lee seemed to throw a bit of a dart at the siloing of new unstructured data, like certain social networks who have walled off much of their data, but he seems bullish that the continued need to separate data from applications will differentiate the value of that data.

By way of example, Berners-Lee explained that people should be able to look at the same map, on Google Maps for instance, and the separation of the GPS data from the actual application has been what’s facilitated that.

So things that have previously been in those silos, Berners-Lee suggests, will not enable the same value creation should they stay in those silos, and the new value of social business is having people collaborate with all this information and with one another.

Watson, Come Here!

Next on the stage was Manoj Saxeona, general manager of IBM’s recently created Watson Solutions Software Group.

Hard to believe, it’s been a year since Watson beat the best “Jeopardy!” contestants in the world in a widely televised and celebrated match.  Now, Saxeona explained, it was time for Watson to stop playing and get down to work.

Manoj Saxena, the new general manager of Watson's Software Solutions unit at IBM, explains how Watson is quickly moving from play to work, and may even play a role in helping find a cure for cancer.

As Saxeona explained, currently, businesses are dying of thirst in an ocean of data.

Quick, somebody throw me a POWER7 lifeboat!

What most folks didn’t see behind the scenes during the Watson challenge was all the great technology that made Watson possible.

Watson brings together a set of transformational technologies that cultivate the following:

1. An understanding of natural language and human speech.

2) Generation and evaluation of hypothesis for better outcomes.

3. Adaptation and learning from user selections and responses.

The system is built atop a  massively parallel, probabilitistic evidence-based architecture optimized for IBM’s POWER7 processors, so it can process 200 million pieces of information in three seconds, which was the threshold it needed to perform and win at “Jeopardy!”

But what about in your doctor’s office.  Could Watson help your physician narrow a wide field of diagnoses into a very specific condition?

Absolutely.  In fact, medical information is doubling every 5 years, much of which is unstructured.

So for medical diagnostics, Watson can quickly sift through symptoms presented, along with background information like age and other relative demography, medications the patient is taking, and so forth, and then arrive at a narrower list of possible diagnosis.

It doesn’t replace the doctor.  It helps the doctor make a more informed decision.

We’ll just have to wait and see as to Watson’s bedside manners!

Chief among the topics was the business of getting down to the practicalities of social business — including a case study of IBM customer TD Bank, the 6th largest in the U.S. — as well as some insights on enterprise gamification and collective intelligence.  The later of which Scott and myself have certainly not cornered the market on.

I want to thank Scott in advance for including that particular frame of the video by which to start this vodcast (you know, the one where I’m squinting like Uncle Scrooge?) Nice editing, amigo.

That’s okay…I’ll get you back, just when you least expect it.

You’ve never had to contend with an exploding microphone on camera before, have you, Scott?  Kind of like those exploding golf balls my dad used to exchange on the tee?

Just last evening, I was introduced to a gentleman by the name of Bill Ives, an analyst and blogger with Merced Group who writes about knowledge management and social business, among other topics.  As we got to talking, I discovered that Bill had lived in the town I hail from and grew up in, Denton, Texas, once upon a time when he was a wee lad, and who also shares my passion for golf.

Bill has been producing some of his own fine coverage of Lotusphere 2012 and IBM Connect here in Orlando, and I wanted to share the link below to his post on some of IBM’s own social business endeavors.

Keep in touch, Bill, and keep those posts a comin’:

Lotusphere 2012 Notes: IBM as a Social Business

Chefs at Newly Weds Foods, a world leader in food ingredient technology, have reduced department travel and meeting costs by 10 percent using the IBM SmartCloud for Social Business services. The cloud services allows them to easily collaborate and quickly share information and ideas online, including new region-appropriate recipes and menus as well as ingredients such as sauces, batters, breading and seasonings.

With its network of R&D, manufacturing and service facilities, which include 27 state of the art plants and 19 regional laboratories globally, Newly Weds Foods needed to find a way to more quickly accommodate the regional differences, food preparations, and ingredient availability of its food manufacturing and food service industry clients.

Too Many Cooks On the Video Conference?

Newly Weds Foods chef Abe White explains how his company is utilizing the IBM SmartCloud to save on various and sundry business expenses (excessive travel, meeting costs, etc.) through the use of online meetings, social networking, brainstorming, and online information sharing.

IBM’s SmartCloud services facilitates online meetings, social networking, brainstorming, online information sharing, saving Newly Weds Foods time and money spent on travel expenses, teleconference fees and in-person meetings.

Due to its rapid growth in recent years, the company needed to quickly figure out a way to work together more efficiently across geographic regions.

As more offices opened, and more chefs and thousands of new clients came into the picture, the company needed a more intelligent and streamlined form of communications.

“Working with IBM is helping Newly Weds Foods become a social business, connecting our many resources across the globe in an effort to bring better products to our customers,” said Bob Brindza, Manager, management information systems (MIS), Newly Weds Foods.

IBM’s SmartCloud for Social Business portfolio features social networking, online collaboration tools and e-mail as a service. It can help businesses of all sizes reduce IT costs, increase productivity and save money.

Watch the video below to hear Chef Abe White explain how Newly Weds Foods is collaborating in the cloud:

The company’s MIS department has also reduced expenses by using the IBM service. Instead of traveling to teach remote employees and new divisions how to use new and existing technology tools, the MIS manager now conducts the training from the comfort of his office, saving both time and travel expenses. The research and development department recently starting using the service as well.

Additional IBM clients collaborating in the cloud include AA Translation, Brunswick, Michigan Municipal League, Russell’s Convenience, Signature Mortgage, State of Vermont, and York University’s Schulich School of Business in Canada.

IBM Helping Customers In The Cloud

IBM has helped thousands of clients adopt cloud models and manages millions of cloud based transactions every day. IBM assists clients in areas as diverse as banking, communications, healthcare and government to build their own clouds or securely tap into IBM cloud-based business and infrastructure services.

IBM is unique in bringing together cloud technologies, deep process knowledge, a broad portfolio of cloud solutions, and a network of global delivery centers. For more information about cloud offerings from IBM, visit http://www.ibm.com/cloud.

Join the Twitter conversations via hashtags #IBMSocialBiz and #IBMCloud.