The online dating site BeautifulPeople.com, a self-proclaimed dating site for good looking people, has succeeded in creating buzz and controversy by removing 5,000 members who put on too much weight over the holiday season.

BeautifulPeople.com launched in Denmark in 2002 and went global in 2009. The dating site describes itself as the “the sexiest web site in the world.”

Members of the site rate each others’ photos as “Yes, definitely” or “NO definitely NOT” when deciding whether a person should be allowed to join the site. People with low scoring pictures are denied membership on the site.

A number of advocacy groups for overweight have publicly denounced the site since the membership purge was announced.

The Fox News show RedEye takes a humorous look at the issue:

According to a recent Computer World article, the use of open source business intelligence software for data mining is doubling every year.

While commercial business intelligence software makers are still viewed as having the best data mining technology on the market, the open source business intelligence software offerings are seen as being good enough for day-to-day business needs.

This new acceptance of open source business intelligence applications is allowing open source BI software to move into the business mainstream.

Although it is free to download and use open source BI software, the associated cost of deploying, administering and supporting large-scale open-source BI projects can run into the millions of dollars for a company or organization.

In addition, a lack of skilled open-source BI developers can slow a project and increase costs.

As a result of the growing use of open source business intelligence software, many commercial BI software companies are offering free limited use of their BI software.

Some of the better known data mining applications for business intelligence use are listed as: Actuate, Jaspersoft, Jedox, Pentaho and SpagoWorld.

[ Source: Computer World ]

Online dating sites are reporting a surge in web traffic that they attribute to the cold weather spell that is blanketing the globe with record low temperatures.

Mysinglefriend.com reports that traffic to their online dating site grew by 55% in a single day this past Tuesday. Singles365.com reported a 27% traffic increase from Tuesday to Wednesday.

IllicitEncounters.com ( a dating site for married people who are seeking an extramarital affair ) reports that their site registered a record number of new people on Wednesday.

The large increase in people visiting online dating sites comes at a time when the online dating business is already experiencing boom times.

As more adults become comfortable using computers, the stigma of using online dating sites diminishes and the ease of registering with an online dating agency with a laptop or mobile device makes people more likely to join and online dating site or dating social network.

[ Source: BBC ]

Need to do a background check? There’s an iPhone app for that!

A new iPhone app lets you run background checks on people for free.

The BeenVerified app will do a background check and send the results to your mobile phone.

All of the information provided by BeenVerified is pulled from existing public records sources and, therefore, is totally legal for people to access.

BeenVerified is a free iPhone app that can run a background check on someone, using a name email address. BeenVerified also allows people to run background checks the contacts from their iPhone address book with one click.

The BeenVerified app allows users to view a person’s criminal records, property records, family information and even searches the web for social network profiles and photos.

The BeenVerified application is free to download and lets users run three free background checks per week.

Users who want to run more than 3 background checks a week are required to register for a BeenVerified account that provides unlimited background checks for $8 per month.

For more information or to test out the BeenVerified app, you can visit their website @ BeenVerified.

[ Source: KDVR.com ]

Have you ever wanted to know what one of the big public records aggregators and data providers like ChoicePoint, Accurint or Acxiom knows about you?

When you apply for a job, security clearance or even an apartment, the company or organization will often do a background check on you as a precondition for employment etc.

Acxiom, one of the largest public records data providers to government and business, has announced that they will allow the general public to view their data profile from Acxiom.

The new Acxiom service is called I-Check. The self-background check is billed as a low-cost, confidential and thorough background check tool for individuals who want to find out just what personal information Acxiom has on them in their vast data mines of public records and consumer profiles.

Acxiom’s web-based background check allows people to view their personal data online confidentially as well as control access to the results of their personal background check.

People can also decide whether or not to share the information with potential employers etc.

Acxiom claims that access to personal information is assured by a real-time verification system, called “Acxiom Identify-X”, that can accurately identify the person requesting the background check.

Users can access their personal background check on the Acxiom site with a password and can control their screening information. People can also choose to share the password with potential employers or other organizations to review the results.

According to Acxiom’s CEO: “This is information that is not available through traditional Internet searches.”

He further noted that: “This service gives consumers more of a say in the process while also protecting the safety and integrity of the employer or organization. This is a real background check – the same that an employer would order for an applicant.”

You can visit the Acxiom I-Check site at AcxiomICheck.com.

KDnuggets data mining site recently released a poll of its users to determine the top business uses and fields where Data Mining was used in 2009.

Here are the top ten areas for data mining use from the KDnuggets poll:

- CRM/ consumer analytics [ 32.8% ]

- Banking [ 24.4% ]

- Direct Marketing and Fundraising [ 16.1% ]

- Credit Scoring [ 15.6% ]

- Telecommunications and Cable Services [ 14.4% ]

- Fraud Detection [ 13.9% ]

- Retail [ 11.7% ]

- Healthcare HR [ 11.7% ]

- Financial Services [ 11.1% ]

- Science and Advertising tied at [ 10.6% ]

The areas where the use of data mining made the greatest gains from 2008 to 2009 were Education, Social Networks, e-Commerce and Healthcare / HR.

The entire KDnuggets data mining poll can be viewed at KDnuggets 2009 Data Mining Poll

Twitter is adding to their geolocation technology through their purchase of Mixer Labs.

Mixer Labs’ GeoAPI is a tool that helps developers create geolocation-specific applications for the Twitter messaging service.

The technology will allow Twitter users to identify the location where a tweet was posted from.

The GeoAPI tool can track the location of tweets on Twitter. Location software that uses the GeoAPI could allow people to receive Twitter messages based on location-specific tweets.

Adding location-based data to tweets could help with issues like tracking friends or locating businesses.

Last month Twitter launched a geotagging tool for their social network.

[ Source: Business Week ]

The Facebook social network experienced wild growth in 2009. Facebook went from 50 million registered people in January to more than 350 million registered people in less than a year.

Facebook spent $9.5M in 2009 to settle a lawsuit regarding their advertising tool that was rolled out in 2007 and viewed by many as an invasion of user privacy.

In November 2009 Facebook made changes to their social network that exposed millions of people’s personal information to the web.

Now that Facebook has become a storehouse of personal information, it is feeling the growing pressure from governments and privacy advocates to safeguard user data.

In an effort to head off future legal threats over privacy issues, Facebook has hired a team of lobbyists in Washington and Brussels to press its case with elected officials.

It will be interesting to see whether or not the Facebook privacy lobby acts as educators or palm-greasers to the elected officials the are trying to influency.

[ Source: UK Telegraph ]

In the book Super Crunchers, Acxiom Corporation is described as “one of the biggest companies you’ve never heard of”.

Acxiom is a personal data aggregator that collects consumer information on nearly every household in the United States and maintains a database mine of over twenty billion personal records.

Acxiom’s data mine of information is over 850 Terabytes of people data which would fill a 20,000 mile tower of one billion diskettes.

Acxiom collects its data from public records, census data, tax records and commercial information supplied by businesses and credit companies.

The company is considered to be a top dog in the business of consumer data integration.

Believe it or not, Acxiom probably knows what consumer mail you receive, brands of clothing you wear as well as the type of pet you own.

Every person in the Acxiom data mine is assigned a 13 digit code that categorizes them into one of 70 lifestyle categories.

For example: one of Acxiom’s lifestyle categories is a “Shooting Star”, which is someone who is thirty-six to forty-five, married, has no children, is an early riser and runner, travels abroad and watches Seinfeld reruns.

The lifestyles are so specific that nearly one third of all Americans get recategorized by Acxiom every year.

Through data mining all of this personal information, Acxiom is even able to predict what category you will likely fit into next year.

Acxiom Site: Acxiom.com

Yahoo Finance: ACXM

[ Source: Super Crunchers by Ian Ayres; Trading in Data - pages 145 -146 ]

A British woman was shocked to find out that live images of her bedroom were viewable on a travel news site.

A security camera used for traffic monitoring was pointed at her bedroom and recording.

Filmed images on the site were so detailed that the pillows on her bed were easily identifiable.

The woman described the situation as an inexcusable invasion of her family’s privacy.

She is accusing workers at Transport for London of deliberately pointing the camera at her bedroom.

The camera’s pictures were discovered by a commuter who uses the traffic website to monitor traffic levels.

He was shocked to find the camera was filming a bedroom instead of the street traffic.

The camera position has been fixed and British government authorities claim to be investigating the matter.

[ Source: The Sun UK ]