Here’s something interesting for anyone into cloud-based data mining: Google have announced a new prediction API. More details here:
http://code.google.com/apis/predict/
http://code.google.com/apis/predict/docs/getting-started.html
Here’s the summary from the site:
The Prediction API enables access to Google’s machine learning algorithms to analyze your historic data and predict likely future outcomes. Upload your data to Google Storage for Developers, then use the Prediction API to make real-time decisions in your applications. The Prediction API implements supervised learning algorithms as a RESTful web service to let you leverage patterns in your data, providing more relevant information to your users. Run your predictions on Google’s infrastructure and scale effortlessly as your data grows in size and complexity.
Looks exciting! Now, why didn’t Microsoft do this? Clearly the ideas were there (remember the cloud version of the Excel DM addin?), but it seems like all the key members of the SQL data mining team had to leave MS to pursue their dreams: http://predixionsoftware.com/
