Tag: brand

What is Apache Hadoop? Website Brand Review

Website Brand Review of Apache Hadoop

We’ve all heard of Apache® Hadoop® – well, at least heard of Hadoop, and by now you should realize it’s an Apache project! But when was the last time you took a critical eye to the actual Apache Hadoop project’s homepage?.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache Hadoop project, told purely from the point of view of a new user finding the project website.

What Is Apache Hadoop?

“Apache Hadoop (is) a framework that allows for the distributed processing of large data sets across clusters of computers using simple programming models”

“Hadoop is designed to scale up from single servers to thousands of machines, each offering local computation and storage. Rather than rely on hardware to deliver high-availability, the library itself is designed to detect and handle failures at the application layer, so delivering a highly-available service on top of a cluster of computers, each of which may be prone to failures.”

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What is Apache Mahout? Website Brand Review

Website Brand Review of Apache Mahout

While we’ve all heard about Apache Hadoop, did you know there are over a dozen big data projects at Apache? We host projects that provide everything for your big data stack: databases, storage, streaming, logging, analysis, machine learning, and more. Apache Mahout is one of the pieces that puts a big data stack to do higher-level work for you.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache Mahout project, told purely from the point of view of a new user finding the project website.

Happy Birthday! This month is the Apache Mahout project’s 6th #ApacheBirthday!

What Is Apache Mahout?

“The Apache Mahoutâ„¢ project’s goal is to build an environment for quickly creating scalable performant machine learning applications.”

While this is a laudable statement – and nicely emphasises the community behind the project – it doesn’t directly say what the software they provide does.

“The three major components of Mahout are an environment for building scalable algorithms, many new Scala + Spark and H2O (Apache Flink in progress) algorithms, and Mahout’s mature Hadoop MapReduce algorithms.”

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What is Apache Hive? Website Branding Review

Website Brand Review of Apache Hive

While we’ve all heard about Apache Hadoop®, did you know there are over a dozen big data projects at Apache? We host projects that provide all the different functions your big data stack: databases, storage, streaming, logging, analysis, and more. Apache Hiveâ„¢ is one of these pieces of the whole big data ecosystem.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache Hive project, told purely from the point of view of a new user finding the project website.

What Is Apache Hive?

“The Apache Hive â„¢ data warehouse software facilitates querying and managing large datasets residing in distributed storage”.

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What is Apache Flex? Website Branding Review

Website Brand Review of Apache Flex

Many projects come to Apache from software vendors donating them to the Apache community, where the Apache Incubator works to form an open and independent community around the project. Here, Adobe donated both the code and the brand for their Flex project to Apache. Now, the ASF is the steward both to the vibrant Apache Flex community, as well as the new owner of the Flex brand and registered trademark.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache Flex project, told purely from the point of view of a new user finding the project website. While we’re all familiar with Adobe Flash browser plugin, not everyone may be familiar with the Flex environment for building Flash (and other!) applications.

What Is Apache Flex?

Apache Flex® is the open-source framework for building expressive web and mobile applications.

In other words, Flex is a toolkit for building general applications that can be run on a variety of web browsers and mobile platforms that include the Adobe Flash or Adobe AIR runtimes or application containers. Flex is the coding language and environment you use to write applications for the Flash/AIR containers.

No, Really, What Is Apache Flex For?

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What is Apache HBase? Website Branding Review

Website Brand Review of Apache HBase

How do open source projects get popular? By providing some useful functionality that users want to have. How do open source projects thrive over the long term? By turning those users into contributors who then help improve and maintain the project. How well a project showcases themselves on the web is an important part of the adoption and growth cycle.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache HBase project, told purely from the point of view of a new user finding the project website. HBase is a key part of the big data storage stack, so although you may not work directly with it, it’s probably underlying some systems you use.

What Is Apache HBase?

“Apache HBase™ is the Hadoop® database, a distributed, scalable, big data store”.

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What Is Apache Mesos? Website Branding Review

Website Brand Review of Apache Mesos

How do open source projects get popular? By providing some useful functionality that users want to have. How do open source projects thrive over the long term? By turning those users into contributors who then help improve and maintain the project. How well a project showcases themselves on the web is an important part of the adoption and growth cycle.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache Mesos project, told purely from the point of view of a new user finding the project website. Mesos is turning into a major project in the big data and cloud space; not perhaps the obvious popularity of Apache Spark yet, but certainly big.

What Is Apache Mesos?

Apache Mesos abstracts CPU, memory, storage, and other compute resources away from machines (physical or virtual), enabling fault-tolerant and elastic distributed systems to easily be built and run effectively.

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What Is Apache Spark? Website Branding Review

Volunteering at the ASF and elsewhere in open source, I think a lot about open source brands. In particular: how do various open source projects – run by a wide variety of typically very geeky volunteers – present themselves publicly to new users? We sometimes spend so much time working on the great new code – and explaining it to other developers we already know – that sometimes I wonder if we’re really showcasing what our great new code can do for new users and contributors.

Here’s my quick review of the Apache Spark project, told purely from the point of view of a new user who just came to the project website. I’m trying to show what I think someone new to the project might think about the project once they get to the homepage. Since Spark is a major project in the big data space, there are a lot of search hits for Spark, including a wide variety of other software vendors.

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Three key elements defining any open source project

Open source has come a long way in the past 30 years and is entering the consciousness of most modern cultures. When thinking of open source projects, people categorize them several ways: governance structure, type of product platform, programming language, utility, technical details (language written in), industry sponsored or fully independent, and more.

But what truly defines any open source project, making it a unique entity different from all other open source projects? I would propose that there are three key elements of any open source project that frame, define, and differentiate that project from all others: the code, the community, and the brand.

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So, I gave this talk at OSCON

So, it was short, but an important message that I don’t think many open source project participants are really thinking through yet. So, it was all about how BRAND > CODE, and I’m looking for feedback on how to expand this, so, into a much bigger and better talk.

OSCON Ignite 2014: BRAND > CODE, by Shane Curcuru

So, you have to understand: yes, watching the video is so painful. I’m not usually that so-so. It was a combination of nerves (bigger stage than expected), jetlag, E_NOTENOUGH_PREPTIME, and the fact that my cell phone had just taken a dip in the water a few hours earlier.

OSCON was awesome, by the way. Next year looking forward to making sure my travel plans include the Community Leadership Summit!

I use Slideshare, and I speak at ApacheCon on managing community brands and making profits while respecting brands.

Dear Wibidata: The Elephant Noticed

Astute Apache Hadoop Public Committee Members have noticed local corporation WIBIDATA’s attempt to usurp our yellow elephant project mascot. We have mobilized our sources, and I have posted an official trademark complaint on their website:


Please note that the Apache (TM) Hadoop (R) yellow elephant logo is a worldwide trademark of THE APACHE GROUP, and more to the point, the elephant is very conscious of his appearance; thus we DEMAND that you remove his image from your WIBIDATA blog post immediately, forthwith, forsooth!

As a courtesy, I am leaving you this blog comment now to alert you that our army of lawyers on howdahs have already left, and should be arriving shortly at your corporate headquarters to insist on ceasing and desisting such indecipherable designs. They should arrive within a day or two.

You may have noticed that the proper Hadoop logo is always facing to the right; we have learned the hard way that our elephant is insistent at only being photographed from his RIGHT side. Pictures of Hadoop's LEFT side tend to enrage him, so we will also be sending you a bill for the racks of servers that our normally lovable elephant mascot knocked over when he saw your picture of him being jumped on by a tortise.

Note: THE APACHE GROUP only accepts cold hard cash, or properly licensed AND formatted patches. You might also want to send some peanuts as a peace offering.

Thanks for your swift... er, eventual attention to this matter,

- Shawn Curran

Trademark Architect

THE APACHE GROUP