Many of “out-of-the-box” analytics solutions come with automatically defined user sessions. It’s good to start with, but as your company grows, you’ll want to have your own session definitions based on your event data. Analyzing user sessions with SQL gives you flexibility and full control over how metrics are defined for your unique business.  

What is a session and why should I care?

The session is usually defined as a group…

In order to prevent my programs from freezing up while running long calculations, I generally run the calculations on separate threads.  In Java, this process can be accomplished by separating the GUI from processing.  In the code below, a thread for an instance of MyProcessing would be invoked using start(): e.g. “(new MyProcessing()).start();” would run indefinitely until T is made null.  T can be made null by calling stop() or by directly making T null.  Often when the GUI is closing, I…

Below are some images generated by an algorithm that I originally created to study stocks. The stock in this case is Yahoo! in the early 2000s. I realize that none of these images resemble conventional stock market patterns. Keep in mind that algorithms by nature interact with the data. They don't simply restate the numbers in graphical form. An algorithm designed to deal with historical stock trading data can be modified to deal with the data in real-time. However, there is no inherent…

 This blog contains some snippets of code that I tend to use in Java.  I acknowledge that somebody else writing this blog might include different code.  Except for a short course at Sun Educational Services, most of my Java programming skills are self-taught.  I’m unsure if people with formal backgrounds in computer science might have different styles and conventions.  Mine have been shaped primarily by my needs.

Creating a Graphical User Interface…

How big data is shaping mobile user expectations

By Jeff Hasen

Hipcricket Chief Marketing Officer, Thought Leader (ART+DATA) Institute and author of Mobilized Marketing: Driving Sales, Engagement, and Loyalty Through Mobile…