We are fascinated here at ReadWriteWeb about Hadoop. It can be used in so many ways. It gives you that sense of excitement that shows how big data can open up all kinds of possibilities.

So we got a tad excited tonight when we ran across a post by Mike Pearce about "10 Hadoopable Problems: or in other words, 10 things you can do with Hadoop. But excitement turned to disappointment when it reminded us of how limiting we can be when thinking about big data in standard terms.

We won't go into detail about each of the 10 ways Hadoop can be used. You can go check out the post yourself. Instead, we'll highlight a few and provide our own little view about big data, the failings of geek culture and the role information plays in our interface culture.

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Hadoop is a transforming technology that through its analytic capabilities, can change the way we interface with the world. We use the term interface in deference to Interface Culture, the book by Steven Johnson that explored the Web's interactive elements and technology interfaces. He looked at buttons, links and metaphors such as the desktop and traced them back to medieval planning, Victorian novels, early cinema and the rise of our modern culture.

The interface culture we develop out of big data will spawn new works that help guide us into unfamiliar spaces as much as novels helped the Victorian era make sense of the new, industrial world.

Hadoop is a tool increasingly used to make sense of a new world that automatically creates data in overwhelming amounts. We manually create our own data through gestures on Facebook, from the images we post to Flickr and the tweets we post religiously. But data is also created automatically by intelligent agents who do the work on our behalf, sending information from machine-to-machine, analyzing itself along the way, increasing in intelligence through APIs or forking into new realms as its manipulated and turned into apps, recommendation engines and the rest.

Transforming data helps us make sense of an information universe, By analyzing it we create our own interface culture and in the process, better understand our world. New art, new intellectual movements and new societies will emerge from the data we are just starting to learn how to chisel into new shapes, new scuptures if you will that tells stories about who we are.

Unfortunately, the 10 examples (from a Cloudera presentation) don't draw us into a new world of possibilities. Sure, fraud detection (number seven) is important. Goodness knows how often we hear about it. I am sure there are lots of surveillance geeks out there who love the idea of monitoring trade with Hadoop as pointed out in number 8. Ad targeting comes in the four spot. That's a familiar topic. Search quality is ninth. More yawns. You get the picture.

All of these examples explore what we have become accustomed to in geek culture. Possibilities for how big data can be used in a strictly commercial sense or as a way to optimize processes or the technologies we have already developed.

It's implausible to believe that we will see any kind of diversity in geek culture if we continue grinding down this technically oriented view of the data around us. Focusing on incremental improvements in processes has been done for generations. It will make people a lot of money but its impact is minimal in the world we live. It will create jobs. We will without a doubt see a new generation of data analysts but there is more to this big data, right?

Perhaps it is too early to expect a renaissance. It's like we are medieval artists who are struggling to move beyond the concept of flat images. We are too consumed in the technological marvels of what we have created to fully understand the implications of what we have discovered and with it what we can create.

We will admit it is getting simpler to develop technologies and easier for people to use. More people are making apps. We have a new generation of developers who have taught themselves by following the principles of the view-source culture. More women are making inroads. We can thank open standards for that.

It's the software that mixes and cooks up that data which will truly transform our world. When that data is as accessible as flour is for baking or clay for sculpting then Hadoop and other analytics technologies like it will have real meaning.

And perhaps it is the ability to discover data and perform tricks with it that opens up this marvelous world. A world made from the big data we shape into images that help us realize an interface culture of a new modern era.

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Korea National Oil Corp said it is sticking by its £1.67 billion offer for North Sea oil explorer Dana Petroleum

The market for web-based translations is estimated to be worth around $3 billion currently, and big markets tend to attract investors. One of the newer companies in that area, Tokyo-based myGengo (which we previously profiled as “Mechanical Turk for translation”), just raised a $750,000 seed round from some high-profile backers.

What’s interesting is that the round was extremely international, as its total of twelve participants cover eight nationalities and currently reside in eleven different countries. Investors include Dave McClure (who made a personal investment earlier this year and now added myGengo to his 500 Startups fund), last.fm co-founder Felix Miller, Delicious founder Joshua Schachter, Brian Nelson (CEO at Japan-based affiliate marketing firm ValueCommerce), Pageflakes co-founder Christoph Janz, Benjamin Joffe (CEO at China-based tech consultancy Plus Eight Star), and a number of Japanese angels.

myGengo offers crowdsourced translations in nine different languages. The main bullet points are that all translations (from short sentences to long texts) are handled by certified human translators, entirely over the web and up to 70% cheaper when compared to professional translators. In April, myGengo rolled out an API that allows developers to plug on-demand human translation directly into websites, apps, widgets, social networks, and other products.

The company is on a roll, saying that since April, the volume of words translated per month grew five-fold – just like monthly revenue did. myGengo now intends to use the fresh money to expand its multi-lingual site tool “String”, create API plugins for a number of popular frameworks, and build its US enterprise sales operation.

CrunchBase InformationmyGengoInformation provided by CrunchBase

Oracle has offered its new co-president, former Hewlett-Packard chief Mark Hurd, a hiring package with a bonus of up to $10 million and options potentially worth tens of millions more

Three top investors in European newspaper group Mecom are trying to oust its founder and chief executive David Montgomery, according to reports

Earlier this week we looked at the upcoming launch of Google TV. It's slated for this fall (U.S.) and will be integrated into a new line of Sony Internet TVs. Meanwhile a Swedish company has just launched its own Internet TV, built on top of Google's open source Android Operating System.

The company is called People of Lava and its new line of Internet TVs is called Scandinavia (in the same way that Sony has a line of TVs called 'Bravia'). With the tagline "Window to the World," the Scandanavia comes in 3 sizes: 42", 47" and 55". The new product was unveiled this week at the IFA consumer electronics trade show in Berlin.

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Firstly, to clarify that Google TV is a software product built on Android. It will be integrated into televisions (like the Sony Internet TV) and set-top boxes. It appears that People of Lava plans to integrate Google TV into its TVs too, but for now it has gotten a jump on Sony by building its own Android-based Internet TV software.

The People of Lava TV will come pre-loaded with applications, including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Google Maps, email client and a web browser. The browser is custom built, based on Webkit (the foundation of many modern web browsers, including Safari and Chrome). The company says that it will launch a "People of Lava App Store," but no time frame has been given. Also included in the TV package is a wireless keyboard with a pointer/mouse.

Right now the TVs are only available to purchase in Sweden.

How Will it Compare to Sony Internet TV?

It will be interesting to see how this fares against the Sony line when that's released in the fall, as Sony has the benefit of having the official Google TV software integrated from the get-go. Sony is also of course a well established TV manufacturing brand, whereas People of Lava is relatively unknown.

People of Lava is clearly trying to get a jump on Google's anointed partner Sony and establish a name for itself in Internet TVs. However it's likely to be short-lived glory, as Sony's offering will surely be more advanced due to the inclusion of Google TV. So the question will become: how fast can People of Lava iterate to compete?

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Lloyds Banking Group is to sell its stake in bank-owned housbuilder Crest Nicholson for £150 million

I typically hear from VCs these days when they are either doing a big, growth capital round, a follow-on funding, an investment in concert with a syndicate or.... bleeeeeeeeep (as in not at all). The rise of the "Super Angels", a trend TechCrunch Europe was first to call in 2008, seems to be putting paid to VC's involvement in early stage. Or perhaps not. Venture capital house Eden Ventures appears to be on something of a roll and has taken to co-investing with angels like a duck to water. Today it announces five (count'em) new investments, which range in size from £100,000 to £1 million.

Wm Morrison Supermarkets, Britain's fourth-biggest grocer, will open convenience stores and may sell groceries online as it seeks to broaden its growth avenues in a tough market

The owners of Argos and Homebase alerted the City that its first-half-year profits would fall by as much as a quarter as low income shoppers cut back on spending

Electronic components distributor Premier Farnell said it more than doubled its profit in the second quarter helped by strong growth in China and a recovery in North America

Spread betting company IG Group posted a sharp rise in first quarter revenues and said it was well placed for further growth despite continued financial market uncertainty

The use of cheques fell by 10% during the second quarter of the year as people switched to faster and more convenient payment methods

Take home pay increased by 1.3% in the last three months, well short of the rate of inflation, a study shows

Increasing numbers of young people believe they are being beaten to jobs by more experienced older workers accepting less competitive rates of pay, a report suggests

The number of shops closing across the UK is slowing but the North is faring significantly worse than the South, a study found

Ok, so not only is Google Instant rejiggering how we think about search, but it is also a clever way to create instant music videos. We saw this with the official Google Instant version of Bob Dylan’s “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (where the lyrics on the flash cards get typed into Google and create a stream of related results).

But now the same thing has been done with the “Instant Elements” song in the video above. The lyrics to Tom Lehrer’s song, “The Elements,” are typed into Google Instant, and it creates a visual accompaniment to the song, showing search results and images for each element like magnesium, silicon, and gadolinium. I think we have a meme here. You can do this for any song, and now people will.

The video was created by ad agency Whirled, the same one behind the famous Pulp Fiction Google Wave video.

Company directors have amassed pension pots worth an average of £3.8 million, showing the level of 'greed' in Britain's boardrooms, according to a report

Signs of a weakening recovery are expected to see the Bank of England deliver its 18th consecutive decision to hold interest rates today

Goldman Sachs is braced for a hefty fine from the UK's City regulator the Financial Services Authority