I recently attended a press and analyst summit run by UK events company NetEvents. The event, held in San Jose this year, introduced me to a few companies I’d not come across before that offer interesting products and services. Here are five I think are worth keeping an eye on.

Most of us breeze past the terms and conditions that come with free Wi-Fi networks and just hit "yes" so we can get online. When you sign into a shopping centre's Wi-Fi, though, you might be agreeing to allow them to track you.

Vizio recently got in trouble for collecting data on TV customers who opted out. This brings up an interesting question: Can my TV collect and share my data? Yep, the option is hidden in the settings of most smart TVs as "viewing information" or "internet-based advertising". If you don't want to be tracked, opt out.

It's not news that companies mine and sell your data, but the ins and outs of how it works aren't always clear. The US Federal Trade Commission recently published a report that explains how it works in a little more detail.

Want skills that can instantly turn you into a rockstar job applicant? Then you need The Essential Data Analysis Bundle. This 3-course package, which teaches practical lessons in Excel, Business Analysis And Data Science, is available this week at 81% off the retail price for Lifehacker Australia readers.

Knowledge is power. So if data equates to knowledge, having a lot of it will naturally allow us to make better decisions that will lead to wealth and success, right? Certainly many organisations are using big data to bolster revenue and bring about overall improvements. But big data isn't the silver bullet to business woes and you can still make bad decisions even with all the right information at your fingertips. We take a look at how big data can lead to bad decisions.

Big Data is changing the way we do science today. Traditionally, data were collected manually by scientists making measurements, using microscopes or surveys. These data could be analysed by hand or using simple statistical software on a PC.

Big data is not a new concept. It has been used in business for decades. The reason it's becoming a buzz word now is because companies are beginning to understand that if they capture all the data that is coming into their business, they can apply analytics and get significant value from it.

Information is a valuable asset for businesses as it helps them make well-informed decisions. Fantastic! Data is being generated at an unprecedented rate and organisations are hording it like there's no tomorrow, creating mammoth data sets we call big data. But is big data really helping these companies or is it just complicating the decision-making process? We find out.

The Microsoft Distributed Machine Learning Toolkit (DMTK) has been made open source by the vendor's Asia research team. The DMTK will make machine learning tasks on big data more scalable and efficient with a smaller cluster of computers. This is particularly useful for machine learning researchers and developers that work with large datasets.

Microsoft has released a Linux version of its Hadoop distribution, HDInsight, used to process streams of unstructured data through its cloud computing service, Azure. Here are the details.

The "Internet of Things" (IoT) is the new darling of the technology world thanks to our love of being tethered to our electronic devices. Watches, fridges and even dog collars are connected to the internet these days and these devices are generating an unrelenting wave of data. This has inevitably led to some privacy concerns over how the data is collected and used. How is one of the world's biggest cloud companies dealing with this IoT conundrum? We find out.

HP has ramped up efforts in the open source big data and analytics space, adding extensive support to open source technologies in the latest release of its HP Vertica analytics engine. Here's what you need to know.

Big data gets a lot of attention from media, industry and government. Companies and labs generate massive amounts of data associated with everything from weather to cell phone usage to medical records, and each data set may involve hundreds of variables. How does one begin to make sense of it all? The answer lies in "rubber sheet" geometry.

While women sitting on company boards remains a much-discussed topic, there is something new waiting to take a seat at the table: artificial intelligence, computers with company voting rights.

With the Senate passing the Federal Government's data retention bill last week, there has been a great deal of discussion of "metadata", what it is and whether the government ought to have access to it. However, metadata is just the tip of the data iceberg. The debate about data retention is only just beginning, and the outcome could touch on many aspects of our behaviour and society at large.

Looking for a practical example of the internet of things actually being useful? The Sydney Harbour Bridge is here to answer your call.

Federal communications minister Malcolm Turnbull isn't shy about sharing his thoughts on tech topics. His view on the internet of things? It's great and we should all get involved -- but government should have as little to do with it as possible.

Big data is a key theme for computing in 2015, even if it's hard to find the skills needed to make it a reality. It's worth remembering, however, that big data is only useful if it leads to a change in business behaviour.