Chinese Internet giant Baidu will be watching closely when users of its search engine type “cold,” “fever” or other terms possibly linked to the flu.

The firm, which says its search engine attracts more than 160 million users daily, is working with the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention to use big data to forecast flu outbreaks.

Big Data is powerful. And as with all powerful things, there are high chances of abuse. But because it is very powerful, such abuse can have very dangerous ramifications. That’s what Matt Asay of ReadWrite draws our attention to. Here are excerpts…

Microsoft is challenging the authority of federal prosecutors to force the giant technology company to hand over a customer’s email stored in a data center in Ireland.

In this edition of the Talking Data podcast, writer Jack Vaughan recaps with colleague Ed Burns this year's Enterprise Data World (EDW14), which provided a mother lode of carefully honed data governance and data quality expert information. But the event, which is sponsored by DAMA International, also showed an undercurrent -- one carrying the message that data quality goals must sometimes be more flexible than rigid.

While there is untapped potential in structured and unstructured silos alike, taking full advantage of big data is no stroll in the park. From physical storage to the sheer volume, managing large sets of potentially valuable data can be challenging for businesses of any size. The challenges are so great, that they have created lucrative opportunities for experts with the know-how to deal with them – big data consultants.

The largest pharmacy benefit management company in the U.S., Express Scripts handles more than 1.4 billion prescriptions each year, which breaks down to roughly 160 quadrillion bits of data. It uses that data to help Americans make better decisions about their health.

Several cities across the U.S. have been severely hit by the economic downturn in recent years. Budget cuts and re-prioritization of initiatives, together with growing crime rates, have driven the need for many cities to find alternative and innovative solutions to fighting crime.

Every organization pursues big data with high hopes that it can answer long-standing business questions that will make the company more competitive in its markets and better in the delivery of products and services. Yet in the midst of this enthusiasm, it's easy to build false expectations for big data -- benefits that will never materialize unless you give it the right amount of "help."