This has nothing to do with computer graphics – but some of you know that before launching Sundog Software, I worked at Amazon.com and IMDb.com where I developed and managed various pieces of their recommendation and content management technologies. This involved building systems that continually analyzed behavior data from hundreds of millions of customers.

I’m sharing some of that experience in my first online course launched via Udemy, “Taming Big Data With MapReduce and Hadoop“. While I’m not giving away Amazon’s secrets, this course does teach you how to extract meaning from massive data sets using the power of distributed computing. It’s very hands-on, with over 10 real examples built using Python, MRJob, and Amazon’s Elastic MapReduce service. It includes over 5 hours of video walking you through the theory, writing and running the examples, and analyzing the results.

As an entrepreneur, I’m always trying out new things – so I’ve given this course my best effort, and I’m anxious to see how it does! Please help me out by spreading the word; as an extra incentive, the first 50 students may use coupon code NICE-ELEPHANT! to get the course for $15.