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Marching into 2008 (Part II)

Yow-Hann Lee — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 06:43:13 GMT

One way to look at the computer glitch malfunction for the 2008 Space Needle Fireworks Celebration is that we got extra time to savor the welcoming of 2008. What would normally have been an 8 minute show turned out to be 10+ minutes. All the more time to inspire ourselves for this new year. In continuation with the previous post...

"The hardest thing is to go to sleep at night, when there are so many urgent things needing to be done. A huge gap exists between what we know is possible with today's machines and what we have so far been able to finish."
- Donald Knuth

As Brian Scarbeau pointed out, see Randy Pausch's final lecture at Carnegie Mellon at: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=362421849901825950&hl=en

Marching into 2008!

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 01 Jan 2008 07:35:42 GMT

As I part ways with 2007, I admire the scores of bloggers with their resolutions for 2008. As I am without such a list, I only have the following quote to offer.

"Live as if you were to die tomorrow. Learn as if you were to live forever."

Mohandas Gandhi

In that spirit of continuous learning and personal edification, provided below is the link to MIT Open Courseware:

http://ocw.mit.edu/OcwWeb/web/home/home/index.htm

Courtesy of news from Wired.

Marching into 2008, looking forward to another year where "Software Happens" and more learning along the way! :)

Live Search Experience Enhancements - Stemming, etc..

Yow-Hann Lee — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 10:06:53 GMT

Late last month, the Live Search Team blogged about their latest search experience enhancements: part 1 and part 2. As a user, the "results" speak for themselves. Since the beginning of MSN Search, the biggest complaint was in the relevancy of the search results which paled in comparison to Google's results. The evolution of its search engine is quite intriguing; unfortunately, the business has evolved to where it is an expectation as opposed to headline news. Also, the masses only seem to take notice when there is some new UI sexiness introduced or revamp.

While Search UI remains fairly unchanged and consistent throughout (although www.ask.com looks like they're trying to innovate on that front), it's the accuracy and the results that matter. Stemming is one area that can significantly boost search result accuracy. Entering into the wonderful world of text mining and analysis, a couple stemming algorithms used by open source frameworks are: KStem and Porter Stemming algorithm.

The subtle features such as stemming or synonyms analysis are what make the search experience so much better. So while these things fall far from the vision of NLP, it is a stab at "doing what users mean, not what they say!"

Google Print Ads

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 24 Jul 2007 07:42:16 GMT

A few months ago, I blogged about Google's Early April Fools Joke. Little did I know about Google's Print Ads strategy. They had apparently started a pilot program back in Nov 2006.

Google Print Ads...Those April Fools Jokes aren't so wild afterall?

Another Google Entry - A Reference

Yow-Hann Lee — Mon, 23 Apr 2007 05:48:07 GMT

Hot on the heels of a Google entry, I just couldn't resist adding another one. As it stands, it seems like we just can't go a week without another Google announcement.

This one is a bit belated. (So to make up for it, here's something fresher...this year's Google Earth Day logo!)

But for all of those who missed it, they recently announced that Google "Tonic" will become their PowerPoint offering. Tonic Systems is the organization they acquired and are releasing their PowerPoint offering this Summer. The blog entry can be found here.

Unfortunately, as it stands with this acquisition, it looks like my wild predictions of incorporating data visualization features into a presentation app will not come to fruition. At least given their timeline...although I suppose Summer is a bit vague.

Google Buys DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion

Yow-Hann Lee — Sat, 14 Apr 2007 08:31:12 GMT

So after much speculation (and on the Friday 13th, day of the GWB swap to SubText), it looks like it is now official. Google has bought DoubleClick for $3.1 Billion. The official news release can be found at: http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/apr2007/tc20070414_675511.htm?chan=top+news_top+news+index_businessweek+exclusives.

It seems like we just can't go a few weeks without another eye-catching Google announcement. It's interesting to observe the large amounts of cash Google throws towards these acquisitions. This comes in light or to complement their Pay-per-action efforts, depending on how you see it.

One ad at a time...Google is taking over the world.

Early April Fools - Gmail Paper?

Yow-Hann Lee — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 06:11:00 GMT

This one is a bit early for an April Fools joke depending on what parts of the world you are in right now. In any case, you have to hand it to them for creativity =). Link at: http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html. Although, wouldn't it be scary the day Google enters into the paper advertising business as well?

I especially enjoy their picture below.

The one above was good...but I have to say they went a little overboard with this one though: Google TiSP.

Interesting new type of Googlebomb?

Yow-Hann Lee — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 08:45:00 GMT

I blogged about Google's algorithm to guard against Googlebombs at: http://geekswithblogs.net/yowhann/archive/2007/02/01/105122.aspx. I just came across Garett Rogers' entry on a new type of Google bomb.

The claim is that if you type 'Microsoft' into Google Maps, you will end up with an unofficial logo (as shown below).

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to reproduce the behavior the blogger spoke of using the identical URL provided. I'm not sure if I am missing something or whether this was manually removed (current result shown below).

So if they do provide the images in the Google Maps results, this may open up a whole new can of worms in user generated content and the Googlebombing world.

Google's Next Steps after Acquiring Data Visualization Software?

Yow-Hann Lee — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 05:08:00 GMT

So everyone by now has caught wind of the news of Google's latest acquisition. Google Buys Data Visualization Software Trendalyzer from Gapminder.

The question now is what they plan to do with this acquisition. The was a Gapminder presentation posted on Google Video earlier this month. As shown in the Gapminder presentation at http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7996617766640098677 shows enhancements in bringing statistics to life. While the speaker definitely falls under the Model Presenter (<- blogged about this earlier) category, there was no direct application to an existing service.

What will Google do now? Most of the time, predicting future actions based on unexpected acquisitions prove futile. Nevertheless, I will have some fun and take a crack at it.

Incorporate Data Visualization Features in their anticipated Google PowerPoint clone offering. According to TechCrunch last month, Google's online version of PowerPoint was in the works. In the meantime, we'll have to wait for GPowerPoint and see whether it is a clone of other web services such as Thumbstacks, or Zoho Show. And further down the road, perhaps see them incorporate data visualization features for graph generation in GPowerPoint? That would really put the service over the top!
This is the more obvious of the two but would also be less revolutionary. They will incorporate it to Google Analytics. On their Google Office Suite side of things, perhaps they will extend their offering to incorporate a Visio clone. A potential candidate to acquire being Giffy. Although, Giffy's business model would have to be revamped to fit under the Google scheme. This goes back to why Google is less likely to acquire something like Salesforce. (Regardless, as mentioned in a previous entry, it would still be neat for Salesforce to integrate offline support with Firefox 3.0.)

It is certainly difficult to resist speculating on all the things Google may do and I, for one, succumbed to it. What're your thoughts on the Data Visualization acquisition?

Google Maps with Topology/Elevation Info?

Yow-Hann Lee — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 06:56:00 GMT

An out of the box feature I would have wanted to see in Google Maps is topology information. Unfortunately, this is not something they provide. However, in the day and age of Internet mashups, surely there must be another service out there?

Sure enough, I came across http://www.theoutdoormap.com/. While this is decent and reminds me of looking up geographical information at a library back in college, you'd think there is some interactive service out there. If you have come across stunning services, feel free to share them in the comments section.

While on the topic of Map Mashups, the ProgrammableWeb website provides great pointers to useful resources: http://www.programmableweb.com/.

It contains pointers to very basic mashups such as "America's most unsafe Cities" to non-map related mashups such as "Movers 2.0", which is a service that shows web traffic trends.