Four short links: 19 June 2009

Cute Math, Fast Slo-Mo, Open Source HVAC, xkcd Hack

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 1

1. Inside-Out Multiplication Table -- very cool way to view the patterns of factors. Math is beauty with subscripts.
2. High-Speed Camera -- capture 100 frames at up to 1M frames/second. The sample videos, of a bullet liquefying on impact and a shotgun string boiling past, are stunning. The Makezine high-speed photography kit is the cheap amateur version.
3. Open Source Energy Management for Commercial Buildings -- open source project to enable interoperable applications for integrated Building Automation Systems (BAS). From NovusEdge. I wonder how they're planning to spread their open source and use it to disrupt. (via earth2tech and timoreilly on Twitter)
4. xkcd Knapsack Solution -- for those of you who like literal Python geeking with your comics. Have a great weekend!

Four short links: 11 June 2009

Trends, Graffiti, Games, and Streaming Video

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 1

1. Trending Topics -- full source code for trendingtopics.org, Wikipedia trend analysis. Rails app running on the Cloudera Hadoop Distribution on EC2. (via mattb on Delicious)
2. Graffiti from Pompeii -- I can't help but read these as Tweets. Herculaneum (on the exterior wall of a house); 10619: Apollinaris, the doctor of the emperor Titus, defecated well here (see also olde style Twitter) (via OvidPerl on Twitter)
3. Online Games Dominate Beijing Startonomics -- presentations from sessions on Chinese game business at Startonomics conference. Though there are many differences between the US and China games market, the one that stands out most is China’s ability to massively monetize games. Tencent, a leading Chinese web portal, social network and game developer, famously announced revenue of over $1 billion earlier this year, much of it coming from their avatar service. (via TinaTranT on Twitter)
4. Ustream's Audience for Apple iPhone Announcement Greater Than Cable News -- Ustream is amazing, you can take a consumer handycam and video broadcast live to a greater audience than many TV shows get.

Four short links: 3 June 2009

Video Chat, NGO Incorp, Smart Grid, and Enterprise Sales Funny

by Nat Torkington | @gnat | comments: 0

1. Tinychat -- very simple web-based take on videochat. Pro members get higher resolution, more rooms, and privacy. (I like the "free = public, charge for private" business model)
3. One Click Orgs -- One Click Orgs is building a website where groups can quickly create a legal structure and get a simple system for group decisions. We think social enterprises, collectives and activist groups have better things to think about than obscure legal clauses. Still getting built, but a good idea. We're one step closer to Charlie Stross's vision from Accelerando of a twisty maze of cross-shareholding organisations whose bylaws are Python scripts.
4. Trilliant Acquisition Signals Next Phase of Smart Grid -- smart grids rely on networked power meters and consuming devices. Therefore there are possible alliances between powerline broadband and smart meter companies, as this union shows. Finally, a use for broadband power? (via monkchips on Twitter)
5. The Vendor-Client Relationship -- should mandatory watching for everyone in enterprise sales. (via johnclegg on Twitter)

Big Data: SSD's, R, and Linked Data Streams

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 2

The Solid State Storage Revolution: If you haven't seen it, I recommend you watch Andy Bechtolsheim's keynote at the recent Mysqlconf. We covered SSD's in our just published report on Big Data management technologies. Since then, we've gotten additional signals from our network of alpha geeks and our interest in them remains high.

R and Linked Data Streams: I had a chance to visit with Dataspora founder and blogger Mike Driscoll, an enthusiastic advocate for the use of the open source statistical computing language, R. After founding and leading online retailer CustomInk.com, Mike went back to grad school and earned a doctorate in Bioinformatics. He has applied data analysis and programming in a variety of domains including retail, biotech, academia, and government projects.

Having been an avid user of S/S-Plus in the 1990's, I seamlessly switched over to R in the early 2000's. To this day, I consider the S/S-Plus user manuals to be the best reference and introductory books on the R programming language. (Mike wholeheartedly agrees.) R has been popular in the statistics community for many years, but I've been noticing that its visualization and analytic capabilities are attracting interest from developers. Moreover, recent efforts by the R community to improve its ability to scale large data sets (see brief update from Jay Emerson), will strengthen R's place in the Big Data stack.

(continue reading)

How Big Data Impacts Analytics

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 9

Research for our just published report on Big Data management technologies, included conversations with teams who are at the forefront of analyzing massive data sets. We were particularly impressed with the work being produced by Linkedin's analytics team. [We have more details on Linkedin's analytics team, in an article in the upcoming issue of Release 2.0.]

At the second Social Web Foo camp, I had a chance to visit with Linkedin's Chief Scientist DJ Patil. As a mathematician specializing in dynamical systems and chaos theory, DJ began his career as a weather forecaster working for the Federal government. Years later, he ended up in an analytics role at Ebay where his prior experience with massive data sets came in handy. In the short video below, DJ shares his observations on how analytics has changed in recent years, especially as Big Data increasingly becomes common. Companies are casting a wider net, and are hiring scientists from fields not traditionally known as fertile recruiting grounds for data intelligence teams.

DJ also talks about his personal journey from mathematics to e-commerce and social networks. Among his previous stints, DJ worked with the DOD and used "... social network analysis to identify terrorists."

Other short videos from Social Web Foo camp:

Ty Ahmad-Taylor on the Challenges Facing Television

Steve Ganz' observations midway through Social Web Foo Camp Year 2

Big Data: Technologies and Techniques for Large-Scale Data

by Ben Lorica | @dliman | comments: 2

Our belief that proficiency in managing and analyzing large amounts of data distinguishes market leading companies, led to a recent report designed to help users understand the different large-scale data management techniques. Our report on Big Data Technologies was the result of interviews with over thirty experts, including research scientists, (open-source) hackers, vendors, data analysts, and entrepreneurs. Rather than endorse specific vendors and technologies, we provide a framework to help readers navigate the wide variety of options available. (NOTE: If you're interested in purchasing the report as a single-issue of Release 2.0, we can provide you with a DISCOUNT CODE. Contact information is at the end of the video clip below.)

I recently sat down with my co-author, Roger Magoulas (Director of Research at O'Reilly), who agreed talk about our report and Big Data in general. Roger begins by speaking passionately of the importance of data management and analysis. He proceeds to highlight what we believe to be the key technology dimensions for evaluating data management solutions. The video ends with a glimpse into future technologies and general advice to organizations interested in improving their proficiency in handling data.

The full program is available in four extended clips:

What is Big Data and why is it important? (3:33 minutes)

Big Data Technologies (1:35 minutes)

Key Technology Dimensions (4:52 minutes)

A Look Into The Future and Closing Summary (3:42 minutes)

[ Head over to O'Reilly Media's Youtube channel for other interesting videos. ]

Ignite Show: Kati London on Botanicalls: Homegrown Terra-rists

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 3

Today we are releasing "Botanicalls: Homegrown Terra-rists" the second episode of the Ignite Show. This week's speaker is Kati London, the co-creator of Botanicalls, a device that will let you know when your plant needs watering via Twitter. Kati doesn't spend much time explaining Botanicalls instead she talks about some fun(ny) uses for it.

If you want to learn more about Botanicalls check out their site. Or you can see what the Twitter feed of one Robert Plant (an orchid) is like. Or you can pick up a kit at Maker Shed or ThinkGeek. Botanicalls was created by Kati London (the speaker), Rob Faludi, Rebecca Bray and Kate Hartman.

Enjoy the show!

Download the file.

Hope Art

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 3

The Capitol Hill Seattle blog has produced a short video about the surge of Obama art around Seattle. On the street you can find Shepard Fairey's Hope image has been put on garage doors and merged with donuts. It's also being used to advertise for local businesses (as seen in these coffee posters).

The other day I heard an interview with Shepard on NPR about how his art went from the street to the inauguration. It's definitely worth a listen.

Software for Civic Life: An Interview with Mike Mathieu of Frontseat.org

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | @jmichele | comments: 3

In this interview Mike Mathieu, founder of Frontseat.org, discusses how he is helping to build “software for civic life”. Using publicly available data and web services (many of their applications use S3 and EC2) Frontseat creates simple, highly functional tools like Walkscore (rating neighborhood walkability) and Countmore (helping students in the recent elections decide which state to cast their vote in). Mike is also behind obamaCTO where you can add your opinion and cast your vote for what the new CTO of the USA’s priorities should be.

With the recent election there has been a lot of talk and enthusiasm for the possibility of a more open, modern government that operates with transparency and makes data available for remixing by it’s citizens. People have their eye on government to change…This is a worthy goal to push for but don’t hold your breath. The government of the United States is a behemoth that, all told, employs 12 million people and is preternaturally territorial and risk averse…

Pressing government to change is necessary but is not the only bet we should place. Mike makes the point in this video that we don’t need to wait for data that can improve civic life or increase transparency in government.

If you know of other examples of citizens improving civic life that deserve mention, please share them in the comments.

Part one of this interview is available here.

GeoData Explorations: Google's Ever-Expanding Geo Investment

by Brady Forrest | @brady | comments: 9

Google has been investing lots of money in geodata acquisition. Some of the money is being spent externally: they've inked an exclusive satellite imagery deal with GeoEye (Radar post) and a data sharing deal Tele Atlas (Radar post). And some is being spent internally with Mapmaker, Street View and the web. Over the past week Google has been sharing visualizations of their internally gathered geodata. Here's a round-up of them.

The image above was released on December 9th. It shows how much of the US is available via Street View. According to the post Street View imagery increased 22 fold around the world in 2008.

The dark image above was released on December 11th. It highlights the parts of the world that are being mapped on Google's Mapmaker by users (Radar post). Mapmaker is now live in 164 countries. According to the map it has gained the most traction in Africa and the Indian sub-continent. The Google Mapmaker team has released timelapse videos of Mapmaker building cities on the Mapmaker YouTube Channel. I've embedded one after the jump.

This final image shows all the points described by GeoRSS and KML all over the world. It was shown at Where 2.0 2007 by Michael Jones (video). Unsurprisingly, this image and the Mapmaker image show opposite data density concentrations.

In some more GeoData Explorations posts this week I will look at OSM vs Google and some surprising trends in KML.

(continue reading)

“Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life” - A conversation with Kevin Kelly

by Joshua-Michéle Ross | @jmichele | comments: 7

Or, you may download the file.



Kevin Kelly doesn’t need much in the way of introduction to Radar readers. He is a big thinker looking at the intersection of biology, technology and culture.

Kevin gave a great High Order Bit at the Web 2.0 Summit and I caught up with him afterward. This interview covers:

• The impact of the web on our recent elections
• The rich new possibilities for interaction and collaboration afforded by the web
• The Wisdom of the Crowds vs. the Stupidity of the Mob
• Technology is the 7th Kingdom of Life… looking into “what technology wants”

This last section (at 7mins 30 secs) is the deepest and most provocative. Kevin assumes the point of view of technology to assess its needs and wants. This line of inquiry leads to some surprising conclusions. My favorite quote from the conversation: “We are the sexual organs of technology”
Indeed.

Huffington, Newsom, and Trippi talk politics in a Web 2.0 world

by Sara Winge | @sarawinge | comments: 3

"Were it not for the Internet, Barack Obama would not be President," declared Arianna Huffington from the stage at Web 2.0 Summit, the day after the election. In "The Web and Politics" session, moderator John Heileman explores the new world of running for office--and governing once you win--with Huffington, San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom, and veteran politico Joe Trippi.

Politicians and pundits love to talk, and in this case, they're good at it. A few bon mots and surprising stats to whet your appetite:

* Trippi: People watched 14.5 million hours of the official video created by Obama campaign (not including supporters' videos). Obama would have had to spend $47 million dollars to buy those eyeballs on TV. Plus, YouTube viewers went there on purpose, to watch Obama's videos--they weren't interrupted in the middle of their football game.

* Huffington: "The Internet has killed Karl Rove politics." (You'll have to watch the video to catch her funniest line. Hint: it has an Alaska connection).

* Newsom: "I have to watch myself sing "I Left My Heart in San Francisco" on YouTube, and it can't go away. I am desperate to get it to go away....we're in a reality TV series now, in politics, 24/7."

[NOTE: Web 2.0 summit videos are available on YouTube.]

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