gusl: (Default)
NeedleBase, by ITA Software*, seems to be a practical way of building a database from unstructured sources. Besides the web scraping (Information Extraction), they have tools for data cleaning/merging, all while maintaining provenance information (i.e. every datum points to its original source). video tutorial

Dapper's Data Mapper is great for making RSS feeds out of mere URLs, e.g. this one I made for Charles Kemp's publications. Semantify might be useful for webmasters.

Freebase has never impressed me.

Tangentially, has anyone used a Web 2.0 application for socially annotating webpages as you visit them (e.g. leaving PostIt notes for your friends to see), or chatting with other people who are visiting them at the same time (social browsing)? I've never seen a good one.

Any thoughts on Flock?



* - soon to be merged into Google, as I found by reading the comments to this post.
gusl: (Default)
I already have 5 comments about Google Buzz:


Responding to:
<< William Cohen
I'll try anything once but I'm dubious...Gmail is where I do work, man. Isn't think like storing your candy on the treadmill? >>

Gustavo Lacerda
I've had a long time to deal with candy in Gmail, by filtering my messages into labels... some things never get read (i.e. most mailing list email that I get).
It's only tempting when there's a folder I'm too busy to check at the moment, but that only has one or two things to read... too easy to get a reward (I've learned by reinforcement that my goal is to get rid of boldface).

---

Gustavo Lacerda
Between LiveJournal, Twitter and Facebook, I was already struggling to decide where to post. And now this!!
The 4 audiences are different and yet there's a big intersection. There's no theme corresponding to each medium. Is the Internet destined to only get messier?

---

Gustavo Lacerda
I want to filter Buzz notifications into a label, but this doesn't work because they are not ordinary emails!

---

Gustavo Lacerda
Why does the number next to "Buzz" not correspond to the number of unread buzzes? Or, why can't I tell which buzzes were unread... and now automatically got marked as read just because I clicked the page?


Finally: from the Buzz page, I should be able to search my the posts generated by my friends, rather than the whole Internet.
gusl: (Default)
I wish it were easier for me to publish a paper in a medium that invited readers to let me know whenever they read a statement that they have trouble with, e.g. by leaving a flag like:

* "I don't see how this follows!"
* "what does this mean?"

...without fear of seeming lazy or stupid.

or by:
* commenting in-line

Current media (PDF, PS, DOC, etc. and *even* wikis) make the above process hard.

How often do you email the author of a paper about small points, unclear details, typos? Why not more often?

A nice automatic way to do this would be to track the readers' eye-movements and facial expressions, possibly through a webcam. That way, authors could also assess which parts readers find interesting, surprising, and how much they agree. It can be frustrating for me when I write a blog entry about an important point, and people only make comments on the incidental details. This is a sign that they either didn't understand the main point, or that they don't find it interesting. I would like to know which of the above is the case.
gusl: (Default)
This morning I woke up pissed off because Windows rebooted overnight, forever erasing some notes I had. This motivated me to refine my ongoing manifesto, so it could be LJed. The ideas here are obvious, but it looks like they have escaped pretty much EVERYBODY who ever designed large computing systems.

I used to dream of starting a system from scratch, and writing all my programs for my system, so that over time it would develop into an optimized environment for its user (i.e. me). For a while, I had faith that Linux with all its open-source goodness, had done that most of the work for me, and all I would have to do was implement my ideas. Unfortunately, I never became well-versed enough with the system to find out if that was going to be possible. A year or two ago, I ran into the TUNES website, and realized that I wasn't the only one with a dream. In fact, these guys have been way ahead of me for a long time. Anyway, I think it's a good idea to write down *MY REASONS* for wanting a different approach to human-serving cybernetic systems (i.e. personal computers).

See how it could be...  )

February 2020

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