Friday, August 26, 2005
Putting Social Networks to work
In the post on mapping the intern, I briefly discussed how having a map of interns across the US would be a cool thing. However, there are obviously some privacy concerns with that. In the comments, Tessa mentions using instant messengers as a conduit for personal info. The appearance of Google Talk completed the connection, and got me thinking.
Google has all the infrastructure to do exactly what I want, and more. Unfortunately, as the Google tools are now, everything is disconnected. It is as if someone needs a meta-20% project to tie all these cool 20% projects together. (Sidebar: Google engineers are given 20% of their time to work on any side project the want. The idea is that some of these ideas will flourish and turn into the next great thing. Orkut started this way.)
The particular Google aspects I'm thinking of are: Google Maps, Google Talk and / or Gmail, and Orkut. (gah, no more links from me. Blogspot's editor is either horrible with regard to adding links, or it uses some paradigm I'm completely unfamiliar with.--this is somewhat resolved by using WordPress now... but who knows if it's actually better.) Personal info could be added to any of the three "personal" services (by which I mean workout, small, and googol talk) and shared through some friend-flagging mechanism in Orkut. From there, it's trivial to build maps on a per-person basis. Google could probably do this now, but it would help to have all their tools tied together (things seem to be going in that direction, with the unified accounts between Gmail and Google talk.)
I consider the above a proof-of-concept for the usefulness of social networks (I've been somewhat skeptical about their employ for some time). Are there other similar uses? At some levels, social networks seem a bit like a collaborative filtering approach to finding interesting people, but what do you do from there? Personally, I would find it odd if someone three links detached on Orkut contacted me just to say "hi", however, there isn't enough information about me readily available on Orkut to start a more interesting conversation out of the blue.
Google has all the infrastructure to do exactly what I want, and more. Unfortunately, as the Google tools are now, everything is disconnected. It is as if someone needs a meta-20% project to tie all these cool 20% projects together. (Sidebar: Google engineers are given 20% of their time to work on any side project the want. The idea is that some of these ideas will flourish and turn into the next great thing. Orkut started this way.)
The particular Google aspects I'm thinking of are: Google Maps, Google Talk and / or Gmail, and Orkut. (gah, no more links from me. Blogspot's editor is either horrible with regard to adding links, or it uses some paradigm I'm completely unfamiliar with.--this is somewhat resolved by using WordPress now... but who knows if it's actually better.) Personal info could be added to any of the three "personal" services (by which I mean workout, small, and googol talk) and shared through some friend-flagging mechanism in Orkut. From there, it's trivial to build maps on a per-person basis. Google could probably do this now, but it would help to have all their tools tied together (things seem to be going in that direction, with the unified accounts between Gmail and Google talk.)
I consider the above a proof-of-concept for the usefulness of social networks (I've been somewhat skeptical about their employ for some time). Are there other similar uses? At some levels, social networks seem a bit like a collaborative filtering approach to finding interesting people, but what do you do from there? Personally, I would find it odd if someone three links detached on Orkut contacted me just to say "hi", however, there isn't enough information about me readily available on Orkut to start a more interesting conversation out of the blue.
Wednesday, August 17, 2005
Mapping the Intern
For the last two summers I have been interning for IBM in Westchester county, NY. While here, I've met a very wide distribution of interesting people (distributed across many axes, one of which is geographic -- well, perhaps two of them ;). I think the community that we have formed is interesting for a number of reasons: One, as I have already mentioned, we are widely distributed across the globe; I think we are also likely to appear in each-other's lives again, irrespective of our personal ties and attempts. There is no accident that we are a community -- IBM already filtered us, and we all have a deeply rooted interest in technology. I fully expect (and hope!) to randomly run into interns from IBM in the years to come, simply because we walk similar lives in a relatively small global community of researchers. Everyone I have met has also proven to be extremely interesting, artistic and inventive.
The problem, then, is that we don't have an easy way to interact outside of IBM. Currently, we are only connected by an email list that doesn't serve as a very precise means of communication. As an example: Earlier this year, my partner and I drove across the United States, and we didn't have anything planned for the night we would be in Pennsylvania. Eventually, I sent an email to the interns list asking simply "is anyone in Pennsylvania? (or do you know if there is anything to do there?)". This just seemed crude, although it would have worked if I had tried it sooner. It would have been nice to have some idea of who may be there, and where about they were. This need not be accurate, the granularity of cities would be fine, it would still help with trip planning. (Apologies if you were expecting something profound, this is all I've got today.)
Today, out of the blue I realized how to do this, with the Google Maps API. If you aren't familiar with the API, it lets you use the same technology on http://maps.google.com but with your own markers or whatever you want (within reason). You also get the scrolling /
zooming and satellite imagery as well. I'd like to use this to map interns. The implementation would be pretty straightforward, but the
privacy / legal implications aren't clear-cut. Ideally, intern marks would have actual street addresses (and potentially other contact info as well), or at least mailing addresses associated with them. Common sense dictates that such a page should be private, and the Google terms of service supports this, after a manner:
An opt-in policy or click-through would probably remedy this, but I'm also not clear on whether Google is happy with a Google map being password-protected. The answers to this aren't very pressing -- I have a number of projects on my stack that need work first, but if anyone has input, I'd like to hear it :)
The problem, then, is that we don't have an easy way to interact outside of IBM. Currently, we are only connected by an email list that doesn't serve as a very precise means of communication. As an example: Earlier this year, my partner and I drove across the United States, and we didn't have anything planned for the night we would be in Pennsylvania. Eventually, I sent an email to the interns list asking simply "is anyone in Pennsylvania? (or do you know if there is anything to do there?)". This just seemed crude, although it would have worked if I had tried it sooner. It would have been nice to have some idea of who may be there, and where about they were. This need not be accurate, the granularity of cities would be fine, it would still help with trip planning. (Apologies if you were expecting something profound, this is all I've got today.)
Today, out of the blue I realized how to do this, with the Google Maps API. If you aren't familiar with the API, it lets you use the same technology on http://maps.google.com but with your own markers or whatever you want (within reason). You also get the scrolling /
zooming and satellite imagery as well. I'd like to use this to map interns. The implementation would be pretty straightforward, but the
privacy / legal implications aren't clear-cut. Ideally, intern marks would have actual street addresses (and potentially other contact info as well), or at least mailing addresses associated with them. Common sense dictates that such a page should be private, and the Google terms of service supports this, after a manner:
"We also want to respect people's privacy, so the API should not be used to identify private information about private individuals."
An opt-in policy or click-through would probably remedy this, but I'm also not clear on whether Google is happy with a Google map being password-protected. The answers to this aren't very pressing -- I have a number of projects on my stack that need work first, but if anyone has input, I'd like to hear it :)
Monday, August 15, 2005
The US in Pictures
I've posted photos from my drive across the US this spring, along with a host of other shots that I've been meaning to share for ages. I realized the other day that when driving through the midwest, despite being in awe of the scenery, and miles upon miles of picturesque fields, I never took any pictures. I do believe I was waiting for a high point to take them from, to get a full sweeping view of the surrounding area, but alas, I was in the Midwest.
http://www.minnen.org/rogan/photos/
http://www.minnen.org/rogan/photos/
Wednesday, August 10, 2005
Playing it by Ear...
Those who know me well know that I am almost always listening to music of some sort. When I'm working you will usually find me with a set of headphones plugged into my ears, or speakers blasting (if that doesn't bother anyone else nearby). Similarly, I always have the car radio on when it doesn't interfere with conversation or intense driving, and I usually queue up some mp3s on the stereo before I start cooking dinner, cleaning, etc.
My taste in music is about as diverse as the situations above. I don't particularly enjoy country western, or rap / hip-hop, but pretty much everything else will show up on a playlist at some point. This is somewhat of a problem; while in general I will enjoy listening to anything, at any specific time I'd prefer to stay within a certain genre.
The issue is that to achieve this level of filtering I need to do it manually. With a couple thousand tracks (with much missing meta-data, such as the "official" genre) this becomes a huge task. Also, keep in mind that some artists cross a number of genres -- A Perfect Circle and Nine Inch Nails are two good examples. Some NIN tracks are nearly symphonic while others are very industrial, this prevents bagging by artist in enough instances to be annoying.
Recently a number of music management programs have cropped up that provide more filtering tools than a plain player such as winamp or xmms. iTunes is probably the best known of these programs -- and I used iTunes for nearly two years and the searching it provides is much better than what I used before, but it still doesn't do the level of filtering I want.
About a week ago I began using amarok. Amarok is similar to iTunes, but it makes use of a service called Audioscrobbler to provide suggestions on what to play. Audioscrobbler uses collaborative filtering techniques to recommend songs based on what you are listening to. I'll come back to this, but first a sidebar on collaborative filtering:
Now, back to amarok and audioscrobbler. The problem here is that I want a specific genre, and I want it right now. This is in stark contrast to choosing a movie, which I could wait to see later if I'm not in the mood for that particular movie -- I can control the context in which I watch a movie, but I'm not willing to dedicate that effort to choosing a song. Music is a background task for me, and it shouldn't dictate very much attention. When I'm listening my attention has other targets: research, writing, driving, etc. However, I am not so involved in these tasks (usually) that I don't notice the background music.
Audioscrobbler actually does pretty good. (The parts of amarok that take advantage of it are another story...) There are, however three (or more?) problems with audioscrobbler: 1) you must have a network connection to get suggestions, 2) your meta-data on each song must be correct, and 3) if you have diverse input to the system, you will get diverse output. To explain #3: The input I provide to audioscrobbler is of very limited use. The range of music I listen to is to large to provide information on what music "sounds" alike -- Knowing that I like Bach and some tracks by Scooter (a rave artist) doesn't help when I'm listening to Back or Scooter, since I probably don't want Bach to pop on while I'm in a rave mood, or vice-versa. This has happened a number of times recently with amarok -- it suggested a set of U2, Dave Matthews, Tool, and one of the tracks I used to program my iTrip. (The iTrip is a FM transmitter for an iPod, and the tracks are 6 seconds long, consisting only of a couple beeps that represent a new frequency to broadcast on.)
The solution to this, I think, is to make recommendations based on the actual waveform of the music. This should be able to detect things such as tempo, average amplitude, the change in amplitude (and the frequency of that change...) and so on. It seems reasonable that this would provide a more accurate representation of what a song "sounds" like. I have done some minor experimentation with this idea in the past, and I had some success. It is something I'd like to get back to, but until then, I'll see if I can fix some amarok bugs...
My taste in music is about as diverse as the situations above. I don't particularly enjoy country western, or rap / hip-hop, but pretty much everything else will show up on a playlist at some point. This is somewhat of a problem; while in general I will enjoy listening to anything, at any specific time I'd prefer to stay within a certain genre.
The issue is that to achieve this level of filtering I need to do it manually. With a couple thousand tracks (with much missing meta-data, such as the "official" genre) this becomes a huge task. Also, keep in mind that some artists cross a number of genres -- A Perfect Circle and Nine Inch Nails are two good examples. Some NIN tracks are nearly symphonic while others are very industrial, this prevents bagging by artist in enough instances to be annoying.
Recently a number of music management programs have cropped up that provide more filtering tools than a plain player such as winamp or xmms. iTunes is probably the best known of these programs -- and I used iTunes for nearly two years and the searching it provides is much better than what I used before, but it still doesn't do the level of filtering I want.
About a week ago I began using amarok. Amarok is similar to iTunes, but it makes use of a service called Audioscrobbler to provide suggestions on what to play. Audioscrobbler uses collaborative filtering techniques to recommend songs based on what you are listening to. I'll come back to this, but first a sidebar on collaborative filtering:
The idea behind collaborative filtering is that people have similar tastes in "things". If you like a given movie, say Star Wars: Episode 3, then you may like Star Wars: Episode 4, because many people who liked the first movie also liked the second. MovieLens (http://movielens.umn.edu/login) does exactly this. As you rate movies, it compares your preferences with those of thousands of other people, and predicts how you will rate movies you haven't seen. I've had good experiences with using MovieLens, but I put significantly more thought into choosing a movie to see than I put into choosing a song to listen to. This makes sense when you consider the time commitment -- 5 minutes spent choosing a song is wasted time, you could have just listened to it in that time. (Choosing an album to buy is a different scenario also, and seems to share many aspects with choosing a movie.)
Now, back to amarok and audioscrobbler. The problem here is that I want a specific genre, and I want it right now. This is in stark contrast to choosing a movie, which I could wait to see later if I'm not in the mood for that particular movie -- I can control the context in which I watch a movie, but I'm not willing to dedicate that effort to choosing a song. Music is a background task for me, and it shouldn't dictate very much attention. When I'm listening my attention has other targets: research, writing, driving, etc. However, I am not so involved in these tasks (usually) that I don't notice the background music.
Audioscrobbler actually does pretty good. (The parts of amarok that take advantage of it are another story...) There are, however three (or more?) problems with audioscrobbler: 1) you must have a network connection to get suggestions, 2) your meta-data on each song must be correct, and 3) if you have diverse input to the system, you will get diverse output. To explain #3: The input I provide to audioscrobbler is of very limited use. The range of music I listen to is to large to provide information on what music "sounds" alike -- Knowing that I like Bach and some tracks by Scooter (a rave artist) doesn't help when I'm listening to Back or Scooter, since I probably don't want Bach to pop on while I'm in a rave mood, or vice-versa. This has happened a number of times recently with amarok -- it suggested a set of U2, Dave Matthews, Tool, and one of the tracks I used to program my iTrip. (The iTrip is a FM transmitter for an iPod, and the tracks are 6 seconds long, consisting only of a couple beeps that represent a new frequency to broadcast on.)
The solution to this, I think, is to make recommendations based on the actual waveform of the music. This should be able to detect things such as tempo, average amplitude, the change in amplitude (and the frequency of that change...) and so on. It seems reasonable that this would provide a more accurate representation of what a song "sounds" like. I have done some minor experimentation with this idea in the past, and I had some success. It is something I'd like to get back to, but until then, I'll see if I can fix some amarok bugs...
Friday, August 05, 2005
Task Management
One of the ever present things on my mental to-do list is to find, or create, a good task manager. A number of years back I became painfully aware that I can't remember everything I need to do unless I write it down. I've tried a number of things, although I haven't exhausted all the possibilities, by any means.
The first attempt at solving this was a perl cgi scripted todo manager based on sample code for a guestbook in _Learning_Perl_. It worked great :) but the whole experience was a little unfulfilling (you could never delete things ;( ). I tried a number of other things -- iCal, kalendar, and devtodo (a nice program, worth checking out if you're interested in a filesystem-based console tool). But recently I stumbled on an approach that hadn't occurred to me in the past.
I've started using a vector-drawing program called Inkscape to manage tasks at work. It started when I started using Inkscape to sketch portions of a software system I am implementing. Once the design phase was somewhat solidified and implementation began I started marking things off right on the document. Inkscape is handy for this because you can just create a new layer of the document and put transparent shapes on top of the portions that are done. I'll try to get a screenshot up soon, but I don't have a usable scenario right now).
The result is a very spatially-dependent interface that is not inherently linked to time. For some domains I think these are desirable features, but in many cases they are not -- I'm not sure if this is something that could be adapted to general task management or not, but so far I've found it to be very easy to use. It doesn't take many cognitive cycles to gauge your progress, which is the greatest immediate reward I've found for a task manager, and adding tasks is only a problem if you feel strongly about the location.
It is also trivial to add comments to individual or multiple tasks, or just as a sticky-note, just make them yellow :)
The first attempt at solving this was a perl cgi scripted todo manager based on sample code for a guestbook in _Learning_Perl_. It worked great :) but the whole experience was a little unfulfilling (you could never delete things ;( ). I tried a number of other things -- iCal, kalendar, and devtodo (a nice program, worth checking out if you're interested in a filesystem-based console tool). But recently I stumbled on an approach that hadn't occurred to me in the past.
I've started using a vector-drawing program called Inkscape to manage tasks at work. It started when I started using Inkscape to sketch portions of a software system I am implementing. Once the design phase was somewhat solidified and implementation began I started marking things off right on the document. Inkscape is handy for this because you can just create a new layer of the document and put transparent shapes on top of the portions that are done. I'll try to get a screenshot up soon, but I don't have a usable scenario right now).
The result is a very spatially-dependent interface that is not inherently linked to time. For some domains I think these are desirable features, but in many cases they are not -- I'm not sure if this is something that could be adapted to general task management or not, but so far I've found it to be very easy to use. It doesn't take many cognitive cycles to gauge your progress, which is the greatest immediate reward I've found for a task manager, and adding tasks is only a problem if you feel strongly about the location.
It is also trivial to add comments to individual or multiple tasks, or just as a sticky-note, just make them yellow :)
Thursday, August 04, 2005
Distributed Communication
Over the past year, the people I know well have become quite scattered across the nation, if not the globe. As a result, I'm left wanting to keep up to date with friends in Southern California, Oregon, New York, Boston, Nebraska, Britain (for a while), Seattle, and at the moment, a body of water in southwest-ish Alaska. I'm sure there are others, but you people are hard to keep tabs on!
This has led me to try blogging -- somehow there's a connection there that makes sense, but I doubt I can explain it modestly. Because of that, I'm going to claim this is a personal record for my own use.
And with that,
Good night!
This has led me to try blogging -- somehow there's a connection there that makes sense, but I doubt I can explain it modestly. Because of that, I'm going to claim this is a personal record for my own use.
And with that,
Good night!
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