Biweekly Links – 10-04-2010

1. How Astronomers Hunt for New Planets

Recently there was some excitement that a new earth-like exo planet was found. I was searching for the ways in which these new planets are detected and this is an accessible explanation.

2. Object Detection in Crowded Workspaces

Impressive idea. The way the objects are detected is pretty clever.

3. Atheists score best in religious tests

Oh the irony 🙂

4. From ‘Avatar’ Playbook, Athletes Use 3-D Imaging

Very clever idea to use motion capture and using it for virtual training against opponents. Neat !

5. Aiming to Learn as We Do, a Machine Teaches Itself

Haven’t had a chance to play with it. But Tom Mitchell’s involvement lends it a sense of significance.

6. Talk to Wolfram|Alpha in TeX

It is pretty cool that Wolfram Alpha now accepts formulas in TeX too. I never got a hang of Mathematica form and this will make it easier to enter formulas.

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Biweekly Links – 09-17-2010

1. Diaspora : Developer Release
As promised the folks behind Diaspora has released the code. Interestingly it uses Ruby ! I got my code running but could not add any of my friends. Their architecture is pretty interesting – the idea of decentralization permeates the design. One of their next steps is to integrate/interoperate with Facebook. It should be interesting to see FaceBook’s response – given that they deny access to Google and Twitter 🙂 I also joined Diaspora’s mailing list. It is quite high volume (around 100+ mails a day), although I expect it to drop to acceptable levels soon. Diaspora code uses so many interesting technologies that just scanning the mails introduces me to new technologies – WebID and OStatus are the most recent. Hopefully, I will learn many more ideas on the way !

2. How do I become a data scientist?
Has an interesting discussion on how to become a better data scientist – One of the responses is very comprehensive and other respected people have also chimed in.

3. Testing, testing…YouTube begins trial of new live streaming platform
A very interesting move by Google – I am not sure of the long term implications but it looks to me like a potential game changer.

4. User Experiences: Customizing Pinned Sites
In the demo during IE9 beta release, one of the examples was WordPress and Amazon using pinned sites creatively. This post explains how other sites can use the pinned sites more effectively. I am impressed with the ability of sites to provide custom jump list commands and the thumbnail toolbar commands are even more cool ! Looks like IE9 seems to have done some cool job .

5. A Better Twitter
At last Twitter becomes more user friendly. The proposed redesign looks promising – let us see how it changes the way people use Twitter applications.

6. Precursor to H.I.V. Was in Monkeys for Millenniums
Some powerful conclusions from very basic observations 🙂 Hopefully it will lead to some new insights on acquiring immunity against HIV if not cure !

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