And you are here why?

A nice wrapup on mobile development from GigaOm Mobilize.  I particularly like points 5 and 6, "Throw out your own expectations of what it needs to do", and "Compete only with yourself, don't freak-out over the market" 5. Throw out your own expectations This dawned on the Formspring team when they were figuring out how to translate their Q&A site into a mobile app, which they released earlier this month. At first they felt pressured to recreate their site, but they realized that wasn’t realistic for the phone’s small screen. “Some expectations are yours that you need to throw out,” said  Tom Wang head of product at Formspring . Your website may look “radically different” than your app, and that’s OK if it gives the best user experience. “You really need to rethink what you’re presenting and how you’re presenting it.” 6. Compete with yourself “A great company thinks about competing with itself,” Flipboard Editorial Director  Josh Quittner said ....

The Ikea Effect - people value things that they put together themselves - and the surprising part - even more than already-put-together products of higher quality. Well, we kind of already knew that, its just that there was never any conclusive study showing why  Ikea is a multi-billion dollar company, and why we put together  Ekby Bjärnum   shelves. So, I hear you saying, So , what does that have to do with Product Design? Well, if you are like us, and in the business of providing services that require some level of customization, this is evidence showing that the stickiness that comes with  personalization  isn't just something that is made up by marketers, it has a basis in science. Its good to know that sometimes, there is hard data backing up the things that we do :-)

Yum. FWIW, the pizza dough is a variation of the NYTimes no-knead bread recipe - 

A discourse on the nature of creation - as in    - What does it take to create something?    - How much of it is inspiration? ,    - How much is borrowing from others? Wonderful riffs on everything including Apple, Led Zeppelin, Star Wars, etc.

Hat tip to Eschaton Elizabeth Warren! I hear all this, you know, “Well, this is class warfare, this is whatever.”—No! There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you! But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did. Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea—God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Excerpted from a post by Tyler Cowen [...] Obi-Wan’s younger prodigy, Luke, was a failure who relied on his dad and wouldn’t at the key moment listen to Old Ben and stay on the Dagobah system to invest in additional human capital (instead he read Caplan on the signaling model), ... and they never even made the final three movies of the planned nine, so we don’t know how it turned out with the unwinding of the fiscal stimulus on the Ewok world. People, next time get your facts straight!

To summarize this article , people prefer to type things into the address bar (on mobile phones), as compared to using Tabs or favorites. This poll may be about browsers, but i suspect it has some relevance to application design too.  To be specific, the use of tabs on the GUI (vs. pull downs, favorites, icons, etc.) Personally, I think traditional tabs are somewhat painful on a screen (I'm picturing people poking at little tiny tabs on the screen, and hitting the wrong one), but perhaps bigger tabs, or tiles, or some such?   Which brings me to the next point - I suspect that tabs and icons kinda converge at the extreme when we talk about mobile devices. Now, on iPads, I suspect the design philosophy changes (tabs will work) Why the Windows Phone browser has no tabs. Should it? Microsoft's newest Windows Phone browser, coming soon via the Mango software update, shows improvements, but tabs aren't part of the redesign. The small screen of a smartphone limits what control...

I'm seeing more and more people starting to get into the 'Aggregation' aspects of BigData. On the one hand, you have the FB timeline take on the world, where  all  your data is stored in one place. On the other hand, you have this example, where small amounts of data is collected from a large  number of people. In either scenario, the Volume is large, and the Velocity is, quite probably, equally large, and the Analytics will, of course, be both interesting and valuable... Big data meets commercial building energy  Ditch the hardware and embrace big data and analytics — that could be the key to monitoring and managing energy consumption of commercial buildings. On Thursday, startup FirstFuel Software, which uses big data tools to crunch energy info about commercial buildings, announced that it’s raised $2.4 million from Battery Ventures and Nth Power, and rebranded itself (from iblogix).   (more...)

Money quote:  If you can take 10 cups of club soda with 10 different bitters in it and can taste the difference, I’ll eat my hat. I’m sure that people will argue with me about the different nuances, but I mean, they’re fucking bitter. Marc Murphy Isn’t Buying Homemade Bitters | Food Republic My taste is not for those sweet cocktails with different notes and everything like that. I’d rather leave that for food. For a cocktail, I like a Scotch. What we do at the restaurants, and our Beverag...(more...)

No additional information about this anywhere - basically just teh press release. All intrigued though, I am... SAP Opt for MongoDB for their Platform-as-a-Servic e Offering Business management and software solutions providers, SAP, have taken their time in developing their Platform-as-a-Servic e (PaaS) offering. However, since the purchase of IP from PaaS specialist, Co... (more...)

In a move that I bet  no one  saw coming (i'm being sarcastic, in case you didn't get it) Twitter is starting to bulk up its in-house analytics. Theres definitely gold in them thar hills... Twitter snaps up Julpan in another Big Data play Twitter has acquired Julpan, a New York City-based startup that analyzes real-time data collected from blogs, Tweets, status updates and news sources. It's just the latest in a series of moves Twitter... (more...)

Remember this article  where an analysis of twitter feeds showed that it was a good predictor of the market?  Well, a Hedge fund (Derwent Capital Markets) launched a twitter based fund in May  to take advantage of 'twitter timing' (my term), to not that much fanfare.  Turns out that they made 1.85% in their first month which seems pretty damn good to me.  Then again, any idiot can beat the market if the dice roll his way - the key is going to be in seeing if this trend works in the longer run, eh?   Update:  Interestingly, I can'f find any information on their _second_ month results….

Also known as " Correlation is  not  Causation. Really. Trust me on this" Hat tip to Kid Dynamite... Correlation Is Not Causation – In Easy To Understand Form Kudos to  Bryce Elder at the FT  for banging out some tremendous  Google Correlate  charts which illustrate more clearly than any words possibly can the old adage “Correlation is Not Causation.”  Elder grabs some charts showing the correlation between Google search data on: 1) S&P 500 vs “Asian Diner” 2) “Gold” and “hot girl” 3) VIX and “Lil’ Kim Downloads” 4) Euro-Dollar and “It Will be Alright” Google Correlate is another cool function from Google that I’m guessing most people don’t know about.  The FT’s Bryce Elder describes it succinctly as “It is, in short, an automatic logical fallacy generator.” (more...)

An in-depth look at what happened to RIM . The bottom line - this is what happens when you remain stuck on your current business model, and ignore whats happening out there in the field. I know, I know, this is about as ridiculously obvious a statement as has ever existed, but then again, if it  is  so obvious, why is RIM withering on the vine right now? Interesting tidbits about Jim and Mike (founders, co-CEOs) - "There will never be a BlackBerry with an MP3 player or camera.” (in 2005) - “A BlackBerry with a name is ridiculous.” (unlike RAZR, it will always be a model number) - “One of the main reasons RIM missed the mark with the browser was because they were always proud of how little data usage a user would use,” - “Mike Lazaridis couldn’t imagine that consumers would be spending hours watching and streaming video to their devices, he couldn’t understand it,” - “Mike is convinced people won’t buy an iPhone because battery life isn’t as good as a BlackBerry,” (When...

The bottom line from this report (at least the parts that I care about, viz., people in their first jobs out of college... - The mobile phone is, increasingly,  the  most important device that they care about - They are inveterate users of Facebook and twitter at work. -  Only  32% prefer to keep their private and professional lives separate. Or, put differently, 68% have  no  issues blurring the lines Well, this certainly applies to me, and I'm certainly not "just out of college".... Social media, multi-tasking and the death of the billable hour Thanks to the web and social media, interruptions have become not just a way of life, but a way to work according to survey data out from Cisco. The networking giant found that among college students and young professionals, 24 percent experience three to five interruptions in a given hour, while 84 percent get interrupted at least once (more...)

OFF THE BAHAMAS — In a remote patch of turquoise sea, Denise L. Herzing splashes into the water with a pod of 15 Atlantic spotted dolphins. For the next 45 minutes, she engages the curious creatures in a game of keep-away, using a piece of Sargassum seaweed like a dog’s chew toy. (more...)

Sigh. Must....Get...Back...To...Italy.... This year saying goodbye to summer seems particularly poignant, even though I only took a week + some days off (to head to  Hawaii ) compared to traditional Italian summers with 3 or so weeks off. The difference is that  my job  allowed me to work from wherever, so I left muggy  Milan  early on and came back when it was starting to mellow again. (more...)

We already knew that what we see isn't all that reliable ( New Jersey Supreme Court , The Gorilla , etc.).  Now it turns out that what we hear is  really  not all that reliable.  Wicked!

BigData - Politics is, of course, a natural fit If 2008 was the Social Election, will 2012 be the BigData Election? I suspect the answer is yes. Mind you, it could also quite well be the Money Spent On BigData Election (with a soupçon of 'Wasted' thrown in) Obama seeks data scientists for election edge Building on his social media success in 2008, it looks like big data will be a driving force behind President Obama's reelection campaign. To that end, his team is taking to the streets to find data (more...)

In particular, I like the way they've gone all out on the plumber analogy, with fittings and all... There are a few reasons you should be excited about running your MapReduce queries on Riak Pipe. First and foremost, Riak Pipe is designed as a work distribution system, and as such,  it is better able to take advantage of the parallel resources available in the cluster . One small example of how Riak Pipe achieves this is simply by splitting the “map” phase processing into two steps: fetching the object from Riak KV, and transforming it. This allows the work of each step to happen in parallel; the next input will be fetched while the transformation of the last one is in progress (more...)

Its the one at 1389 Peachtree Street, NE. My "Italian Panini" seems to consist of - B.O.L.O.G.N.A - Pepperoni - Pickles - Thousand Island Dressing - Something else that looks and tastes like Random Luncheon Meat My mind is reeling...

Not much commentary here - I'm not really a meatarian - but Good Barbecue Regardless at  Live Oak Barbecue . Moist brisket (which, from what I understand, is pretty much necessary in TX), fun pickled Jalapenos, and nice environment. Speaking of the environment, it really  is  quite nice. You order yer stuff inside, get whatever you're getting, and then head out back to a bunch-a picnic tables. Well worth it. It may not be Franklin's, but we wouldn't know, not having made it to Franklin's thanx to the insane line there...    

Went to F&D for dinner w/ Ben last night (The Nikki was still on her way in from NY). One word description -  Brilliant Upscale-ish - i.e., casual, but with a remarkable amount of attention paid to the food. Its quite a small place (15 tables? Bar seats 10?), but thats part of the charm - you don't feel like you're in a barn, one of the crowd, on the receiving end of conveyer-belt food. Au contraire, the crowd seems to have a decent set of regulars, and the waitress recognizes you, etc. The place used to be a furniture store, prior to its conversion into F&D (does this matter? Dunno, but the mention seems somehow appropriate).  The owner (?) Ned has quite a flair with the food, and can almost always be found in the open kitchen Cooking. Anyhow, the concept - such as it is - is that its 'comfort food' done w/ furrin' flair.  + Ben Phenix   describes the menu - appropriately - as Everything on the ever-changing menu is really good, but there are one...

Was discussing Mass Transit w/  + Ben Phenix , and the question came up -  Why is there no Mass Transit to LGA?  (Mind you, the M60 and Q83 don't count). The Googles to the rescue... Dreams of taking the N to LaGuardia By  Benjamin Kabak The Fiorello H. LaGuardia Airport in Queens is one of the nation’s most infuriating urban airports. It is so close to midtown and Manhattan’s Central Business District that a commuter in a hurry could make the trip in 30 minutes. Yet, it’s so far away because congestion frequently creates trips to Queens that last an hour and 30 minutes. The only public transit option to the airport is a packed and slow bus that, on a good day, goes from 125th St. and Lexington to the airport in a half an hour. (more...)

Curse you Googles! I was writing up a long post about this, and somebody had beat me to the punch. Next time, I won't check :-) Seriously tho', this article can be summarized as "Make data more visual, and easier to interact with" I know, I know, sounds kinda trite right? Still a valid point though... What Is Business Intelligence 3.0? By Bill Cabiro Interactive Visual Analytics represents what Gartner Research calls the consumerization of Business Intelligence. It’s a good example of a disruptive innovation or, as Qliktech’s Donald Farmer calls it, a market changer. According to Tableau Software “visual analysis is not a graphical depiction of data. Virtually any software application can produce a chart, gauge or dashboard. Visual analytics offers something much more profound. Visual analytics is the process of analytical reasoning facilitated by interactive visual interfaces”  (more...)

Now  this  is nifty. When I read this, I had a head-smack moment (  of course this makes sense  ). That said, I suspect that they could avoid the Underwear Gnomes problem, because they already had an idea of what they were looking for. 1) Collect Data 2) ??? 3) Profit Kelley Blue Book taps data analytics tools to improve car valuation From updating car values once in five months, Kelley now does it once a week By Jaikumar Vijayan Computerworld -  Car buyers looking to purchase new or used vehicles have relied on the Kelley Blue Book to give them an estimate of how much a vehicle is really worth. Until recently, the numbers were largely educated conjectures that Kelley analysts arrived at by running a handful of car sales and other metrics through a rudimentary pricing algorithm. (more...)

Somewhat different issue - there is no hell like being on a road with multiple deadlines and no laptop. For what its worth, phones, regardless of how smart they are, are  not - Good platforms for coding - Good platforms for documentation - Good platforms for, well, basically anything involving vast quantities of input But Mahesh, didn't you already know that? Well yeah, I did. Consider this in the spirit of scientific enquiry Oh, incidentally, this would also be the reason for the extended radio silence...

Google flights -->  http://google.com/flights  . Its fast. wicked fast. scary fast.

Its difficult to describe - so just go look... .

Makes sense from Twitter's perspective. Mind you, I didn't realize that they were re-wrapping  all  URLs that go through them. Not quite sure I'm cool with that... Twitter offers analytics to try and prove its value Twitter CEO Dick Costolo As Twitter has become  an increasingly important part  of the media strategy for content producers such as newspapers, TV networks and other media players, measuring the impact of a tweet has become even more important — so that those companies can show that spending time on Twitter has actual business value in terms of driving traffic and engagement. Until now, using analytical tools like Bitly’s link-tracking and Chartbeat’s dashboard  have been the only way to do this, but Twitter has just thrown its own offering into the ring: an analytical tool-kit the company  announced on Tuesday that can track tweets and links  across the network. (more...)

Its a food trailer in East Austin (not a truck. _trailer_). The owner used to be a chef at Jeffrey's (  an old-guard classy Austin restaurant, and has decided to take his cooking to, well, Food Trailer World.  Do you sense a wee bit of sarcasm there? Well, you shouldn't, cos' it is far-freaking-fabulous.  Really. + Ben Phenix  (in the pic!) and I ended up there this evening. The menu was long on Pork (is that standard? dunno), and its  spectacular . Pork belly sliders,(nuff said), a breaded pork loin with some kind of salsa verde that was sharp, crisp, and beautiful, pork sausage and roasted brussel sprouts w/ pickeled ginger and sushi rice (really!), a bacony meat-loafy thing w/ grits and greens - oh good grief, i'm hungry all over again. And the best part is, East Side Wines is right there , and you can grab a glass (or bottle!) of wine to go with.  Happy days! Run, don't walk to Three Little Pigs --->

We Are Cloud (from France. natch) has strung together a general purpose analytics engine that is actually usable. I've just started playing with it - more later once I have more - but it is almost frighteningly easy to use. I'm getting the same thrill of use that my first pass at Google Analytics gave me, one of those 'Hey! This is Cool!" moments.... A French startup called  We Are Cloud wants to take cloud-based business intelligence applications to the next level, and it thinks it has taken another step in that direction with a new feature called QueryBlender. The highlight of version 3.0 of the company’s Bime offering, QueryBlender lets users combine live data sets on the fly to let users better make sense of their business by analyzing disparate data points against one another. (more...)

I'm shocked,  shocked  to discover that austerity in the face of high unemployment will not actually create jobs. Who would-a thunk it? Although advanced economies need medium-run fiscal consolidation, slamming on the brakes too quickly will hurt incomes and job prospects WHEN British Prime Minister David Cameron announced his government’s deficit reduction plans earlier this year he said, “Those who argue that dealing with our deficit and promoting growth are somehow alternatives are wrong. You cannot put off the first in order to promote the second” (Cameron, 2011). The challenge facing the United Kingdom and many advanced economies is how to bring debt down to safer levels in the face of a weak recovery. Will deficit reduction lead to stronger growth and job creation in the short run? Recent IMF research provides an answer to this question. Evidence from data over the past 30 years shows that consolidation lowers incomes in the short term, with wage-earners taking more ...

I'm actually drawing a quite different lesson here. The big story in the mortgage world was the fraud in the  securitization  process, i.e., the people who were bundling mortgages were incented to get  anyone  to sign up for a mortgage, whether they could afford one, needed one, or not. Hence the proliferation of NINJA loans, etc.  Given that these loans are backed by Ye Old Gummint, what is to prevent lenders from basically repeating this, and getting  anyone  they can to sign up for a loan?  No wonder the default rates are similar.... Comparing the Numbers on Subprime Mortgages and For-Profit College Loans News from the Department of Education: The U.S. Department of Education today released the official FY 2009 national student loan cohort default rate, which has risen to 8.8 percent, up from 7.0 p...... (more...)

Saw this on the Beeb today, and realize that, perhaps, others  dont  know about it. Been using it for a while, and it really,  really  reduces eye-glare. Mind you, its the PITA that is OSX Lion means that I need to manually reset location when I travel. C'est la vie... From the site.... Ever notice how people texting at night have that  eerie blue glow ? Or wake up ready to write down the Next Great Idea, and get blinded by your computer screen? During the day, computer screens look good—they're designed to  look like the sun . But, at 9PM, 10PM, or 3AM, you probably shouldn't be looking at the sun. f.lux F.lux fixes this: it makes the color of your computer's display adapt to the time of day, warm at night and like sunlight during the day. It's even possible that you're staying up too late because of your computer. You could use f.lux because it makes you sleep better, or you could just use it just because it makes your computer look better. ...