Four short links: 23 January 2010

Wikileaks Fundraising, Internet Censorship, Unfree as in Video, and Museums Online

1. WikiLeaks Fundraising -- PayPal has frozen WikiLeaks' assets. Interesting: they need $600k/yr to run.
2. The Great Australian Internet Blackout -- online protest to raise awareness about the Great Firewall of Australia.
3. HTML5 Video: Problems Ahead -- YouTube and Vimeo won't support a free codec (file format). The web is undeniably better for Mozilla having entered the browser market, and it would have been impossible for us to do so if there had been a multi-million-dollar licensing fee required for handling HTML, CSS, JavaScript or the like. It's not just a matter of Mozilla licensing formats such as H.264 for browsers and their users: sites would have to license to distribute content.
4. History of the World in 100 Objects (BBC) -- a radio show, telling the history of humanity in 100 objects from the British Library. Exquisitely high quality commentary (available in original audio and in textual transcript), hi-resolution images, maps, timelines, and more. It's growing day by day as episodes air, and shows how a quintessentially offline place like a museum can add to the online world.

CrisisCamps and the Pattern of Disaster Technology Innovation

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Four short links: 22 January 2010

notmuch Email, Mobile Processing, Realtime Mocap, and Making Money from Books

1. notmuch -- commandline tagging and fast search for a mailbox, regardless of which mail client you use.
2. Processing for Android -- pre-release versions of a Processing for Android devices. Mobile visual programming makes for interesting possibilities.
3. Binary Body Double: Microsoft Reveals the Science Behind Project Natal for Xbox 360 -- machine learning to recognize poses and render in the game at 30fps. It's a basic real-time mocap and render.
4. The Monetization Paradox -- interesting post by Charlie Stross about the quandry of authors. he proposed $9.99 cap on ebooks replaces the high-end $24 hardcover. Not only does it mean less royalties for the authors, it means less money for the publishers — or, more importantly, their marketing divisions. Here's a hint: if I wanted to spend my time marketing my books I'd have gone into marketing. I'm a writer. Every hour spent on marketing activities is an hour spent not writing. Ditto editing, proofreading, commissioning cover art, and so on. This is what I have publishers for.

iPhoning His Way To Retirement

My friend Eugene Lin wanted some iPhone App Store money. So he made one iPhone app that was eventually accepted, then another that was rejected and then he found a hit with the racy Peek-a-boo. Along the way he learned the ins and outs of the App Store approva process and made quite a lot of money in Japan.

He shared his findings on this episode of the Ignite Show. Eugene was filmed at Ignite Seattle 8 in the funniest talk of the evening.

Four short links: 21 January 2010

Wireless Hacks, Real Time Web, 3D Christmas, Mac Sync

1. DD-WRT -- replacement firmware for cheap wireless router boxes that add new functionality like wireless bridging and quality-of-service controls (so Skype doesn't break up while you're web-browsing). Not a new thing, but worth remembering that it exists.
2. Brain Dump of Real Time Web and WebSocket -- long primer on the different technology for real-time web apps. Conclusion is that there's no silver bullet yet, so more development work is needed. (via TomC on Delicious)
3. Data Decs -- 3d-printing Christmas decorations based on social network data. My favourite is the blackletter 404. (via foe on Delicious)
4. ZSync -- open source syncing application that makes it easy for app writers to connect desktop apps and iPhone apps. (via Dave Wiskus)

Haiti: Tradui, Translation App for Android and (almost) iPhone

Crisis Commons and Crisis Mappers have become major technology and data contributors to the Haiti Relief Effort. Many technologists and geohackers are donating hundreds of hours to common projects. This past weekend saw the release of a mapping app for the iPhone (with expedited App Store approval). Now there is a second app waiting for Apple's app store approval.

Tradui is a free offline dictionary that converts Creole to English and vice-versa. The data came from the HaitiSurf Creole to English Dictionary. It was built by Intridea and came out of Crisis Camp DC. It was released to the Android market on 1/19. It was released the same day to Apple's App store -- hopefully it is approved soon.

I've included screenshots after the jump. Intridea has put the code up on Github.

During any crisis there is a debate about how to coordinate volunteers, manage technology projects and keep data sources clean (for example Boingboing just posted about the redundant people finders that are emerging - via jknauer). That debate found its way to the comments of my Haiti mapping app.

No silver bullet will be found to solve these problems -- especially not immediately following a disaster. When in need people reach for what they have on hand and know. There is criticism that the iPhone is to expensive and not widely deployed enough to be of use. However, it is one of the most powerful mobile platforms out there. Many relief workers will start to carry them (and Android devices) if the right tools are available. Tardui and HaitiGPS are steps in that direction.

Jeffrey Johnson will be speaking about Crisis Mapping Haiti at Where 2.0 in March.

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Four short links: 20 January 2010

Brazilian Open Source, PostgreSQL Replication, Bug Fixing Lessons, Copyright Fail

1. Governmental Open Source Software Policies: Brazil Experience (World Bank) -- the slides give the gist, and the range of places in which open source is being used in Brazil is quite staggering: digital TV middleware, sewage management systems, local government management systems. (via lhawthorn on Twitter)
2. Bucardo -- PostgreSQL master/slave replication system. (via Selena Deckelmann)
3. Learning from 10 Years of Bugzilla Data -- presentation looking for bug-fixing patterns in open source projects. (via Mark Surman)
4. Copyright Fail (BoingBoing) -- rare out-of-copyright Jack Benny masters discovered in the CBS vaults, but CBS won't release them or say why. As Cory says, "this isn't how copyright is supposed to work."

Our Future World: Freedom (and Daemon)

I just read FreedomTM the second and latest book in the Daniel Suarez's Daemon series. It was a fun, thought-provoking read and I recommend it to any technologist or sci-fi junkie (it would also make a nice Christmas gift for your favorite conspiracy theorist). This review will focus primarily on the technology of FreedomTM, but I recommend that you start with the first book, Daemon.

The Daemon series is an exploration of a could-be-now, constantly connected society. Suarez has taken cutting edge technology and inserted it into everyday life. It's a great exploration of where our society might be headed. In many ways it reminds me Cory Doctorow's excellent Little Brother. Cory's young-adult novel is a great primer for hacker and maker culture. Daemon serves a similar purpose providing a primer for what a networked society that is structured like MMORPG will look like.

The Daemon series is heavy on real world tech (and Suarez has cataloged much of it). After the jump I talk about some of the technology used in the book. Although I will not reveal plot points that aren't on the book cover, these could be viewed as Spoilers. So Reader Be Warned!

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Bringing e-Books to Africa and the Middle East

Infrastructure, economics and censorship are major issues

In the United States, Western Europe and Asia, e-Books are becoming a major player, especially now that e-Readers like the Kindle and Nook are available. But people living in the Arabic-speaking world or Africa haven't been invited to the dance. Two of the keynote speakers at the upcoming Tools of Change conference are working to improve access to e-Books in these areas: Arthur Attwell in South Africa and Ramy Habeeb in Egypt. We talked to each of them about how e-Books are important in their area of the world, and the challenges that they are facing.

Arthur Attwell runs Electric Book Works, based out of Cape Town. His company does both traditional print publication and electronic publication, but he believes that e-Books have a particular promise in South Africa. "Certainly in South Africa, our traditional model doesn't even begin to reach the market that I think digital publishing could cater for. For me, digital is a massive social development tool. I like to think of e-books as one small application of digital publishing, which is really a grand process of putting the world of letters onto the internet.

"Mobile is one of the keys to that, I think, for Africa because of the existing penetration of mobile devices, but there may be other ways of harnessing digital as well that will include distributing e-books through libraries and internet cafes, kiosks, any infrastructure that doesn't require someone to be spending a lot of money on a device. I think print on-demand has got a massive future for Africa, and developing countries in general, because of the way it caters to people with low cash flow and who just need a book right now; they can't afford to get an e-reader or even a netbook computer to read books in the long-term."

"I think that we will see an incredible growth of digital publishing in Africa over the next few years, we're in the process right now of really just laying down the infrastructure that's going to make that possible. Mobile has done a lot, but because mobile tends to be controlled by network operators, it doesn't have quite the freedom of the internet. So I don't think it's necessarily going to see the same innovation at a very high centralized level. But I do think that with the massive growth of bandwidth and connectivity we're seeing right now, especially in Central Africa, that more conventional web-based applications of content and content-sharing will take off there as well."

While mobile access to e-Books in Africa is largely an urban phenomenon right now, Attwell thinks that is changing. "You're probably going to find that 80 percent of internet connections in any African country will always be in the urban centers. So that's naturally then where the investment money's going to be going. But we're already seeing some exciting innovative approaches to getting internet connectivity into more rural areas. I know that in South Africa, we have fairly common solution where farmers in a particular area will get together and pool their resources to share a satellite internet connection or something similar, often even solar-powered connections. Naturally, rural is an area where mobile will be critical."

"I think one of the really exciting trend-setting technologies at the moment is the success of the M-Pesa mobile payment system in Kenya. I think that that system is showing the power of a simple effective mobile application, there obviously for the purpose of transferring money between people. But it's an incredibly powerful tool in Kenya and used as much in rural areas as it is in urban."

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Four short links: 19 January 2010

Stack Overflow Data, Open Source GSM, Nostalgia, and Openness

1. Stack Overflow Data Dump -- all public data in Stack Overflow, Server Fault, and Super User.
2. OpenBTS -- an open-source Unix application that uses the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP) to present a GSM air interface ("Um") to standard GSM handset and uses the Asterisk software PBX to connect calls. Portable mobile phone basestation that routes calls over the Internet.
3. Should We Encourage Self-Promotion and Lies? (Tom Coates) -- And while encouraging people to spot the talented and the creative, we should also be considering how we shame those people who self-promote without creating. The financial collapse has taught us that rhetorical bubbles divorced from reality are a danger to us all. We're already approaching this point - our industry has become venal, insular and dominated by marketing. We have come to value the wrong things. And if we want a continued vigorous, creative, free, open and equal environment, that's something we have to fix. It's not something to aspire to. Related: danah boyd's tweet, Sometimes I feel deeply nostalgic about the days when the interwebs were filled with the techno-utopian dreams of geeks and freaks.
4. The Opposite of Open is Theirs (David Weinberger) -- absolutely nails the nature of openness. A quick must-read. (via timo on Delicious)

Four short links: 18 January 2010

Google Wave Uses, Open Data Reddit, Crypto Flaw, and Foursquare for Good

1. On How Google Wave Surprisingly Changed My Life -- mandated in his small company that non-critical emails be turned into waves instead. Saw: more resolutions to arguments, less rehash of old territory, conversation gained structure and could be referred to afterwards, remote employees able to participate even when timezones prevented real-time. I've been looking for the use case that says "this is what Google Wave is really good for", and this is a great start. Note: small # of people, and in a company, so critical mass issue easily overcome.
2. Open Data and APIs on Reddit -- a new subreddit created just for Open Data and APIs.
3. Smart Meter Crypto Flaw Worse Than Thought -- poor seeding of the pseudorandom number generator in various chipsets, including those heavily used in embedded networked applications such as smart meters, means those devices are trivially insecure. (via Hacker News)
4. Foursquare is Changing Our World (Mashable) -- Foursquare was perhaps the first to change our day and night life experiences into a social competition to essentially answer the question, "who has the most interesting life?" In fact, one key side effect of playing the game is that it inspires users to lead more active and interesting social lives. While this may all sound superficial and silly, the implications of social location gaming are quite significant. One of the many reasons that O'Reilly invested in Foursquare--glad to see someone noticing. (via timo on Delicious)

Manifold Learning, Calculus & Friendship, and Other Math Links

One of the largest gatherings of mathematicians, the joint meetings of the AMS/MAA/SIAM, took place last week in San Francisco. Knowing that there were going to be over 6,000 pure and applied mathematicians at Moscone West, I took some time off from work and attended several sessions. Below are a few (somewhat technical) highlights. (It's the only conference I've attended where the person managing the press room, was also working on some equations in-between helping the media.)

The Machine-Learning Bubble in Computational Medicine (Challenges in Computational Medicine and Biology)
Donald Geman gave a nice survey of the problems and mathematical techniques frequently used in computational biology. He also raised something that struck a chord with me. While computational biology has things in common with other fields ("small n, large d problem": small samples, relative to the number of dimensions), techniques that work in fields like computer vision don't automatically translate to biology. First, the size of samples in biology and medicine are orders of magnitude smaller compared to other fields. Secondly, while black boxes (think SVM's or neural nets) are acceptable in other fields, biologists want accurate predictions and explanations for why/how algorithms work. Finally, it isn't clear if there are underlying low-dimensional structures in biological data. Taken together, Geman wonders if machine-learning's possible role in biology and medicine has been overhyped.

Using Unlabeled Data To Identify Optimal Classifiers (A Geometric Perspective on Learning Theory and Algorithms)
Revisiting, the "small n, large d" problem, Partha Niyogi gave an overview of recent geometric approaches^† to machine-learning. In order to mitigate the curse of dimensionality, Niyogi and his fellow researchers exploit the tendency of (natural) data be be non-uniformly distributed. In particular, they use the shape of the data to determine optimal machine-learning classifiers. In their version of manifold learning, they assume that the space of target functions (e.g. all possible classifiers), consists of functions supported on a submanifold^†† of the original high-dimensional euclidean/feature space. One of the most interesting features of their geometric approach, is their use of both labeled and unlabeled data^††† to identify optimal classifiers. The traditional approaches to training classifiers require labeled data. So while one can use mechanical turks to increase the amount of labeled data for learning purposes, the geometric techniques outlined by Dr. Niyogi actually take advantage of any unlabeled data you may already have. Lest you think that these are purely academic/theoretical techniques, Dr. Niyogi cites a company that uses these algorithms to analyze and classify child speech patterns. With so much Data Exhaust available, I can't help but think that techniques that can leverage unlabeled data will prove useful in many domains. (Niyogi and his collaborators have many papers on Manifold Learning, including one that describes the algorithms, and another that provides the theoretical foundations.)

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Recent Posts

• Haiti: OSM and Sat Imagery for Free iPhone App | by Brady Forrest on January 16, 2010
• Roger Magoulas on Big Data | by Joshua-Michéle Ross on January 15, 2010
• Four short links: 15 January 2010 | by Nat Torkington on January 15, 2010
• Innovation Battles Investment as FCC Road Show Returns to Cambridge | by Andy Oram on January 14, 2010
• Collecting, Aggregating, and Analyzing Data Exhaust | by Ben Lorica on January 14, 2010
• Google and China: What's the real story, and where does it go from here? | by Mac Slocum on January 14, 2010
• Four short links: 14 January 2010 | by Nat Torkington on January 14, 2010
• Four short links: 13 January 2010 | by Nat Torkington on January 13, 2010
• Four short links: 12 January 2010 | by Nat Torkington on January 12, 2010
• Dean Kamen's 2010 Homework | by Linda Stone on January 11, 2010
• Four short links: 11 January 2010 | by Nat Torkington on January 11, 2010
• What's going on with OAuth? | by David Recordon on January 8, 2010