Portent

This is interesting. A research project to try and work out jokes that match your sense of humour. As they say “Jester uses a collaborative filtering algorithm called Eigentaste to recommend jokes to you based on your ratings of previous jokes.”

Of course I’m not sure quite how they classify humour or rate a joke for a match but the jokes provided I found above average so they must be doing something right.

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There are some tasks that humans are generally better than computers though clever software techniques mean that computers are catching up. For example trying to spot a lost human on a map, post reviews, or devise new quiz questions.

Amazon, the popular online bookstore (and also the people behind a9.com- the search engine) have set up their “Mechanical Turk” (named after a chess playing automaton that had a hidden human inside) so that people can complete tasks and earn small amounts of money, typically 5 to 20 cents per task.

Amazon themselves seem to be using their service to find UPC codes for various manufacturers which makes sense. Some of this work is dull and repetitive but if you need cash, you know that this isn’t a scam.

Some of the tasks require qualifications for example being able to do a Java test (which has none qualified) or take photos in the Seattle area. (14 qualified for that).

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As a Kid I used to love electronics- I had one of those kits with loads of resistors, capacitors and transistors etc. Sometimes the things I built actually worked! (Not always though). I was an avid reader of Everyday Electronics as Electronics Today.

This site is a comprehensive e-book about circuits in 17 chapters. It starts with basic electricity plus a chapter about Ohms law. Electrical safety isn’t neglected either. Having once had a little jolt of 240 V AC, I can testify to that. After that it gets onto into much more complex stuff. It’s at the level I’d guess of first or second year university electronics degree. E.G. Do you know the difference between Kirchoff’s Current Law and Voltage Law?

There is a lot here. Don’t be fooled by the 17 chapters – that’s just Volume I- DC. There are 6 volumes and Volume VI is possibly the most interest if you can’t be bothered learning all the theory- it’s on Experiments.

There is probably several books worth of material here – highly recommended.

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This is not Am I Hot or Not but I guess more of an experiment. People upload photos of themselves and judge others. They get to answer 5 question from this list:
* What is my sexual orientation?
* What do you think my name is?
* How attractive am I?
* Do you think I would win a fight with a medium sized dog?
* How much do I weigh?
* What is my ethnicity?
* What is my relationship status?
* What is my political affiliation?
* How intoxicated am I?
* What gender am I?
* How trustworthy am I?
* How smart am I?
* How old am I?
* Describe me in one word.

The interesting part is that you choose 3 of these questions. Ie you can market research your looks! You can post three images to start with and one more per day. You can also earn the right to another bunch of questions such as Will I end up in rehab? or Have I had plastic surgery? and lots more by answering lots of questions.

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Something a little different. You are shown image after image and have to rate them for life likeness, on a scale of 0 to 10 where 10 is most like a face like and 0 isn’t anything like a face.

I suspect this is some variation of a genetic algorithm. This is a way of trying to solve a problem that doesn’t lend itself to normal computation by using a process akin to genetic selection. Interesting.

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I’d heard of bookcrossing before but on Sunday actually found the first book I’d ever seen in a lift in the Brittania Hotel in Nottingham, left by a Dutch visitor. If you’re interested, it was by Daphne Du Maurier (no not Rebecca!) and I’ll update the Bookcrossing website later today. Not all books get journalled but I like the idea and with over 3.5 million books released by half a million readers that means sodo a lot of people.

Bookcrossing is a clever form of viral marketing. Well it’s actually about giving books away. You put a sticker on to identify the book, then leave it somewhere it can be found. Each book has an ID number (a BCID), and this is put on the front of the book on a sticker.

The idea is that you read a book then “send it on its way” by leaving it somewhere where someone can find it. As they say I’”m looking at your site here, and I can’t believe what I’m reading. Do you actually want me to give away my books? – Registering your books with BookCrossing.com, then giving them to a friend, a charity, or otherwise releasing them “into the wild” and following their progress and travels, is infinitely more fulfilling than the small satisfaction you’ll get by looking at your books in your bookcase every day.”

It’s a form of sending a message in a bottle. “Make the world one big library!”. A very laudable aim. Of course once electronic book readers (that you can safely read in the bath) emerge then maybe it will be no longer useful. But until then, maybe 20 years in the future…

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Everyone has got used to the PC's desktop metaphor- dragging Windows around, opening applications etc. Films like Minority report and the Dixon's Advert with a woman operating a virtual screen show one possible way forward. But what if the computer was part of a 3d network in which you could interact with other? No, not Virtual Reliaty circa 1995 but something more akin to the picture above. the Rabbit is a user's avatar. Such as Open croquet.

Open Croquet is a framework that lets users work together in such a space. It is a highly scalable architecture that can be used to develop powerful simulations, and multi-user online spaces. What makes it different from say on an online game (other than not being intended for gaming) is that computation can be done in the workspace. In an online game, servers do the calculations of fights, movement etc and then render that into a 3d world. Open croquet allows you to work in the 3d world, type documents, run applications while others watch or even interact. Its a subtle but key difference.

Lest you consider this just a fanciful exercise, one of the team behind this is Alan Kay, who is famous in the world of Computer Science for his work on Smalltalk, and is considered the architect of the present day GUIs with Windows, icons Mice and Pointers. You can read his bio here.

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In the UK, the mapping of postcodes to latitude and longitude is controlled by the Post Office who charge you very large sums of money (like several thousand dollars a year) to use it , either commercially or for nion-commercial use. This is the PAF: the Postcode Address file.

Many British tax payers feel that as they paid for this data, they should not be charged for it. The USA for example doesn’t charge for Zip Code to Lat/long mapping. Hence the Free The PostCode campaign was setup. Volunteers use GPS systems to map postcodes to latitude and longitude. It’s been running several years though probably has a while to go until they catch up with the PAF’s 28 million entries 9each accurate to 100M).

Now a Liverpool,UK developer John McKerrell has created a free App to let UK iPhone owners map postcodes to latitude and longitude using their iphone and submit it to the campaign. Just install the App, run it and when accuracy drops below 100M submit it. Easy to use and you can even download the source code that John has published. If you have an iPhone and are visiting the UK, you can also help.

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Social Wallpapering is a public effort to classify, rank, and distribute high-resolution images for use as desktop backgrounds. Supported resolutions include 1280×960, 1280×1024, 1600×1200, and all other background variations with a minimum width and height of 1280×720 pixels.

Technically this is a pretty advanced website- animated menus, using the latest Web 2.0 Ajax techniques. You can upload your own wallpapers, as well as rate others and share with your friends. There are even torrents for bittracker so you can downloads packs of wallpapers. Very clever stuff!

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A new website launches today. GalaxyZoo is looking for your help to use Mk1 eyeball and inspect photos of galaxies to try and classify them. Are they spiral or elliptical? Which way are they rotating? Not easy with some images barely much better than smudges.

But if enough people identify them (The Wisdom of Crowds approach?) then it will help advance mankind as we strive to conquer the galaxy. (Ok I er made that last bit up!). More about this on the BBC Website.

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Maps, especially online have always been restrictive in what you can do with them due to copyright etc. But there has been an international movement dedicated to providing unrestricted alternatives and as you can see, this map of my part of London is pretty good. I’ve put a blue rectangle around the area in the top map which the bottom map shows.

Like Google Maps you can zoom in and out and drag the map. No satellite data of course!

Not all streets are currently labelled- mine isn’t, but I could sign up and add it in. As more and more people sign up this becomes more and more valuable. One danger is of course that people will be lazy and copy data from commercial or copyright maps and that could be a problem. It’s not unknown for cartographers to introduce fake streets etc to try and spot when people copy their work.

So if you have a spare moment or two, why not help this map by signing up (no costs) and adding your local information.
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Ever fancied being in a movie? This British website (movie? We call them films!) lets you audition by video for one of many roles.

Additionally you can invest as an angel, with a £109 minimum, which also gives you voting privileges to help choose a cast that doesn’t appear to be made of solid timber. They need £1.2 million and are already 10% of the way there. The director and script are both award winning and if you register you can view the script. There’s a directors blog and an online community. An interesting approach and I hope the film is a smash hit.

Having said that, the site has two things I hate- white text on black and too much Flash animations- it eats up CPU time! Bring out an HTML version of the site please! (There might be one I didn’t see it).

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A confession. this is a collaboration between a friend of mine Andy and myself so I’m not going to mention it again after this. I do more of the technical stuff.

The wiki is for information about ship cruises around the world. Not uncoincidentally a bunch of us are doing a cruise next year. Nothing too formal, visiting a bunch of countries bordering the Mediterranean. If you know a bit about ships cruises join up and do your bit.

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A modern day problem in the UK is political correctness. There are a number of unelected officials who are scared of offending anyone, particularly minorities and thus impose stupid thoughtless restrictions which upset many because of fear of offending some unspecified “They”.

You see examples of this around Christmas where some councils call it Winterval or some equally ridiculous name. Never mind that it upsets many non Christians, so long as it doesn’t offend the unspecified “they”.

Many local Government organisations are particularly rife with this as are UK institutions such as the NHS, Police , Job centres etc. I can’t think of anything more insulting to anyone black or coloured that they might be deemed upset by someone calling a blackboard a blackboard.

The Campaign Against Political Correctness (CAPC) seeks to expose examples of this, refute and ridicule them and shine some common sense in. The founders John and  Laura Midgley are not afraid to confront PC in the media, whenever and wherever it occurs.

My only gripe- I think the site is badly in need of a revamp with a fresher look and better site organisation! But the message should go out loud and clear!

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If you have ever read the book “Wisdom of Crowds” by James Suriewicki, this might give you an idea of what vosnap is about.

Its an easy way, using social networking to ask others what their opinion of something you are planning to do or thinking about. E.g. Someone asked ““Should I get drunk on my flight to MIA tomorrow?”” – the results were “Duh”, “yes” and “never”? You have to register to use this site.

It’s a novel concept though having one website for this, something which could probably easily be incorporated into other social networking sites seems a bit limiting.

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