Author: Ajay Ohri

http://about.me/ajayohri

REVolution Computing fails to create a Revolution

REvolution Computing had created big expectations with it’s pedigreed open source credentials

They followed it with the exciting 64 bit version for R and components for Parallel R- and then waited . It seemed  they would RATHER  lie low and not annoy Microsoft etc ( their funding and technical partners as per their own words) and (Masters of the Open Source management game)

THAN do the following –

1) Create a better GUI for more retail acceptance among stats users ( so as not to undercut Microsoft SQL Analysis Server)

2) Create a cloud computing API for Amazon EC2 or a private cloud offering like SAS or just about anyone else (hoping to wait for Microsoft Azure)

3) Invest more in standardizing the documentation and help for R (for corporate users the R help list wont do and search the archives wont do.)

4) Give or share economic incentives to other R package developers for algols which can be used for Business Intelligence or Enterprise wide analytics.

If they create a R Online Doc , acceptance of R would be so much better would not it.

Sadly, R or R plus or Enterprise R would then fizzle out much like the once promising and now defunct except in musuems  S or  Splus.

Sorry guys, but we dont buy it anymore.  This was never about changing the world. It was always about the money, isn’t it.

Your call. Your product.

I will wait till they come with a new language to succeed R ( maybe like Zee).

Or till they get excited about it again ( yes we got the NY times to write an 4 th page again!!)

see below a graph from a better R graph gallery.

http://addictedtor.free.fr/graphiques/


Social Media and Analytics

TeraData has launched a terrific Facebook campaign. It’s got great video You Tube ads ( of the funny kind), lots of fans, and catchy slogans.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Teradata/99985377449

This is an example of a company creating buzz by using social media. I kind of liked the idea of the free TeraData iphone application.

To quote recent announcements from Curt Monash’s blog (http://www.dbms2.com/2009/10/19/teradata-partners-2009/ ) –

Teradata is productizing “private cloud, including working with Amazon on EC2.

and most tellingly

Teradata has achieved a 300%ish speed-up in geospatial processing. I gather this is largely a byproduct of the parallel analytics work Teradata did around strengthening its SAS integration. However, there don’t seem to be a lot of Teradata geospatial users yet.

Curt Monash’s blog is a must read for any one interested in Business Intelligence careers. DBMS2 is a blog with all the inside info from a variety of industry sources since Dr Monash has been here since 1981 and probably was a Business Intelligence expert  even beofre they came up with term “business analytics’ or “business intelligence”. You can contact/ follow him on Twitter at http://twitter.com/CurtMonash and http://www.dbms2.com/

Other example of Database companies using Social Media are at

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Aster-Data-Systems/5601042375

and

http://www.facebook.com/pages/OracleCRM/96039541606

and

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=11383832330

I also liked updates from the SPSS and the SAS pages-

http://www.facebook.com/pages/SPSS/54648805831

and

http://www.facebook.com/SASPublishing

( Note only the people at SAS Publishing have managed to use the new custom domain name feature by Facebook)

This is again something that strikes me again and again-

People great at writing code in very technical things like Linux or even Super Computing find it difficult to study and make improvements in their Twitter , Blog or Facebook pages. Even though the technical effort and time taken to learn them is less than 5 % of the time taken to learn new technologies AND more importantly the incremental benefit from using more Video Presentations, a better looking Blog or  more active Tweeting is SIGNIFICANT in terms of MARKETING ROI.

Social Media Value for a growing technology company/ authors/ open source communities =

Incremental Publicity from FB , Twitter, Blog DIVIDED by Incremental cost of Twitter, Facebook, Blogging ( say 4 hours a week cumulative)

The maths says that Social Media makes sense in terms of return on time taken to publicize your book, your writing or your technology. AND it’s mostly cheaper than other marketing sources.

Good Software sometimes makes way for Average Software WITH Creative Marketing.

Another R Tutorial

This one is a work in progress but it can be used as a generic tutorial for creating and publishing R packages and then running them in an HPC environment. It can also be used for translating existing Algorithms in R or creating new Statistical Algorithms in R.

http://docs.google.com/present/view?id=dcvss358_955fsvm8mfr&interval=5&autoStart=true

High Performance Computing within R: Tutorial

The best tutorial for fast and easy learning of parallel computation, code optimization and general High Performance Computing is by Dr. Dirk which he gave at User9 . He is a nice guy with a pleasant manner and temper though we disagree on his choice of Debian and my choice of Ubuntu as Linux.

Citation-
http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/papers/useR2009hpcTutorial.pdf and download it useR2009hpcTutorial

You can also read his blog here

http://dirk.eddelbuettel.com/blog/

His writing style is well, he writes interesting Linux is all I can say.

The World of Data as I think

Post discussions on my performance at grad school and WHAT exactly DO I want to work in- I drew the following curves.

Feel free to draw better circles- and I will include your reference here

Caution- Based upon a very ordinary understanding of extra ordinary technical things.

THE WORLD OF DATA

Screenshot-18

AND WHAT I WANT TO DO IN IT

Screenshot-19

ps- What do you think? Add a comment

“Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.”- Emerson

Google Patents

Now this may be old news, but in case it is not- here is the Google Patents Search

Screenshot-17

Just go and search at

http://www.google.com/patents

For example did you know that the PageRank Patent is assigned to Stanford ( which is the reason they have more money than err. many Universities combined…not a great football program though)

http://www.google.com/patents/about?id=cJUIAAAAEBAJ

Or you can see the Slidehshare.net version ( which is Ironic since Google Docs is not good enough to share the Pdf as of yet)

Inventor: Lawrence Page
Assignee: The Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University
Primary Examiner: Uyen Le

Page Rank Patent of Google

View more documents from ajayohri.
. Hic

So the next time you have a bright idea on Sunday afternoon after some beers, check and see if you are the first one to think of it

Live Streaming for Free : UStream

Here is an excellent website allows you to Live Stream your conference for free. Its called U Stream and quite catchingly it’s motto is “You are On”

Even better you can stream live to the Internet from your Mobile, alert all your Twitter followers AND even run ads and get 50 % on that stream. For free. For IPhone users they can record and THEN stream the recording ( Android can directly stream)


Source-http://www.ustream.tv/get-started

Create your own broadcast! It takes just minutes…
1. Create your Ustream account
2. Plug in your cam
3. Log in, then select “Your Shows”
4. Type in the name of your show, then click “Broadcast Now”
5. When asked, “allow” the broadcast console to access your video camera or webcam
6. Click “Start Broadcast” in the console. You are now live!
It’s that easy. Sign up for Ustream now!