Tag: Free

Here comes PySpread- 85,899,345 rows and 14,316,555 columns

A Bold GNU Head
Image via Wikipedia

Whats new/ One more open source analytics package. Built like a spreadsheet with an ability to import a million cells-

From http://pyspread.sourceforge.net/index.html

about Pyspread is a cross-platform Python spreadsheet application. It is based on and written in the programming language Python.

Instead of spreadsheet formulas, Python expressions are entered into the spreadsheet cells. Each expression returns a Python object that can be accessed from other cells. These objects can represent anything including lists or matrices.

 Pyspread screenshot
features In pyspread, cells expect Python expressions and return Python objects. Therefore, complex data types such as lists, trees or matrices can be handled within a single cell. Macros can be used for functions that are too complex for a single expression.

Since Python modules can be easily used without external scripts, arbitrary size rational numbers (via gmpy), fixed point decimal numbers for business calculations, (via the decimal module from the standard library) and advanced statistics including plotting functions (via RPy) can be used in the spreadsheet. Everything is directly available from each cell. Just use the grid

Data can be imported and exported using csv files or the clipboard. Other forms of data exchange is possible using external Python modules.

In  order to simplify sparse matrix editing, pyspread features a three dimensional grid that can be sized up to 85,899,345 rows and 14,316,555 columns (64 bit-systems, depends on row height and column width). Note that importing a million cells requires about 500 MB of memory.

The concept of pyspread allows doing everything from each cell that a Python script can do. This may very well include deleting your hard drive or sending your data via the Internet. Of course this is a non-issue if you sandbox properly or if you only use self developed spreadsheets. Since this is not the case for everyone (see the discussion at lwn.net), a GPG signature based trust model for spreadsheet files has been introduced. It ensures that only your own trusted files are executed on loading. Untrusted files are displayed in safe mode. You can trust a file manually. Inspect carefully.

 Pyspread screenshot
requirements Pyspread runs on Linux, Windows and *nix platforms with GTK+ support. There are reports that it works with MacOS X as well. If you would like to contribute by testing on OS X please contact me.

Dependencies

Highly recommended for full functionality

  • PyMe >=0.8.1, Note for Windows™ users: If you want to use signatures without compiling PyMe try out Gpg4win.
  • gmpy >=1.1.0 and
  • rpy >=1.0.3.
maturity Pyspread is in early Beta release. This means that the core functionality is fully implemented but the program needs testing and polish.

and from the wiki

http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/pyspread/index.php?title=Main_Page

a spreadsheet with more powerful functions and data structures that are accessible inside each cell. Something like Python that empowers you to do things quickly. And yes, it should be free and it should run on Linux as well as on Windows. I looked around and found nothing that suited me. Therefore, I started pyspread.

Concept

  • Each cell accepts any input that works in a Python command line.
  • The inputs are parsed and evaluated by Python’s eval command.
  • The result objects are accessible via a 3D numpy object array.
  • String representations of the result objects are displayed in the cells.

Benefits

  • Each cell returns a Python object. This object can be anything including arrays and third party library objects.
  • Generator expressions can be used efficiently for data manipulation.
  • Efficient numpy slicing is used.
  • numpy methods are accessible for the data.

Installation

  1. Download the pyspread tarball or zip and unzip at a convenient place
  2. In case you do not have it already get and install Python, wxpython and numpy
If you want the examples to work, install gmpy, R and rpy
Really do check the version requirements that are mentioned on http://pyspread.sf.net
  1. Get install privileges (e.g. become root)
  2. Change into the directory and type
python setup.py install
Windows: Replace “python” with your Python interpreter (absolute path)
  1. Become normal user again
  2. Start pyspread by typing
pyspread
  1. Enjoy

Links

Next on Spreadsheet wishlist-

a MSI bundle /Windows Self Installer which has all dependencies bundled in it-linking to PostGresSQL 😉 etc

way to go Mr Martin Manns

mmanns < at > gmx < dot > net

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Open Source's worst enemy is itself not Microsoft/SAS/SAP/Oracle

The decision of quality open source makers to offer their software at bargain basement prices even to enterprise customers who are used to pay prices many times more-pricing is the reason open source software is taking a long time to command respect in enterprise software.

I hate to be the messenger who brings the bad news to my open source brethren-

but their worst nightmare is not the actions of their proprietary competitors like Oracle, SAP, SAS, Microsoft ( they hate each other even more than open source )

nor the collective marketing tactics which are textbook like (but referred as Fear Uncertainty Doubt by those outside that golden quartet)- it is their own communities and their own cheap pricing.

It is community action which prevents them from offering their software by ridiculously low bargain basement prices. James Dixon, head geek and founder at Pentaho has a point when he says traditional metrics like revenue need o be adjusted for this impact in his article at http://jamesdixon.wordpress.com/2010/11/02/comparing-open-source-and-proprietary-software-markets/

But James, why offer software to enterprise customers at one tenth the next competitor- one reason is open source companies more often than not compete more with their free community version software than with big proprietary packages.

Communities including academics are used to free- hey how about paying say 1$ for each download.

There are two million R users- if say even 50 % of them  paid 1 $ as a lifetime license fee- you could sponsor enough new packages than twenty years of Google Summer of Code does right now.

Secondly, this pricing can easily be adjusted by shifting the licensing to say free for businesses less than 2 people (even for the enhanced corporate software version not just the plain vanilla community software thus further increasing the spread of the plain vanilla versions)- for businesses from 10 to 20 people offer a six month trial rather than one month trial.

– but adjust the pricing to much more realistic levels compared to competing software. Make enterprise software pay a real value.

That’s the only way to earn respect. as well as a few dollars more.

As for SAS, it is time it started ridiculing Python now that it has accepted R.

Python is even MORE powerful than R in some use cases for stat computing

Dixon’s Pentaho and the Jaspersoft/ Revolution combo are nice _ I tested both Jasper and Pentaho thanks to these remarks this week 🙂  (see slides at http://www.jaspersoft.com/sites/default/files/downloads/events/Analytics%20-Jaspersoft-SEP2010.pdf or http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/news-events/free-webinars/2010/deploying-r/index.php )

Pentaho and Jasper do give good great graphics in BI (Graphical display in BI is not a SAS forte though probably I dont know how much they cross sell JMP to BI customers- probably too much JMP is another division syndrome there)

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Amazon S3 slashes prices

Outline of a cloud containing text 'The Cloud'
Image via Wikipedia

From Amazon- November seems like a Thanksgiving for prices as well-

————————————————————————————————

lowered the threshold for our volume based discounts from 50 terabytes to 1 terabyte, extending volume pricing discounts to more customers. Here’s a summary of the changes:

Old         New
First 1TB           $0.150    $0.140
Next 49TB         $0.150    $0.125
Next 50TB         $0.140    $0.110
Next 400TB       $0.130    $0.110
Next 500TB       $0.105    $0.095
Next 4000TB     $0.080    $0.080 (no change)
Over 5000TB     $0.055    $0.055 (no change)

These prices apply to Amazon S3 Standard storage in the US-Standard, EU-West, and AP-East regions. The new lower prices for the US-West region and Reduced Redundancy Storage can be found on the Amazon S3 Detail Page.

 

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Medi-ocre

I am surrounded by people
of dazzling brilliance , beauty and mind
Sometimes they are in the room in my face
Sometimes we interact digitally online


I would never be so cunning
So sharp, astute and yet so polite
I feel sometimes like a little cave man
who has stumbled upon the first artificial light

Or like a flattened sunflower
in a field of tall yellow poppy flower
I am bright but still a medium-ochre
In the middle of all that bright golden power

Maybe I will never be a genius
Die unrequited unsung like billions before
Hey I tried to live up to all that potential
But the pretending and defending was too much of a chore

so mediocre and such a medium ochre
my shining shall be twinkly winkly so-s0
it was a blast and atleast we tried
played ,laughed ,partied then died.

(images courtesy-http://sprott.physics.wisc.edu/fractals/carlson/)

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Amazon goes free for users next month

Amazon Web Services logo
Image via Wikipedia

Amazon EC2 and company announced a free year long tier for new users-you cant beat free 🙂

http://aws.amazon.com/free/

AWS Free Usage Tier

To help new AWS customers get started in the cloud, AWS is introducing a new free usage tier. Beginning November 1, new AWScustomers will be able to run a free Amazon EC2 Micro Instance for a year, while also leveraging a new free usage tier for Amazon S3, Amazon Elastic Block Store, Amazon Elastic Load Balancing, and AWSdata transfer. AWS’s free usage tier can be used for anything you want to run in the cloud: launch new applications, test existing applications in the cloud, or simply gain hands-on experience with AWS.

Below are the highlights of AWS’s new free usage tiers. All are available for one year (except Amazon SimpleDB, SQS, and SNS which are free indefinitely):

Sign Up Now

AWS’s free usage tier startsNovember 1, 2010. A valid creditcard is required to sign up.
See offer terms.

AWS Free Usage Tier (Per Month):

In addition to these services, the AWS Management Console is available at no charge to help you build and manage your application on AWS.

* These free tiers are only available to new AWS customers and are available for 12 months following your AWSsign-up date. When your free usage expires or if your application use exceeds the free usage tiers, you simply pay standard, pay-as-you-go service rates (see each service page for full pricing details). Restrictions apply; see offer terms for more details.

** These free tiers do not expire after 12 months and are available to both existing and new AWS customers indefinitely.

The new AWS free usage tier applies to participating services across all AWS regions: US – N. Virginia, US – N. California, EU – Ireland, and APAC – Singapore. Your free usage is calculated each month across all regions and automatically applied to your bill – free usage does not accumulate.

 

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John Sall sets JMP 9 free to tango with R

 

Diagnostic graphs produced by plot.lm() functi...
Image via Wikipedia

 

John Sall, founder SAS AND JMP , has released the latest blockbuster edition of flagship of JMP 9 (JMP Stands for John’s Macintosh Program).

To kill all birds with one software, it is integrated with R and SAS, and the brochure frankly lists all the qualities. Why am I excited for JMP 9 integration with R and with SAS- well it integrates bigger datasets manipulation (thanks to SAS) with R’s superb library of statistical packages and a great statistical GUI (JMP). This makes JMP the latest software apart from SAS/IML, Rapid Miner,Knime, Oracle Data Miner to showcase it’s R integration (without getting into the GPL compliance need for showing source code– it does not ship R- and advises you to just freely download R). I am sure Peter Dalgaard, and Frankie Harell are all overjoyed that R Base and Hmisc packages would be used by fellow statisticians  and students for JMP- which after all is made in the neighborhood state of North Carolina.

Best of all a JMP 30 day trial is free- so no money lost if you download JMP 9 (and no they dont ask for your credit card number, or do they- but they do have a huuuuuuge form to register before you download. Still JMP 9 the software itself is more thoughtfully designed than the email-prospect-leads-form and the extra functionality in the free 30 day trial is worth it.

Also see “New Features  in JMP 9  http://www.jmp.com/software/jmp9/pdf/new_features.pdf

which has this regarding R.

Working with R

R is a programming language and software environment for statistical computing and graphics. JMP now  supports a set of JSL functions to access R. The JSL functions provide the following options:

• open and close a connection between JMP and R

• exchange data between JMP and R

•submit R code for execution

•display graphics produced by R

JMP and R each have their own sets of computational methods.

R has some methods that JMP does not have. Using JSL functions, you can connect to R and use these R computational methods from within JMP.

Textual output and error messages from R appear in the log window.R must be installed on the same computer as JMP.

JMP is not distributed with a copy of R. You can download R from the Comprehensive R Archive Network Web site:http://cran.r-project.org

Because JMP is supported as both a 32-bit and a 64-bit Windows application, you must install the corresponding 32-bit or 64-bit version of R.

For details, see the Scripting Guide book.

and the download trial page ( search optimized URL) –

http://www.sas.com/apps/demosdownloads/jmptrial9_PROD__sysdep.jsp?packageID=000717&jmpflag=Y

In related news (Richest man in North Carolina also ranks nationally(charlotte.news14.com) , Jim Goodnight is now just as rich as Mark Zuckenberg, creator of Facebook-

though probably they are not creating a movie on Jim yet (imagine a movie titled “The Statistical Software” -not just the same dude feel as “The Social Network”)

See John’s latest interview :

The People Behind the Software: John Sall

http://blogs.sas.com/jmp/index.php?/archives/352-The-People-Behind-the-Software-John-Sall.html

Interview John Sall Founder JMP/SAS Institute

https://decisionstats.com/2009/07/28/interview-john-sall-jmp/

SAS Early Days

https://decisionstats.com/2010/06/02/sas-early-days/

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Interview John F Moore CEO The Lab

Social Media Landscape

Here is an interview with John F Moore, social media adviser,technologist and founder and CEO of The Lab.

Ajay-  The internet seems to be crowded by social media experts with everyone who spends a lot of time on the internet claiming to be one? How  does a small business owner on a budget distinguish for the correct value proposition that social media can give them. 

John- You’re right.  It seems like everytime I turn around I bump into more social media “experts”.  The majority of these self-proclaimed experts are not adding a great deal of value.  When looking to spend money for help ask the person a few questions about their approach. Things you should be hearing include:

  • The expert should be seeking to fully understand your business, your goals, your available resources, etc..
  • The expert should be seeking to understand current management thinking about social media and related technologies.

If the expert is purely focused on tools they are the wrong person.  Your solution may require tools alone but they cannot know this without first understanding your business.

Ajay- Facebook has 600 million people, with people preferring to play games and connect to old acquaintances rather than use social media for tangible career or business benefit..

John- People are definitely spending time playing games, looking at photos, and catching up with old friends.  However, there are many businesses seeing real value from Facebook (primarily by tying it into their e-mail marketing and using coupons and other incentives).  For example, I recently shared a small case study (http://thejohnfmoore.com/2010/10/07/email-social-media-and-coupons-makes-the-cfo-smile/) where a small pet product company achieved a 22% bump in monthly revenue by combining Facebook and coupons together.  In fact,45% of this bump in revenue came from new clients.  Customer acquisition and increased revenue were accomplished by using Facebook for their business.
Ajay-  How does a new social media convert (individual) go on selecting communities to join (Facebook,Twitter,Linkedin,Ning, Ping,Orkut, Empire Avenue etc etc.
How does a small business owner take the same decision.

John- It always starts with taking the time to define your goals and then determine how much time and effort you are willing to invest.  For example:
  • LinkedIn. A must have for individuals as it is one of the key social networking communities for professional networking.  Individuals should join groups that are relevant to their career and invest an hour a week.  Businesses should ensure they have a business profile completed and up to date.
  • Facebook can be a challenge for anyone trying to walk the personal/professional line.  However, from a business standpoint you should be creating a Facebook page that you can use to compliment your other marketing channels.
  • Twitter.  It is a great network to learn of, to meet, and to interact with people from around the world.  I have met thousands of interesting people, many of which I have had the pleasure to meet with in real life.  Businesses need to invest in listening on twitter to determine if their customers (current or potential) or competitors are already there discussing them, their marketplace, or their offerings.
In all cases I would encourage businesses to setup social media accounts on LinkedIn, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and Flickr.  You want to ensure your brand is protected by owning these accounts and ensuring at least the base information is accurate.
Ajay- Name the top 5 points that you think make a social media community successful.  What are the top 5 points for a business to succeed in their social media strategy.

John-
  • Define your goals up front.  Understand why you are building a community and keep this goal in mind.
  • Provide education.  Ideally you want to become a thought leader in your space, the trusted resource that people can turn to even if they are not using your product or services today.
  • Be honest.  We all make mistakes.  When you do, be honest with your community and engage them in any fall-out that may be coming out of your mistake.
  • Listen to them.  Use platforms like BubbleIdeas to gather feedback on what your community is looking for from the relationship.
  • Measure.  Are you on track with your goals?  Do your goals need to change?
Ajay- What is the unique value proposition that “The Lab” offers

John- The Lab understands the strategic importance of leveraging social media, management and leadership best practices, and our understanding of local government and small and medium business to help people in these areas achieve their goals.  Too many consultants come to the table with a predefined solution that really misses the mark as it lacks understanding of the client’s goals.
Ajay-  What is “CityCamp in Boston” all about.

John- CityCamp is a FREE unconference focused on innovation for municipal governments and community organizations (http://www.citycampboston.org/what-is-citycamp-boston/).  It brings together politicians, local municipal employees, citizens, vendors, developers, and journalist to build a common understanding of local government challenges and then works to deliver measurable outcomes following the event.  The key is the focus on change management, driving change as opposed to just in the moment education.
Biography-

John F Moore is the Founder and CEO of The Lab (http://thelabinboston.com).  John has experience working with local governments and small and medium business owners to achieve their goals.  His experience with social media strategies, CRM, and a plethora of other solutions provides immense value to all of our clients.   He has built engineering organizations, learned sales and marketing, run customer service teams, and built and executed strategies for social media thought leadership and branding.  He is also a prolific blogger as you can see by checking out his blog at http://thejohnfmoore.com.

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