httR by Hadley #rstats

The awesome Hadley Wickham has just released the next version of httr package. Prof Hadley is currently on leave from Rice Univ and working with the tremendous geeks at R Studio . New things in the httr package-

 

http://blog.rstudio.org/2012/10/14/httr-0-2/

httr, a package designed to make it easy to work with web APIs. Httr is a wrapper around RCurl, and provides:

  • functions for the most important http verbs: GET, HEAD, PATCH, PUT, DELETE and POST.
  • support for OAuth 1.0 and 2.0. Use oauth1.0_token and oauth2.0_token to get user tokens, and sign_oauth1.0 and sign_oauth2.0to sign requests. The demos directory has six demos of using OAuth: three for 1.0 (linkedin, twitter and vimeo) and three for 2.0 (facebook, github, google).

I especially like the OAuth functionality as I occasionaly got flummoxed with existing R OAuth packages , and this should hopefully lead to awesome new social media analytics posts by the larger R blogger community. Also given the fact that unauthenticated API requests to Twitter are greatly expanded by OAuth authenticated requests- (see https://dev.twitter.com/docs/rate-limiting )

  • Unauthenticated calls are permitted 150 requests per hour. Unauthenticated calls are measured against the public facing IP of the server or device making the request.
  • OAuth calls are permitted 350 requests per hour and are measured against the oauth_token used in the request.

 

some creative use cases should see an incredible amount of cross social media analysis (not just one social media channel ) at a time.

R for Social Media Analytics ? Watch this space.. 😉

 

 

 

Interview Beth Schultz Editor AllAnalytics.com

Here is an interview with Beth Scultz Editor in Chief, AllAnalytics.com .

Allanalytics.com http://www.allanalytics.com/ is the new online community on Predictive Analytics, and its a bit different in emphasizing quality more than just quantity. Beth is veteran in tech journalism and communities.

Ajay-Describe your journey in technology journalism and communication. What are the other online communities that you have been involved with?

Beth- I’m a longtime IT journalist, having begun my career covering the telecommunications industry at the brink of AT&T’s divestiture — many eons ago. Over the years, I’ve covered the rise of internal corporate networking; the advent of the Internet and creation of the Web for business purposes; the evolution of Web technology for use in building intranets, extranets, and e-commerce sites; the move toward a highly dynamic next-generation IT infrastructure that we now call cloud computing; and development of myriad enterprise applications, including business intelligence and the analytics surrounding them. I have been involved in developing online B2B communities primarily around next-generation enterprise IT infrastructure and applications. In addition, Shawn Hessinger, our community editor, has been involved in myriad Web sites aimed at creating community for small business owners.

 Ajay- Technology geeks get all the money while journalists get a story. Comments please

Beth- Great technology geeks — those being the ones with technology smarts as well as business savvy — do stand to make a lot of money. And some pursue that to all ends (with many entrepreneurs gunning for the acquisition) while others more or less fall into it. Few journalists, at least few tech journalists, have big dollars in mind. The gratification for journalists comes in being able to meet these folks, hear and deliver their stories — as appropriate — and help explain what makes this particular technology geek developing this certain type of product or service worth paying attention to.

 Ajay- Describe what you are trying to achieve with the All Analytics community and how it seeks to differentiate itself with other players in this space.

 Beth- With AllAnaltyics.com, we’re concentrating on creating the go-to site for CXOs, IT professionals, line-of-business managers, and other professionals to share best practices, concrete experiences, and research about data analytics, business intelligence, information optimization, and risk management, among many other topics. We differentiate ourself by featuring excellent editorial content from a top-notch group of bloggers, access to industry experts through weekly chats, ongoing lively and engaging message board discussions, and biweekly debates.

We’re a new property, and clearly in rapid building mode. However, we’ve already secured some of the industry’s most respected BI/analytics experts to participate as bloggers. For example, a small sampling of our current lineup includes the always-intrigueing John Barnes, a science fiction novelist and statistics guru; Sandra Gittlen, a longtime IT journalist with an affinity for BI coverage; Olivia Parr-Rud, an internationally recognized expert in BI and organizational alignment; Tom Redman, a well-known data-quality expert; and Steve Williams, a leading BI strategy consultant. I blog daily as well, and in particular love to share firsthand experiences of how organizations are benefiting from the use of BI, analytics, data warehousing, etc. We’ve featured inside looks at analytics initiatives at companies such as 1-800-Flowers.com, Oberweis Dairy, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, and Thomson Reuters, for example.

In addition, we’ve hosted instant e-chats with Web and social media experts Joe Stanganelli and Pierre DeBois, and this Friday, Aug. 26, at 3 p.m. ET we’ll be hosting an e-chat with Marshall Sponder, Web metrics guru and author of the newly published book, Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics. (Readers interested in participating in the chat do need to fill out a quick registration form, available here http://www.allanalytics.com/register.asp . The chat is available here http://www.allanalytics.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=241039&piddl_msgid=439898#msg_439898 .

Experts participating in our biweekly debate series, called Point/Counterpoint, have broached topics such as BI in the cloud, mobile BI and whether an analytics culture is truly possible to build.

Ajay-  What are some tips you would like to share about writing tech stories to aspiring bloggers.

Beth- I suppose my best advice is this: Don’t write about technology for technology’s sake. Always strive to tell the audience why they should care about a particular technology, product, or service. How might a reader use it to his or her company’s advantage, and what are the potential benefits? Improved productivity, increased revenue, better customer service? Providing anecdotal evidence goes a long way toward delivering that message, as well.

Ajay- What are the other IT world websites that have made a mark on the internet.

Beth- I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to UBM TechWeb sites, including InformationWeek, which has long charted the use of IT within the enterprise; Dark Reading, a great source for folks interested in securing an enterprise’s information assets; and Light Reading, which takes the pulse of the telecom industry.

 Biography- 

Beth Schultz has more than two decades of experience as an IT writer and editor. Most recently, she brought her expertise to bear writing thought-provoking editorial and marketing materials on a variety of technology topics for leading IT publications and industry players. Previously, she oversaw multimedia content development, writing and editing for special feature packages at Network World. Beth has a keen ability to identify business and technology trends, developing expertise through in-depth analysis and early-adopter case studies. Over the years, she has earned more than a dozen national and regional editorial excellence awards for special issues from American Business Media, American Society of Business Press Editors, Folio.net, and others.

 

Do android hackers tweet about electric sheep?

Here is a very amusing site where bunch of hackers discuss black hat techniques to game social media- they meet in the MJ website. LOL

Thats actually the official MJ website. (also see my Poem on MJ at

https://decisionstats.com/2011/04/29/tribute-to-michael-jackson/

and https://decisionstats.com/2009/12/01/obama-and-mj-on-history/)

But back to the funny twitter gamers

http://www.michaeljackson.com/us/node/703109

MICHAEL JACKSON YOU ARE OVER THE STATUS UPDATE LIMIT. PLEASE WAIT A FEW HOURS AND TRY AGAIN.

Analyzing Conversations on Twitter

If you are a marketing , analyst relationship, public relationship or a product manager who uses or abuses social media, you sometimes need to track what influencers and analysts are saying. A tool called Bettween allows you to capture public conversations between two influential (or interesting) tweeps.

See conversations between Neil Raden http://www.beyeblogs.com/raden/ and Curt Monash http://www.dbms2.com/ two noted BI gurus

http://bettween.com/neilraden/curtmonash

  • @NEILRADEN66
  • @CURTMONASH61
  • TOTAL MESSAGES127
  • SHARE CONVERSATION


unless Google decides to license its Wave technology to Twitter for separate encrypted , or public tweets. 🙂 They do share some history and employees (cough cough) or Twitter waits to create or better its public /protected tweet mode to be more granular

http://bettween.com/neilraden/curtmonash#statistics

tools to analyze Twitter conversations in SAS

Youtube's variance in interface/s for sharing

Youtube seems to have a different  interface for sharing a channel, a playlist or an individual song. Also it seems to be missing out on revenue from Itunes (or maybe it isnt). and it seems to promoting Facebook and Twitter to the expense of other social media sharing buttons which can be only seen when you click share more (or maybe the buttons/social media channels change based on sharing activity analytics 🙂 )

on a slightly different note read my techie tutorial on boosting your youtube channel views

https://decisionstats.com/2010/09/10/creating-an-anonymous-bot/

Creating an Anonymous Bot

 

See the following interface snapshots/views-

youtube song share expanded
youtube song share expanded

 

youtube song share
youtube song share default
youtube playlist share
youtube playlist share
utube channel share
youtube channel share

Youtube’s variance in interface/s for sharing

Youtube seems to have a different  interface for sharing a channel, a playlist or an individual song. Also it seems to be missing out on revenue from Itunes (or maybe it isnt). and it seems to promoting Facebook and Twitter to the expense of other social media sharing buttons which can be only seen when you click share more (or maybe the buttons/social media channels change based on sharing activity analytics 🙂 )

on a slightly different note read my techie tutorial on boosting your youtube channel views

https://decisionstats.com/2010/09/10/creating-an-anonymous-bot/

Creating an Anonymous Bot

 

See the following interface snapshots/views-

youtube song share expanded
youtube song share expanded

 

youtube song share
youtube song share default
youtube playlist share
youtube playlist share
utube channel share
youtube channel share

Why social media is an one way street- cant close accounts

Update to https://decisionstats.com/2010/11/24/deleting-twitter-facebooklinkedin-accepting-life/

You cant DELETE a Facebook Account- it gets deactivated NOT DELETED.

You have to delete photo albums one by one, but if you have a folder like profile photos or wall photos or mobile uploads  (you cant delete these folders you have to delete those photos one by one)

So I had to delete 1100 friends, delete all Facebook Pages I created, and then download the account- (photos) which were now a more easy to download zip file of 92 mb. And I deleted all the 250+ Likes I had given to things I had flippantly liked- it was horrifying because if you accumulate all that info- it basically gives you a big lead in estimating my psychological profile- and thats not stuff I want to be used for selling.

Then I deactivated it- no like Lord Voldermort’s horcruxes you cant delete it all.

and Facebook shows you ads even if you clean your profile and your friends and can longer see any preference for any product.

Facebook treats data like prisoners – even if you are released they WILL maintain your record.

20 years later they would be able to blackmail all the people  of all countries in the WORLD- by that much info.

And Linkedin is still getting deleted- I got this email from them-

basically if you have an active group for whom you are the only owner you cant delete yourself- you have to delete the group or find another owner.

Sigh!

If it took me 2 days to download all my info, and wipe my social media for just 3 yrs of using it (albiet at an expert enough level to act as a social media consultant to some companies)- I am not sure what today’s generation of young people who jump to twitter and Facebook at early ages would face after say 5-10 years of data is collected on them. Lots of Ads I guess!

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