Tag: Word

Ethics and Writing

A particularly prominent technology blogger ( see http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/michael_arrington_the_kingmaker_who_would_be_king.php )has now formalized his status as an investor (which he did even before) while relinquishing his editorial duties (which were not much given the blog’s acquisition by AOL and its own formidable line of writers, each one of whom is quite influential). Without going into either sermon mode (thou shall not have conflict of interests) or adulatory mode (wow he sold the blog for 30 mill and now he gets another 20 mill for his funds)- I shall try and present the case for ethics and ethical lapses while as a writer.

Continue reading “Ethics and Writing”

Making your website cool

Some notes and thoughts on Websites ( which may be back in fashion once the social media bubble bubble  burps, I mean bursts)

0) Write Great Content. Do not write in haste. Do not revise in haste. Publish and share url only at a time when you think it will lead to views.

1) Design-Benchmarking Beauty

Bad Artists borrow, Great Artists Steal- Continue reading “Making your website cool”

Contribution to #Rstats by Revolution

I have been watching for Revolution Analytics product almost since the inception of the company. It has managed to sail over storms, naysayers and critics with simple and effective strategy of launching good software, making good partnerships and keeping up media visibility with white papers, joint webinars, blogs, conferences and events.

However this is a listing of all technical contributions made by Revolution Analytics products to the #rstats project.

1) Useful Packages mostly in parallel processing or more efficient computing like

 

2) RevoScaler package to beat R’s memory problem (this is probably the best in my opinion as it is yet to be replicated by the open source version and is a clear cut reason for going in for the paid version)

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/products/enterprise-big-data.php

  • Efficient XDF File Format designed to efficiently handle huge data sets.
  • Data Step Functionality to quickly clean, transform, explore, and visualize huge data sets.
  • Data selection functionality to store huge data sets out of memory, and select subsets of rows and columns for in-memory operation with all R functions.
  • Visualize Large Data sets with line plots and histograms.
  • Built-in Statistical Algorithms for direct analysis of huge data sets:
    • Summary Statistics
    • Linear Regression
    • Logistic Regression
    • Crosstabulation
  • On-the-fly data transformations to include derived variables in models without writing new data files.
  • Extend Existing Analyses by writing user- defined R functions to “chunk” through huge data sets.
  • Direct import of fixed-format text data files and SAS data sets into .xdf format

 

3) RevoDeploy R for  API based R solution – I somehow think this feature will get more important as time goes on but it seems a lower visibility offering right now.

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/products/enterprise-deployment.php

  • Collection of Web services implemented as a RESTful API.
  • JavaScript and Java client libraries, allowing users to easily build custom Web applications on top of R.
  • .NET Client library — includes a COM interoperability to call R from VBA
  • Management Console for securely administrating servers, scripts and users through HTTP and HTTPS.
  • XML and JSON format for data exchange.
  • Built-in security model for authenticated or anonymous invocation of R Scripts.
  • Repository for storing R objects and R Script execution artifacts.

 

4) Revolutions IDE (or Productivity Environment) for a faster coding environment than command line. The GUI by Revolution Analytics is in the works. – Having used this- only the Code Snippets function is a clear differentiator from newer IDE and GUI. The code snippets is awesome though and even someone who doesnt know much R can get analysis set up quite fast and accurately.

http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/products/enterprise-productivity.php

  • Full-featured Visual Debugger for debugging R scripts, with call stack window and step-in, step-over, and step-out capability.
  • Enhanced Script Editor with hover-over help, word completion, find-across-files capability, automatic syntax checking, bookmarks, and navigation buttons.
  • Run Selection, Run to Line and Run to Cursor evaluation
  • R Code Snippets to automatically generate fill-in-the-blank sections of R code with tooltip help.
  • Object Browser showing available data and function objects (including those in packages), with context menus for plotting and editing data.
  • Solution Explorer for organizing, viewing, adding, removing, rearranging, and sourcing R scripts.
  • Customizable Workspace with dockable, floating, and tabbed tool windows.
  • Version Control Plug-in available for the open source Subversion version control software.

 

Marketing contributions from Revolution Analytics-

1) Sponsoring R sessions and user meets

2) Evangelizing R at conferences  and partnering with corporate partners including JasperSoft, Microsoft , IBM and others at http://www.revolutionanalytics.com/partners/

3) Helping with online initiatives like http://www.inside-r.org/ (which is curiously dormant and now largely superseded by R-Bloggers.com) and the syntax highlighting tool at http://www.inside-r.org/pretty-r. In addition Revolution has been proactive in reaching out to the community

4) Helping pioneer blogging about R and Twitter Hash tag discussions , and contributing to Stack Overflow discussions. Within a short while, #rstats online community has overtaken a lot more established names- partly due to decentralized nature of its working.

 

Did I miss something out? yes , they share their code by GPL.

 

Let me know by feedback

Chrome

If you are new to using Chrome, there are many delightful features just beneath the surface.

If you are an Internet Explorer or Firefox or Safari or Arora or Opera or Sea Monkey browser user- this is one more reason to test, just test Chrome.

Ok so who Made chrome- (note the link i.e about:credits is what you type in chrome to see features)

about:credits

Credits

David M. Gay’s floating point routines
dynamic annotations
Netscape Portable Runtime (NSPR)
Network Security Services (NSS)
purify headers
google-glog’s symbolization library
valgrind
xdg-mime
xdg-user-dirs
google-jstemplateshow licensehomepage
Launchpad Translationsshow licensehomepage
Mozilla Personal Security Managershow licensehomepage
Google Toolbox for Macshow licensehomepage
ActiveX Scripting SDKshow licensehomepage
Almost Native Graphics Layer Engineshow licensehomepage
Apple sample codeshow licensehomepage
Google Cache Invalidation APIshow licensehomepage
Compact Language Detectionshow licensehomepage
OpenGL ES 2.0 Programming Guideshow licensehomepage
OpenGL ES 2.0 Conformance Testsshow licensehomepage
hunspell dictionariesshow licensehomepage
IAccessible2 COM interfaces for accessibilityshow licensehomepage
Chinese and Japanese Word Listshow licensehomepage
ISimpleDOM COM interfaces for accessibilityshow licensehomepage
modp base64 decodershow licensehomepage
NSBezierPath additions from Sean Patrick O’Brienshow licensehomepage
Cocoa extension code from Caminoshow licensehomepage
OTS (OpenType Sanitizer)show licensehomepage
Google Safe Browsingshow licensehomepage
XUL Runner SDKshow licensehomepage
and of course
so thats who made chrome.
  • Will Google be able to monetize Chrome the way it has monetized Android (Atleast by locking in both search,computing and browsing platforms)? I like the Adblock extension- and I would be happy to see more paid extensions. or even two versions one free and other freer (in choice) browsers for ads /security etc. maybe even a premium paid browser which has tor embedded in it , adblock enabled in it, and encrypted chat (like Waste Again) as an extension…. Hmm Hmm Hmm There is a SOCIAL version of Chromium called Rockmelt used ironically by Google Social Nemesis -Facebook (see http://blogs.ft.com/fttechhub/2011/06/facebook-partners-with-rockmelt-on-building-a-social-web-browser/)
  • Will Google share more revenue with open source contributors and thus create a new path in open source revenue generation just like it did with online advertising as an industry? Hmm Hmm Hmm. or Will Facebook continue to lead the way with extensions and applications (which did predate the mobile app place- so thats one innovation u gotta give to Zuk’s boys 😉
Back to Chrome-
To change settings- chrome://settings/browser
but to check what Autofill Data is stored within chrome (thats your credit card and your web form information)
chrome://settings/autofill and chrome://settings/content has all your content settings
Well Chrome is very very secure, or as secure as a browser can be in 2011.
You can set up Google Sync to keep all your data in the cloud, and it has an application specific password as well.
So hopefully you will have much more fun enjoying hacking Chromium 😉
See these

Interview – first Big Data Conference

From time to time, I revisit the past just to ensure I am not choking on the same spin or hype bullshit I resent in this world of marketing the worlds perfect software (everyone claims to be it, noone is it)

From the very first Big Data conference ever (and kudos to Steve Wooledge at AsterData for coining the buzz word of the decade- BIG DATA)- a two year old interview.

Is it relevant- or outdated.

watch?v=cqgChBV_JBs

https://www.youtube.com/v/cqgChBV_JBs?version=3&hl=en_US

RStudio 3- Making R as simple as possible but no simpler

From the nice shiny blog at http://blog.rstudio.org/, a shiny new upgraded software (and I used the Cobalt theme)–this is nice!

awesome coding!!!

 

http://www.rstudio.org/download/

Download RStudio v0.94

Diagram desktop

If you run R on your desktop:

Download RStudio Desktop

OR

Diagram server

If you run R on a Linux server and want to enable users to remotely access RStudio using a web browser:

Download RStudio Server

 

RStudio v0.94 — Release Notes

June 15th, 2011

 

New Features and Enhancements

Source Editor and Console

  • Run code:
    • Run all lines in source file
    • Run to current line
    • Run from current line
    • Redefine current function
    • Re-run previous region
    • Code is now run line-by-line in the console
  • Brace, paren, and quote matching
  • Improved cursor placement after newlines
  • Support for regex find and replace
  • Optional syntax highlighting for console input
  • Press F1 for help on current selection
  • Function navigation / jump to function
  • Column and line number display
  • Manually set/switch document type
  • New themes: Solarized and Solarized Dark

Plots

  • Improved image export:
    • Formats: PNG, JPEG, TIFF, SVG, BMP, Metafile, and Postscript
    • Dynamic resize with preview
    • Option to maintain aspect ratio when resizing
    • Copy to clipboard as bitmap or metafile
  • Improved PDF export:
    • Specify custom sizes
    • Preview before exporting
  • Remove individual plots from history
  • Resizable plot zoom window

History

  • History tab synced to loaded .Rhistory file
  • New commands:
    • Load and save history
    • Remove individual items from history
    • Clear all history
  • New options:
    • Load history from working directory or global history file
    • Save history always or only when saving .RData
    • Remove duplicate entries in history
  • Shortcut keys for inserting into console or source

Packages

  • Check for package updates
  • Filter displayed packages
  • Install multiple packages
  • Remove packages
  • New options:
    • Install from repository or local archive file
    • Target library
    • Install dependencies

Miscellaneous

  • Find text within help topic
  • Sort file listing by name, type, size, or modified
  • Set working directory based on source file, files pane, or browsed for directory.
  • Console titlebar button to view current working directory in files pane
  • Source file menu command
  • Replace space and dash with dot (.) in import dataset generated variable names
  • Add decimal separator preference for import dataset
  • Added .tar.gz (Linux) and .zip (Windows) distributions for non-admin installs
  • Read /etc/paths.d on OS X to ensure RStudio has the same path as terminal sessions do
  • Added manifest to rsession.exe to prevent unwanted program files and registry virtualization

Server

  • Break PAM auth into its own binary for improved compatibility with 3rd party PAM authorization modules.
  • Ensure that AppArmor profile is enforced even after reboot
  • Ability to add custom LD library path for all sessions
  • Improved R discovery:
    • Use which R then fallback to scanning for R script
    • Run R discovery unconfined then switch into restricted profile
  • Default to uncompressed save.image output if the administrator or user hasn’t specified their own options (improved suspend/resume performance)
  • Ensure all running sessions are automatically updated during server version upgrade
  • Added verify-installation command to rstudio-server utility for easily capturing configuration and startup related errors

 

Bug Fixes

Source Editor

  • Undo to unedited state clears now dirty bit
  • Extract function now captures free variables used on lhs
  • Selected variable highlight now visible in all themes
  • Syncing to source file updates made outside of RStudio now happens immediately at startup and does not cause a scroll to the bottom of the document.
  • Fixed various issues related to copying and pasting into word processors
  • Fixed incorrect syntax highlighting issues in .Rd files
  • Make sure font size for printed source files matches current editor setting
  • Eliminate conflict with Ctrl+F shortcut key on OS X
  • Zoomed Google Chrome browser no longer causes cursor position to be off
  • Don’t prevent opening of unknown file types in the editor

Console

  • Fixed sporadic missing underscores (and other bottom clipping of text) in console
  • Make sure console history is never displayed offscreen
  • Page Up and Page Down now work properly in the console
  • Substantially improved console performance for both rapid output and large quantities of output

Miscellaneous

  • Install successfully on Windows with special characters in home directory name
  • make install more tolerant of configurations where it can’t write into /usr/share
  • Eliminate spurious stderr output in forked children of multicore package
  • Ensure that file modified times always update in the files pane after a save
  • Always default to installing packages into first writeable path of .libPaths()
  • Ensure that LaTeX log files are always preserved after compilePdf
  • Fix conflicts with zap function from epicalc package
  • Eliminate shortcut key conflicts with Ubuntu desktop workspace switching shortcuts
  • Always prompt when attempting to save files of the same name
  • Maximized main window now properly restored when reopening RStudio
  • PAM authorization works correctly even if account has password expiration warning
  • Correct display of manipulate panel when Plots pane is on the left

 

Previous Release Notes

 

Microsoft works on ad supported desktop programs

3 years ago, in a mock article I speculated what happened if Microsoft followed Google, and gave away Windows/Office for free while showing you ads. Basically whats the value of a single customer for 3-4 years worth of ads.

https://decisionstats.com/2008/02/02/ballmer-yahoo-googles-boo-hoo-2/

Well it seems like Windows 7, and Microsoft Word have  made a quiet move to showing ads OUT of the browser and into the desktop program.

See screnshot on Windows 7, when even a simple Rich text document shows an ad for slidefest/powerpoint. Continue reading “Microsoft works on ad supported desktop programs”

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