So, when you want to build some ambient visualizations that are integrated with the structure of a data-driven site, remember: you can go a long way with accessible, standards-based markup and some simple CSS.

Accessible Data Visualization with Web Standards

While new interfaces, video, images, binary streams of any kind you can think of are easily presented into plugins and other “wares,” we are still struggling to get to the “next level” of retrieval technology.

What Today’s Search Engines Cannot Tell You

Recommender systems have emerged over the last several years as an important area of research spanning the boundaries of such diverse set of disciplines as data mining, machine learning, information retrieval, human-computer interaction, marketing and operations research. Interest in recommender systems was further enhanced when Netflix announced its $1,000,000 prize competition in October 2006 that attracted over 20,000 participants from 167 different countries. One of the sub-fields of recommender systems that benefited very significantly from the Netflix Prize competition is the area of large-scale recommender systems, which deals with scaling recommendation methods to large datasets. Many Netflix competitors came to realize that some of the well-known recommendation algorithms would not scale well to the Netflix dataset. In addition, some of the most popular and well-regarded methods would perform poorly on the Netflix dataset — maybe because the asymptotic performance of these methods is quite different from their performance on smaller datasets.

Second KDD Workshop on Large-Scale Recommender Systems and the Netflix Prize Competition

The real sin here is how extraneous links induce link shyness: When the time comes that the reader will benefit from clicking on a link, he'll not bother because the site has taught him its links are worthless.

Links that stink

An idea that rocked my world at SciBarCamp was the understanding that everything should be expressed as code.

Everything should be code

The combination of e–mail overload and interruptions is widely recognized as a major disrupter of knowledge worker productivity and quality of life, yet few organizations take serious action against it. This paper makes the case that this action should be a high priority, by analyzing the severe impact of the problem in both qualitative and quantitative terms. We attempt to provide sufficient supporting data from the scientific literature and from corporate surveys to enable change agents to make the case and convince their organizations to authorize such action.

Infomania: Why we can’t afford to ignore it any longer

Here are my notes from Knuth’s lecture on Valentine’s Day 2008. There was no specific topic that the Don spoke on. It was more of a Q/A session than a lecture. However there were few short questions and long insightful answers.

Notes from Valentine’s Day

No one really expects a disk crash but drive failures do happen-and often at the most inconvenient times. In addition to the possible loss of important data files, a disk crash can leave you with the daunting task of having to replace the dead drive and reinstall your operating system and all of your applications. While you're doing this-assuming you know how to do this, your computer remains nonfunctional.

While this "rebuilding" time can range from mildly annoying to extremely aggravating for a home computer user, it can bring a computer-dependent small business, or even a large office, to a virtual standstill. Whatever you use your computer for, having a quick and easy-to-restore backup can eliminate both the distress and the expense of the prolonged downtime normally associated with a hard drive failure.

Avoiding Disaster When Your Hard Drive Fails

Goals of this document:
● To prove that one .ISO standard is adequate and in fact desirable (ODF / ISO26300)
● To demonstrate the substantial technical deficiencies of MS-OOXML / ECMA376
● To debunk some of the fallacies being circulated
● To provide our inputs to the Singapore's council which will vote in the .ISO JTC1 regarding ECMA376's fate

Microsoft OOXML / ECMA376 Get The Facts

This document proposes a new revenue source for the IETF to support standardization activities: protocol field naming rights, i.e., the association of commercial brands with protocol fields. This memo describes a process for assignment of rights and explores some of the issues associated with the process. Individuals or organizations that wish to purchase naming rights for one or more protocol fields are expected to follow this process.

Naming Rights in IETF Protocols