Hstalavista 2010

This is the last post of the year and since it's been another good year full of fun, I would like to finish it on a humorous note.

The following four caricatures are from Shooty, a Slovak political satirist and artist, they were shown in an open air exposition. Funnily enough the event was sponsored by the US consulate.


Anbody following the financial news in Europe, know what this stands for, I found it hillarious.


Good luck Mr. Obama :-)


Cultural norms changed big time!


Industrialised death...

On this note, all the best wishes for new year!

2011 - Obama's 3rd year in Office

I've came across several articles recently about the variation in US Presidential Politics ahead of re-election. The argument is simple; potentially unpopular policies and laws are passed at the beginning of a presiding government term as opposed to more popular laws towards the end of term so that the presiding government will stand better chances of re-election. This simple argument is based on the bias of recent memories, in other words, people tend to remember recent past better than what happened several years ago.

Below is a table summarising the S&P 500 annual changes in %: 1962-2010 (13 election terms):



Of course the amount of data we can rely on is statistically seen, tiny. Yet it provides some indication to a more positive performance, in the second half of the US Presidential term. Especially the 3rd year of a term, has historically seen much growth.

Witty Quotes - part 3

I certainly believe and associate to ideas expressed by some talented people, and I feel that sometimes a whole book gives you less than a dozen great quotes that hit the right spot :-)! So over the month I spontaneously put together a few quotes which I've come accross, and so here they are:

There is one thing stronger than all the armies of the world; an idea whose time has come. Victor Hugo

Everybody wants to right the world. Nobody wants to help their neighbour. Henry Miller

The ultimate measure of a person is not where they stand in moments of comfort and convenience, but where they stand at times of challenge and controversy. Martin Luther King

Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does! William James

No one knows what he can do till he tries. Publius Syrus

How wonderful it is that nobody need wait a single moment before starting to improve the world. Anne Frank

Action is the antidote to despair. Joan Baez

Beware of half-truths. You may have got hold of the wrong half! Unknown (Anonymous)

One understands people through the heart, not the eyes or the intellect. Mark Twain

Victory belongs to the most persevering! Napoleon Bonaparte

If you must tell me your opinions, tell me what you believe in. I have plenty of doubt of my own. Wolfgang Goethe

God created the world out of nothing, and as long as we are nothing, he can make something out of us. Martin Luther

A smooth sea never made a skilful mariner. Unknown (Anonymous)

Some people see things as they are and say, 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say, 'Why not?' George Shaw

The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Chineese proverb

Learn to obey before you command! Greek proverb

Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work. Thomas Edison

The further backward you can look, the further forward you are likely to see. Winston Churchill

I quote others only the better to express myself. Michel de Montaigne

Social Media Monitoring

WARNING: This article is critical of the Loughborough University Enterprise Office (an initiative to help commercials ideas & work from academia into viable business oportunities).

Well over a year ago (back in 2009, actually the idea came in 2008) I entertained myself with the idea of starting up a social media monitoring business. I have worked on the topic within my PhD and I have published on the topic and also did some decent work with a student of mine back through 2008/2009 academic year. Our results were great, winning me an IEEE best PhD student paper award at a conference among some encouraging feedback from my paper reviewers.

The idea was to use my student's existing server infrastructure (he runs a web hosting service in Poland) to accumulate web 2.0 datasets and apply data-mining and statistical techniques summarisation, and finally to build a nice and fancy User Interface based on edgy web-design techniques (which I lectured about to my large Introduction to Web Programming undergraduate class last year) and further wrap it all up into ontologies to be usable by semantic web capable agents!

The above sounded like a decent Business Plan to me, with relatively low risk, as I could have done this part time (aligned with the PhD) and we could have just used, as mentioned, my students server infrastructure to a degree. See this article for a very timely overview of Social Media Monitoring tools, and how significant they have become in business (There is much more academic work, looking at many case studies - drop me a line if you want some references to those).

We therefore decided to seek some initial funding or at least support from Loughborough's student enterprise office, in one form or another and depending on their response we wanted to begin development of the initial prototypes! After a few email exchanges and several phone conversations, I was very dissapointed...

The ent. office consultant was obviously overworked, and complained about her high volume of meetings, business trips and other responsibilities. Once I mentioned that we have published and received an award, her reaction shocked me. Apparently since the work was published we could not patent it, and hence without any possibilities of patenting she lost any interest. I was shocked by this reaction, assuming that patents still rule the world of software is something I consider quite ridiculous (just like the once click amazon buy button patent), in my opinion a barrier to innovation that's what my whole experience dealing with the entr. office at loughborough felt like.

It is ironic that reading the BBC article today, I realise that with a little bit support we could have had a finished beta product by today, covering local demand in social media monitoring in the Midlands area. Great way to throw logs under the feet of young university talent, Loughborough Student Enterprise Office, well done ;-)!

Any comments are welcome, at same time, I do know the Office was behind a few interesting projects, however they have a lot of improvement ahead to become worthy for a university of Loughboroughs Profile!

iReporter on CNN

Since web 2.0 largely concerns itself with easy data sharing, naturally it has already found many interesting applications within Journalism. One such example is CNN iReport, a web 2.0 system allowing any user to submit and edit news stories within a community of “citizen reporters”. Essentially any news can be uploaded since the contributions are neither edited, nor fact-checked, or screened, a-priori. Certain (urgent or timely) stories do get vetted and cleared by CNN, and these would be subsequently used by CNN in its mainstream broadcasting.

iReport is defined by a distinctive news-friendly community, which seems to find pleasure in reporting news. The community of contributors consists of around 20'000 enthusiasts who get ranked based on their site activity and value of contributions. Clearly the chance of an iReport item being selected by CNN for broadcast acts as a strong motivation itself (31'800 out of 485'000 reports were vetted by CNN, to date). See http://ireport.cnn.com/ and http://ireport.cnn.com/faq.jspa for more information.

Witty Quotes - part 2

This is the second installement, in my little series on witty and clever insights. These were mainly chosen from a book published by Ebury Press ("Keep calm and carry on"). I picked them on the basis of being representative of my beliefs and convictions I often live by or try to live by.

We make a living by what we get, but we make a life by what we give. Winston Churchill

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable but more useful than a life spent doing nothing. George Shaw

Upgrading one's imagination about what is possible is always a leap of faith. Clay Shirky

A greatest mistake a man can ever make is to be afraid of making one. Elbert Hubbard

The best portion of a good man's life - his little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness. William Wordsworth

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance the wise man grows it underneath his feet. James Oppenheim

Now and then it's good to pause in our pursuit of happiness and just be happy. Guillaume Apollinaire

A vigorous five-mile walk will do more good for an unhappy but otherwise healthy adult than all the medicine and psychology in the world. Paul White

You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get people interested in you. Dale Carnegie

Don't judge each day by the harvest you reap, but by the seeds that you plant. Robert Stevenson

If you can't sleep, get up and do something instead of lying there and worrying. It's the worry that gets you, not the loss of sleep. Dale Carnegie

Always laugh when you can. It is cheap medicine. Lord Byron

He who has a why to live can bear almost any how. Friedrich Nietzsche

The art of living lies less in eliminating our troubles, than growing with them. Bernard Baruch

While there is a chance of the world getting through its troubles, I hold that a reasonable man has to behave as though he were sure of it. If at the end your cheerfulness is not justified, at any rate you will have been cheerful. Herbert Wells

Prosperity is not without many fears and distastes, and adversity is not without comforts and hopes. Francis Bacon

Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn't do than by the ones you did do. Mark Twain

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful & committed people could change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever hasMargaret Mead

Some witty quotes

I decided to run a little series on witty and clever quotes, I prefer to call them insights, since that more closely reflects the collection of quotes presented here. These insights were mainly chosen from a book published by Ebury Press ("Keep calm and carry on"). I picked them on the basis of being representative of my beliefs and convictions I often live by or try to live by. Here they are, in 2 parts - part 1 of 2.

I am an optimist it doesn't seem to much use to be anything else. Winston Churchill

Worry often gives a small thing a big shadow. Swedish Proverb

The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable. John Galbraith

Beware of little expenses; a small leak will sink a great ship. Benjamin Franklin

A Bank is a place that will lend you money if you can prove that you don't need it. Bob Hope

Always be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle. Plato

Happiness depends upon ourselves. Aristotle

We will never return to the old boom and bust. Gordon Brown (2007 Budget Stat.)

The safe way to double your money is to fold it over once and put it in your pocket. Frank Hubbard

What we anticipate seldom occurs; what we least expect generally happens. Benjamin Disraeli

An economist is an expert who will know tomorrow why the things he predicted yesterday didn't happen today. Laurence Peter

Better bread with water than cake with trouble! Russian Proverb

For a greedy man even his tomb is too small. Tajikistani Proverb

It is unfortunate we can't buy many business executives for what they are worth and sell them for what they think they are worth. Malcolm Forbes

Beware the barrenness of a busy life. Socrates

The Dot-com boom is over

The year 2000 was the infamous end of the dot-com internet boom; the 10th March to be precise! The period preceding this event saw heavy prefix investing (basically any company with an e- prefixed or .com appended to it was bought up straight away). This occurred because the expectation of promise from the internet and the future potential seemed enormous with the reach and potential of world wide web. However the technology and economical momentum simply was not there and thats why most companies failed.

The consolidation and second wave in what can be termed to be the second internet boom is the web 2.0 craze that is occurring at the moment: twitter, facebook, blogger, youtube, google, yahoo, ... The difference this time is that the technology has reached the tipping point. Economically online advertising now accounts for over $20 Billion worth in industry. A whole set of industry has grown around building and managing the huge datasets and data processing requirements of web 2.0 - this in turn is now supported by real profits of .com companies - and this is where the major difference to the previous boom. The simples business model - online advertising - actually works, online shopping works and finally some very cool new business models such as localised group buying emerged. Reasons: other than the technological advances and standardisation, the consumer trust issue has completely changed.

In my next posts, I intend to discuss web 2.0 criticisms and what they mean. I also intend to write several blog posts about the wayback machine! Any comments, please email or comment, thanks.

PhD Papers

I (now) have my papers on Loughborough University Institutional Repository



You can link directly to them via:

http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6420
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6421
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6422
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6423
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/5885

Licensing your Software

Further to my post from Thursday (June 17th 2010) on Open Source Licenses, someone asked me what the process, or steps are, necessary to put a piece of code under specifc license.

How do you license code (putting code under GPL license):

See this short article explaining everything for GPL

http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6420
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6421
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6422
http://hdl.handle.net/2134/6423