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.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
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
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
Monday, August 9, 2010
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
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
Saturday, July 31, 2010
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.
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.
Wednesday, June 30, 2010
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
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
How do you license code (putting code under GPL license):
See this short article explaining everything for GPL
Saturday, June 19, 2010
Prediction API & Big Data API
Google has branched out in many directions since their initial search-engine & adwords success. The company has had such healthy profits (mainly from their internet based advertising) that they were able to dab in pretty much every current interesting application in Computer Science - see here!
For a while they are providing cloud computing services, such as Google Storage for Developers, check out the pricing of that service here. Google maintains all the data within their own infrastructure. I think this article tries to explains how the distributed storage is implemented (of course just a very generic overview). You will notice that the service is naturally scalable and pretty smart in a number of ways.
The most recent activity of google resulted in the announcement of two new APIs (Prediction API and BigData API). The diagram below shows how these fit together.
BigData is used to query a large cloud store (using an SQL dialect over a webservice) and the Prediction API can be used on the data to train google implemented AI models for prediction. This simply seems to be a machine learning library that can be accessed over a webservice. Obviously this runs on google cloud infrastructure and that has it's advantages.
A number of Machine Learning libraries exist, such as WEKA, RapidMiner and many other. I used to write some of my own code for these algorithms, however over the last few years I noticed an amazing increase in the count of ML libraries. In most of my work these days I use open source libraries.
I am not quite sure how the pricing of these APIs works (maybe somebody can enlighten us on this issue), my impression is it is connected to the Google cloud store service, for which these APIs will present another reason to use this store.
You can check out some code samples for the API here.
For a while they are providing cloud computing services, such as Google Storage for Developers, check out the pricing of that service here. Google maintains all the data within their own infrastructure. I think this article tries to explains how the distributed storage is implemented (of course just a very generic overview). You will notice that the service is naturally scalable and pretty smart in a number of ways.
The most recent activity of google resulted in the announcement of two new APIs (Prediction API and BigData API). The diagram below shows how these fit together.
BigData is used to query a large cloud store (using an SQL dialect over a webservice) and the Prediction API can be used on the data to train google implemented AI models for prediction. This simply seems to be a machine learning library that can be accessed over a webservice. Obviously this runs on google cloud infrastructure and that has it's advantages.
A number of Machine Learning libraries exist, such as WEKA, RapidMiner and many other. I used to write some of my own code for these algorithms, however over the last few years I noticed an amazing increase in the count of ML libraries. In most of my work these days I use open source libraries.
I am not quite sure how the pricing of these APIs works (maybe somebody can enlighten us on this issue), my impression is it is connected to the Google cloud store service, for which these APIs will present another reason to use this store.
You can check out some code samples for the API here.
Thursday, June 17, 2010
Open Source Licenses
The best place to visit for more information on licenses would be the Open Source Initiative (OSI) at www.opensource.org/docs/definition.php The last time I checked, OSI has certified about 50 different licenses as being conformant with its concept of open source. So there's plenty of choice, but I will mention 3 most popular ones to you here. In any case it probably makes sense to research these a little more on your own since you have the best idea of how strict a licence you are after.
1- GNU General Public License (GPL)
The most known os license, (find the authoritative version at www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html)
It is probably one of the strongest (and notorious) os licenses, it has a section 2b in the license that makes GPL a viral license. That means that if anyone likes your code and uses that code, they have to make their entire software GPL licensed too. The GPL restricts the people that receive your code but not you. In fact you can change the licence for specific people or versions to a more commercial license at any time. However people that already downloaded/agreed to your GPL licensed code version can distribute it under the GPL as long as they like.
2- BSD License, a Berkeley license (www.freebsd.org) used in first edition of Unix, you probably know that already :-). Not as strict to code users as GPL is, for example microsoft is known to have used parts of UNixes networking code in its commercial version of windows.
3-Mozzila Public License (MPL) (www.mozilla.org/MPL) more complex and more loaded with legalese than the GPL, yet it is largerly compatible with GPL. There's one major difference thought. The GPL forbids combining GPL code with proprietary code in a larger piece of work, whereas the MPL expressly allows this. My understanding is that MPL somewhat occupies the middle ground between GPL and BSD licenses.
Funny thing is actually, Microsoft doesn't like open source software :-), they critisize various aspects about os, and therefore they came-up with their own initiative which they called Shared-Source Licenses (see http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx for more info)
Finally, I'd love to hear various experiences with open source licensing you might have had. You can either comment or email me directly (note: your comment will first go for approval - apologies, but this is necessary due to spam).
1- GNU General Public License (GPL)
The most known os license, (find the authoritative version at www.gnu.org/copyleft/gpl.html)
It is probably one of the strongest (and notorious) os licenses, it has a section 2b in the license that makes GPL a viral license. That means that if anyone likes your code and uses that code, they have to make their entire software GPL licensed too. The GPL restricts the people that receive your code but not you. In fact you can change the licence for specific people or versions to a more commercial license at any time. However people that already downloaded/agreed to your GPL licensed code version can distribute it under the GPL as long as they like.
2- BSD License, a Berkeley license (www.freebsd.org) used in first edition of Unix, you probably know that already :-). Not as strict to code users as GPL is, for example microsoft is known to have used parts of UNixes networking code in its commercial version of windows.
3-Mozzila Public License (MPL) (www.mozilla.org/MPL) more complex and more loaded with legalese than the GPL, yet it is largerly compatible with GPL. There's one major difference thought. The GPL forbids combining GPL code with proprietary code in a larger piece of work, whereas the MPL expressly allows this. My understanding is that MPL somewhat occupies the middle ground between GPL and BSD licenses.
Funny thing is actually, Microsoft doesn't like open source software :-), they critisize various aspects about os, and therefore they came-up with their own initiative which they called Shared-Source Licenses (see http://www.microsoft.com/resources/sharedsource/default.mspx for more info)
Finally, I'd love to hear various experiences with open source licensing you might have had. You can either comment or email me directly (note: your comment will first go for approval - apologies, but this is necessary due to spam).
Wednesday, May 5, 2010
Goldman Sachs Joke!
If more businesses operated like goldman-sachs...
A good book that looks at what happens behind the curtains in some Derivatives departments is provided in F.I.A.S.C.O by Frank Partnoy. Maybe a little out of date, the book is an interesting and entertaining read, I definitely recommend to read! Especially read it, if you are interested to find out whether any of the bad-practices accusations brought against GoldmanSachs are feasible. I leave it to you to make up your mind, nothing is black & white!
A good book that looks at what happens behind the curtains in some Derivatives departments is provided in F.I.A.S.C.O by Frank Partnoy. Maybe a little out of date, the book is an interesting and entertaining read, I definitely recommend to read! Especially read it, if you are interested to find out whether any of the bad-practices accusations brought against GoldmanSachs are feasible. I leave it to you to make up your mind, nothing is black & white!
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Loughboroughs' Success at PiP Challenge
Yesterday 28th April 2010, the Loughborough University Team competed in the Morgan Stanley Investment Challenge Portfolio in Peril 2010, and first of all I want to thank all my team members for a great fun day at Morgan Stanley. I think we can be proud of how well we represented Loughborough University, especially given the talented teams of the likes of LSE, Imperial, UCL, Warwick, Manchester and also Cambridge, Oxford (amongst a total of 12, 8 member teams). All team members were rigorously selected from many candidates to represent universities, and the competition was tough.
our team
The PiP challenge definitely beat my expectations, in a very positive sense! The organisation was top and the way competition was run was also pretty cool and clever, with drinks and refreshments provided thorough.
Ready to start
It all started by a very nice introductory presentation by Asset Allocation Vice-President at Morgan Stanley. He gave a little talk about Asset Allocation, the tradition behind the PiP challenge, and re-iterated some of the rules. The basic idea was for a mutual fund of fictive $100'000'000 lead by our Loughborough team to be managed as an investment, with wise and sound macroeconomic investment asset allocation decisions based on simulated world news, and fundamental indicators on a simulated half-a-year basis. At each decision point, our 8 member team would discuss all new developments and allocate respective assets.
The pervasively interesting element about the game was a strong fictional storyline developed by macroeconomic experts at Morgan Stanley. The game started off with US and Europe experiencing low GDP growth and a growing competition against ASIAN economies, as ASIA was becoming a more self-sustained geographical region with increased trade and a newly established Asian Development Bank. The world started changing within the '4 simulated years' from then. Over the simulated period we saw, high inflation periods, instability in the Middle east, oil prices on the rise and fall, a small US house market bubble, accession of Turkey into the European Union, several natural disasters and many more developments, positive and negative. The task of our team, (in which we performed very well) was to position ourselves in reaction and anticipation to these events within a strategic asset allocations. The goal was not to hit tops and bottoms within a heavily traded portfolio but to take longer term investment decisions with the goal of value aggregation due to economic developments in the worlds' regions.
Throughout we kept a well diversified portfolio of assets, this can be seen in the pictures below.
Overall we came up 4th out of 12 teams. Yes, not the first place, but we weren't far away. Throughout the entire duration of the competition we were in the top 2-3 teams. The Vice-president of asset allocation and organiser of the event complimented our team in front of everybody to have been his favourite, as he believed we distributed risks well, with a sound strategy. What counts is that we generated ~30% of returns and we beat teams, such as Oxford, Manchester, Warwick, Cambridge...
Profit and Trading
Real estate was the 3rd highest earning asset after Equities and the Asian Currencies. Our frequency of trading was lower than average which also shows that next to diversification we didn't over-trade.
Finally three teams were picked to present in front of everybody in the room how and why we made our portfolio perform in the way we did. I was picked by my team-mates to take on this task, so I did and I gave a convincing little presentation.
The final standings
Our Team
Thanks to all my team-members for making this a great and fun event for all of us.
our team
The PiP challenge definitely beat my expectations, in a very positive sense! The organisation was top and the way competition was run was also pretty cool and clever, with drinks and refreshments provided thorough.
Ready to start
It all started by a very nice introductory presentation by Asset Allocation Vice-President at Morgan Stanley. He gave a little talk about Asset Allocation, the tradition behind the PiP challenge, and re-iterated some of the rules. The basic idea was for a mutual fund of fictive $100'000'000 lead by our Loughborough team to be managed as an investment, with wise and sound macroeconomic investment asset allocation decisions based on simulated world news, and fundamental indicators on a simulated half-a-year basis. At each decision point, our 8 member team would discuss all new developments and allocate respective assets.
The pervasively interesting element about the game was a strong fictional storyline developed by macroeconomic experts at Morgan Stanley. The game started off with US and Europe experiencing low GDP growth and a growing competition against ASIAN economies, as ASIA was becoming a more self-sustained geographical region with increased trade and a newly established Asian Development Bank. The world started changing within the '4 simulated years' from then. Over the simulated period we saw, high inflation periods, instability in the Middle east, oil prices on the rise and fall, a small US house market bubble, accession of Turkey into the European Union, several natural disasters and many more developments, positive and negative. The task of our team, (in which we performed very well) was to position ourselves in reaction and anticipation to these events within a strategic asset allocations. The goal was not to hit tops and bottoms within a heavily traded portfolio but to take longer term investment decisions with the goal of value aggregation due to economic developments in the worlds' regions.
Throughout we kept a well diversified portfolio of assets, this can be seen in the pictures below.
Overall we came up 4th out of 12 teams. Yes, not the first place, but we weren't far away. Throughout the entire duration of the competition we were in the top 2-3 teams. The Vice-president of asset allocation and organiser of the event complimented our team in front of everybody to have been his favourite, as he believed we distributed risks well, with a sound strategy. What counts is that we generated ~30% of returns and we beat teams, such as Oxford, Manchester, Warwick, Cambridge...
Profit and Trading
Real estate was the 3rd highest earning asset after Equities and the Asian Currencies. Our frequency of trading was lower than average which also shows that next to diversification we didn't over-trade.
Finally three teams were picked to present in front of everybody in the room how and why we made our portfolio perform in the way we did. I was picked by my team-mates to take on this task, so I did and I gave a convincing little presentation.
The final standings
Our Team
Thanks to all my team-members for making this a great and fun event for all of us.
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