I bought my first mac, on September 28, 2009. Elegance, power, and ability to have the best of both world (Unix & Great Graphics) simply made my choice of moving to a mac an easy decision. Yesterday on my way back to Minneapolis after WikiSym conference I found out that Steve Jobs lost his battle against the cancer. I am Sad to hear the lost of world’s greatest designer & a visionary. I feel I am lucky to be born in this era to experience Steve Jobs creations. RIP Steve Jobs, You changed the way we think.
I just switched myself to JEdit, after carefully analyzing I decided to go with JEdit simply because its free. I really like TextMate but its student version is $50 bucks so I decided to go with JEdit. And boy it did fascinate me, simply because I can load remote files and simple work on them. without having to SCP them to my account.
Day after Microsoft release Bing Search Engine or as they call it decision engine I put it bing to test. Search was ok but I didn’t find it smarter than Google, then I checked the Maps option and it was horrible. But its been few weeks and today I went to bing after I saw its travel option on the television addvertisment. And let me tell you its impressive and I think its one step ahead Google. So this is what I did, I just typed
Bing Search Box
on the search box, and following result shows up as the first result among many others.
Bing Travel Prediction
. I would say up to this stage Google and Bing are neck to neck on this but after you click above option Bing kicks to the next gear like Alberto Contador climb mountains by dancing on his saddle. Yeap, as person who is in the field of HCI and Data Mining, I was very impressed on what I saw in bing. It has predictions on ticket prices such as if they were to stay steady or to go up. Yes it says that
Note that deals are compiled on yesterday’s lowest airfares and can change often.
but its still ahead Google at least on this matter.
Not only that it gives nice graphical representation of the price fluctuation along with the prediction of the price with respect the date.
So, its True that this is no ordinary search engine, but Machine Learning at its best. So if I was Google I would be bit worried about bing. Google as new era technology company had the advantage of learning from all the mistakes made my giants like Microsoft, Yahoo, etc. But I guess for the first time, Microsoft using it potential and capability and thinking out of the box. And the best thing is they are simply try to match everything that Google does where they have been doing it for the past decade. I am not a big Microsoft fan but I have to give props for this to Microsoft, Bravo.
Everyday I login to Gmail, everyday I see the beta sign along with the Google Gmail logo. I always wondered, Are they really going to do release this beyond Beta or is it Google’s way of staying out of reliability issue saying that, “Sorry guys we can’t guarantee your emails are safe with us” (As if Google had any down time in their history – respect to Search engine).
Gmail out of Beta
But Today, I saw something different, when I logged in No Beta sign along with the Google Gmail Logo, I thought something wrong. But it was same for my calendar so looks like Google has finally out of its Beta cave.
Google is moving everything to web, and taking over the world. I just opened my Google Voice account and what awsome concept. Imagine what this would do to a small business and single owner businesses.
Objectives
Main objectives of this research project are to implement Perl module to handle nick names as inputs and make suggestions for possible first names while attaching nick names with the matching last names to retrieve genealogical history of a given name, extend gen.pl along with additional modules to interface with http://www.ancestry.com to retrieve genealogical information related the names that are resolve by gel.pl module, add functionalities to handle combinations of errors such as misspelling, nicknames, mistakes during the census records and finally compare Soundex values of the return query and along with our implementation. The application will use gen.pl as its primary source and additional modules will use Perl as its primary language for implementation purpose.
As I started my research work on finding issues with Genealogical information, I ran into a problem that finding right nicknames using the internet. As I always do first thing I did was pound my research query in Google of course Google game me a hit (what do you expect its Google). The results that I found were fairly good and recognized. I found two main link one was publish from Connecticut and other was Genealogical Information related website. But my biggest concern was not about the links that I found, it was about from what date to what date these nick names were used. Simple example If your name is Richard as my host families name is, automatically your nick name is Dick but my questions was is it true to the modern day nicknames. How about if your name is Kevin, and modern day people use Kev instead of Kevin. But the nick name lists that I found on internet didn’t have modern day nicknames.
Its been awhile (more than four years) that I have touch a perl book or take a look at a perl program. But I have to quickly get back on the perl horse and start riding it like a pro in no time. Because my Graduate research project going to be in perl I guess I could use java but its going to by much much easier with perl. Two reasons, its a information retrieval on genealogy, secondly I will be dealing with tons of raw data manipulation.
Few days ago I was watching NASA TV channel and I got a chance to see how the space shuttle do the back flip manoeuvre and dock with the International Space Station. It was so amazing how the top potion of the space shuttle get open and a cylindrical more like a tunnel get connect with the space station…. it was something you got to see it from your eyes to believe it.
I hope the crew will get a chance to fix the damage that has happen during the take off. I watch the take off too and the NASA television commentator and the lead flight director was informing the viewers that it was a perfect lift off. But I am glad that they found it and trying to fix.
As Jay Leno says, I guess no alcohol involve at this flight….
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