Musings

SF Marathon

2010-03-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

Heard about this from a friend the other day: The San Francisco Marathon. I am thinking about giving this a try - if not this year then definitely the next one (still recovering from my ACL tear). I went biking along the top third of the course last weekend, from Embarcadero to Golden Gate, and the course is pretty fun. The views are pretty good all along though still not enough to distract from the steep hills just before the GGB. There are still 17 weeks to tame those hills though - doing my best to see you guys on 25th July, 2010. You can follow updates on the SF Marathon on Facebook.

Sky Diving

2009-09-14T09:14:00.000-07:00

5 adrenaline rich minutes of my life.

Your web persona

2009-08-26T13:17:00.000-07:00

We all have googled our name one time or the other---trying to find our online footprint or just for the kicks. The Personas project from MIT Media Labs goes one step further by assimilating information about you on the web and defining your 'web character' [Click the image for a clearer version]. It provides another dimension to the people search space although it may be a work in progress still (medical,illegal-me???).

Google is of course synonymous with search but specialized search engines focusing on singular verticals are slowly slicing my search time. For instance, I now use Pipl for people search and Tinyeye for reverse image search. Both are pretty good at what they claim to do. For example, Pipl searches the web for a given name and tabulates all information it can find about that person---personal websites, blog entries, social networking profiles--in a profile page like layout. Similarly, Tinyeye is trying to solve one of the long standing problems in computer vision---image matching. You upload an image and tinyeye tries to find images 'similar' to the uploaded image by identifying the objects in the image. It is great to see startups trying to carve their presence in a space already saturated by many big shots.

Damn Facebook Quizzes

2009-08-19T23:25:00.000-07:00

1 status update, 1 photo gallery update, 29 quiz results: that's what my Facebook news feed looks like these days. Thankfully, we have the cure:

Door 1:
A nifty javascript snippet written by a friend of mine that you can use as a bookmark or run through GreaseMonkey on Firefox: Instructions here.

Door 2:
Install GreaseMonkey to your Firefox (GreaseMetal for Chrome) and install the Facebook Purity GreaseMonkey script from here.

Door 3:
IE users, enjoy the pain.

YouTwitFace, I Digg your Friendfeed on Reader and Reddit all

2009-08-16T18:25:00.000-07:00

In a recent interview, Microsoft founder Bill Gates revealed that he has quit Facebook for good and I am sure he is not the only one overwhelmed by the deluge of information being pushed to us these days on the web. We are logging on to YouTube and iReport for our news, Twitter, Friendfeed and Facebook for real-time updates from friends and strangers, apart from the dozens of blogs we peruse through Reader, Digg and Reddit to absorb as much information as we can. Web2.0 is fueling our addiction to know everything!

Humans are inquisitive beings, or at least beings who need to resolve a dispute about the number of grand slams Roger Federer has won at that very instant. We want to know everything about anything instantly. I remember the days when I actually used the library, usually after trying to find something unsuccessfully for hours on Altavista and Lycos; and then Google came along, all flashy with its optimized webpages and smart and efficient algorithms. And that's when I got hooked.

An article in slate magazine reveals a scary hypothesis - we are literally addicted to information. From the article, whenever we get thrilled about the world of ideas, about making intellectual connections, about divining meaning, it is the knowledge seeking circuits in our brain that are firing. The juice that fuels the seeking system is the neurotransmitter dopamine. The dopamine circuits "promote states of eagerness and directed purpose" and it's a state humans love to be in. So good does it feel that we seek out activities, or substances, that keep this system aroused—cocaine and amphetamines, drugs of stimulation, are particularly effective at stirring it. Our internal sense of time is believed to be controlled by the dopamine system. People with hyperactivity disorder have a shortage of dopamine in their brains, which a recent study suggests may be at the root of the problem. For them even small stretches of time seem to drag. Another article in the Atlantic last year, "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" speculates that our constant Internet scrolling is remodeling our brains to make it nearly impossible for us to give sustained attention to a long piece of writing. Like the lab rats, we keep hitting "enter" to get our next fix.

So there you have it, reading tweets and YouTube comments is the same as doing cocaine. I wonder if there are detox clinics for us poor souls.

Of Merit, Reservation and Merits of Reservation

2009-08-13T18:28:00.000-07:00

I felt a little disappointed after reading the following article in Times of India the other day: IITs can't expel students on merit excuse: SC (emphasis mine). The Supreme Court directed IIT Delhi to reconsider its decision to expel 5 students after their grades did not meet the minimum requirements. Although, the SC acknowledged that "the petitioners were not able to secure the required credits as against the stipulated minimum requirement for continuation of their studies”, yet it ordered IIT Delhi to re-enroll the students.

The whole paragraph looks unbelievable until you add the "missing piece"---the students belonged to SC/ST category. Some people would now find the puzzle cohesively complete and argue that the decision was correct. I have been against the dilution of IIT as an institution and as a brand since the proposed expansion as well as the subsequent dropping cutoffs in the entrance examination. Reservations are needed and make more sense at the basic levels of education---making primary and secondary school education more accessible and widely available---but should have no place at graduate level where according to me, only merit and performance should prevail. Tripling the number of IITs without any resources and slashing down passing marks to merely 18% for the entrance examination is unjust both towards the IIT system and the students.

Marketing students are taught case studies about brand dilution of Pierre Cardin, a popular fashion designer. From the article, the Pierre Cardin name was licensed to appear on over 900 marginal products such as push chairs, olive oil, frying pans, floor tiles, sardines, orthopedic mattresses, socks, ‘Memory' pillows, phone holders, pens, coffee pots and thermoses. Pierre Cardin products were retailing at knock down prices in discount shops and the brand was seen on paraphernalia that detracted from the brand's core values. Pierre Cardin himself, though, defends his licensing position by stating, the €30m profits it generates for him a year aside, that why shouldn't his brand be accessible to everyone? He even adds: "If someone asked me to do toilet paper, I'd do it. Why not?"

It is sad to see IITs being pushed down the same path whereby quantity is promoted over quality and merit is considered an excuse. The IITs were created to train scientists and engineers, with the aim of developing a skilled workforce to support the economic and social development of India---too bad our focus is shifting from skilled to workforce.

Best Buy sells HDTVs for $9.99 (almost)

2009-08-12T14:18:00.000-07:00

This one is pretty good: Best Buy was offering 52in 120 Hz Samsung 1080p HDTV for $9.99 on its website since evening yesterday to about 11 AM in the morning today (the normal price is $1699.99). The news of the "deal" spread around the web quite fast through blogosphere appearing on Gizmodo, Reddit, Digg and shared through Facebook. I ordered one as well to see if Best Buy would actually go through with their posted price; will they take this hit for the subsequent PR boost and potential customer loyalty. Unfortunately, the following mail from Best Buy dashed my hopes:

No Shit Sherlock

2009-08-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

Data mining experts are very wary of the pitfalls of Data dredging which simply means finding relationships where none exist. This can happen quite easily when you are learning models with insufficient data, over fitting your models, or simply mistaking correlation for causation. One of the best techniques which explain Data dredging is called the Texas Sharpshooter Method. It goes something like this: The Texas Sharpshooter sprays the side of a barn with gunfire. He then draws a bull's eye around a cluster of bullet holes that occurred randomly. He then says: 'See, what a good shot I am!'.

I read this article today in The Financial Express: Women eat less on a date, Men don't care and I couldn't help applying the same concept here: News dredging. It is interesting in itself that somebody is actually doing such superfluous research and somebody is actually funding it. But what is more surprising is that The Financial Express finds bandwidth and resources for such articles despite the world being in a financial crisis. There are of course others who are guilty of the same crime: Diet and exercise makes you healthy, Drunk driving is bad for you, Too many meetings make you grumpy, etc.

Non Photorealistic Rendering

2009-08-04T11:49:00.001-07:00

With SIGGRAPH going on in New Orleans these days, I feel like talking about an image processing project I did a while back. Me and my friend worked on an iPhone app (article here) called vSketch. It converts any photo on your iPhone or shot from the camera to a pencil sketch and a painting (called Non Photorealistic Rendering or NPR for short). We used Canny edge detector for generating the pencil sketch and Image segmentation and bilateral median filtering algorithms for making the paintings. I extended the same concept to videos and made NPR clips of some movie trailers. Check them out here and let me know what do you think.

Ying: Microsoft (Bing) - Yahoo search deal

2009-08-02T23:41:00.000-07:00

Microsoft and Yahoo! (Tip: click the exclamation mark on Yahoo homepage) announced a joint search deal on 29th July, 2009 whereby Microsoft (Bing) will power Yahoo's search while Yahoo "will become the exclusive worldwide relationship sales force for both companies' premium search advertisers". Latest comscore data shows that Google enjoys 65% search share while the newly formed Ying consortium has 28% [Techcrunch]. The search deal is a 10 year agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo whereby Yahoo will get 88% of the search ad revenue on Yahoo properties for the first 5 years with a guaranteed payment for the first 18 months.

Yahoo stock (YHOO) fell by more than 15% in the following two days with investors fearing that Yahoo got the bad end of the deal since there was no upfront cash payment. I think this may be a little short-sighted---the search game needs patience;it is as much about shifting brand loyalty these days as it is about algorithms. Yahoo has always been fostering innovation in the search space, for instance BOSS and SearchMonkey, but has lacked in the brand loyalty department. Although, Eric Schmidt has maintained that brand loyalty is a myth and users are "one-click away" from using another search engine, I think brand loyalty with search engines is definitely a reality today with more and more people equating Google with search or more broadly as the entrance to the web.

Marketing jargon aside, I think this is a positive step for both Microsoft and Yahoo. It gives Ying an equal footing in search volume on par with Google which according to me, is a pivotal signal in search algorithms. Search has an important feedback loop whereby a search engine can improve the results to a query based on user click-through patterns and query refinement patterns. Ying with a joint share of 28% search volume should now have a large dataset of user sessions to mine through to pick out the best search results for those tough queries which the algorithms can't resolve themselves.

Playing the player

2009-08-02T15:42:00.000-07:00

I love playing Poker, particularly Texas Hold'em. It is one of the very few casino games where you have control over your bets and your losses. Luck has a smaller role in poker as compared to other games like Roulette and a good poker player can further his winnings by playing the player and not only the game.

For the uninitiated, Texas hold 'em is the most popular poker game in the casinos and poker card rooms across North America and Europe. Hold 'em is a community card game where each player may use any combination of the five community cards and the player's own two hole cards to make a poker hand. More information on poker hands here.

But good poker players don't always rely on good cards to win. Remember, you only have to have a better hand than your opponent to win the pot. I have seen pocket A-A bluffed by 2-3 off suite, pocket K-K forced to fold by 8-J. A balanced mix of aggression and patience should win you money most of the time and keep your opponents on their toes---and if you happen to have a poker face like Phil Ivey, then you have the whole package to test your skills against the world's best at the World Series of Poker.

Bonus clip of Phil Ivey's excellent read on his opponent:

Going Viral

2009-08-01T23:49:00.000-07:00

"The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives (such as product sales) through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of pathological and computer viruses." [Wikipedia]

The advent of the YouTwitFace era has made it easier than ever to share your thoughts and your creativity with everyone. Each social network is essentially a large graph where we are the nodes and our friendship relationships are the edges. Combined with the six degrees of separation hypothesis and the fact that social network diameter shrinks as the network expands, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, etc are shaping up to be the Advertising Platform 2.0; Viral marketing without spending $$$ and the potential to reach out to millions of consumers with the click of a 'share' button.

The earliest Viral Marketing campaign that I can remember is the BMW campaign in 2002 whereby BMW made a series of short films to promote brand awareness. No stones were left unturned as BMW used World class directors (Guy Ritchie, Ang Lee) and actors (Clive Owen) which translated to a huge budget (All videos here).

Cut to 2009 where the following amateur wedding video shot the Chris Brown song 'Forever' to billboard top hits and increased the song's sales on iTunes several fold.

Advertising cost: 0$, Revenue from video going viral (which went to the album publishers): $$$. I guess the following sums up the social web aptly:
Web1.0: We make the content, we make the money
Web2.0: You make the content, we make the money

Metro Mishaps

2009-07-23T17:18:00.000-07:00

Delhi Metro began its operation on 24th December, 2004 and was a welcome respite to hundreds of thousands of daily commuters from overcrowded buses, finicky autowallahs and painful traffic jams. It serves millions of people daily and has helped in relieving congestion in highly crowded areas like Chandni Chowk and Kashmere Gate. Even more impressive has been the speed with which the Metro has been constructed with minimal disruption to normal traffic with construction being done round the clock.

However, a recent mishap (third in the last twenty days) on one of the metro lines under construction has brought the whole process under scrutiny. CAG recently submitted its report on DMRC operations saying the swift construction is being done at a heavy price; alleging that standards compliance is not up to the mark and that corners are being cut in order to complete the current phase by next year in time for the Commonwealth games. Dr. E. Shreedharan, a man whose name is synonymous with the Delhi Metro and its success, offered to resign claiming full responsibility. He, however clarified that the incidents happened due to lax measures on the part of third party vendors part of the Delhi Metro project and agreed that stricter regulation is necessary to keep them in check.

Though I agree that bad practices may have crept in due to the hectic schedule, I hope Dr. Sreedharan doesn't have to resign on this issue. We need more action oriented people like him in the right places in the bureaucracy---people who have the vision and the drive to get things done (the Delhi Metro has been part of the Delhi Master Plan since 1960s). He is 77 years old right now but age notwithstanding, I sincerely wish that he sees through the completion of the project till Phase 4 (2020).

Of humility and humiliation

2009-07-21T14:50:00.000-07:00

The Indian media and politicos are riled up these days about the frisking of Honorable Ex-President of India Dr. Abdul Kalam by Continental airlines while traveling to New York from Delhi in April. Houses are in turmoil, FIRs have been filed and show cause notices have been issued. Personally, I have always been a little irritated by the extra security check that American airlines and Continental airlines have at the aerobridge before boarding the aircraft. This is in addition to the full baggage and security check at the airport which everyone has to go through before entering the waiting area. Randomly selecting a man who has been the President of the India and (most likely) accompanied by Z-level security, for frisking sounds insulting, a wastage of resources and frankly stupid. Continental airlines is unrepentant and cite the TSA requirements for aerobridge security checks on flights bound to USA.

My respect for Dr. Kalam has compounded even more after this incident. The incident happened in April and the airlines' officials recount Dr. Kalam's cooperation in the security check (no VIP tantrums). He most likely didn't think twice about the issue---however, it is now being milked for all its worth by different political parties for their personal motives to attack the government particularly after India signed the End-Use Monitoring Agreement (EUMA). Ironically, these are the same parties who didn't consent to let him continue for a second-term as President and yet are 'personally' insulted after this incident.

Of mobile growth and emerging markets

2009-07-20T14:27:00.001-07:00

The iPhone, Palm Pre, G1, Blackberry storm, etc have made smartphones truly mainstream---they're not considered business luxuries anymore but a daily use device. The most attractive feature that these devices have is the availability of a standards compliant browser shipped with the device. Watching videos on YouTube on top of Mt. Rushmore on your phone - not a problem. Unfortunately, the phones are popular in US and Europe only primarily for 2 reasons: firstly, they are very expensive for an ordinary consumer in the developing world and secondly, 3G and 4G frameworks which make internet browsing painless are non-existent in developing countries.

But raw numbers scream for attention. The graphic below shows the number of users on the internet in different countries.

China and India are clearly the frontrunners in the explosive online growth in recent years (140% and 50%) respectively. And combined with the mobile usage stats on WIkipedia, they are poised to become the next big investment markets for mobile phones. If Google Adsense has taught us anything, it is the power of the long tail.

Of power struggles, showdowns and cheap politics

2009-07-17T11:51:00.000-07:00

The UP political scene is ablaze these days with the ongoing tussle between Mayawati and Congress with UP Congress Chief Rita Joshi trapped in between. Rita Joshi allegedly made derogatory remarks against Chief Minister Mayawati at a UP Congress meeting a few days ago. Ms. Joshi was addressing a gathering about the law and order situation in Moradabad, UP when the issue of the recent Dalit women rape scandal was raised. She was bewildered at how each victim was given a compensation of mere Rs.25,000 while the official in charge of compensation distribution came in a helicopter which cost the state lakhs of rupees. She expressed bemusement over the insufficient compensation and in the heat of the moment (and to gain some political cookie points no doubt), exclaimed 'How Mayawati would feel if she had been raped and treated like this'.

(Note: Surprisingly, I found it very hard to find the details of the whole episode on any indian website; in the end I found it on Huffington Post)

Within a few hours all hell broke loose. Ms. Mayawati, who recently unveiled a statue in her name in UP herself), wanted Ms. Joshi made an example of. With BSP and Congress tensions already high post elections, this incident added fuel to the fire. Agreed that the remarks were in poor taste, but low blows and cheap comments laced with political fervor are part of Indian politics. Rita Joshi's house was gutted in a fire started by BSP activists the same night, while she was arrested in Ghaziabad while on her way to Delhi. She was slapped with 'derogatory comments against women' and 'repressing lower caste' charges and put into 14 day custody.

Ms. Joshi apologized for her remarks but she has been abandoned by her own party on this issue. BJP on the other hand, is naturally calling for Sonia Gandhi's blood (as they do everytime) but Mayawati is looking to squeeze all political juice out of this incident.

(Note: Political humiliation is not new in India. Mr. Karunanidhi and Mr. Murasoli Maran were dragged out their beds in the middle of the night when Ms. Jayalalitha came to power.)

World Football Challenge

2009-07-14T16:39:00.000-07:00

World football challenge is happening in US next week with 6 matches between 19th Jul and 26th Jul. AC Milan, Inter Milan, Chelsea and Club America would be sweating it out for the world football champion crown. The matches will be held in Palo Alto, Pasadena, Atlanta, Baltimore, Foxborough and Arlington.

KDD 2009 reading list

2009-07-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

KDD 2009 is going on in Paris these days. From the ACM website:

The annual ACM SIGKDD conference is the premier international forum for data mining researchers and practitioners from academia, industry, and government to share their ideas, research results and experiences. KDD-09 will feature keynote presentations, oral paper presentations, poster sessions, workshops, tutorials, panels, exhibits, demonstrations, and the KDD Cup competition.

Here is my reading list for the interesting papers in the conference this year in the areas of social networks, recommendation systems, etc:

Analyzing Patterns of User Content Generation in Online Social Networks
Co-evolution of Social and Affiliation Networks
Collaborative Filtering with Temporal Dynamics
Meme-tracking and the Dynamics of the News Cycle
TANGENT: A Novel, "Surprise-Me", Recommendation Algorithm
Tell Me Something I Don't Know: Randomization Strategies for Iterative Data Mining
Time Series Shapelets: A New Primitive for Data Mining

Netflix prize claimed

2009-06-30T08:27:00.000-07:00

The Netflix prize was claimed earlier this week by team Bellkor's Pragmatic Chaos (BPC). All the contestants have a month to improve BPC's results and stake their claim for the $1 million bounty. For those who don't know, Netflix announced a prize of $1 million in 2006 to the first person/team that could improve their recommendation engine accuracy by 10%. Apart from the grand prize, the competition had yearly progress prizes of $50,000. The contest has been running for almost 3 years now and has been a topic of discussion at premier data mining conferences like KDD and ICDM.

According to me, this has been one of the best investments that Netflix could have made with a million bucks lying around. For a measly million dollars, they have obtained valuable research to improve their recommendation algorithm by 10% which potentially translates to more satisfied users; ergo more revenue. The more important outcome of the Netflix Prize however, has been the wealth of research in collaborative filtering (all publicly available) and collaboration (the top team has 7 members from 4 different companies and research labs) that the contest has fostered. I suggest we increase KDD cup prizes to $50,000 every year (maybe charge 50$ extra in registration fees) to foster similar feeling of cooperation and competition in the data mining research community every year.

This week in Sports

2009-06-29T12:58:00.000-07:00

Roger Federer is to Tennis as Sachin Tendulkar is to Cricket or Kobe Bryant is to Basketball. I usually find tennis matches quite boring but Fedex's serves, his ground strokes and his rivalry with Rafa have made the sport quite enjoyable. Not content with 14 grand slam titles, Fedex has record scorecards with individual players as well---for instance, he is 11-0 up against Robin Soderling whom he brushed aside in Wimbledon earlier this week.

In other news, the world returned to normalcy when Brazil beat USA 3-2 in the Confederations cup 2009 final in South Africa earlier this week. USA played some good soccer to one-up Spain 2-0 in the semi finals but ran into Brazil in the finals. To their credit, USA were up 2-0 till half-time, but Brazil came back strongly in the second half to claim the cup for the third consecutive year and reaffirm themselves as soccer kings of the world.

Inspiration in advertising

2009-06-17T17:55:00.000-07:00

Gatorade is running this commercial on Television these days:

You will hardly remember what the commercial is for unless you actually pay attention at the end but I am sure you will remember the commercial - particularly the tune. A completely opposite approach when compared to the intel advertisement I posted a few days back:

The Gatorade commercial is more about the wow effect while the Intel commercial focuses more on the company, what it's about and its strengths. Different approaches, great advertising.

Bollywood on YouTube

2009-06-16T15:37:00.000-07:00

A fix for all Bollywood fans on YouTube: Bollywood on YouTube
The page provides a one stop destination for recent and popular bollywood content on YouTube. See you guys there!

Unity in Numbers

2009-06-05T10:09:00.000-07:00

One of the better blogs I follow: Strat.in
Insightful articles discussing almost every topic under the sun---be it technology, finance, green ventures, politics, sports. That's the strength of having a big, talented team of bloggers---not only are the articles fun to read, they are updated fairly regularly as well. A few recent posts from the blog that I enjoyed:

Keep up the good work guys!

My spoils in Vegas on Facebook

2009-06-02T13:09:00.000-07:00

My spoils in Vegas is now available on Facebook as well. Share your spoils with friends and strangers alike.

Firefox extension development

2009-05-21T21:53:00.000-07:00

Writing a firefox extension isn't hard - it is like pinning the tail on a donkey ... with a blindfold ... in a dark room. Firebug has made us so nonchalant about javascript and CSS bugs, it feels very handicapped as a developer when you are messing with the firefox chrome without firebug. There are plenty of tutorials, tips and tricks on the web - by far the most useful one is on mozilla's site: Firefox extensions. I am still testing out a few features of the extension - I will keep everyone posted as the extension matures and is ready for release.