Louis Dorard - Blog

Finally, all my PhD code released under GPL!

Louis Dorard — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 10:26:31 +0000

The Bats toolbox (Bandit Algorithms and Tree Search) for Matlab is my first effort to release a significant amount of clean, open source code — and it comes with a great sense of achievement! Read the story behind it in this post, and check out the toolbox at http://louis.dorard.me/bats.

My PhD contribution on Tree Search

Louis Dorard — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 17:49:08 +0000

As I am progressing with the writing up of my thesis, here is an attempt to explain what my main contribution is about, in a way that should be understandable by people with a university-level background in mathematics. I am using Machine Learning techniques to search large spaces that have tree structures. An example of this is game AI where we look for sequences of moves that make us win the game. Read the full post...

Exploration vs exploitation: new workshop

Louis Dorard — Mon, 21 Mar 2011 15:51:50 +0000

On-line problems such as website optimisation require to trade exploration and exploitation in order to learn and optimise an unknown target. As you may already know from my Twitter feed, I am organising a challenge and a workshop on that topic on 2 July 2011 in Bellevue, Washington, during the 28th International Conference on Machine Learning. We're calling for papers!

Who needs infrastructure?

Louis Dorard — Wed, 05 Jan 2011 11:36:49 +0000

This is the follow-up to my previous post, "Creating a webapp is so much easier these days!", focusing now on infrastructures to host web applications. From your website and content to your application, see how cloud hosting can help you scale, and how streamlined deployment environments can save you the pain of setting up and maintaining a complex infrastructure. Read the full post...

Creating a webapp is so much easier these days!

Louis Dorard — Fri, 31 Dec 2010 18:27:12 +0000

Keeping things simple, sticking to conventions by default, not repeating oneself... These are the keys to making software development (relatively) fun, easy and quick. Powerful frameworks for webapp development have appeared in recent years and apply these key principles. Read the full post...

Connecting Research and Web Entrepreneurship

Louis Dorard — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 22:34:01 +0000

Here's a suggestion for researchers looking to commercialise the technologies they develop: release an API, let other people package your tech into a product that addresses a need, and deliver value out of it. Read the full post...

Bodybuilding techniques for productivity at work!

Louis Dorard — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 15:00:04 +0000

Supersets are combinations of two exercises: you perform a set of one, followed by a set of the other, with minimal rest in between. Used by bodybuilders, they are also interesting techniques for increasing productivity at work, and getting a fresh perspective on things. Read the full post...

New technologies to change people’s lives: the Siri case

Louis Dorard — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 15:59:48 +0000

Siri is a ground-breaking Virtual Private Assistant that runs on iPhone and was recently acquired by Apple. It is of particular interest to me as it builds on years of research in machine learning and intelligent systems. It is also a success story of "research meets entrepreneurship" and a great example of how the commercialisation of new technologies can change the world. Read the full post...

More feedback: which tools are available?

Louis Dorard — Mon, 06 Sep 2010 13:49:15 +0000

This is the follow-up to my previous post, "Feedback, feedback, feedback", focusing now on tools available to gather feedback. Get spontaneous feedback and create user-generated content. Run surveys. Observe and hear what your users say about you. Gather visual and technical feedback.

Feedback, feedback, feedback

Louis Dorard — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:00:47 +0000

In this post I will motivate user feedback when building a product, I will be discussing how this feedback should be used and how to take advantage of face to face sessions with (potential) users. This will be followed by another post focussing on web tools available to gather feedback.