Toronto Hackathon
June 8, 2013
Are hackers a good thing or a bad thing? In the realm of computers, the term used to simply refer to those breaking into the systems of others (bad), but has gained some positive definitions along the way. “Hacking” can now refer to heavily modifying one’s own system or devising unique solutions to challenging problems. PRWeb informs us that “Semantria and Lexalytics Excited to Provide Unlimited API Access for Viafoura Hackathon.” I think organizers had one of the less nefarious definitions in mind. The write-up informs us:
“The Viafoura Hackathon is part of Big Data Week, an international festival focusing on the social, political, technological and commercial impacts of Big Data.
“We’re very pleased to partner up with Semantria and Lexalytics on this Hackathon,” said Ali Ghafour, Viafoura Founder and CTO. ‘We’re excited to see what people will come up with by combining large datasets from media companies with high-end Natural Language Processing technology. Viafoura loves these types of challenges, and we are happy to have Semantria/Lexalytics and the Toronto development community join us.'”
Perhaps I’m a purist, but personally I’d rather a term not gather meanings like a dog in an open field gathers grass seeds. Nevertheless, I sincerely hope all the “hackers” had a good time.
Large media companies rely on Viafoura for audience engagement and monetization solutions. The company, which is headquartered in Toronto, hosted Big Data Week in recognition of big data’s booming importance.
Founded in 2003, Lexalytics creates text mining software for integration into third-party software. The company co-founded Semantria, a services and SAAS firm specializing in cloud-based text and sentiment analysis. That outfit launched in 2011.
Cynthia Murrell, June 08, 2013
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
