Is Collaboration the Key to Big Data Progress?
May 22, 2015
The article titled Big Data Must Haves: Capacity, Compute, Collaboration on GCN offers insights into the best areas of focus for big data researchers. The Internet2 Global Summit is in D.C. this year with many exciting panelists who support the emphasis on collaboration in particular. The article mentions the work being presented by several people including Clemson professor Alex Feltus,
“…his research team is leveraging the Internet2 infrastructure, including its Advanced Layer 2 Service high-speed connections and perfSONAR network monitoring, to substantially accelerate genomic big data transfers and transform researcher collaboration…Arizona State University, which recently got 100 gigabit/sec connections to Internet2, has developed the Next Generation Cyber Capability, or NGCC, to respond to big data challenges. The NGCC integrates big data platforms and traditional supercomputing technologies with software-defined networking, high-speed interconnects and visualization for medical research.”
Arizona’s NGCC provides the essence of the article’s claims, stressing capacity with Internet2, several types of computing, and of course collaboration between everyone at work on the system. Feltus commented on the importance of cooperation in Arizona State’s work, suggesting that personal relationships outweigh individual successes. He claims his own teamwork with network and storage researchers helped him find new potential avenues of innovation that might not have occurred to him without thoughtful collaboration.
Chelsea Kerwin, May 22, 2014
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Oracle is Rocking COLLABORATE
April 15, 2015
News is already sprouting about the COLLABORATE 15: Technology and Applications Forum for the Oracle Community, Oracle’s biggest conference of the year. BusinessWire tells us that Oracle CEO Mark Hurd and Chief Information Officer and Senior VP Mark Sunday will be keynote speakers, says “Oracle Applications Users Group Announces Oracle’s Key Role at COLLABORATE 15.”
Hurd and Sunday will be delivering key insights into Oracle and the industry at their scheduled talks:
“On Tuesday, Sunday discusses the need to keep a leadership edge in digital transformation, with a special focus on IT leadership in the cloud. Sunday will build upon his keynote from two years ago, giving attendees better insight into adopting a sound cloud strategy in order to ensure greater success. On Wednesday, Hurd shares his insights on how Oracle continues to drive innovation and protect customer investments with applications and technology. Oracle remains the leading organization in the cloud, and Hurd’s discussion focuses on how to modernize businesses in order to thrive in this space.”
Oracle is really amping up the offerings at this year’s conference. They will host the Oracle User Experience Usability Lab, Oracle Proactive Support Sessions, Oracle Product Roadmap Session, and more to give attendees the chance to have direct talks with Oracle experts to learn about strategies, functionality, products, and new resources to improve their experience and usage. Attendees will also be able to take accreditation tests for key product areas.
COLLABORATE, like many conferences, offers attendees the chance to network with Oracle experts, get professional feedback, and meet others in their field. Oracle is very involved in this conference and is dedicated to putting its staff and products at the service of its users.
Whitney Grace, April 15, 2015
Stephen E Arnold, Publisher of CyberOSINT at www.xenky.com
Want to Lose Weight? Google Results Could Make You Fat
November 18, 2014
I never know what to make of article that report about research results. Mistakes that would not fly in a Stats 101 class are the norm. I did work through “Poor-Quality Weight Loss Advice Often Appears First in an Online Search.”
Here’s the passage that I highlighted with my new bright pink marker:
The study reveals that the first page of results, using a search engine like Google, is likely to display less reliable sites instead of more comprehensive, high-quality sites, and includes sponsored content that makes unrealistic weight loss promises.
I would not be surprised if there were a Federal grant boosting this ground breaking, never before thought of, issue.
I find the results presented by advertising supported search engines incredibly useful, relevant, and on point. The notion that one might have to use a system other than Bing or Google to get accurate information is a new thought.
I liked this bit about the timeliness and rigor of the research too:
In 2012, the researchers accessed 103 websites for queries specific to weight loss and scored the content on its adherence to available evidence-based guidelines for weight loss. Medical, government and university sites ranked highest, along with blogs.
Yes, blogs and governmental entities are fonts of accurate information. With data from a mind boggling 103 Web sites to evaluate, I am amazed with the speed with which the information found its way to an online publication.
Stephen E Arnold, November 18, 2014
Libraries: A Good Thing
December 31, 2013
When you cannot locate information on Google, what does one do? Some people just guess? Others use spreadsheets and make up data? Quite a few people go to the library. Well, “quite a few” may be one of those unsupported factoids about modern life.
Navigate to Pew Research and check out the outfit’s most recent report How Americans Value Public Libraries in Their Communities. You can find it at http://bit.ly/1bLMEOt for now.
The report contains good news and bad news. Here’s a positive finding:
91% of Americans who have ever used a public library say it is not difficult to find what they’re looking for, including 35% who say it is “very easy.”
On the other hand, the Pew Report says:
“54% of Americans have used a public library in the past 12 months, and 72% live in a “library house hold.”
If accurate, this statement identifies a Pew sampling issue and underscores the need to reach the 46 percent of folks who don’t use the library more than once in a blue moon.
Since my team started Marketing Library Services in the late 1980s, library marketing has remained an important job. I sold this publication to Information Today and the MLS information service, like library marketing itself, remains mostly unchanged over the last 20 years. That in itself makes clear one aspect of the library market: It is slow moving.
I noticed the last time I used our local library that useful online resources were no longer available to patrons. The budget pressures on libraries are significant. The vendors of commercial databases have priced their commercial reference products so that only a few institutions can afford them.
The Pew Report does little to lessen my concern that easily distorted free Internet information is creating a false sense of “research security.” Libraries are an asset. I want to see them become more important, offer more commercial database access, and communicate that there is more to research than letting Google’s personalized research provide information automatically.
Here’s hoping for a more vital role for libraries in 2014.
Stephen E Arnold, December 31, 2013
A Translation Guide for Scientific Papers
December 17, 2013
I think this is supposed to be funny. I am not sure that Elsevier, ACM, and other real academic publishers will see the humor, however. You may be able to find the original translation table at this Twitter link. No guarantees, so you know that I am indifferent to Google’s rules and regulations for important content. Let me highlight three of the “translations” from @sehnaoui:
- “It has long been known” means “I did not look up the original reference”
- “Correct within an order of magnitude” translates as “Wrong”
- “It is clear that much additional work will be required before a complete understanding of this phenomenon occurs” means “I don’t understand.”
- “It is hoped that this study will stimulate further investigations in this field” connotes “I quit.”
These phrases appear in information retrieval papers and in text mining, predictive analytics, and natural language processing studies.
Stephen E Arnold, December 17, 2013
Libraries: A Reminder of How Research Used to Be
December 5, 2013
A library invites search. A library experience can be social or solitary. One can proceed by asking a reference desk staffer where something is. One can locate books by wandering around. The word “serendipity” applies to this approach. One can use a card catalog with actual paper cards.
Image source: http://www.bibliotheque-institutdefrance.fr/catalogues/catalogues.html
Whoops. Wrong tense.
One used to be able to search in this way. No more. On a recent visit to the local library, I did speak with a reference desk professional. We browsed a computer screen looking for information. Unfortunately due to commercial database vendors’ policies, the information I sought was not available. One of my team called the commercial database vendor to find out how to access the specific information, and we did not reach anyone. Neither our voice mail nor our email elicited an answer. No joy.
I walked around the library. When I was a much younger version of myself, I found great satisfaction in the serendipity method. I recall learning about giving talks by browsing and coming across an illustrated volume by “Redpath.” I recall only the single word, and I have not been able to locate that particular volume again. No joy.
If you recall the libraries with books, magazines, card catalogs, and vertical files, I have a recommendation for you. Navigate to The Atlantic and peruse “The Evolution of the College Library.”
I have access to a wealth of information on my local system and via the Internet. I have a number of information retrieval systems and tools. I even have a few books that I keep as a reminder of the good old days.
Know what?
None of the modern tools is as satisfying to use as a traditional library. For me, I enjoy the physical space and the experience of using a traditional book or reference book. I even like the distinctive odor of ink on paper. I can live without microfilm, but it was fun once to figure out how to locate a reel, thread it, and look into the past in odd, slightly off kilter representations of a page.
There were filters just like there are today. But there were, as now, ways around them. What’s lost? More than an old-fashioned, labor-intensive approach to research. The physicality of the library was for me as important as the collection.
Stephen E Arnold, December 5, 2013
SearchHub is More than a Forum
December 3, 2012
SearchHub.org is the latest open source community resource offered by LucidWorks in support of Lucene and Solr developers specifically. More than a blog or a forum, SearchHub is an interactive community to exchange ideas. One new item of interest is a session video, “Solr 4: The SolrCloud Architecture.” Read this description to see if this video might be helpful for you or your organization:
“In this talk, Lucene/Solr committer Mark Miller will discuss the low level architecture and design decisions around SolrCloud and distributedLucene Revolution 2012 Download Presentation indexing. Come learn about the latest work on Solr’s new scaling and fault tolerance solution – how it works and how we built it.”
In addition to this session video, there are screencasts, other conference videos, and many how-to instructional pieces. Also, there is a wonderful compilation of resources on the Reference Materials page. Documentation, comparisons, white papers, and tutorials are all included.
SearchHub.org is another way for LucidWorks to give back to the open source community, supporting Apache Lucene and Solr. However, some users may benefit even more from the utilization of LucidWorks products including LucidWorks Search and LucidWorks Big Data. These products are ready to go out-of-the-box and are supported by the industry-vetted power of LucidWorks.
Emily Rae Aldridge, December 03, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Wikipedia Studies Itself
August 31, 2012
We think studies about oneself are fascinating. TechEYE.net shares our enthusiasm in “Wikipedia is Accurate Says, er, Wikipedia Study.” Last autumn the Wikimedia Foundation tapped Epic, an “e-learning” company, and researchers at Oxford University to perform an assessment of Wikipedia’s accuracy. The results of the reflectively funded study? Wikipedia was found to be more accurate than Encyclopaedia Britannica. What an upset! Writer Nick Ferrell notes:
“For the record, if you wrote a page on Wikipedia about yourself, you would find that one of its teams of editors had deleted it for being advertising. However when Wikipedia commissions a study into itself and reports that it is wonderful, this is apparently ok.”
Apparently. Incidentally, a 2005 external peer review showed an average of four mistakes per article, as compared to Britannica’s three. The free encyclopedia has improved markedly, it seems. The new report also found Wikipedia articles tend to be more up-to-date. No surprise there; I’ll give them that one, at least.
Ferrell observes:
“What makes us smell a rat is that the report said that there were little differences between the two on style and overall quality score. We were not aware that the Encyclopaedia Britannica articles were penned by a person with a crayon, like some of the Wikipedia articles appear to have been. Nor does the Encyclopaedia Britannica employ people with faked doctorates.”
Good point. I think I’ll wait on an objective study before I draw any conclusions.
Cynthia Murrell, August 31, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Vertical Searches for User Manuals
August 4, 2012
Makeuseof presents a handy collection of vertical search sites in “Can’t Find a User Manual for Your Gear? Search These Specialist Websites.” Writer Saikat Basu observes that, in the excitement of a new purchase, most of us stuff our user manuals into some corner and forget about them—until we need them! He comments:
“User manuals – those thick (or thin) soft covered sheaf’s of paper with multi-lingual instructions and weird hieroglyphics that we don’t bother to read. . . . We all have rummaged through the house looking for the user manual we ‘misplaced’. No luck.
“Here’s where a bit of smarts comes in. The meticulous guy with foresight will either scan it and keep a softcopy in his computer, or look for a softcopy that’s usually available as PDF on the manufacturer’s site.
“There’s a third option – a bunch of specialist websites which does the hard work for us lazybones, and stockpiles user manuals for us to search and download.”
So, instead of combing through the filing cabinet or, worse, those paper-piles every office seems to collect, turn to this list of sites that can put the desired information at your fingertips at the speed of, well, of your Internet connection. Basu details six sites, describing the purpose behind each, how it works, and what he values most about each one. For example, he likes the forums on Safe Manuals, and appreciates the teardown diagrams at iFixit.
The other four sites that made the list include Retrevo, Manuals Online, eSpares, and Free Manuals (aka TheManuals.com). I recommend tucking the article away for your next manual-related urgency. At the end of the article, Basu puts out the call for reader recommendations, so check the comments section for similar sites.
Cynthia Murrell, August 4, 2012
Sponsored by ArnoldIT.com, developer of Augmentext
Crowd Sourced Dictionary Holds Promise
July 24, 2012
Dictionaries become part of our lives shortly after we start to read and many of us remember the classic textbook copy of Webster. The old texts seem to gather dust, and the addition of a crowd source dictionary will not increase their popularity.
A new dictionary is in the works according to Stylist Magazine’s article “The World’s First Crowd-Sourced Dictionary.” Dictionary publishers Collins are inviting the general public to contribute to their online dictionary, and become involved in the evolution of the English language.
This new online reference will contain not only words, but some of the phrases from slang between friends to abbreviations, jargon or made-up buzzwords, all input by the users.
Anyone can be a part of the process and submitting content is simple, as:
“Users just need to log and submit their phrase of choice, which will go through an editorial evaluation and if accepted appear on the definition page, with your name forever imprinted as the creator of that word.”
“If there’s a word you use with your friends that you think is absolute genius, now’s your chance to let the world know. Collins will also giving away prizes to a person who submits a word every day until the 31st August 2012.”
The thing that makes Collins stand out from other user content sources like Wikipedia is the moderation and approval aspect. A crowd sourced dictionary is not only an interesting concept, but may bring the occasional chuckle as we watch trendy buzzwords come and go.
Jennifer Shockley, July 24, 2012
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