Nice Shirt!

Nice shirt!

I was walking down the hallway recently and somebody called out "Nice Shirt!" An unanticipated small ego boost(*) aside, I immediately looked at what I was wearing. A plain old shirt it was.

It got me thinking though. What is the dressing norm at PARC?

What are you wearing?

So, I did an unscientific survey of what people at PARC are wearing while walking from pod 6 on the first floor to pod 1 on second floor.

Type	Count
Long Sleeve Shirts Short Sleeve Shirts Polo Shirts T-Shirts	2 2 4 2

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(*) I went home and asked the boss. I am definitely less of a slob than before. Good to be grounded.

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Inference Engine and Applications

Inference Engine

One of the things that internet/web enables is to make low-cost data collection and analysis mostly a computational question. Add in the idea of "wisdom of crowd", then you have the making of PARC's inference engine technology - if you would allow for a gross simplification.

What the inference engine is good at is to identify items that may be linked in ways that is not always obvious. My favorite example is how the inference engine easily cracked the heavily redacted story on the location of a CIA agent's first assignment in How to catch a spy.

Web Chatters

But the same technique can also be used to identify emerging trends (chatters) on a specific topic. So, I used the Inference Engine to look at the top terms associated with the Sonia Sotomayor's nomination process to the US Supreme Court at Sotomayor Web Chatter Index.

And, indeed, it is interesting to see what are the top ranking terms associated with that process and how it points to specific concepts that come in and out of favor in the web crowd.

Private Corpus

Finally, it may be worth noting that the same technique can also be applied to data corpus beyond the visible internet. For example, eDiscovery in legal proceeding is a space where this capability would be very helpful by expanding beyond simple keyword search to a more nuanced understanding of how information linked to each other.

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Mobile Computing and Cloud Today

The Short half-life of Predictions

The hazard of the technology world is that the future is always just around the world. So, it is interesting to note that I have done an analysis of Cloud Computing earlier this year and one of the conclusions is that mobile computing will be a key influence on how people access the Cloud. Mobile, the next Cloud frontier?

Microsoft and Nokia's Mobile Cloud offering

It is, therefore, not a surprise to hear about how Microsoft and Nokia is joining force to offer standard productivity tools like Office for Nokia smart phones. Microsoft and Nokia to bring cloud computing to mobile phone users

What would be interesting to see if users finds the offering compelling. Mobile computing has its own set of form factor and operating norms and fitting the mental framework of productivity tools in that context would be a fascinating story.

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Sotomayor Web Chatter Index - Week 12

New items and faded topics

The term "111th" which refers to the fact that Justice Sotomayor is the 111th for the Supreme Court, continued its appearance in the top 20.

For the first time, "Malesko" and "Alito" both showed up in all three rankings. Would this presage the basis for the first analysis of the Supreme Court once she is sworn in and decisions are rendered?

More on the results

A reminder, if you are interested in finding out more about the result details or the inference engine used in this analysis, please let me know at yfjuan (at) parc (dot) com.

Results (top 20 terms ranked in the order of relevance with the most relevant on top)

Google	Yahoo	Microsoft
sonija leval sotomyaor judgeship rulings 111th stating sotomayor coxe gurfein gop malesko judging 68-31 chin ginsburg ruled eight legislator alito	sotomyaor sotomayor sonia souter malesko mcmahon destefano bronxdale alito ginsburg hispanic scotus nominee scotusblog supreme scalia hearings morgenthau 111th allowing	sotomayor alito scotus moynihan obama statehood souter 111th rulings destefano retiring scalia stating legislator ginsburg malesko cabranes scotusblog mahoney rendell

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Virtual World for a Neophyte

Video Games

I got recruited by an intern to participate in a study on virtual world. What specifically sold me on the idea is that I would get to play a "video game" - given my last formal training in video game dates around Donkey Kong on a hand-held.

Before the experiment started, I confessed to my lack of gaming context. And, with a knowing glance, the experimenter quickly gave me a tour on how things work in virtual world. For example, to navigate forward, back, left, and right, the keys are, respectively, W, S, A, and D.

At the end of the experiment, I was asked to fill out a questionnaire by hand. Again, with the experimenter's knowing glance I pre-apologize for my chicken scratch's illegibility and suggested that the collection be done via a keyboard next time.

A world of neophytes subjects

Later I found out that these were two of the most common concerns with PARC participants - don't even know the rudimentary controls and type better/faster than hand-write.

But, hey, the game was pretty cool!

PARC and Virtual World

I do not mean to imply that game playing is beneath PARC. As a matter of a fact, there is very active exploration on gaming and virtual worlds at both the technology and social interaction levels.

In the case of this experiment, however, the thing is that these very same people are also running the experiment. In other words, they are stuck with neophytes like me.

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Sotomayor Web Chatter Index - Week 11

Confirmed to the US Supreme Court

By a vote of 68-31, Sonia Sotomayor was confirmed as a Supreme Court justice on August 6th, 2009.

New items and faded topics

All the usual suspects such as "nlj (National Law Journal)", Foxnews, and "wsj.com" dropped off the top 20 list.

The new term that is making a rapid ascend is the term "111th" which, in case you missed the news, Justice Sotomayor is the 111th for the supreme court.

Next week, we will have the final installment on the top 20 analyses.

More on the results

A reminder, if you are interested in finding out more about the result details or the inference engine used in this analysis, please let me know at yfjuan (at) parc (dot) com.

Results (top 20 terms ranked in the order of relevance with the most relevant on top)

Google	Yahoo	Microsoft
sotomyaor stating sotomayor rulings sonia faced sued assail baer gop coxe 111th gurfein meant approval involving judging â nominees murders	sotomyaor sotomayor sonia souter malesko judgepedia mcmahon destefano bronxdale alito scotus ginsburg scotusblog nominee hispanic supreme judgeship hearings morgenthau tasini	alito sotomayor obamaâ scotus moynihan obama statehood 111th souter scotusblog retiring destefano malesko legislator politico cabranes noting mahoney stating judgeship

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ByOnic and T Rex's Peptides

Taste like a Chicken

You may have heard that dinosaurs are related to birds. A study on the soft tissue of a T.rex fossil pioneered the theory but there has been enough heated debate that several other teams have re-analyzed the data. See Dinosaur Study Backs Controversial Find in Science.

Suffice to say that PARC's Bioinformatic team entered the fray with ByOnic, a peptide identification program. And, indeed, T.rex is related to birds.

ByOnic

Beyond looking at a pre-historic top of the food chain animal, the technical advantage of ByOnic over the traditional peptide identification tools is in its ability to do "smart scoring". In other words, it has a more accurate way of matching observed spectra to "theoretical" spectra predicted from protein sequence.

For easy searches, a smart scorer like ByOnic beats the standard scorers by a margin of, say, 30%. However, as the complexity of the searches increase, such as the number of proteins, chemical modifications, mutations, spectra with more than one peptide, etc., the total advantage of smart scorer goes up significantly. In other words, a very smart scorer system should be just as good as manual analysis - without the manual work.

We believe ByOnic is almost there.

There are also other crowd pleasers features such as the ability to trade off speed and sensitivity to do large searches and "wild-card" modification to catch peptides with unanticipated modifications.

Work with ByOnic and PARC's Bioinformatic team

Please contact me if you are interested in trying out ByOnic for your peptide analysis. The PARC research team thinks that the T.rex analysis was "easy", say a 3 on a scale of 1 to 10. If you have searches in the difficult range of 8, 9, or 10, we would love to talk with you.

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Sotomayor Web Chatter Index - Week 10

Senate Confirmation Debate

Now that the Senate Judiciary Committee has endorsed the Supreme Court nomination of Judge Sonia Sotomayor, the nomination is now in the full Senate for debate.

New items and faded topics

The term "nlj (National Law Journal)" and its sister term "pubarticlenlj.jsp" have kept up its ranking. As a matter of a fact, it shot up to #1 in one of the engine results.

Foxnews has quickly lost its top 20 ranking while "wsj.com" continues to assert its relevance to this discussion. Also appearing for the first time is the term "Barack" and debuting as #1 no less. Similarly, "conservatives" made its top 20 appearance.

Finally, the term "dissented" which appeared in the top 20 last week kept its position this week.

More on the results

A reminder, if you are interested in finding out more about the result details or the inference engine used in this analysis, please let me know at yfjuan (at) parc (dot) com.

Results (top 20 terms ranked in the order of relevance with the most relevant on top)

Google	Yahoo	Microsoft
justices stating cityâ rulings dissented sotomayor sotomayorâ questioning proceedings defenses nominees malesko krimstock â supporting issued ended nearly senator supreme	nlj sotomayor sotomayorâ krimstock sonia malesko souter pubarticlenlj.jsp destefano ginsburg scotusblog nominee hispanic judgeship supreme judgepedia hostednews jury hearings leahy	barack sotomayor moynihan statehood obama leahy souter cuomo destefano cabranes scotusblog online.wsj.com ginsburg conservatives affirmative prosecutor stating nlj rulings politico

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