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Workshop on Data Mining in Web 2.0 Environments

Users feel very attracted by currently emerging Web 2.0 environments, that allow to provide content in a simple, unrestricted, and ad hoc way. Providing annotations (such as tags) in a Web 2.0 like way is applicable to a wide range of resources and data types, such as web pages, images, multimedia, etc. There is, however, a disadvantage: the freedom to provide arbitrary (personal) content and tags in ubiquitous, uncoordinated ways results in very large amounts of poorly structured information. Behind the current hype around Web 2.0 applications, this raises several important challenges for future data and web mining methods.

The workshop aims to bring together researchers and professionals in the areas of data and web mining, information systems and collaborative systems to discuss challenges and solutions of applying data mining to highly unstructured, user created data. Such challenges include the analysis of loosely-coupled snippets of information, such as overlapping tag structures, homonym or synonym tags, blog networks etc. Other challenges arise from scalability issues or new forms of fraud and spam. They demand, for instance, innovative methods of tag clustering, filtering, aggregation, personalization and visualization. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• analysis of blogs
• tag clustering and visualization
• synonym and homonym resolution in tags
• visual and textual information extraction
• temporal analysis
• data streams, trend detection, and concept drift
• application of web and text mining to wiki content
• discovering social structures and communities
• evolution of online social networks
• predicting user behavior
• analysis of dynamic networks
• discovering misuse and fraud
• combining the web with data from other sources, mining with mashups
• deriving profiles from usage
• personalized delivery of information
• applications, case studies

International Workshop on Data Mining in Web 2.0 Environments held in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Data Mining (ICDM 2007) on October 28, 2007 in Omaha, United States.

[ PDF ] call for papers » uni-kassel.de [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Web 2.0 hype is making web firms neglect the basics of good design

Describing Web 2.0 as the "latest fashion", Mr Nielsen said many sites paying attention to it were neglecting some of the principles of good design and usability established over the last decade. Good practices include making a site easy to use, good search tools, the use of text free of jargon, usability testing and a consideration of design even before the first line of code is written.

Sadly, said Mr Nielsen, the rush to embrace Web 2.0 technology meant that many firms were turning their back on the basics. "They should get the basics right first," he said. "Sadly most websites do not have those primary things right."

» bbc.co.uk [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Shaping the future [Charlie Stross discussion at TNG Technology Consulting]

A fascinating analysis of where technology is going in the next 10-25 years. Instead of envisioning outlandish future developments, Charlie Stross looks at what the impact might be on society from very reasonable iterations of today's SOTA.

"10Tb is an interesting number. That's a megabit for every second in a year -- there are roughly 10 million seconds per year. That's enough to store a live DivX video stream -- compressed a lot relative to a DVD, but the same overall resolution -- of everything I look at for a year, including time I spend sleeping, or in the bathroom. Realistically, with multiplexing, it puts three or four video channels and a sound channel and other telemetry -- a heart monitor, say, a running GPS/Galileo location signal, everything I type and every mouse event I send -- onto that chip, while I'm awake ... Add optical character recognition on the fly for any text you look at, speech-to-text for anything you say, and it's all indexed and searchable. 'What was the title of the book I looked at and wanted to remember last Thursday at 3pm?' Think of it as google for real life."

» antipope.org [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Mayer-Schönberger lays out his idea in a faculty research working paper called "Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing," where he describes his plan as reinstating "the default of forgetting our societies have experienced for millennia."

Why would we want our machines to "forget"? Mayer-Schönberger suggests that we are creating a Benthamist panopticon by archiving so many bits of knowledge for so long. The accumulated weight of stored Google searches, thousands of family photographs, millions of books, credit bureau information, air travel reservations, massive government databases, archived e-mail, etc., can actually be a detriment to speech and action, he argues.

"If whatever we do can be held against us years later, if all our impulsive comments are preserved, they can easily be combined into a composite picture of ourselves," he writes in the paper. "Afraid how our words and actions may be perceived years later and taken out of context, the lack of forgetting may prompt us to speak less freely and openly."

[ PDF ] Useful Void: The Art of Forgetting in the Age of Ubiquitous Computing

Blogger's Code of Conduct - Tim O'Reilly's Draft

We celebrate the blogosphere because it embraces frank and open conversation. But frankness does not have to mean lack of civility. We present this Blogger Code of Conduct in hopes that it helps create a culture that encourages both personal expression and constructive conversation.

1. We take responsibility for our own words and for the comments we allow on our blog.
   We are committed to the "Civility Enforced" standard: we will not post unacceptable content, and we'll delete comments that contain it.
   
   We define unacceptable content as anything included or linked to that:
   - is being used to abuse, harass, stalk, or threaten others
   - is libelous, knowingly false, ad-hominem, or misrepresents another person,
   - infringes upon a copyright or trademark
   - violates an obligation of confidentiality
   - violates the privacy of others
   
   We define and determine what is "unacceptable content" on a case-by-case basis, and our definitions are not limited to this list. If we delete a comment or link, we will say so and explain why. [We reserve the right to change these standards at any time with no notice.]
   
2. We won't say anything online that we wouldn't say in person.
   
3. We connect privately before we respond publicly.
   When we encounter conflicts and misrepresentation in the blogosphere, we make every effort to talk privately and directly to the person(s) involved--or find an intermediary who can do so--before we publish any posts or comments about the issue.
   
4. When we believe someone is unfairly attacking another, we take action.
   When someone who is publishing comments or blog postings that are offensive, we'll tell them so (privately, if possible--see above) and ask them to publicly make amends.
   If those published comments could be construed as a threat, and the perpetrator doesn't withdraw them and apologize, we will cooperate with law enforcement to protect the target of the threat.
   
5. We do not allow anonymous comments.
   We require commenters to supply a valid email address before they can post, though we allow commenters to identify themselves with an alias, rather than their real name.
   
6. We ignore the trolls.
   We prefer not to respond to nasty comments about us or our blog, as long as they don't veer into abuse or libel. We believe that feeding the trolls only encourages them--"Never wrestle with a pig. You both get dirty, but the pig likes it." Ignoring public attacks is often the best way to contain them.

» Tim O'Reilly / radar.oreilly.com

über bloggers

It's no secret that bloggers are becoming increasingly influential. But Arrington is part of an emerging crowd of writers who use their narrowly focused blogs, such as hyperlocal real estate reports, green guides, or Web 2.0 startup reviews, to establish themselves as thought leaders. These new influencers are taking a page from the blog networks Gawker and Weblogs Inc. and turning rapid-fire, around-the-clock blog patter that makes and shapes the news into a hot new online media model.

Companies are directing more efforts toward buttering up these New Media players, often feeding them exclusives that play well with their targeted audiences. And for marketers who are increasingly comfortable with spending money on blogs, advertising with these opinion leaders provides instant cachet.

Think of these as the digital version of potent, passionate trade press writers. They swarm every novelty in areas like tech, creating problems and buzz for companies and innovations. They report news and publish it alongside analysis of newspaper stories and company releases. These posts are salted with strong doses of personality, sparking discussions across the Web. By melding their own insights and opinions with the aggregated views of others, they're starting to gain leverage. "In a time-starved world, people—especially decision-makers—have very little time, but do not want to miss being in the know," says Rishad Tobaccowala, chief innovation officer at advertising firm Publicis Groupe Media.

» Business Week

Web2.0 Research: 2007 digital outlook report

Avenue A | Razorfish has released Digital Outlook Report 2007, a 140-page PDF that describes where marketing dollars are being spent online, key trends that will impact marketers in 2007, and new quantitative research on best practices for measuring the effectiveness of advertising campaigns.

[ PDF ] DigitalMediaOutlook07

World In 2007: the future of the internet: A discussion with Eric Schmidt, CEO, Google

"It is clear that over the next few years people will have access to more information than they can ever handle, and that is a good thing. That information crowds out bad ideas, bad governments, bad behavior and knowing what people are doing produces a better, more profitable, faster-growing and safer world."

» Search Web2-Specific Tags: Eric Schmidt - Google - Future Internet

[mp3] Listen or Download / The Economist

John Naisbitt's 11 mindsets of forecasting

1. While many things change, most things remain constant.
2. The future is embedded in the present.
3. Focus on the score of the game.
4. Understanding how powerfull it is not to be right.
5. See the future as a picture puzzle.
6. Don’t get so far ahead of the parade that people don’t know you’re in it.
7. Resistance to change falls if benefits are real.
8. Things that we expect to happen always happen more slowly.
9. You don’t get results by solving problems but by exploiting opportunities.
10. Don’t add unless you subtract.
11. Don’t forget the ecology of technology.

The Futurelab 100 Online Brands

The Futurelab 100 ranks the online relevance of the world’s 100 most valuable brands as listed by Business Week/Interbrand. Its objective is to highlight to senior executives the importance of paying close attention to their brand’s performance in the online arena.

The ranking is based on the number of times the brand’s name appears in leading search engines like Google, Baidu and Technorati, the number of links to the brands website, its reach and Page-rank relevance, and the number of times people express their “love” or “hate” for the brand. The Futurelab 100 will be compiled each time Business Week/Interbrand issues a new ranking

[PDF] THE FUTURELAB 100 via: FutureLab

Blog 2.0 / Web 2.0 Technologies

Web 2.0 refers to a perceived transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications to end users. The proponents of this thinking expect that ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

Sites:

37 Signals . Web-based software
• Ruby on Rails . Open-source web framework
• BasecampHQ . Project management
• BackpackIT . Simple take on pages, notes, reminders

AJAX Devmo . Mozilla Developer Center for AJAX
OpenRico . Ajax open source javascript library
Protopage . Personal start pages built with AJAX technology
AJAX Review . Web 2.0 Dissected
del.icio.us . Social bookmarking, tagging, search
del.icio.us direc.tor . Alt UI for del.icio.us
Pooln . Carpool network
Digg . Technology news website

A website could be said to be built using Web 2.0 technologies if it featured a number of the following techniques:

Technical:
• CSS, semantically valid XHTML markup, and Microformats
• REST or XML Webservice APIs
• Unobtrusive Rich Application techniques (such as Ajax)
• Aggregation/Syndication of data in RSS/Atom
• Some social networking aspects

General:
• The site should not act as a "walled garden" - it should be easy to get data in and out of the system.
• Purely web based - most successful web 2.0 sites can be used almost entirely through the browser

Internet2 / Abilene / LambdaRail

Internet2 is a non-profit consortium which develops and deploys advanced network applications and technologies, mostly for high-speed data transfer.

Abilene Network is the U.S. high-performance backbone network created by the Internet2 community. Over 220 member institutions participate in Abilene, mostly universities with some corporate and affiliate institutions, in all of the US states as well as the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico

National LambdaRail
The network extends across North America.

National LambdaRail is a high-speed national computer network in the United States that runs over fiber-optic lines, and is the first transcontinental Ethernet network. The name is shared by the organization of research institutions that developed the network, and, to date, plans to continue developing it. LambdaRail is similar to the Abilene Network, but LambdaRail permits deeper experimentation than Abilene does.

It is primarily oriented to aid terascale computing efforts, but is also not intended to be a service network, but to be used as a network testbed for experimentation with next-generation large-scale networks. National LambdaRail is a university-based and -owned initiative, in contrast with Abilene and Internet2, which are university-corporate sponsorships. This gives universities more control to use the network for these research projects.

Links in the network use dense wavelength-division multiplexing (DWDM), which allows up to 32 or 40 individual optical wavelengths to be used (depending on hardware configuration at each end). At present, individual wavelengths are used to carry a 10-gigabit Ethernet signal, although other systems such as SONET may also be used in the future.

The goals of the National LambdaRail project are:

• To bridge the gap between leading-edge optical network research and state-of-the-art applications research;

• To push beyond the technical and performance limitations of today’s Internet backbones;

• To provide the growing set of major computationally-intensive science (often termed e-Science) projects, initiatives and experiments with the dedicated bandwidth, deterministic performance characteristics, and/or other advanced network capabilities they need; and

• To enable and to rekindle the possibilities for highly creative, out-of-the-box experimentation and innovation that characterized facilities-based network research during the early years of the Internet.

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Processes + Meta-Processes

XP core practices
The core practices of eXtreme Programming, as described in the first edition of Extreme programming explained can be grouped into four areas (12 practices) as follows:

Fine scale feedback
• Test driven development
• Planning game
• Whole team (original name: Onsite customer)
• Pair programming

Continuous process rather than batch
• Continuous Integration
• Design Improvement (original name: Refactor)
• Small Releases

Shared understanding
• Simple design
• System metaphor
• Collective code ownership
• Coding standard or Coding conventions

The core practices are derived from generally accepted best practices, and are taken to extremes:

• Interaction between developers and customers is good. Therefore, an XP team is supposed to have a customer on site, who specifies and prioritizes work for the team, and who can answer questions as soon as they arise. (In practice, this role is sometimes fulfilled by a customer proxy.)
• If learning is good, take it to extremes: Reduce the length of development and feedback cycles. Test early.
• Simple code is more likely to work. Therefore, extreme programmers only write code to meet actual needs at the present time in a project, and go to some lengths to reduce complexity and duplication in their code.
• If simple code is good, re-write code when it becomes complex.
• Code reviews are good. Therefore XP programmers work in pairs, sharing one screen and keyboard (which also improves communication) so that all code is reviewed as it is written.
• Testing code is good. Therefore, in XP, tests are written before the code is written. The code is considered complete when it passes the tests (but then it needs refactoring to remove complexity). The system is periodically, or immediately tested using all pre-existing automated tests to assure that it works. See test-driven development.

XP values

Extreme Programming initially recognized just four values but a new value was added in the second edition of Extreme programming explained. The five values are:

• Communication
• Simplicity
• Feedback
• Courage
• Respect (the latest value)

Communication
A fundamental task of building software systems is communicating system requirements to the developers of the system. In formal software development methodologies, this task is accomplished through documentation.

Extreme Programming techniques can be viewed as methods for rapidly building and disseminating institutional knowledge among members of a development team. The goal is to give all developers a shared view of the system which matches the view held by the users of the system. To this end, Extreme Programming favors simple designs, metaphor, collaboration of users and programmers, frequent verbal communication and feedback.

Simplicity
eXtreme Programming encourages starting with the simplest solution and refactoring to better ones. The difference between this approach and more conventional system development methods is the focus on designing and coding for the needs of today instead of those of tomorrow, next week, or next month. Proponents of XP acknowledge the disadvantage that this can sometimes entail more effort tomorrow to change the system; their claim is that this is more than compensated for by the advantage of not investing in possible future requirements that may change before they become relevant. Coding and designing for uncertain future requirements implies the risk of spending resources on something that might not be needed. Related to the previous value, "communication", simplicity in design and coding should improve the (quality of) communication. A simple design with simple code can be easily understood by every programmer in the team.

Feedback
Within eXtreme Programming, feedback is related to different dimensions of the system development:

• Feedback from the system: by writing unit tests the programmers have direct feedback from the state of the system after implementing changes.
• Feedback from the customer: The functional tests are written by the customer and the testers. They will get concrete feedback about the current state of their system. This review is planned once in every two or three weeks so the customer can easily steer the development.
• Feedback from the team: When customers come up with new requirements in the planning game the team directly gives an estimation of the time that it will take to implement.

Feedback is closely related to communication and simplicity. Flaws in the system are easily communicated by writing a unit test that proves a certain piece of code will break. The direct feedback from the system tells programmers to recode this part. A customer is able to test the system periodically according to the functional requirements (User Stories). To quote Kent Beck, Optimism is an occupational hazard of programming, feedback is the treatment.

Courage
The Extreme Programming doctrine of "Courage in system development" can be best explained by a couple of practices. One is the commandment to always design and code for today and not for tomorrow. This is an effort to avoid getting bogged down in design and requiring a lot of effort to implement anything else. Courage enables developers to feel comfortable with refactoring their code when necessary. This means reviewing the existing system and modifying it so that future changes can be implemented more easily. Another example of courage is knowing when to throw code away. Every programmer has experienced getting stuck on a complex problem in their own design and code after working on it all day, then coming back the next day with a clear and fresh view and rapidly solving the problem in half an hour.

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