Great Web 2.0 video

For those that need to explain what Web 2.0 is to those not technical, this video is a great way to show what Web 2.0 is all about.



This is exactly what Web 2.0 is all about and why everybody needs to get on the bandwagon of Web 2.0, it isn't hype any more, it's real.

On Technorati: Web 2.0

Social networking comes to Microsoft Excel

Marc Smith's Community Technologies research group at Microsoft Research has just released .NetMap which is a plug-in to do social network analysis in Microsoft Excel. This was presented at the Microsoft Faculty summit this week. Just import your data into Excel and let .NetMap visualize the social network, calculate centrality, and do all the other stuff that UCINET, Pajek and NetDraw do. Gone are the gzillion steps that you have to do in order to get the visualization of the social network (in my PhD thesis, this involved MySQL to get the actual data in a table format, creating a DL file to import into UCINET, then taking the file and converting it into Pajek to use Pajek features, or visualizing it in NetDraw).

More details of .NetMap are below:

New tools from Microsoft Research make performing many basic network
manipulations and visualization tasks as simple as using Excel. The (Excel)
.NetMap add-in provides directed graph charting features within Excel,
allowing users to create node-link diagrams with control over each node and
edge color, size, transparency and shape. Since .NetMap builds within Excel,
all of the controls and programmatic features of Office are available.
Additional features of (Excel) .NetMap generate social networks from data
sources like personal e-mail (drawing data from the Windows Desktop Search
engine). Arbitrary edge lists (anything that can be pasted into Excel) can
be visualized and analyzed in .NetMap. To download the Excel .NetMap Add-in
and slides, go to the following Web site in CodePlex (Microsoft's version of SourceForge).

I'm going to try it out and see how it works. Of course this could have saved me time in my PhD research analysis!

On Technorati: .NetMap, Microsoft Research, Excel

Arrived in Beijing

I've just arrived with my wife in Beijing and staying at a temporary apartment until we find a permanent housing to live. Can't believe that it's finally here, that I'm in Beijing and living and working here. Going to start my first day of work at Nokia Research tomorrow, looking forward to it!

Off to Beijing

I'm at the airport now with my wife and we're waiting for the flight to Beijing. This move is really exciting as I've been in Canada (specifically Toronto) throughout my entire life. I can't wait to start my new job at Nokia Research and I'm looking forward to this new journey in my life.

Please pray for us for a safe flight and a new and blessed beginning in Beijing. Maybe we'll get a chance to see the Olympics while we're there!

Keep reading my blog and keep in touch via e-mail. This is not good bye but a new beginning since so many things have happened in my life this year. And I'm grateful for God for everything in my life, my family, my amazing blessed wife, my exciting new job, and finally nearing towards the end of my PhD (my defense is in November).

God always has a plan for all of us.

Preparing my move to Beijing

Today, the moving company came to move the items that my wife and I are packing to Beijing. They were pretty fast, done within 2 hours, but they had 3 people to help to pack in boxes. Now, it's packing stuff in suitcases and then physically flying to Beijing.

I'm so excited to start a new job in Beijing and with Nokia Research and it will be a great opportunity to start a new life with my wife. I'm beginning to learn how to balance work and family life and having an amazing wife that supports me, I feel I'm the most blessed man and husband in the world.

PhD final defense scheduled!

Finally, the PhD is near its end after 5 years. I just scheduled my PhD final defense for November 3. It feels great that I'm going to graduate soon and start a full time job. I have accepted a full time job in Nokia Research in Beijing, China which should be exciting and challenging. I'll be moving with my wife to Beijing. Maybe I'll be able to see the Olympics while I'm there.

Just need to finish minor changes and flow in the dissertation.

As I reminisce on my PhD years, what I've learned is that a PhD prepares you for life, it's not about the degree, it's about the experience and skillset that you gain. You go to conferences, you practice your talks, you meet other people, you socialize with other researchers, you work on interesting projects, you improve your writing skills by writing papers, and you cooperate with other students and faculty. It is such an enriching experience. It isn't without its ups and downs, but its the ups and downs that make it all worthwhile.

TV houses using social media for research

TV companies like ABC and NBC are always looking for ways to improve viewer ratings, viewers themselves to watch TV, and to create enhanced services based around TV shows. We've already seen this with Facebook applications like Addicted to Lost around the ABC's hit TV show Lost and Warner Brothers' move using Facebook on their TheWB.com network. Now, NBC is using the Beijing Olympics as a testbed for research into social media to determine which sports viewers like to watch and to provide a "comprehensive picture of how people are supplementing TV viewership with tools such as video streaming, video on demand and mobile phones" (Alan Wurtzel, NBC's research chief). They are also giving online surveys to viewers to guage their feedback and even giving special programmed cell phones to look at viewer behaviour when away from the TV watching the Olympics.

I think it's about time that TV began to use social media and integrate it with their own TV offerings. There needs to be more value add in TV, it needs to be a more social experience. This reminds me of a research project from PARC called SocialTV. You can also read a previous blog post I wrote about this.

On Technorati: Olympics2008, social media, TV

Hypertext 2007 trip report published in ACM SIGWEB newsletter

If you're an ACM SIGWEB member, then the latest SIGWEB newsletter is out. In there you'll find an article co-authored by me and James Goulding about the Hypertext 2007 conference trip report.

Have a read and let me know what you think!

On Technorati: SIGWEB, HT07