An extremely interesting 2-day menu of Text Analytics activities in Boston coming up this Sunday. It includes (the highlights below are my selection from the online menu):
1. Pre-conference workshops (Text Analytics for dummies and MarketPlace Overview),
2. Keynote by Microsoft CompLing Research Labs on sentiment detection,
3. An Industry Panel including a Sr. Product Manager from Business_Objects/SAP (previously Inxight), the CTOs of Attensity and Clarabridge and the VP of SPSS,
4. Text mining and evaluation in blogs,
5. A presentation in Speech Analytics by the SVP of CallMiner, Inc. and
6. A presentation in Visual Analytics in Pharma data by the rep of Merck KGaA.
Thursday, June 12, 2008
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Glottopedia
Check out Computational Linguistics in Glottopedia*. Of course you can edit the lemmas just like in Wikipedia. A nice little corner for CompLinguists.
*Apologies if the link to the Glottopedia site doesn't work; I've found that the site is down periodically.
*Apologies if the link to the Glottopedia site doesn't work; I've found that the site is down periodically.
Monday, June 9, 2008
iPhone
Well, okay, it's now a bit cheaper.
However, there are still a couple of glaring omissions in its features specifically in terms of accessibility:
Whereas most blackberry devices are hearing-aid compatible (HAC), iPhone isn't. This simply means that about 20 millions of Americans that are born with (or have acquired) varied degrees of hearing loss throughout their lives are automatically excluded from iPhone's clientele since the phone cannot be used with a hearing aid's microphone (M) or telecoil (T) switches.
iPhone also does not support multiple languages i.e. languages other than English that the phone can be set to display its menus and text in. This also means that iPhone -perhaps inadvertently- excludes e.g. Spanish-speaking audiences from its clientele, unless of course they know to write and read in English.
It's high time that Apple opened its tech doors to the world. As long as it remains "exclusive" and in that sense esoteric to the masses, it may never attain the success and popularity of a Blackberry.
However, there are still a couple of glaring omissions in its features specifically in terms of accessibility:
Whereas most blackberry devices are hearing-aid compatible (HAC), iPhone isn't. This simply means that about 20 millions of Americans that are born with (or have acquired) varied degrees of hearing loss throughout their lives are automatically excluded from iPhone's clientele since the phone cannot be used with a hearing aid's microphone (M) or telecoil (T) switches.
iPhone also does not support multiple languages i.e. languages other than English that the phone can be set to display its menus and text in. This also means that iPhone -perhaps inadvertently- excludes e.g. Spanish-speaking audiences from its clientele, unless of course they know to write and read in English.
It's high time that Apple opened its tech doors to the world. As long as it remains "exclusive" and in that sense esoteric to the masses, it may never attain the success and popularity of a Blackberry.
Saturday, June 7, 2008
South and North California dichotomy
It's one thing to hear it and totally another to actually live it.
Californians seem to have a good reason for being displeased with the stereotype.
Upon arrival in Northern Cali, I was welcomed by numerous friends and acquaintances who didn't know my exact location with a "Welcome to LA!". Ha! Not all Cali is LA and thank God for that! Unlike my American friends, my only reason of discontent with LA is the fact that it's a big city. I love almost every suburb around LA but I am not a big fan of LA itself. So when I correct my well-wishing friends, I have my reasons and they have theirs for looking at me with concern. I'm a few light years away from the local stereotypes but it's funny how assumptions work, especially when they are so obvious.
Californians seem to have a good reason for being displeased with the stereotype.
Upon arrival in Northern Cali, I was welcomed by numerous friends and acquaintances who didn't know my exact location with a "Welcome to LA!". Ha! Not all Cali is LA and thank God for that! Unlike my American friends, my only reason of discontent with LA is the fact that it's a big city. I love almost every suburb around LA but I am not a big fan of LA itself. So when I correct my well-wishing friends, I have my reasons and they have theirs for looking at me with concern. I'm a few light years away from the local stereotypes but it's funny how assumptions work, especially when they are so obvious.
Saturday, May 31, 2008
Resurfacing for good later in June! Enjoy summer, everyone!
May has been a real long month.
Today the 31st I'm finally wrapping up business and moving on with my life.
Apologies for leaving this blog an orphan for so long.
I'll be back soon with daily bites.
Today the 31st I'm finally wrapping up business and moving on with my life.
Apologies for leaving this blog an orphan for so long.
I'll be back soon with daily bites.
Saturday, May 3, 2008
2008 North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad
What is the Computational Linguistics Olympiad?
The North American Computational Linguistics Olympiad (NACLO) is modeled after similar Linguistics Olympiads held in Eastern Europe since 1965. In these events, hundreds of high school age students have participated, challenged by interesting linguistic problems from dozens of the world's languages. In solving the problems, students learn about the richness, diversity and systematicity of language, while exercising natural logic and reasoning skills. No prior knowledge of particular languages or of linguistics is necessary, but the competitions have proven very successful in attracting top students to study and choose careers in fields of linguistics, computational linguistics and language technologies.
Professional linguists and other specialists in natural language processing technologies cooperate to create stimulating and engaging problems that represent cutting edge theoretical and practical issues in their fields. This is truly an opportunity for young people to experience a taste of what natural language processing in the 21st century is all about.
For details and past CL Olympiads visit: NACLO 2008
Friday, March 14, 2008
The unbearable lightness of being
See the movie if you can. Better yet read the book (by Kundera).
A bit post-modernistic by some standards, I found it agrees with me these days.
A bit post-modernistic by some standards, I found it agrees with me these days.
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
semantic computing and "vaguely-formulated human intentions"
The field of Semantic Computing (SC) brings together those disciplines concerned with connecting the (often vaguely-formulated) intentions of humans with computational content. This connection can go both ways: retrieving, using and manipulating existing content according to user's goals ("do what the user means"); and creating, rearranging, and managing content that matches the author's intentions ("do what the author means").
There is no such thing as "vaguely-formulated intentions of humans". Humans have intentions. Only the human who has expressed the specific intentions knows how vague or not these intentions were "formulated". How? Usually vague intentions bring about vague results or bring about undesired (unintended) results. It's all in the eye (and mind) of the beholder.
What's pertinent for CL and SemComputing here is the fact that intentions are hard to detect. We will never be 100% sure that we matched the intention of the author, neither should we even try for that. Regardless of what the author "meant" (which can be very imprecise and gauged only by the author's own judgement), a document bears evidence of such intentions. If we focus on the intentions evidently expressed in the document we can happily dispense with the "intentions of humans".
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