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Machine Learning in everyday applications
Machine Learning has been around for decades and is already used in a variety of applications such as spam filters, speech recognition and self-driving cars. It is defined as a subset of artificial intelligence (AI) that specifically deals with algorithms that can learn by themselves. It is estimated that today, 80% of all organizations use [Continue reading]
Hunting for restaurant locations in New York using Python
Introduction/Business Problem What follows is a presentation of a short data science task for the IBM Data Science Professional Certificate on Coursera (the related code is uploaded on GitHub). The question to be answered is finding an area in New York to open a restaurant. New York is a huge city, famous for offering any [Continue reading]
Your next music instrument: a text editor
In the video Sébastien Rannou is using Sonic Pi (free on Windows, Mac, Raspberry Pi) to reproduce Daft Punk’s “Aerodynamic”. Unlike classical approaches to generate sound on a computer, he generates sound by writing text: instead of adding tracks, instruments, samples on a timeline, you can express those in code and play music. Learn how [Continue reading]
I Googled for you: Natural Language Generation
Not sure how, but I woke up to a scramble of googling on NLG. I got the impression out that while there are some very interesting applications like automated journalism (weather, sports, business news) as well as in business intelligence (2-page summaries of 300-page financial results), the field is not as progressed on the “opposite” [Continue reading]
This future is cool
For someone that once had to limit his program’s code to 32KB, it’s quite amazing how easy it is do a video like this in about 5 minutes on your mobile phone. Here’s how it goes. My Garmin smartwatch records GPS distance and pace data (among other things), sends it to an app, which sends [Continue reading]
11 Applications for your new Mac
After six years, I got to setup a new Mac. Having never done a format of the previous Mac and deciding not to migrate its installation, I found myself starting from zero. Here is my selection of essential free/almost-free apps that make my digital life easier – Hyperdock: A variety of neat features that improve [Continue reading]
Tracking reading: Goodreads to Beeminder
If you’re into quantified self (e.g. digitally tracking your work, health, habits, whatever) you might have heard of Beeminder, which works as commitment device for following up on your plans. In my case, Beeminder has helped me keep track and build up my habits. One of them is daily reading for at least 10′. It’s [Continue reading]
Apple, Microsoft and battery-related scandals
People on the internet (or at least the ones that only read headlines) were outraged these last few days to find out that recent iPhones have a feature which slows down the CPU when the phone is in very cold or hot environment or when the battery is getting old and can not support high [Continue reading]
These mails from Twitter sound kind of desperate
The bad (or good) thing about these kind of notifications is that it reminds me of a book on how social media (and other) apps/platforms use the science of behind creating #habits to trigger you into using the app/platform more Check out “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products”
Reminder, you’re always giving information to Facebook
In case you were wondering how much information you’re providing to Facebook’s advertisers, there is a page for that. To access the page, you need to bump into an ad on your feed, click the arrow icon on the top right, select “Why am I seeing this?” and then “Manage your ad preferences”. Or click [Continue reading]
YouTube adds Contacts and Private Chat features
Every app/platform in today’s world should have every feature possible so since you already have contacts/friends/connections in Facebook/Twitter/Google+/etc, you might as well have them in YouTube as well. And since you have contacts, you need to have chat, otherwise, what’s the point? So in case there was some debate about whether YouTube was a social [Continue reading]
A RescueTime alternative, Memory from Timely
There are plenty of software approaches to tracking who one spents time for billing and productivity (or just plain personal improvement) reasons. Memory is a new app from Timely, that aims to be an improvement over widely-used RescueTime in that it offers a better presentation of were you spent your time and that it intergrates with the [Continue reading]
Abundance is our future, some optimism required
If you’re looking for some optimism for the future, look no further than Peter Diamandis. He runs the X Prize Foundation, which offers large cash incentive prizes to inventors who can solve grand challenges like space flight, low-cost mobile medical diagnostics and oil spill cleanup. He is the chair of Singularity University, which teaches executives [Continue reading]
Apple captures top revenue spot in holiday sales for wearables
Chart and report from the The Information For all the skepticism about the Apple Watch’s prospects, the new version appears to be selling better than the first one. Apple raked in nearly half of the revenue generated online in the U.S. wearables market in the monthlong lead-up to Cyber Monday, new data shows, a big [Continue reading]
Apple is second only to Rolex in revenue from watches
The watches industry is still in denial though. From a watch-enthusiasts blog: All of this is not meant to reignite the debate, “is the Apple Watch a watch?” I am simply saying that for those interested in fine, long-lasting mechanical wrist watches, be they from Seiko or Patek Philippe, an Apple Watch with its inherently [Continue reading]
Algorithmia uses Algorithmic Intelligence to colorise your photos
Web app of the day: Algorithmia’s auto-colorization service allows you to colorise black and white photos. The results are interesting with varying levels of success (see an example above). Colorful Image Colorization is an algorithm originally developed by Richard Zhang, Phillip Isola, Alexei A. Efros, which takes black and white pictures, and returns the image [Continue reading]
Prisma iOS app promises to add variety in your photo filters
I’m trying out the Prisma app that’s gone viral the last few days. Although we have had Photoshop filters that turn photos into “paintings” for more than two decades now, the creators of the app seem to have done a good job with their algorithms. The outputs (which the developers claim that are coming from [Continue reading]
How to kill Facebook’s News Feed
Find yourself spending too much time on Facebook? Eradicate distractions by removing the news feed content. Chrome: News Feed Eradicator for Facebook Firefox: Kill FB Feed Safari: Quiest Facebook These solutions will allow you to still use messages and do posts of your own. To block Facebook (and other distracting sites) completely (or even better, [Continue reading]
Jukedeck: Royalty free music for your videos
Web app of the day: Jukedeck uses algorithms to create tunes (or even full songs if you allow a bit more flexibility on the definition of the word) based on a set of parameters of your choice (genre, “mood”, instruments, tempo and duration). The end result is a royalty free soundtrack that you can use [Continue reading]
Vivoactive vs Vivoactive HR: First 3 days
So as of last Friday I’m the happy owner of a Garmin Vivoactive HR (will refer to it as VAHR, shown on the left on the photo above). Already owning the original Vivoactive (VA, shown on the right of the photo) model, here are some impressions between the two. This isn’t meant to be a [Continue reading]
Focus is about saying no
Steve Jobs was asked (WWDC’97) about some of Apple’s choice at the time in cutting off features, and had this to say: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that [Continue reading]
How to export and manage all your Kindle highlights
Web app of the day: Clippings.io (free) is a handy service allowing you to export/backup and manage your highlighted texts from your Kindle device. You can: – Browse your Kindle highlights online – Import your Kindle highlights from any device – Edit and annotate your Kindle highlights and notes – Search your Kindle highlights online [Continue reading]
Vega-Lite: producing complex visualisations with minimal amount of code
Here is an interesting visualisation library released just a few days ago from the University Washington Interactive Data Lab. Vega-Lite is a high-level visualization grammar. It provides a concise JSON syntax for supporting rapid generation of visualizations to support analysis. Vega-Lite can serve as a declarative format for describing and creating data visualizations. Vega-Lite specifications [Continue reading]
Adobe Post: Easily create social media/blog graphics on your iPhone
Adobe continues its release of free/freemium mobile apps. Adobe Post makes it easy for anyone to turn their photos and text into “beautifully designed graphics,” the company says, then share them on social networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest. The app is easy to use, allowing you to select a single image from your [Continue reading]
Your free 2015 fitness infographic
If you’re a Strava user, VeloViewer will create a visual overview of your running and/or cycling. VeloViewer seems like an interesting service: VeloViewer Tour Notes (Restricted to 25 activities for free users. Upgrade to PRO to see your entire Strava history.) Your Activities page provides a fully filterable and sortable list of everything you’ve uploaded to Strava. [Continue reading]
Journalists are slamming into scientific studies, exposing a key flaw in media
I was writing a few days ago about science reporting in media. Well here’s a bit more on this. Just as Robert Scoble was writing yesterday about the issue of “techno skeptics” and the role of media (bottom line: fear sells more paper/pageviews. Full read here) I bump into a highly sensationalised headline on Bloomberg [Continue reading]
Thank you Internet: the best order of watching Star Wars
1 part crowd-sourced Q&A (the sci-fi StackExchange site) and 1 part Google’s Knowledge Graph (a database of answers and indexed data based on semantic search concepts) to get an instant result on my critical search: “correct order of watching Star Wars” In case you wonder, here’s what the Internet has decided for my life in [Continue reading]
The 100-word KeySmart review
On of my favorite purchases of the last couple of years has a CyberMonday offer, so I’ve finally decided to post about it. The premise is simple: KeySmart will hold your keys in a tight, small place. And yes, these are my keys in the photo :) I got it so that I no longer [Continue reading]
Google’s Boolean Logic Doodle: what does it mean?
If you were stuck on Google’s homepage today trying to understand what the doodle is about, here’s the meaning of each combination. In each case, the “x” and “y” circles of the lowercase “g” letter are hidden or shown according to the highlighted operation as if you were do a search on two terms (“x” [Continue reading]
Links in e-mails: Always hover before you click
In the screenshot, a fresh #phishing (received three times already today) attempt masquerading as a message from #Paypal . The subject was “We’ve limited access to your PayPaI account” Luckily, OSX Mail (most mail software do this, Outlook as well) shows you the address of any link when you hover over it. More on phishing [Continue reading]