NasheBlog.com

One of my routines that I have been doing for a long time has been to log on to a few technology related websites and read up a bit so I can always stay on top of what is happening in the field. One of these websites is GIGAOM and I am really happy with the excellent content that they provide. Today, (yes I have been browsing on Thanksgiving day!), I came across an article that really brought back a combination of very good and sad memories. Here is qoute from the article:

I'm not really comfortable making broad technology predictions, but I've run across two things recently that perfectly illustrate for me the next generation of the web.  Some of us are already living it — those of us that use offerings like Twitter or Hunch, or any service that instead of forcing us to search for information asks for our interests, preferences or even location, then delivers it. The next-gen version of the web will consist of services that tell us what we want to know at the exact moment we want to know it — possibly even if we don't ask.

The good memories is that I was lucky to join a team whose focus was to solve such a similar problem. That was almost 4 years ago! I just happened to stumble into this research group at the proding of one of my programming professors. It was a privilege to join some very smart people who, thinking back now, were visionaries who were thinking several years ahead into the future.

The sad bit is that due to poor leadership, the team crumbled and fell apart. The lesson I learned is that no-matter how smart the team is, if the leader is a wimp and not bold, very little can be done. The sad bit too is that I and my colleagues let the poor leadership, not only break the team but break our spirits.

Web personalization, in my opinion, in huge and very important. Many people depend on it. With information overload and the multiplicity of sources now available, it is important that technologies tell us what we need to know. I use Google News for that reason. I depend on Google to tell me what I should know that is happening around me.

There are many aspects of our information consumption that can greatly benefit from personalization and recommendations!

A number of people who have followed my work have been asking me whether I no longer had interests in Hadoop and Data Mining. I can understand where this is coming from since I have not posted anything either on this blog or elsewhere. The main thing is that after graduating from college, I mostly lost access to the cluster that I was using for most of my work. I had always thought that as soon as I graduated I could land a good job and possibly acquire a few good desktops and make my own cluster. That did not happen. The economy decided to completely ignore my wishes. So without resources I have not been able to do much.

So santa if you are listening, I do not need more candy this season. Cash is more like it. As soon as I can get myself a reasonable cluster, I am going to dive back into Hadoop and continue my research. Of course I have been reading a lot about Hadoop but I usually prefer writing about my experiences rather than what someone else wrote. So until then there won't be much. But as soon as I am set up, I am going to finalize/extend my findings on Hadoop and Distributed Data Mining and write about it. I have had requests to write about my experiences learning parallel programing and I am also going to do that once I get the chance.