Archive for November, 2007

Give One Laptop – Get One

Wednesday, November 21st, 2007

Here’s a great opportunity to help others less fortunate than yourself. If you are reading this, it is probably safe to assume that you have access to a decent computer. I have several computers laying around the house (tough to toss when I upgrade) and I guess I take the opportunity for granted. That’s not the case in many parts of the world. The Give One – Get One program allows you to buy two revolutionary XO laptop computers for $400 for the pair. One is shipped to you and the other to a child in a developing nation. Plus, a $200 tax contribution is sent your way. From what I’ve read, the computer is very unique and is designed to work in adverse conditions. It is spill proof, runs six hours on battery, runs Linux and automatically networks with other similar computers. This laptop is not designed to run Photoshop, or World of Warcraft. Instead, the focus is to provide educational opportunities in developing nations.

Thanks to Tushar Mehta for bringing this to my attention in the Daily Dose of Excel blog. In his post he referenced an excellent article in the NY Times which includes a realistic review of the laptop. Be sure to read it before buying one. Offer ends November 26, 2007.

Cross posted at Random Thoughts.

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Analytical Strategy and Monopoly

Saturday, November 17th, 2007

You know you are a analytical, statistical or economic geek when you analyze the probabilities related to the game Monopoly! See these sites for related articles and tips. Freakonomics blog, fool proof strategy, and probabilities related to the game.

Don’t have the game? You should!

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Visual Analytics for e-Discovery

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

What could be better than paying lawyers less money for more work? (Sorry Pat.)

In today’s world, litigation typically involves the review of thousands, if not millions, of e-docs. Though shredders can permanently destroy a paper document, past e-mails and e-docs hide in all types of digital nooks and crannies. Unfortunately, many companies have not kept up with the proliferation of e-documents. But that’s no excuse when in the middle of litigation. If there’s a chance that a relevant e-doc exists, it typically must be found, reviewed and deemed relevant or not.

Sean McNee describes a recent case where a small legal team representing a small time inventor was able to use visual analytics to review and analyze the contents of 50 million pages of electronic documentation in just a few months. (Yes, 50 million pages.) He states,

“Visual analytics tools identify nouns and noun phrases in a series of messages, then visually cluster the documents together according to similarities in subject matter”

Apparently some Fortune 1000 companies have seen three-fold productivity increases using visual tools. According to the article, “U.S. corporations spend nearly $5 billion a year analyzing emails for litigation, regulatory requests and investigations.” A three-fold increase in productivity yields signficant benefits!

Read more at BI Review Online.

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Digging Through Wall Street Journal Articles With RSS

Thursday, November 15th, 2007

A clever tip was posted on Digital Inspiration on Wednesday. Interested in reading the most popular full-text Wall Street Journal articles? Simply add this RSS feed to your newsreader and you’ll receive any article that has at least one “digg” by full subscribers. It could be interesting to track the number of articles per day and diggs per article over time to measure the acceptance of the digg concept with WSJ readers.

In this model, the paying subscribers are feeding non-paying subscribers by digging the articles. Interesting concept. On the one hand, WSJ is giving away content. On the other hand, what if there was a way for them to create a feed of other “undigged” articles to encourage non-subscribers to get the full package?

See the full tip at http://www.labnol.org/internet/tools/read-wall-street-articles-from-digg-without-subscription/1788/

Cross posted at Random Thoughts

 

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Latest BI Acquisition Ends Best-of-Breed

Wednesday, November 14th, 2007

In the latest round of tech acquisitions and mergers, IBM snatches Cognos. According this BusinessWeek article, this is a combination that might actually work. I think all of these big player acquisitions are creating havoc in large companies that have tried to standardize on enterprise solution providers. For instance, my company is clearly an IBM shop. No Oracle spoken there, but we’re a big user of Siebel and PeopleSoft. Oops, those are now Oracle products. Does that mean that there will be advantages in the future for Oracle users? I’m certainly no expert in the arena of enterprise software but it appears to me that the end of best-of-breed certainly has some downsides.

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Why Not, What If, Wouldn’t It Be Cool

Sunday, November 11th, 2007

A few years ago Barry Nalebuff and Ian Ayres published Why Not?: How to Use Everyday Ingenuity to Solve Problems Big And Small. The book challenged everyday folk to use everyday ingenuity to solve problems. This innovation primer outlined a simple framework for generating solutions to existing problems and applying existing solutions to new problems. I recently stumbled upon the Why Not web-site. Checkout the idea exchange. Here visitors are encouraged to post great ideas while other visitors vote on their favorites. Most of the traffic is from 2003 (the year the book was published.) It is amazing to see why items were merely “ideas” back then but have now been implemented. Here are a few of my favorites.

I’d add to the list an MP3 podcast/audio book player that can book mark and annotate files on the fly (see post on 10/26/07 ). What would you add?

(cross-posted on Random Thoughts)

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How are Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa and Wal-Mart Related?

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

A few weeks ago I mentioned a data visualization I had found about Wikipedia articles.  The more I explore the original, the more odd relationships I discover.  For instance, find the collection of nodes along the 8:00-9:00 axis that includes Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa and Wal-Mart.  If nodes are located on this visualization based on the similarity of links to other articles, why would these three be in the same ballpark?

I’d like to here from you.  Your thoughts?

Click here
to open the visualization and explore.  See A Beautiful WWW for information on the method.

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Super Crunching Tools and the Longevity Game

Wednesday, November 7th, 2007

I bumped into Ian Ayres’ personal web-site last night. He is author of  Super Crunchers. The prediction tools page includes a few free, fun tools some of which are mentioned in the book. One that I especially liked is the tool to predict how long you’ll live. Two tools are included one of which is from my employer, Northwestern Mutual. Give it a shot. The results may surprise you! Click here to “Play the Longevity Game”.

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The Cost of Spam – A Long Tail Perspective

Tuesday, November 6th, 2007

Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, recently addressed the connection between global warming, public relations spam and magazines in his blog. I got a kick out of his comments since he included as spam the “blow-in” magazine subscription cards that drop out of magazines on to your floor. He says…

Our circulation department wants to put in as many as possible, because five cards have a slightly higher chance of one being sent back than four, and six is slightly higher yet. As long as those cards earn more in subscriptions than the cost of paper and print, they’re consider a good thing from the circulation department perspective.

He goes on to say that editors hate them because of the grief they create for readers. AMEN!

It just so happens that a few weeks ago I ordered a subscription to Wired which he edits. The cost of the one year subscription is only $10 bucks. But what’s the cost to my back for bending over and trying to pick those slippery cards up off the ground?

I’ll count the number of cards in my first issue and report back!

(Cross posted at Random Thoughts.)

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