Programming Collective Intelligence Building Smart Web 2 0 Applications

Programming Collective Intelligence Building Smart Web 2 0 Applications

Want to tap the power behind search rankings, product recommendations, social bookmarking, and online matchmaking? This fascinating book demonstrates how you can build Web 2.0 applications to mine the enormous amount of data created by people on the Internet. With the sophisticated algorithms in this book, you can write smart programs to access interesting datasets from other web sites, collect data from users of your own applications, and analyze and understand the data once you’ve found it. Programming Collective Intelligence takes you into the world of machine learning and statistics, and explains how to draw conclusions about user experience, marketing, personal tastes, and human behavior in general — all from information that you and others collect every day. Each algorithm is described clearly and concisely with code that can immediately be used on your web site, blog, Wiki, or specialized application. This book explains: Collaborative filtering techniques that enable online retailers to recommend products or media Methods of clustering to detect groups of similar items in a large dataset Search engine features — crawlers, indexers, query engines, and the PageRank algorithm Optimization algorithms that search millions of possible solutions to a problem and choose the best one Bayesian filtering, used in spam filters for classifying documents based on word types and other features Using decision trees not only to make predictions, but to model the way decisions are made Predicting numerical values rather than classifications to build price models Support vector machines to match people in online dating sites Non-negative matrix factorization to find the independent features in adataset Evolving intelligence for problem solving — how a computer develops its skill by improving its own code the more it plays a game Each chapter includes exercises for extending the algorithms to make them more powerful. Go beyond simple database-backed applications and put the wealth of Internet data to work for you. “Bravo! I cannot think of a better way for a developer to first learn these algorithms and methods, nor can I think of a better way for me (an old AI dog) to reinvigorate my knowledge of the details.” — Dan Russell, Google “Toby’s book does a great job of breaking down the complex subject matter of machine-learning algorithms into practical, easy-to-understand examples that can be directly applied to analysis of social interaction across the Web today. If I had this book two years ago, it would have saved precious time going down some fruitless paths.” — Tim Wolters, CTO, Collective Intellect

User Ratings and Reviews

3 Stars Practical and accessible.
The book is interesting and easy to read. Shows how to apply AI concepts to the kind of applications that the majority of programmers produce, and for those who like me studied AI years ago but haven’t used it a lot since then, it’s a good reminder.

But, the quality of the Python code leaves a lot be desired. I’m sure it works, and for strict personal use it could be OK, but lacks of ellegance for a textbook; abuses of list comprehensions and long expressions(to make the code compact, I guess), which makes hard to follow the examples to the detail.

I don’t regret having bought it, though.

5 Stars Great Introduction
One of the best books I have bought in a while. It strikes a perfect balance of introduction of the algorithms and practical application. The book is organized around the different problem areas such as “search”, “optimization”, “categorizing”, etc. and algorithms to achieve them. It starts each section with a naive implementation to a problem, and gradually works through to more intelligent solutions. I really enjoyed the evolution of the search implementation. It starts with a trivial implementation, and continues to augment adding such features as a simplified PageRank and other optimizations.

5 Stars great book for getting more out of your data
I’ve had this book for almost a year now, and have been pleased with the content.

If you run a website, with users, you probably have a ton of data on how those users use your site. Each chapter covers a different topic in things like search ranking, recommendations (they kind of explain how amazon does it!), plus a ton of other statistical methods and models to help improve your data analysis. The code examples are fairly straight-forward, written in python, and easy to adapt to other programming languages with minimal effort.

4 Stars Good for starters
I’ve actually bought this book for my bf who is one of those self taught people and he was jumping off the walls when he got it. He has been smiling for days….

5 Stars Understanding Web 2.0 Preference, Search & Machine Learing
This tutorial does much more than it promises. It provides a thorough introduction to Web 2.0 techniques for preference and recommendation applications and many search related algorithms, based upon statistical learning techniques and showing use of the relevant web application’s API (software interface). At the same time it offers an excellent tutorial in one of computer science’s most widely relevant topics: Machine Learning. This mathematically sophisticated topic is carefully explained to the layman in both a verbal description of how each algorithm works, and well documented Python code to allow both deep understanding and practical experience with relevant programming examples. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to understand important Web 2.0 concepts involving analysis of information and data or who needs to implement a Machine Learning or Data Mining application. The only recommendation I would make to the author for a second excellent edition would be the inclusion of an appendix on some popular Machine Learning package such as Weka, or for Python compatibility Orange. All in all a valuable addition to any web programmer’s library and as a guide to Statistical Learning concepts.

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Easy Email for the Computer Shy

Easy Email for the Computer Shy

This instructional DVD teaches how to set up and use a free web based email account.

NOTE: This computer help video can be watched on Televisions with DVD players and on computers which have DVD Drives.

“Easy Email for the Computer Shy” has been designed for absolute computer novices. No previous computer experience is necessary. You (or your “computer shy” friend) can learn how to use email in the comfort and privacy of your own living room.

Yahoo Mail is used for the visual demonstrations but the email basics that are carefully explained and demonstrated will apply to any email provider (Hotmail, Gmail, AOL, etc.)

Table of Contents

- Introduction

- Email Account Sign up

- Your Email Inbox

- How to “Sign-in” to Your Email Account

- How to Open Email Messages

- How to Send Email Messages

- How to Reply to Email Messages

- Your Email Address Book

- How to Save Email Pictures

- How to Attach and Send Email Pictures

- How to Delete Email Messages

- How to “Rescue” Email Messages From the Trash

- All About Email Folders

- How to Move Email Messages

- “Draft” Email Messages

- Keyboarding Tips

- Where to go From Here

FREE PROGRAM UPDATES

This computer help video never gets out of date! Free updates to this program will be available at www.computershy.com.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Help for the Computer Shy founder Michael Gorzka has been teaching “computer shy” adults how to use personal computers (both Macs & PCs) and various software & Internet applications since 1997.

He has incorporated what he has learned from his teaching experiences into his computer help DVDs and manuals.

This product is manufactured on demand using DVD-R recordable media. Amazon.com’s standard return policy will apply.

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All Things Distributed

All Things Distributed

Werner Vogels’ weblog on building scalable and robust distributed systems.

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ActionScript 3 0 for Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book

ActionScript 3 0 for Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book

The fastest, easiest, most comprehensive way to learn ActionScript® 3.0 for Adobe Flash CS4 Professional

ActionScript® 3.0 for Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book contains 14 lessons. The book covers the basics of learning ActionScript and provides countless tips and techniques to help you become more productive. You can follow the book from start to finish or choose only those lessons that interest you.

Learn to add interactivity to Flash files using ActionScript 3.0: Control timelines and animation, write event-handling functions, and control loading of and interaction with data, text, video, sound, and images.

“The Classroom in a Book series is by far the best training material on the market. Everything you need to master the software is included: clear explanations of each lesson, step-by-step instructions, and the project files for the students.” —Barbara Binder, Adobe Certified Instructor, Rocky Mountain Training

Classroom in a Book®, the best-selling series of hands-on software training workbooks, helps you learn the features of Adobe software quickly and easily. Classroom in a Book offers what no other book or training program does—an official training series from Adobe Systems Incorporated, developed with the support of Adobe product experts.

User Ratings and Reviews

5 Stars good start with actionscript 3.0
This book is great for beginners who want to learn the fundamentals concepts and features of Actionscript 3.0 , and who want to switch from actionscript 2.0 to 3.0 , it illustrates actionscript 3.0 by the means of practical projects, each chapter has a project with specific goals builds on its previous, and the explanation is clear and step by step instructions and it covers everything you need to know t begin code and animation, and covers the new features of as 3.0 such as pixel bender toolkit, inverse kinematics and developing desktop application with adobe integrated runtime (AIR).

2 Stars I advise against purchasing this book
The ActionScript 3.0 class I took at a local community college used this book as the text book. I went through the book’s chapters in sequential order as assigned by the professor. I personally invested a lot of time into learning AS 3.0 through the book’s exercises, but I have made little progress towards utilizing AS 3.0 full potential.

I own the o’reilly’s essential ActionScript 3.0 by Colin Moock and it does a much more through job of teaching ActionScript 3.0, but is designed for people that have some kind of programing background. [...]

What I liked about the is how it took a pragmatic approach to teaching ActionScript 3.0, but the book is littered with errors and does not always take the “best practice approach”. Below is a list of the problems I encountered while going through the chapters.

1. code errors in almost every chapter

2. book was created for cs4, yet the author(s) created files in cs3 not cs4

3. extremely poor design…even though this is an ActionScript 3.0 book they could have at least spent some time working on design. Some of the exercises look terrible.

[...]

5 Stars FINALLY
So ActionScript 3.0 has been out for a couple of years and FINALLY it dawns on Adobe to have a AS3.0 book that is for people that didn’t get a masters’ degree in computer science. And for all you folks that tried with all your might to concentrate hard and start learning 3.0 with a book and pure will, prepare to advance. The book is straight forward, written for designers instead of the other 64 AS3 books.

Now, you can get started. The book tells you helpful things on the way like “you need to get really good at using ‘event listeners’ because you are going to use them all the time in your basic projects”.

You designers have finally found the book to actually get you started. Pretty soon, you’ll be helping the Java and C# programmers with ActionScript instead of the other way around. And your stuff will actually still look nice.

5 Stars Worth the Money
I purchased this book after I read “Adobe Flash CS4 Professional Classroom in a Book” in order to get more insight on some the features of ActionScript 3.0. I wasn’t disappointed. I thought the chapters were well organized. And everything worked the way the book said it would. Just follow the directions and you should do well.

Of course, it’s an introductory course. But once you finish, you should be able to work with the online materials to find what you need for more detailed information.

5 Stars A designers way to learn actionscript
This book is simply the best book I have seen for designers to learn actionscript. I have gone through countless actionscript books, all of which seem like they are written by programmers who just assume you know basic programming. I’m a designer, not a coder! This book helped me bridge the divide and I gratefully spent the money on it. It was worth every penny.

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Home-Based Rehabilitation Trialed By Cardiac Patients (Medical News Today)

Patients who have been treated in hospital for cardiac health problems, such as a heart attack, are being given a powerful new option to help set them on the path to good health.

Nokia N97 SDK Beta Available For Download

The Nokia N97 SDK Beta was released to the full Forum Nokia community during the Nokia Developer Summit 2009 . The new SDK allows developers to explore the new features and APIs offered by the Nokia N97 device. Using the SDK developers can create applications that take advantage of the new home screen publishing, memory management, and compass APIs. The emulator, which has full Nokia N97 device look-and-feel, enables the testing of these new application capabilities as well as home screen w

SuccessFactors lands big deployment, new cloud computing VP (ZDNet)

SuccessFactors, which offers on-demand human capital management software, said Wednesday that it has landed a deployment of 300,000 users bringing its user base to 4.5 million. In addition, it has named former eBay exec Tom Fisher as vice president of cloud computing. The 300,000 user deployment was at a customer only described as one of the world's largest retailers. But the list of retailers ...

Time Warner: AOL’s revenue slide continues; We plan to buy Google’s 5% AOL stake (ZDNet)

Updated: Time Warner's first quarter was weighed down by its AOL unit, which saw revenue fall 23 percent. Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes reiterated that the company is looking for the right ownership structure for AOL and the company plans to buy back a 5 percent stake owned by Google. AOL reported first quarter revenue of $867 million, down 23 percent from a year ago. Subscription (dial-up) ...

Business Development Professional (Dubai)

Employer: Industry: Business DevelopmentLocation: Dubai, UAEWe are looking for a business development professional to market our web technology and online communication package to Small businesses.Entrepreneurs and Corporations in sectors you have experience in or expertise in. This is an independent representative role, where you manage this business from your own virtual business office, full training and coaching support given.Email this Job to a Friend | Share on Twitter

Mapping the Current Web Transition

A year ago, I wrote a magnum opus three-part post that attempted to chronicle some of the underlying changes happening in the economy and how this would impact web technology ventures. “Useful, but too long” was a recurring comment. So, here is a one-year update, much shorter. And hopefully a bit clearer, seeing as we are further into this transition. Sponsor The Grossly Over-Simplified Web Transition Chart Pre-Historic Recent History Now Future Phase 1.0 2.0

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