Google Tech Talks
June 26, 2008
ABSTRACT
The Semantic Web presents the vision of a dist
Google Tech Talks
June 26, 2008
ABSTRACT
The Semantic Web presents the vision of a distributed, dynamically growing knowledge base founded on formal logic. Common users, however, seem to have problems even with the simplest Boolean
expression. So how can we help users to query a web of logic that they do not seem to understand? One frequently proposed solution to address this problem is the use of natural language (NL) for
knowledge specification and querying. We propose to regard formal query languages and NL as two extremes of a continuum, where semistructured languages lie somewhere in the middle.
To evaluate what degree of structuredness casual users prefer, we introduce four query interfaces, each at a different point in the continuum, and evaluate the users' preference and their query performance in a study with 48 subjects. The results of the study reveal that while the users dislike the constraints of a fully
structured formal query language they also seem at a loss with the freedom of a full NLP approach. This suggests that restricted query languages will be preferred by casual users because of their guidance effect, mirroring findings from social science theory on human activity in general.
Speaker: Prof. Bernstein
Abraham Bernstein is a full Professor at the Department of Information Technology (Institut für Informatik) of the University of Zurich. He conducts research on various aspects of supporting dynamic (intra- and inter-) organizational processes. His work draws from both social science (organizational psychology/sociology) and technical (computer science, artificial intelligence) foundations.
Before coming to Zurich he was an Assistant Professor, at the Information Systems Department in New York University's Stern School of Business, and received a Ph.D. at MIT's Sloan School of Management, where he worked with Prof. Thomas W. Malone at the Center for Coordination Science.
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Added: 2 days ago
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Google Tech Talks
June 26, 2008
ABSTRACT
Peripheral Information Awareness through Evolvi
Google Tech Talks
June 26, 2008
ABSTRACT
Peripheral Information Awareness through Evolving Mood Maps
Representing multivariable changes of complex data sets with beautiful developing landscapes
The idea behind the Panorama solution is to express the overall 'mood' of evolving, complex data (such as the development of the stock market) in rendered 3D animations that can be perceived and interpreted with little cognitive effort. The software application maps variables of a data set (e.g. bonds, shares, overall trading intensity or fluctuation of the stock market) to graphic parameters in a 3D simulation, such as ocean waves, sun strength, wind speed, cloud particles etc. Developments of the stock market, for example, become perceivable by cloud transformations, wave precipitations, and changes in sunlight. The result is a beautiful, developing scene in which observers (e.g. traders) can monitor several streams of background information without effort in their peripheral vision. Whenever this background information signals particular relevance in a given context, it moves to the observer's foreground attention. In this way information can become functional art instead of just a burden.
Speaker: Roberto Vitalini
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Added: 1 week ago
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Google Tech Talks
June, 27 2008
ABSTRACT
This Tech Talk is designed to in two parts and
Google Tech Talks
June, 27 2008
ABSTRACT
This Tech Talk is designed to in two parts and covers the basics of high definition video for consumers and the basics for video production and post production.
This talk will cover the current HD delivery formats in the US and their relationship to consumer equipment (e.g. television, home video) and installation. Different viewing methods will be compared including direct displays vs projection.
Speaker: Dave Van Hoy
Speaker: Brian Rutz
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Facebook and a polar bear may persuade people to pare down their energy use
The average
Facebook and a polar bear may persuade people to pare down their energy use
The average American consumes 12.5 times the energy of the average citizen of Africa or Asia. With approximately 300 million citizens, that adds up to 2 billion metric tons of CO2, or just over a 3rd of the total waste produced across all sectors of the U.S. economy. Of the other two thirds, much is produced as a by product of the process of meeting the needs of individuals. A reduction in energy use will require a combination of legislation, innovation, and changing lifestyles.
The StepGreen team draws from social science research, ubicomp, decision sciences, and environmental engineering to explore the use of of social technologies in encouraging behavior change. This talk covers several projects which explore issues such user acceptance of different iconography (such as an animated polar bear or tree) and language (such as how environmental language differs across ethnic groups); the impact of showing information about user energy savings on their MySpace page on user behavior; and user experiences with a mobile phone that automates sensing of transportation behavior and reports back.
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Added: 1 week ago
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Google Tech Talks
June 10, 2008
ABSTRACT
The disruptive technology of new media is far m
Google Tech Talks
June 10, 2008
ABSTRACT
The disruptive technology of new media is far more accessible than most realize. The impact of new media is far more impressive than most report. The mavericks of new media are slowly taking over - quietly, but with a shadow that dramatically changes the Internet's role in media (delivery, creation and consumption). At this point in time, these mavericks aren't effectively in anyone's index. Will that ever change?
Speaker: Paul Colligan
Paul Colligan is CEO of Colligan.com Inc. and manages several popular Internet properties that include Podcast Secrets, Automate Sales, FrontPage World, and PremiumCast.com.
Paul produces a number of Podcasts that include (but are not limited to) Marketing Online Live, Podcast Tools Weekly Update, Paul's Profitable Podcasting Podcast, Electronic Marketing Interviews, and Big Seminar Live. He is also the author of many books and magazine articles about Internet marketing and is co-author of The Business Podcasting Bible with Alex Mandossian.
Mr. Colligan has played a key role in the launch of dozens of successful Web sites and Internet marketing strategies that have seen tens of millions of visitors and millions of dollars in revenue. Previous projects have included work with Peak Potentials, Heritage House Publications, InternetMCI, the Oregon Multimedia Alliance, Rubicon International, Microsoft, the Electronics Boutique, and Pearson Education.
He is also a popular speaker on Internet technology topics and frequently speaks online, on the air, and before audiences about his passions. He has presented at events around the world that include The Podcast And New Media Expo, The European Business Podcasting Summit, Internet World, Linux World, Mac World, Commission Junction University, Big Seminar, the X-10 Seminar, and Microsoft Tech-Ed.
Paul's Blog at http://www.PaulColligan.com, is a great place to keep up with his latest efforts and current speaking schedule.
Paul lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and daughters and enjoys hiking, theater, music, fine dining, and travel.
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Added: 2 weeks ago
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Google Tech Talks
June, 19 2008
ABSTRACT
Digital tools for annotation of video have the
Google Tech Talks
June, 19 2008
ABSTRACT
Digital tools for annotation of video have the promise to provide immense value to researchers in disciplines ranging from psychology to computer science to ethnography. With the traditional methods for annotation being cumbersome, time-consuming, and frustrating, technological solutions are situated to aid in video annotation by increasing reliability, repeatability, and workflow optimizations. Three notable limitations of existing video annotation tools are lack of support for the annotation workflow, poor representation of data on a timeline, and poor interaction techniques with video, data, and annotations. Our model is a new system called VCode and VData. The benefit of our system is that is directly addresses the workflow and needs of both researchers and video coders.
Speaker: Josh Hailpern canditate
Joshua Hailpern is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the Computer Science Department focusing on Human Computer Interaction. He thesis work revolves around encouraging speech and vocalization in low functioning children with Autism. He attended Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, PA, majoring in Computer Science and minoring in Music Technology and graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree with Honors in May 2006.
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Added: 2 weeks ago
Views: 1,704
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Google Tech Talks
June 14, 2008
ABSTRACT
Traditionally file system designs have env
Google Tech Talks
June 14, 2008
ABSTRACT
Traditionally file system designs have envisioned directories as a means of organizing files for human viewing; that is, directories typically contain few tens to thousands of entries.Users of large, fast file systems have begun to put millions of entries in single directories, probably as simple databases. Furthermore, many large-scale applications burstily create a file per compute core in clusters with tens
to hundreds of thousands of cores.
This talk is about how to build file system directories that contain billions to trillions of entries and grow the number of entries instantly with all cores contributing concurrently. The central tenet of our work is to push the limits of scalability by minimizing serialization, eliminating system-wide synchronization, and using weaker consistency semantics. We build a distributed directory index, called GIGA+, that uses a unique,self-describing bitmap representation that allows the servers to encode all their local state in a compact manner and provides the clients with hints required to address the correct server. In addition, GIGA+ also handles operational realities like client and server failures, addition and removal of servers, and "request storms" that overload any server. I'll describe the implementation of our prototype in the PVFS2 parallel file system and experimental evaluation that demonstrates high degree of scalability.
(this is joint work with Garth Gibson at CMU)
Speaker: Swapnil Patil
Swapnil Patil is a third-year Ph.D. student in CS at Carnegie Mellon University, working with Professor Garth Gibson. For fun (and profit), he likes to think about end-to-end issues in large-scale computer systems, particularly parallelism, reliability, and scalability. At CMU, he is a member of the Parallel Data Lab (PDL) and and the Petascale Data Storage Institute (PDSI).design of Chapel. He received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University with honors in 1992.
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Google Tech Talks
June 14, 2008
ABSTRACT
Increasingly, R users have access to multi
Google Tech Talks
June 14, 2008
ABSTRACT
Increasingly, R users have access to multiprocessor machines or multiple-core CPUs. However, base R does not natively support parallel processing; this can force R users to wait while computationally intensive work is done on a single processor or core and other processors or cores lie idle. NetWorkSpaces for R (NWS-R) is a Python-based tuple coordination system that is portable across virtually all popular computing platforms. NWS-R includes a web interface that displays the workspaces and their contents; this is helpful when debugging or developing a program, or monitoring the progress of an application. NWS-R is easy to learn, accessible from many development environments, and deployable on ad hoc collections of spare CPUs. The server and client for NWS-R are available at SourceForge (nws-r.sourceforge.net); the client is also available at CRAN (cran.r-project.org/web/packages/nws/). We will present NetWorkSpaces for R and demonstrate the web interface.
While we are using R as the primary example for our NetWorkSpaces product, we will also present interfaces to other languages such as python and matlab.
Speaker: David Hendersen
David Henderson holds a Ph.D. in statistical genetics from Virginia Tech and completed a post-doc at Iowa State University in the Statistics Department. He has held faculty positions in the Biostatistics Department at the University of Washington and at the University of Arizona. Before coming to REvolution Computing, he was a Research Scientist at the Insightful Corporation in Seattle.
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Added: 2 weeks ago
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Google Tech Talks
June 14, 2008
ABSTRACT
Chapel: Productive Parallel Programming at
Google Tech Talks
June 14, 2008
ABSTRACT
Chapel: Productive Parallel Programming at Scale
Chapel is a new programming language being developed by Cray Inc. as part of the DARPA-led High Productivity Computing Systems Program (HPCS). Chapel strives to increase parallel programmability for supercomputer users by raising the level of abstraction compared to current parallel programming models. Language concepts that support this goal include abstractions for globally distributed data
aggregates and anonymized task-based parallelism. Since locality is crucial when computing at large scales, Chapel also supports language concepts for reasoning about architectural locality on the target
machine, including control over data placement and affinity between tasks and data. In contrast to previous higher-level parallel languages, Chapel is designed to be a "multi-resolution language", in which users can start by writing very abstract code and then incrementally add more detail until they are as close to the machine as that portion of their code requires. Although Chapel was not specifically designed for datacenter-oriented applications, many of its concepts should also be quite suitable for this domain given the importance of distributed data, concurrency, and affinity. In this talk, I will provide an overview of Chapel, explain how it was designed to help the HPC community, and describe its status. I will also attempt to make ties between its concepts and how they might be useful in a datacenter-based programming environment.
Speaker: Bradford Chamberlain
Bradford Chamberlain is a Principal Engineer at Cray Inc., where he works on parallel programming models, focusing primarily on the design and implementation of the Chapel parallel language in his role as technical lead for that project. Before starting at Cray in 2002, he spent a year at a start-up working at the opposite end of the hardware spectrum to design a parallel language (SilverC) for reconfigurable embedded hardware. Brad received his Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington in 2001 where his work focused on the design and implementation of the ZPL parallel array language, particularly on implementing and generalizing its region concept -- --a first-class index set representation for programming with distributed arrays. While at UW, he also dabbled in algorithms for accelerating the rendering of complex 3D scenes. Brad remains associated with the University of Washington as an affiliate faculty member and most recently co-led a seminar there that focused on the design of Chapel. He received his Bachelor's degree in Computer Science from Stanford University with honors in 1992.
Slides for this talk are available at http://groups.google.com/group/seattle-scalability-conferenc e
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