Hung Truong: The Blog!

Amazon.com Wishlist => Huge River Wishlist

So I got a message from Amazon.com about my facebook app called “Amazon.com Wishlist.”

Basically, Amazon doesn’t want me to describe my Amazon.com wishlist using the word Amazon… I asked if an exception could be made but the lawyer politely declined. I can understand Amazon’s reasons for wanting to protect its name, but seriously, I can’t use “Amazon” to describe an app that displays an AMAZON.COM Wishlist!?

So I renamed the app “Huge River Wish List.” I think Amazon.com is developing a wishlist app for Facebook of their own, which is the real reason for forcing the name change. It’s the risk that one takes when developing using an API, though. I guess I should’ve read the terms more closely. It’s completely within Amazon’s rights to request that I change them app’s name.

It’s also completely in my rights to develop an app for a competitor to Amazon.com. Hmmm…

Google Developers Day US – Theorizing from Data

So before I got on a plane to fly from NM to RH, I prepared myself for boredom. One of the things I did was encode some of the Google Developer Day videos on Youtube for my Sony PSP. I think it was one of three times I’ve actually used my PSP!

Anyway, most of the videos were pretty fluffy and didn’t hold my interest, but the talk by Peter Norvig about statistical analysis was pretty darn interesting. Funny sidenote: when I went to Google for an interview, Peter Norvig was the special speaker dude. He had a pretty cool Hawaiian shirt on then too, as I recall.

Anyway, the talk brings up some pretty interesting things, like how if you feed enough statistics to a computer, the actual algorithm matters less and less. I’ve been interested in AI and machine learning, but I never really took any formal classes.

The stuff in the talk has sort of stuck in my head now. So I’m tending to see a lot of problems as being solvable by statistical analysis/classification. Like that Spock Challenge thing I blogged about earlier. Anyway, I’ve got an idea for a wacky application of Naive Bayesian Classification, but I won’t mention it yet (in case it’s an actual good idea, or in case I decide to bail after I don’t want to figure out the probability math).

Stay tuned?

House MD Seasons One and Two!

I just got my House M.D. Seasons One and Two DVD from Amazon.com today. It took like a month! I guess they sold a bunch and ran out. Anyway, I watched the first disc today (both sides).

I started randomly watching House when I saw it on TV one day. I really liked it, though I never actually “plan” my TV watching, so I hardly ever see it. I just bought the DVDs so I could see the first two seasons. I think I saw like, 2 or 3 episodes from this past season.

One thing I’ve noticed about House is that patients going into seizures usually mean a commercial break. I guess it’s just good TV writing to have a seizure plus fade to black… Also, the doctors really love Diazepam, which goes along with the many seizures. I remember Diazepam from Metal Gear Solid, which would help you relax to use the sniper rifle.

I think a drinking game where you take a drink when a patient goes into seizure, or when House’s initial treatment fails would pretty do the job for anyone. No other rules required.

So far, the series is really good. Sure, the plots get a little redundant and formulaic, but nothing like Inspector Gadget. Plus at least the characters develop. It may take me a while to watch the whole set, but I’ve got nothing but free time this Summer anyway!

i’m in like with you – Beta Impressions + Invites!

Yesterday I tried out i’m in like with you, another hip startup type thing. It’s a social network that lets you find cool people near you and play “games” with them. The games involve setting up a question and having others answer them. Like the dating game? Then you get points for being the most clever or something.

I’m not sure why this site is getting so much attention. It’s okay, but it has yet to offer enough users. There’s no women within 100 miles of my zip code!!!

Oh, and yet again, I have invites if anyone wants to try this.

Also, there was once this site called “Consumating” that was really similar. I had fun with it for a few weeks or so, but it got old. Then I went back to Facebook. I have a feeling i’m in like with you will suffer a similar fate.

Spock – Person Search Engine Beta Impressions + Invites

So I got a Spock invite from Jessica Mah and I just started trying it out today. It’s a search engine specifically designed to find people. So you type in a name, or a tag, or some other query and you’re supposed to get people as results.

The Spock about page says:

Spock is the online leader in personal search, helping users find and discover people. With over one hundred million people already indexed and millions added every day, Spock is building the broadest and deepest people specific search engine.

And that’s about all it says. Pretty sparse. I don’t even know what their actual purpose is. Is Spock for helping people stalk others? Myspace is better for that. Is it for building business connections? LinkedIn is better. Social networking? Either Facebook or LinkedIn, depending on how you’re networking.

For more famous people, Spock shows a decent amount of aggregated info. Like for Eddie Murphy, you get tags, photos, and links to imdb and whatnot. For less famous people, all you get is the info that’s already available from whatever site the info was scraped from.

Most peoples’ info is scraped from sources like LinkedIn or Myspace. This doesn’t really add anything useful, since you could just find those profiles on the respective sites. For example, let’s say that you want to find me on Spock. You’ll type in my name, and you’ll be presented with a bunch of Hung Truongs. You probably know something about me, so you’ll use the info that Spock has to figure out which Hung Truong is me. But since you know that much about me already, chances are, Spock won’t be telling you anything you don’t already know about me… Useless.

There are already many sources to gather information about people online. Spock just aggregates this stuff and doesn’t actually add any value to the information. In addition, there’s probably all sorts of privacy issues that need to be dealt with if Spock gets to the open beta phase. Google does a good job of removing sensitive personal info if people request it. Spock might not be so kind.

The most interesting thing I found while looking around at Spock was the $50,000 Spock Challenge. Basically, Spock is holding a contest to get developers to solve the problem of Entity Resolution and Extraction. EG how do you know a page is about Michael Jackson the pop singer vs the football player. I’m pretty sure the answer involves Bayesian statistical analysis. But I’m not about to spend my time to solve a problem for a startup that I don’t believe in.

Oh, I have 101 invites to try out Spock. So if you want one, leave a comment and I’ll email it to you. If I get around to it!