Snapchat's Year

Image via CrunchBase

Last year it was Highlight's year to shine at SXSW. This year I think that honor goes to Snapchat.

Twitter had its year. It was Twitter that put SXSW on the tech map. One year FourSquare stole the show.

Next year I think we will see a new paradigm emerge. That new paradigm is the NUI, the Natural User Interface. It will be like moving from 2D to 3D. All apps will need to be overhauled. New possibilities will emerge.

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Chhath, Scarsdale And Albert Wenger

I was just kikking around with Albert Wenger (Breakfast With Albert (Wenger), VC Albert Wenger, Al Wenger Wants To Learn Scala, What Are You Doing Monday? Come Meet Al Wenger).

And I really wanted to share this picture with him. Then I figured I did not know how to do a search at my blog for that particular post on my phone. I fired up my laptop. The screen shots of our Kik chat, for one split second I thought it would be good to ask him if it was okay to blog them away. Would that be an invasion of his privacy? Then I made the judgment call. I will just be intruding, costing him time if I ask. Either I should not post it, or I should make a judgment call and post it.

English: Devotees of the Festival Chhath Parva in Janakpur, Nepal (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The significance of the picture is, this is Chhath being celebrated in Scarsdale. Chhath is the biggest festival in the culture that I was born into: Mithila is the land, Maithili in the language. It is not exactly a Hindu festival since also Muslims in Mithila are known to celebrate it. I became a Buddhist but never stopped celebrating, but then I like festivals of all kinds. Below are pictures of me celebrating Christmas, Holi and Social Media Week. The other person in the Christmas picture is a Muslim.

The Chhath festival revolves around the sun. You say goodbye in the evening, and welcome it back in the morning. Ideally you are all night by the water. The water here is a swimming pool in Scarsdale, Albert's hometown. The most famous body of water related to Chhath of course is the river Ganges. There is a huge pond in my hometown called Ganga Sagar. Sagar means sea. It is not a sea, it is a pond. That is where my family celebrates Chhath.

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Level 8 In A Month

Level 8 In A Month

And that in February, the shortest month. I hit Level 5 without an External Battery. And now that I am a Level 8 I am going to relax a little. I will still go out at least once a week with the express intention of hacking, plus I will be hacking when I am out and about town doing other things. But now I expect to be more skilled at it. Deploy just the right Burster, for example. That is a judgment call.

Now my Ingress focus is going to shift to the hyperlocal apps Highlight and Sonar. The number one reason I wanted to play Ingress was to meet people.

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Now I am going to enjoy the scenery more, and I am going to venture beyond the Farms. I am going to the isolated Portals, because I want to see the city, and I want to meet people.

Photography
Highlight
Sonar

I took the train to Madison Square Park in the afternoon, not long after lunch. Madison Square Park, Union Squar Park and Washington Square Park all looked blue. I took turns and created a whole bunch of Fields all three places. And I kept walking. I destroyed a whole bunch of green Portals near City Hall, and created blue Fields. Then it was off to Wall Street and Battery Park. I hit Level 8 while I was working Trinity Church, right off of Wall Street.

It is a very good feeling to hit Level 8. Now I can relax some. I had cold sores the final few days, all those late night hours in Battery Park. You get those cold sores when you go up the Himalayas if you are not careful.

It is an amazing feeling to use a Level 8 Burster for the first time. You do some major damage.

I'd like to share some photos.

Creating Fields in Union Square. This is also the Level Omar was at when I met him, and I met him in Union Square.




It was a long walk between Washington Square Park and City Hall. You pass through this zone where there is one Portal per block, often less.



City Hall: green territory turned all blue.



Hitting Level 8 at Trinity Church near Wall Street.



What the Battery Park, Wall Street area looked like when I hit Level 8. Hint: it is not all blue. And that large Field you see I created after I hit Level 8.




About to use a Level 8 Burster for the first time.



The aftermath.

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Big Data, Big Confusion?

Big Data (Photo credit: Kevin Krejci)

The Problem with Our Data Obsession

however objective data may be, interpretation is subjective, and so is our choice about which data to record in the first place. While it might seem obvious that data, no matter how “big,” cannot perfectly represent life in all its complexity, information technology produces so much information that it is easy to forget just how much is missing..... life is messy, and not everything can be abstracted into data for computers to act upon

There are obvious limitations to Big Data, but overall it is a force for good. The solution to Big Data blind spots seems to be even more Big Data. No?

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