Graphics

• Use cases where Mahout should be use
• The infrastructure needed
• How to scale this infrastructure

Check out the article here : http://ssc.io/deploying-a-massively-scalable-recommender-system-with-apache-mahout/

There is also a book available that explains using Mahout in details : http://www.manning.com/owen/

So this book introduced me back then to the concept of E Inks. Now part of various devices and particularly made famous by Amazon’s Kindle, the e ink eventually as a technology aimed to become printable on surfaces as thin as the newspapers.

Today FastCompany published an article that talks about T Shirts that will allow for E Ink printing, thus giving a huge avenue to advertisers to use people t shirts as a dynamic display medium. The possibilities that something like this brings about are enormous like maybe even cell phones could eventually get integrated into clothing.

Check out the interesting prospect of E Ink on cloth:

And you can find the complete article here.

Check out the complete flikr photoset here  – http://www.flickr.com/photos/13084997@N03/sets/72157608258335431/

The creator, Linden Glendhill, wrote that the shapes have been made out of water based paints and sound come from a speaker. The motion is captured with mic triggered flash units controlled by StopShot.

Some relevant links:

Some photographs of the set up – http://www.npr.org/blogs/pictureshow/2011/04/13/135377949/how-sound-can-create-sculpture

How to do high speed photography at home – http://www.diyphotography.net/diy_high_speed_photography_at_home

Some other beautiful high speed photography results – http://www.toxel.com/inspiration/2009/04/08/beautiful-and-creative-high-speed-photography/

• Google’s official blog
• Watch the official Video here
• A potential boon to paid search marketers (www.searchengineland.com)

Read more about it here:
http://www.corning.com/news_center/features/A_Day_Made_of_Glass.aspx

Below is a video that talks about some of this (in its later part). It is also a very nice watch if you like data visualizations.

Finding your apps
First of all I always find it difficult to find where my apps are on Facebook. So i thought i’ll keep the url bookmarked:  http://www.facebook.com/developers/apps.php

Using WAMP
I am a lazy person and like out of the box solutions. So for a windows machine WAMP gave me apache, php and mysql bundled.

• Install wamp
• Open port 8080 for external access, make sure the machine can be accessed from outside your domain
• To create fbml app you might have to work directly on the server, to see results at runtime
• create you app folder in the www folder
• Start all services in wamp

I was working on a IIS server and it did not have curl enabled.
To enable curl:

• edit php.ini in \bin\php\(your version of php)\ and
• edit php.ini in \bin\Apache\(your version of apache)\bin\ folders.
• search for curl and uncomment this line -  extension=php_curl.dll

One of the trends that i always think is gonna be big in future is gaming in the real world. By that I mean that when people themselves will become characters of the games that they are playing in the virtual worlds. The merging of your virtual and real self.  Location based services are getting us there.

That is why it was very interesting to read that Frog Design is working on a location based game in Las Vegas. Interesting stuff.  Read the details of that initiative here : http://designmind.frogdesign.com/blog/frog-brings-ge039s-desert-quest-to-ces.html. And maybe be a part of it in case you are around in Vegas when this is happening .

On a related note, you should watch the following TED talk by Seth Priebatsch. He talks about how the next big thing is gonna be the game layer that will be built on the social layer that has already been created largely by Facebook. Though he talks about known concepts, but the way he puts it all together makes it very fascinating. He is trying to create such a integrated framework that uses game dynamics in order to get people motivated and makes them do stuff. It would be an awesome tool in the hand of marketing people.

And a funny video to follow that up from the Gamify Initiative: