Our own Dan Fay (eScience blog) has a great post about data mining services in the cloud.

“So for fun – I downloaded a csv file of a stream gauge near Redmond into Excel and ran the “Highlight Exceptions” tool to find outliers in the dataset – it read the table, uploaded it to the service and in seconds returned the results - which included the number of outliers - in this case air temperature and it also highlighted in the table the rows.  It was so easy.  I can see it being used for many scientific datasets - even to clean them before doing other analysis, charting, graphs, uploads, etc.”

From the Microsoft SQL Server Data Mining Services:

“The SQL Server Data Mining team is working to extend the power and ease of use of SQL Server Data Mining to the Cloud. Our goal is provide services that allow you to build rich, predictive applications without worrying about server infrastructure, and showcase these services with cool applications that give you a glimpse of what’s possible.”

After all the buzz about the Seinfeld ads, Microsoft announced the “I’m a PC” campaign. Clever me finds. Finally, something creative from Microsoft. I’ve said in the past how much I love the Apple ads (not just the “I’m a PC, I’m a Mac” ones but everything that Apple does.

It’s funny how people get attached to products/technology. So, following the theme, here’s my entry...

“I am a human, or at least I aspire to be one, and no material thing defines me” :-)

I must admit, I do love the "I am a Mac, I am PC", as I've said a number of times on this blog. When Microsoft announced that they were investing $300M on a campaign, I hoped that something good would come out. Well, the first ad has now been released and everyone is talking about it. There are looooong discussion threads in Microsoft internal mailing lists. People like it, people hate it. The same seems to be happening all around the Web. I guess, the mere fact that people are discussing it indicates that the advertisers know what they are doing. I would have preferred, of course, that everyone talked about the ad because it was great, like Apple's :-( oh well! I am waiting for the follow on spots.

(Screen shot from http://www.microsoft.com/windows as of 6 Sept 2008)

The reason for this entry, though, is to link to a brilliant advertising idea by the same company. It came up in one of the discussion threads I mentioned above. I think it's funny :-)

Check out the main site and a blog entry with more videos.

And what a week has been! Lots of food, meeting friends, traveling around, and even been productive with work (i.e. no meetings!!! :-) I am now back in Xanthi and at my family's home in Petinos (3.5km outside of Xanthi). I'll continue working from here with a focus on the Web book. I am planning to take some days away from the Internet so I can concentrate on writing. My family has a beach house 25km away from here, which sounds like the ideal place to go and write! We'll see.

Here are some photos from last week...

Every time I visit Athens, I try to walk around and up the Acropolis. I spent few hours there just absorbing the feeling of the place, the beauty of ancient Greece, and the culture of a civilization that seems so far away.

   
  
 

You'll notice lots of close ups. This is because I wanted to avoid pictures of the ongoing (seems forever) restoration work (e.g. last photo of the Parthenon). Here are a couple of night shots; the one from far away is from the top of the Hilton Hotel in Athens (31 Euros for two drinks but I guess you pay for the view :-)

 

 

Here's Dave (unmarried at the time :-), at the top of the Hilton Hotel.

 

 

Not everyone seemed to be able to handle the long hours :-)

 

I love the Athens metro system. The stations are like museums...

 

In Greece, a it's a custom for friends and family to shave the groom. For good measure, Dave was already shaved and he had removed the blades :-) Also, the wedding ceremony was "accompanied" by lots of rice-throwing :-)

 

 

Christina and Dimitris (friends from Seattle) in one of my favorite night shots from the wedding reception.

 

Upon my return to Thessaloniki, I joined Kostas and Nikos (his assistant) for a photo shoot. Kostas is a professional photographer, amongst the most successful and well-known in Greece. In this particular occasion he was shooting the cast of Northern Greece's theatre group for a piece on their latest play.

  
  

Yes, I am the own with the rainbow t-shirt :-) They thought I was one of Kostas' helpers. The last three photos are Kostas' (unprocessed). In the last one, you can see Nikos (the guy in yellow) having some fun :-) The entire crew just looked at him while he was making faces (of course, not for publication).

Going out for a night in Thessaloniki (I had sooooo much beer and food that night :-)

  
  
  

Ahhh! Our beautiful Thessaloniki.

 

Back in Xanthi and out for the local festival. The entire old part of the city is converted into a huge party. Lots of groups playing music, everyone is BBQing, the bars are full... I love Greece :-)

  
 

When the .name top-level domain name became available, I thought that I would make use of it for all my online identity needs for the rest of my life, so I purchased the savas.parastatidis.name domain. My personal email has been savas@parastatidis.name since then while my web/blog presence is located at http://savas.parastatidis.name. After a change in policy, I was allowed to own parastatidis.name so that my entire family can have personal emails, even though they are not taking advantage of the feature yet. The transition was not without pain.

In July, the .me top-level domain name came into existence. I liked the idea a lot and purchased "savas.me". Given the difficulties that people have with my last name, I thought that moving my online identity to "savas.me" might make sense. But this means changing everything again (Windows Live ID, blog, feeds, web, email, etc.). So, do I go through the process again? Should I change the promise I made to myself that I will have only one permanent online identity and keep it throughout my life?

The thought is to move my web/blog sites to http://savas.me and running http://savas.parastatidis.name in parallel. As for email, the me@savas.me looks easy and short. What do people think?

If only there was a global semantics processing system that would have allowed me to introduce the following piece of knowledge into the global hive of information facts:

savas@parastatidis.name is also known as me@savas.me (digitally signed by 'savas')

I know we can do it with RDF but the problem is that we don't have something like DNS allowing us to introduce such a statement and make everyone aware of it. Then again, the last part (i.e. "digitally signed by 'savas'") also requires a permanent certificate (or at least another chain of certificates that will ultimately lead to 'savas', the person).

All very interesting issues that I am sure people in the security, online identity, semantics domains have been considering for years. The question on whether to transition to "savas.me" though still exists.