Archive for the 'Hacking' Category

Particle - on the way to a Findory

Friday, July 11th, 2008


Although I started this project as an experimental weekend thingy (to play around with Google App Engine), the project has shaped up well. Before you surf over to another blog, wondering what the hell I’m talking about, let me introduce you to “Personalized ARTICLE” aggregator (read as PARTICLE). The aim is to personalize a users online reading (just like what Findory did). Findory was an excellent service and I’ll be glad if I can achieve even an iota of what Greg created. This project is at very rudimetary and experimental stage. Rather than tapping into the users reading history on the site (monitored by the links clicked), the idea is to study how a users *interests*, scattered around at various “databases of interest” like del.icio.us, could be used to personalize online reading (news articles, blogs and more). This way the user could merrily browse the world wide web, bookmarking pages, doing his usual stuff and let PARTICLE worry about making this data useful.

Click here to try PARTICLE

Presently you need to provide PARTICLE with your del.icio.us username, which it uses to analyze your *interests* and present you with recent news stories you may like. It works well if you have a decent number of bookmarks in del.icio.us. As I mentioned, the project is at a very rudimentary stage, so don’t feel disappointed by the results (ah! the unlucky few). I encourage you to play around with the app and recommend it to others to try. I’ll be making many changes/additions in the coming weeks.

Test drive PARTICLE at http://particle.semanticvoid.com. Kindly leave your feedback/comments/suggestions in the comments or send me an email at ‘anand at semanticvoid.com’.

[UPDATE] Yahoo! Research has a similar project called Garçon.

Posted in Tagging, Artificial Intelligence, Project, Hacking | 4 Comments »

Awaken The Hacker Within

Thursday, July 19th, 2007

My good friend and fellow Barcamp organizer, Rohit Srivastwa, came up with this brilliant idea last Barcamp. He has been attending various hacker conventions like Black Hat and thought that it would be appropriate for hosting an event on similar lines in India. ClubHack is scheduled to be hosted in Pune (India) sometime around this December. You can head over and register for the following events:

Or you can register yourself for attending the convention.

Although this event would be moderated, we would still try to keep it as close to the flavor of the Barcamp. So fellas, awaken the hacker within you and be there to present your exploits, mods, software hacks or network with fellow nerds.
You can stay updated about ClubHack here as well as check out the blog.

Posted in Hacking | No Comments »