I have meant to post about AideRSS for months now, but I have been so busy at Suited Media gearing up for the launch of Pokerspace that I have completely disregarded this blog and its readers. Rest assured I will be able to put more time back to this blog in the coming months.

For those that are still listening, there is a something you should check out. Simply put, I am very impressed with some software, a web application, created by a small team of local professionals including a fellow UW graduate, Ilya Grigorik, the Chief Architect of AideRSS, Inc.

AideRSS may be the first tool I have found in a long while that has the potential to significantly improve on my Bloglines experiences. Bloglines has been my tool of choice for blog reading for years, but as past posts have detailed I have found some difficulties navigating and enveloping hundreds of feeds a day, many of which post a lot, some of which post rarely. I used to subscribe to almost 500 feeds, but I am now cut down to about 335.

After meeting Ilya I knew he was creating innovative and potentially important software. I met Ilya at my UW graduation ceremony a few months ago. We exchanged some of our experiences and entrepreneurial interests. Conversing with him before the ceremony confirmed my initial impressions that Ilya was a very interesting individual. We exchanged contacts and I actually added him to my LinkedIn, which is something I have never done with someone I have known for such a short time. Now, a quick glance at his LinkedIn profile shows he is linked to more than 100 very interesting people - I not surprised in the slightest.

I played with his site for a few hours one night after work and found it to be a very well designed web application. I explored the site throughly and found it be an exemplary example of modern web design. I imported my entire OPML feed of into the site and it performed flawlessly. The interface was clear and easy to follow. I especially liked the quality feedback it gives the user at the apprioriate times and places. Looking at the CSS confirmed my guess that it was a cleanly coded site. Without any hesitation I subscribed to the AideRSS blog.

I am also impressed with their technology, PostRank. In fact, I use a lot of the same ranking techniques myself and have
experience with most of the sites (Bloglines, del.icio.us, Technorati, etc.) that enable the AideRSS application. I still use a lot of these services to run what I call “tracking feeds” for myself, my company, and other key words I care about so that I can hear immediately whenever these terms are mentioned online. I used to love PubSub (if you remember of it… if not, research it). I wish it was still around. Wow, apparently it is coming back…

PubSub is undergoing redevelopment at the moment. We’ll be relaunching as PubSub 2.0 this winter with a host of exciting new features and services.

Anyways, I suggest you check out AideRSS.

Computer scientists from Carnegie Mellon University are developing and using online games to train computers visual system according to this article from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

An example game is Peekaboom, which is used online by teams of two players. The first one, designated as “Peek,” sees on his screen an image — initially empty — and a word that describes the image or one element of the image. The second one, named “Boom,” gradually reveals the image or gives hints to “Peek” until he correctly guesses the word associated to the image. A computer program can use this information to learn how to better categorize and identify objects visually. Essentially, humans are helping to train computer vision systems.

This reminds me of the method people use to break CAPTCHAs. A Completely Automated Public Turing Test to Tell Computers and Humans Apart is often used to protect web forms from automated use. To break a CAPTCHA, one simply needs to redirect the CAPTCHA image that the script comes across - to a human of course. The most common way to do this, is to ask a human to evaluate a CAPTCHA image before giving them access to free pornography. Clever, but extremely simply, and I would guess it is quite effective.

Why I blog this? I believe we will see many more ‘teaching systems’ where computer software ‘learns’ by working with humans. Why? Because humans already know how to learn. We can categorize incoming sensory information and manipulate it abstractly with symbols. And, we know instinctively how to teach learning when we raise children. I quite expect to one day raise a personal A.I. using human training and attention.

via FutureWire via Unmediated via SmartMobs