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Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

blog.stephenwolfram.com

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Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#51

Post by ninetax »

SCdF wrote: post #40
ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

I think I would be on the side of excited. It would be nice to make a batrillion dollars I suppose, but I already have a day job and a growing list of books that I haven't read, and as much as I like coding in the case of my main idea I'm kicking around it's a means to an end, and I would be a happy chap if that end already existed.

I am totally excited (it's a mixed feeling), but this doesn't exactly fulfil my end goal for the project: let me fiddle with my own facebook data.

It's pretty good inspiration though.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#52

Post by matthewcford »

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Happened to me when Apple launched the iPhone, which I had designed for my pre-GCSE project in 1996.

Then again when for my actual GCSE project, I designed a electric car in a Lotus Elise inspired body.

That's life though, suffice to say I'm buying a tesla roadster when they're next available and I have the cash.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#53

Post by SCdF »

ninetax wrote: post #51
SCdF wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I would be on the side of excited. It would be nice to make a batrillion dollars I suppose, but I already have a day job and a growing list of books that I haven't read, and as much as I like coding in the case of my main idea I'm kicking around it's a means to an end, and I would be a happy chap if that end already existed.

I am totally excited (it's a mixed feeling), but this doesn't exactly fulfil my end goal for the project: let me fiddle with my own facebook data. It's pretty good inspiration though.

Totally :-) You get to see what works and what doesn't

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#54

Post by ohashi »

ninetax wrote: post #47
ohashi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Had this happen with my Master's thesis. Not fun. The positive side is, it was a good idea (at least based on the attention it's getting). It gave me something to compare to as well.

Yeah, it's good to know that you are at least keeping up with the exciting ideas. Better than being completely surprised by it. It's also nice to get some perspective on how other people think about the topic.

Better than creating something that nobody wants or cares about certainly :)

Also, don't let this stop you. If you really feel like giving up though, consider open sourcing it, I suspect some people (myself included) are interested in this, but hesitant to give our info away to some untrusted 3rd party.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#55

Post by amirmc »

This just made personal search a very interesting space.

Put aside for a moment the fact that you're giving your personal data to (yet another) third party. Imagine you tie all your social online stuff to a service that's good at aggregating/displaying the data from each one. Now I could have a 'dashboard' of my online life as well as being able to query it (e.g when/how did I last interact with Alice or Bob?).

I don't know how good Alpha actually is but if I take the visualisations on faith, then I'm interested to know where they're headed. If I were a startup in the personal data/aggregation space, I'd be paying very close attention.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#56

Post by ninetax »

ohashi wrote: post #54
ninetax wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, it's good to know that you are at least keeping up with the exciting ideas. Better than being completely surprised by it. It's also nice to get some perspective on how other people think about the topic.

Better than creating something that nobody wants or cares about certainly :) Also, don't let this stop you. If you really feel like giving up though, consider open sourcing it, I suspect some people (myself included) are interested in this, but hesitant to give our info away to some untrusted 3rd party.

I'm not giving up. There are a few things they totally missed here like the fact I have to give away all my data and that it's not platform based (I can't build on it). I would like to be able to ad-hoc query and visualize my social data on my own terms locally. Not much written yet, but I will probably be open source.

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#57

Post by ohashi »

ninetax wrote: post #56
ohashi wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Better than creating something that nobody wants or cares about certainly :) Also, don't let this stop you. If you really feel like giving up though, consider open sourcing it, I suspect some people (myself included) are interested in this, but hesitant to give our info away to some untrusted 3rd party.

I'm not giving up. There are a few things they totally missed here like the fact I have to give away all my data and that it's not platform based (I can't build on it). I would like to be able to ad-hoc query and visualize my social data on my own terms locally. Not much written yet, but I will probably be open source.

Best of luck :)

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#58

Post by ninetax »

amirmc wrote: post #55

This just made personal search a very interesting space. Put aside for a moment the fact that you're giving your personal data to (yet another) third party. Imagine you tie all your social online stuff to a service that's good at aggregating/displaying the data from each one. Now I could have a 'dashboard' of my online life as well as being able to query it (e.g when/how did I last interact with Alice or Bob?). I don…

It's hard to ignore that I've just granted someone most of the permissions available to my facebook, but I totally agree that if I could get an aggregation of all my social data in one place and pipe it into some visualizations to create a dashboard it would be pretty formidable.

I just wish I could have that without having to sacrifice my privacy. Why not have a standalone app like the days of old?

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#59

Post by slipperyp »

ninetax wrote: post #17

Do you know that feeling when a project/idea you have been working on a long time gets implemented almost exactly as you imagined it, only by someone else? Well I do now. I'm not sure if I should be excited, or listen to the sick feeling in my stomach. Edit: Thanks for the positive support! I'll keep working on the project.

Yeah - also take some comfort in the fact that though this sounds amazing (and probably is), it's clearly illustrating the fact that it's easier to have an idea, get it kind of working, and make a big announcement about it than it is to oversee a successful launch.

I don't know what's causing the failures (whether it's a problem at wolfram's end or facebook) but I've seen multiple errors every time I've tried this and judging from the comments here in hn, many others are, too. Maybe you'll be first to announce a reliably working implementation?

Re: Wolfram Alpha Personal Analytics for Facebook

#60

Post by amirmc »

ninetax wrote: post #58
amirmc wrote: post #55

This just made personal search a very interesting space. Put aside for a moment the fact that you're giving your personal data to (yet another) third party. Imagine you tie all your social online stuff to a service that's good at aggregating/displaying the data from each one. Now I could have a 'dashboard' of my online life as well as being able to query it (e.g when/how did I last interact with Alice or Bob?). I don…

It's hard to ignore that I've just granted someone most of the permissions available to my facebook, but I totally agree that if I could get an aggregation of all my social data in one place and pipe it into some visualizations to create a dashboard it would be pretty formidable. I just wish I could have that without having to sacrifice my privacy. Why not have a standalone app like the days of old?

> "... if I could get an aggregation of all my social data in one place and pipe it into some visualizations to create a dashboard it would be pretty formidable."

You mean something like this? (or at least enabled by it). http://perscon.net/overview/dataware.html

It's one of the research topics I'm involved with. Any feedback/opinions appreciated (I can pass it on to the folks actually working on it).

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