Modern medicine and technology has undeniably made great advances for us–those lucky enough to enjoy its benefits. We now live longer and healthier lives, no longer needing to worry about many once-deadly diseases. We are able to screen ourselves and even our potential children for genetic illnesses. We are so optimistic about medicine that […]

Microsoft’s Zune aims to be social butterfly | CNET News.com

On November 14, 2006, Microsoft launched its highly anticipated alternative to Apple’s iPod: the Zune. The device, which has a 30GB hard drive, FM tuner, 3-inch screen and USB 2.0, was the “talk of the web” as technology enthusiasts anxiously awaited an announcement of its official […]

I came across an interesting article while searching for information related to Stanley Milgram’s “small-world” network. Those of you who have read “The Tipping Point” may remember Malcolm Gladwell’s story about Stanley Milgram, the psychologist who in 1967 gave 160 residents of Omaha, Nebraska a letter with the name of a stockbroker who lived in […]

The Trading Agent Competition is a multiple auction-type game competition held every year. A trading agent is a computer program that tries to satisfy the preferences of its client(s) by attempting to assemble a variety of travel packets through different types of auctions and competitions. The agent who fulfills his client’s preferences best wins.
This creates […]

In the February 07 edition of their magazine, View, PriceWaterhouseCoopers (PWC) addresses social networks from a business’ point of view. Three articles touch on social networks; the first concerns consumers and the following two discuss employee networks.
View calls this new type of consumer, the socially networked consumer, a powerful force in the marketplace that CEOs […]

A recent paper by Ross Anderson and Tyler Moore, “The Economics of Information Security: A Survey and Open Questions,” brings together the seemingly disparate fields of security and economics to discuss the reasoning behind security decisions. They provide examples such as why individual PC owners choose to install anti-virus software and why large banks choose […]

“Attention Networks vs. Social Networks”
Article link: http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2005/11/29/attention_netwo.html
This article discusses the difference between how attention networks and social networks model relationships.  The author believes that social networks are not an ideal model because they do not provide adequate information about relationships because of its undirected nature.  For examples, they don’t measure how long you’ve been friends, […]

http://www.codeproject.com/csharp/Neural_Network_OCR.asp
(Note: Knowledge of C# / Java / C++ is recommended.) 
The beauty of neural networks is that they’re inherently generalized with respect to inputs and outputs.  Simply put, there is no type of neural network dedicated to one particular task.  While there are many implementations and algorithms that can be used to create a neural network, they can […]

Auctions: Theory and Practice
Auctioneer Addon for WoW
Our lectures and literatures discussed the theory of auctions. World of Warcraft (WoW) is an online game that was discussed earlier in another post. It has is own virtual economy with an auction house system that uses an ascending first price sealed bid system. Items are placed in the […]

Link to Article
In the opening days of this course we discussed at length the different ways to create triadic closure amongst several nodes. The idea that information can flow just as easily through weak ties led us to the analysis of information flow across social networks and how it is entirely possible that weak […]