Xavier Llorà » Chance Discovery

Analyzing Trends in the Blogosphere Using Human-Centered Analysis and Visualization Tools

Xavier — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 20:23:28 +0000

by Xavier Llorà, Noriko Imafuji Yasui, David E. Goldberg (2006).
Proceedings of the International Conference on Weblogs and Social Mining (ICWSM 2007). Also as IlliGAL TR. No. 2006026. Link to the PDF.

Abstract
The blogsphere is a valuable source of information. From simple topic analysis in the blogosphere—what’s hot—to harvesting and analyzing valuable market trends—what product and features are suggested—require a tight integration of computer- and human-based analysis capabilities. Computers can easily assist the processing filtering and visualizing relevant and key elements of the blogosphere, but coupling them with human evaluation and reasoning can provide the final steps to connect pieces of relevant information into better description map of the current trends of the blogosphere. An example of the need for such human-centered analysis was David R. Ellis’ film Snakes on a Plane (2006) which failed to properly translate blogosphere discussions into a successful commercial product—as a clear misalignment of both environments the blogsphere and the final targeted market. In this paper, we present some human-centered visualization and analysis tools that can help users to compare and reason synergies and misalignments revolving around a particular topic.

Communication gap management for fertile community

Xavier — Sat, 24 Mar 2007 15:17:35 +0000

by Naohiro Matsumura, David E. Goldberg, and Xavier Llorà (2006).
Journal of Soft Computing, Volume 11 , Issue 8, pp. 791–798, ACM press. Link to the ACM portal.
Initial work also available as IlliGAL TR No 2005001. Link to the PDF.

Abstract
In the paper, we first present an approach to extract social networks from message boards on the Internet. Then we propose communication gaps based on structural features of the social networks as an indicator of understanding the state of communication. After we classify 3,000 social networks into three types of communication, i.e., interactive communication, distributed communication, and soapbox communication, we suggest communication gap management to identify the types of communication, the roles of individuals, and important ties, all of which can be used for drawing up a plan for realizing fertile community.

Finally I am back up

Xavier — Sun, 17 Sep 2006 10:23:09 +0000

Vacations were over quite a while ago, but things kept piling on my desk. Finally I succeeded clearing some big chunks of matters out of it. Enough that I could go to the Design Theory and Methodology (DTM 2006) conference in Philadelphia last Tuesday. The conference is held as part of the ASME International Design Engineering Technical Conferences (IDETC 2006) . Yan Jin invited me to join the panel he organized on Intelligent Systems and Innovation. I had a great time joining the DTM people, very interesting work—if you are interested on innovation and creativity.

Innovation and creativity support via chance discovery, genetic algorithms, and data mining

Xavier — Wed, 01 Mar 2006 17:28:45 +0000

by Xavier Llorà and David E. Goldberg, Yukio Ohsawa, Naohiro Matsumura, Yuichi Washida, Hiroshi Tamura, Masataka Yoshikawa, Michael Welge, Loretta Auvil, Duane Searshmith, Kei Ohnishi, and Chen-Ju Chao (2006).
New Mathematics and Natural Computation, World Scientific, pp. 2(1):85–100. Link to the Journal publication.

Abstract
Creativity protocols and methodologies tend to be time consuming if applied manually. This paper presents how information technologies can support innovation and creativity for collaborative scenario creation and discussion. The fusion of change discovery, genetics algorithms, and computer-supported collaborative tools provide computational models of innovation and creativity. The proposed technology allows groups of participants in a creative processes to have pervasive access to the analysis of the current scenario in real time. This paper introduces such innovation technologies gathered in the DISCUS project, and summarizes initial successful usages of DISCUS on marketing research workshops.

The innovation pump: Supporting creative processes in collaborative engineering

Xavier — Sun, 26 Feb 2006 22:45:54 +0000

by Xavier Llorà and David E. Goldberg (2006).
IlliGAL TR No 2006011. Link to the PDF.

Abstract
The pervasive expansion of computers and Internet has change the way people collaborate. Terms such as cybercollaboratories are getting traction in day-to-day work. Web boards, blogs, e-mails, and instant messaging have become {\em de facto} mainstream communication channels. People scattered across the globe collaborate thanks to such technologies to carry out their daily work. Creative processes—such as collaborative engineering—have also taken advantage of such new communication media. This paper reviews the new framework set after these technologies and presents how collaborative creativity and innovation can be modeled and supported using computational models. The paper continues presenting a innovation-support model based on the usage of genetic algorithms as computational metaphors of human innovation. The paper also briefly discuses the results achieved using the proposed technologies in real-world collaborative creative processes.

Special issue on chance discovery (I)

Xavier — Fri, 02 Dec 2005 04:52:48 +0000

The Journal of New Mathematics and Natural Computation is running the first ot two parts of a special issue on chance discovery (volume 1, number 3). The number, besides including two regular papers, contains the first part of this special issue. The journal page can be found here. The table of contents of this first part of the special issue is:

Ruediger Oehlmann, Preface, page 371.
Yukio Ohsawa, Data crystallization: chance discovery extended for dealing with unobservable events, page 373.
Renate Fruchter, Yukio ohsawa, and Naohiro Matsumura, Knowledge reuse through chance discovery from an enterprise design-build enterprise data store, page 393.
Calkin a. s. Montero and Kenji araki, Human chat and self-organized criticality: A chance discovery application, page 407.
Ja-min Koo and Sung-bae Cho, Interpreting chance for computer security by viterbi algorithm with edit distance, page 421.
Edward Tsang, Sheri Markose and Hakan Er, Chance discovery in stock index option and futures arbitrage, page 435.

Mining social networks in message boards

Xavier — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 19:49:54 +0000

by Matsumura, N., Goldberg, D.E., Llorà, X. (2005).
Published in the Symposium on Conversational Informatics for Supporting Social Intel ligence, The Society for the Study of Artificial Intelligence and the Simulation of Behavior Press, pp. 18–27. Also as IlliGAL TR No 2005001. Link to the PDF

Abstract:
In this paper, we first present an approach to extract social networks from message boards on the Internet. Then we show structural features of 3,000 social networks extracted from 3,000 message boards from 15 categories in Yahoo! Japan Message Boards to prove the relationships between the features and the categories. After we classify social networks into three types (interactive communication, distributed expertise communication and soapbox communication), we suggest an approach for mining social networks to identify the types of communication, the roles of individuals, and important ties, all of which can be used to redesign the means communication as well as understand the state of communication.