Author Archives: mfagan

egosurfing on delicious.com

Posted on February 19, 2010 by mfagan

Via Alf, I learn that apparently delicious has long supported lookup by domain and path, not just absolute URL. I took a look through all the bookmarks of my old website, Fagan Finder, and it turned up a few interesting … Continue reading →

Tagged , , | Comments Off on egosurfing on delicious.com

Announcing Quizify

Posted on February 18, 2010 by mfagan

Back in early 2005 I hacked up a quick web app to help me study for the Arthropod Zoology course I was taking in university. It helped me so much that in 2006 I decided to remake it in a … Continue reading →

Tagged , | Comments Off on Announcing Quizify

Aardvark

Posted on February 13, 2010 by mfagan

I’ve had this draft post about Aardvark for about two weeks now. Now that they’ve been acquired by Google, I guess it’s about time to finally publish it. I first heard about Aardvark via the Seattle Tech Startups mailing list … Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Aardvark

Frozen Lizards in Florida

Posted on February 10, 2010 by mfagan

A few weeks ago I was in Florida, around the Fort Lauderdale area, and for the first couple of days, it was very cold, for Florida. Too cold for many lizards, that’s for sure. Here are a couple of my … Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , | Comments Off on Frozen Lizards in Florida

The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa’s City of Gold by Frank T. Kryza | LibraryThing

Posted on January 28, 2010 by mfagan

I mentioned a little over a year ago that I’m now keeping track of what I read (using LibraryThing). I enter the book, the date I finished it, and a rating out of five stars, but I’ve been thinking for … Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , | Comments Off on The Race for Timbuktu: In Search of Africa’s City of Gold by Frank T. Kryza | LibraryThing

Some notes on Map Kibera mapping – Mikel Maron

Posted on January 20, 2010 by mfagan

It occurs to me that I’ve hardly mentioned OpenStreetMap on this blog, despite that it’s often an obsession of mine, as people who’ve met me in person would quickly confirm. As the Wikipedia of maps (no other explanation works nearly … Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

The Loudness Wars (and leaf blowers)

Posted on January 18, 2010 by mfagan

In an earlier post complaining about excessive noise I briefly mentioned the trends within music. The Loudness Wars: Why Music Sounds Worse : NPR has more interesting details on this include some real stats (sadly using only the top song … Continue reading →

Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Comparing NLP APIs for Entity Extraction

Posted on January 2, 2010 by mfagan

Update: a number have people have pointed out some small errors and some additional APIs that I should look at. See my half-hearted followup: Entity Extraction APIs, once again. As part of a project I’m working on (more on that … Continue reading →

Posted in Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 25 Comments

On the US Gov’t “Going Google”

Posted on December 25, 2009 by mfagan

On the US Gov’t “Going Google” – very true. Google has had great success, and thus they are a problem.

Tagged , , , | Comments Off on On the US Gov’t “Going Google”

Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month

Posted on December 23, 2009 by mfagan

Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month – of all the services Yahoo’s been killing, this one is just sad. MyBlogLog was pretty innovative and just as useful today as it always has been, despite years of nothing new. At the … Continue reading →

Tagged , | Comments Off on Yahoo! Will Kill MyBlogLog Next Month