From a theoretical physicist who come up with experiments to find extra dimensions in the universe and searching genes using machine learning, I want to talk about two realistic and achievable ideas that I like to build as a technologist. These two products revolve around speech recognition & next generation social networks. Presented for Barcamp Singapore 3.

1. THE UNDERCOVER
TECHNOLOGIST
Bernard Leong
A Pragmatic Idealist (http://bleongcw.typepad.com)
bleongcw (at) gmail.com
Friday, February 27, 2009

2. My Life in a Space-Time Diagram
Time
Space
Friday, February 27, 2009

3. My Life in a Space-Time Diagram
Time Singapore
Cambridge
Space
Friday, February 27, 2009

4. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

5. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

6. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

7. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

8. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

9. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

10. AS A THEORETICAL PHYSICIST, I ...
Find an experimental signature to show the Universe has more
•
than 3 spatial dimensions.
Applying Self Organized Criticality to look at the firings of football
•
managers in the Premiere League.
Use Bayesian theory, Machine Learning and Independent
•
Component Analysis to learn interesting DNA motifs in the
Human Genome Project from stem cell regulation to cancer.
Friday, February 27, 2009

11. WHAT DOES THAT GOTTA DO WITH THE TALK TODAY?
• Two Interesting Ideas about Technology that I am interested to
think about/invest/develop if I ever have the free time.
• Next Generation Social Networks based on Degrees of
Association which measure Influence and Reputation.
• Voice Recognition on Mobile Phones and Computers.
• This talk is just a sketch of how each one of these products
can be created and developed.
• Remember: Ideas are cheap, Execution is key.
Friday, February 27, 2009

12. PRODUCT 1
NEXT GENERATION WEIGHTED
SOCIAL NETWORKS
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13. SOCIAL NETWORKS
Social Networks are Cultural, Generational & Geographical.
Source: Oxyweb, Nov 2008
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14. From Friendster to Facebook
Static Profile
Dynamic Profile:
News Feed, Groups, Events
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15. Linkedin connects people professionally but does not
distinguish the influencers or the connectors
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16. THE PROPERTIES OF A SOCIAL GRAPH
Six Degrees of Self-Organizing Nature
• •
Seperation: Everyone is of Networks: scale free
connected to each other and the ability of identify
within six degrees of generic hubs and
experiment. connectors in a network.
Friday, February 27, 2009

17. THE PROPERTIES OF A SOCIAL GRAPH
Six Degrees of Self-Organizing Nature
• •
Seperation: Everyone is of Networks: scale free
connected to each other and the ability of identify
within six degrees of generic hubs and
experiment. connectors in a network.
Friday, February 27, 2009

18. THE PROPERTIES OF A SOCIAL GRAPH
Six Degrees of Self-Organizing Nature
• •
Seperation: Everyone is of Networks: scale free
connected to each other and the ability of identify
within six degrees of generic hubs and
experiment. connectors in a network.
Friday, February 27, 2009

19. THE PROPERTIES OF A SOCIAL GRAPH
Six Degrees of Self-Organizing Nature
• •
Seperation: Everyone is of Networks: scale free
connected to each other and the ability of identify
within six degrees of generic hubs and
experiment. connectors in a network.
Friday, February 27, 2009

20. A SOCIAL GRAPH THOUGHT EXPERIMENT
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21. In the online world, each connection is characterized by a
1(Connected) or 0 (Not Connected)
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22. The Current Social
Network is unable to
measure Degrees of
Association, i.e. how
well you know that
person.
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23. TRY THIS NEW IDEA
9
9
Rule 1: Each user assigns
a degree of association 7 5
value (1-10) on how well
you know the other 7
person. Do it for multiple 8
users. Score this based on
the average of each pair
scores.
Friday, February 27, 2009

24. 10
5
10
9 10
• Rule 2: Fit a statistical 2
distribution on all your
associations.
• Rule 3: Calibrate the
weights between each pair of 7.5
users based on the social
9.5
6
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25. A WEIGHTED SOCIAL NETWORK
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26. With a weighted social network, you can search for best path to connect to
someone within a network and also find the influencers and hubs.
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27. PRODUCT 2
AN OPEN SOURCE
VOICE RECOGNITION PROJECT
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28. PROBLEM
• Can you build a voice recognition app which shows the name
of the person and his/her number when you say his/her
name?
• Current Developments: iPhone - Google App (1.5 mins),
Nokia (2-3 mins), Blackberry (2-3 mins).
• The challenge is to reduce the time to recall the name and
number within 30s.
Friday, February 27, 2009

29. WHY IS IT SO DIFFICULT TO
SAY “COMPUTER, ...”?
• Getting the Universal Voice Training Set is extremely difficult:
• Different Accents
• Different Languages
• Different Intonation
• Different Pitch
Friday, February 27, 2009

30. HERE’S A SKETCH:
Fundamental Assumption: What if we confine voice recognition of a gadget
•
such as a mobile phone to the user alone and specifically target the apps
adjusted to him?
An Open Source Voice Recognition Project (GPL) that consists of:
•
Repository to store training sets of users for research purposes.
•
An API built on three core layers: Training Data API, Recognition API and
•
Application API.
Build a few apps and get the developers/users community to join the fray
•
Training Data API Recognition API Application API
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31. Training Data API
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32. Training Data API
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33. Training Data API
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34. Training Data API
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35. Training Data API
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36. Training Data API
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37. Training Data API
Hidden Markov Model
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38. Training Data API
Hidden Markov Model
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39. Training Data API
Hidden Markov Model
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40. Training Data API
Hidden Markov Model
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41. Training Data API
Hidden Markov Model
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47. WHAT TYPE OF APPLICATION
• Suggestions for Basic Voice Recognition Apps:
• Voice Recognition Lock
• Voice Recognition Shutdown
• Voice Recognition Search (1-3 words) to locate where you
are.
• Slowly evolve the complexity and let your imagination run
wild.
Friday, February 27, 2009

48. IS IT A PIPE DREAM?
“You see things; and you say ‘Why?’ But I dream
things that never were; and I say ‘Why not?’”
- George Bernard Shaw
Friday, February 27, 2009