NLP workshop in Korea

Microsoft Research Asia invited me to join a NLP workshop held in Korea, so I participated last week. This was the first time for me to join a workshop about NLP, so many things impressed me in various aspects. In fact, several problems that I was facing seem to be solved.

In the workshop I felt that, not surprisingly, many NLP researchers already realized the importance of the Social Web (Esp. Wikipedia) as a corpus for knowledge extraction. There are several good meetings with other active researchers in this research area. Some of them started researches on Wikipedia Mining recently. I believe that 2008 will be an exciting year for Wikipedia research more than last year.

Macworld keynote

I watched the keynote given by Steve Jobs.

http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/f27853y2/event/index.html?internal=fj2l3s9dm

Here I show a summary of the keynote.

- Time capsule
A WIFI-built in HDD for Time machine.
- iPhone & iPod touch update
For me, iPod touch update is a good news. It supports Mail, Maps, Notes, Stocks, Weather from today Webclips and Lyrics as well.
iPhone & iPod support location detection feature for maps. The technology for location detection is very similar to PlaceEngine. Skyhook investigated the Wifi radio by cars with GPS.
- iTunes Movie Rental
$2.99 for library and $3.99 for new movies.
The international services will start in the late of 2008.
- Mac Book Air
A High-mobility Mac Book.
Thinest? Anyway, it has notable mobility. Multi-touch support sounds quite exciting.

"Get a Mac" Ads updated

I love the ads and the PC guy.

http://www.apple.com/getamac/ads/

My recommendation is "PR Lady"

Wikipedia and AI

An impressive international workshop about Wikipedia will be held conjunction with AAAI.

http://www.aaai.org/Workshops/ws08.php

I think AAAI comunity already realized the importance of Wikipedia in AI research area. In fact, totally three papers on Wikipedia analysis are accepted in the conference last year.

iPhone from Microsoft

Steve Jobs praised the innovative mobile phone.

IEEE Symposium on MAW in Okinawa

Totally 3 research papers about Web semantics are accepted in IEEE symposium on MAW (Mining and Web 2008) held in Okinawa. First one is about Wikipedia Thesaurus Japanese version. Second one is about Wikipedia Ontology related research. Last one is about semantic web resource categorization.

Paris to Nancy

4 PM: Arrived to Charles-de-Gaulle airport. In a train to Paris, I met very kind couple from Moscow and enjoyed conversation with them. They told me how to go to Champs-Elysees.
5 PM: Arrived to Parris.
6 PM: Arrived to an edge of Champs-Elysees. I was heading to Arc de triomphe. Charles-de-Gaulle is quite long, more than I thought.
7 PM: Arrived to the arc. I coincidentally met Dr. Nakamura, Kyoto university. Small world, huh?
8:30 PM: Arrived to the station for Nancy.
9 PM: Leaving Paris to go to Nancy by TGV Est.
10:30 PM: Arrived to Nancy. It was raining but I had to wait 30 min. to get taxi outside. Cold.
11 PM: Arrived to the Hotel. Phew, tired.