Get ready to party like is 11/11/11!

My friend Auren Hoffman has been planning a party on the Golden Gate Bridge for November 11, 2011. He's going to make an attempt at a Guiness record for the largest party on a bridge. Check out the evite:

http://www.evite.com/pages/invite/viewInvite.jsp?event=WWLHWZEHOAAZJDWZZFME&inviteId=BRKQMWXYCEBHIXQTOWRY&showPreview=false&x=613543

Divine, Inc.

My friend Brian Doom is coming out with a movie. It's called Divine, Inc. I saw the trailer at
http://deviousincmovie.com/. It look like a wild and krazy time.

Good luck on the debut Mr. Doom!

Uplifting social disturbances

A few weeks ago our friend Jay and his hula troop crashed various spots throughout the city (san francisco) and broke into hula. This hula-by-surprise was part of an organized effort called Hit and Run Hula (www.hitandrunhula.com). My favorite was when we crammed into the Apple store (http://sfist.com/2009/08/15/hit_and_run_hula_ambushes_apple_sto.php). While the unsuspecting customers browsed the computers, Dee and I put the Hit and Run Hula website up on the Safari web browsers on the display machines. That way they'd know what hit 'em. The best thing about the dances was that the dancers were all in plain clothes. More and more of them would join the dance as the song went on. As a bystander you couldn't tell who was a dancer and who wasn't. The reactions on peoples' faces were very memorable. The funniest was when the Apple store's security guard first noticed somethin was afoot. He lunged into the sea of people but his pace quickly slowed to a stunned run as he began to realize the store was being ambushed by a rare act of kindness and beauty.

Dee and I had lunch with the Hula troop that day and were talking about social disturbance. Someone mentioned another example where on Valentine's Day, singles get together in Justin Herman Plaza and have a pillow fight (http://www.pillowfight.info/). From what I've heard they're protesting those in love...and hoping to get lucky themselves perhaps in a fun and unusual social setting.

One last example of social disturbance with a positive tone came up as I've been reading SOMA (http://www.somalit.com/SoMa-The-Novel.html). It's a great work of fiction-based-on-fact. But anyway, in the book it talks about all kinds of ways people in my town have innovated to connect with each other. One is called the Cocktail Club. I can't find any mention of it online anymore, but apparently this used to be a crowd that would suddenly get a text message one night with the location of a bar typically unfrequented. The idea was everyone would suddenly show up at that bar as if out of the blue causing a bit of fun social disturbance for the regulars.

NetBase unveils public demo - HealthBase

NetBase now has a publicly-accessible demo of its technology. The domain area we chose was health because it's something we can all relate to.

Check out HealthBase at http://healthbase.netbase.com/

This demo illustrates NetBase's Content Intelligence technology applied to health care. We have other applications of Content Intelligence for other domains as well. Our website goes into more detail: http://www.netbase.com.

I love exploring valuable new ways to apply technology. If you find you have to read tons of text (on the web, subscription-based sources, etc.) and you would like technology to do the reading for you, then Content Intelligence might be the solution.

What kind of analysis would you like to automate on the text you read?

Kids innovating with their Nintendo DS

My kids are the in the other room playing on their Nintendo DSs. These are handheld game devices that have built-in networking so the devices can communicate with each other. My older one is telling my younger one "sound it out!!!" It sounds like a spelling lesson.

My older daughter is using her Nintendo DS to teach my younger son to read! She writes a work on her DS and he has to read it on his. They're able to lay around sprawled out on bean bags and sofas looking up at their DSs. I can imagine that in days of old, the two would have sat at a table with a piece of paper between them. But how much more fun to lay around.

Hey I'm not complaining :-) Good kids.

Goldfish S'mores Adventures

My office mate, Joe Hung (employee #1 at NetBase), and I love camping. He camps more than I do and so was first to find and tell me about a great new product, Goldfish S'mores Adventure. This is no ordinary bag of Goldfish. Each bag contains a mixture of chocolate grahams, marshmallow, and honey graham fish that are all shaped like Goldfish. A tasty innovation!

Thanks Joe!

Announcing www.twitter.com/innovationmuse

I had been encouraging my good friend Malcolm De Leo for years to write a blog because he's got so many good ideas and perspectives pertaining to innovation. I'm glad to say he did launch that blog and wrote about some good stuff. But now Malcolm's gone one step beyond. He's now an avid user of Twitter. In fact, Malcolm is the first person I know from my professional network who actively tweets about his worklife. I like what Malcolm said about blogs vs. tweets: "Blogs...that's so 2003!"

Malcolm--leading the way in the next generation of business networking, here's announcing his Twitter spot:

www.twitter.com/innovationmuse

Seeking a Software Sales Executive - Federal

I could use your help finding great candidates for our opening for a Software Sales Executive - Federal at NetBase. Please feel free to forward this.

Software Sales Executive - Federal
Location: Washington, DC

If you ever wanted to take part in how the world’s leading companies and governments leverage various forms of content and next generation search technologies, let NetBase give you the inside track to this dynamic sales career.

NetBase delivers Content Intelligence solutions that harness value and insight from any source including the Internet, premium purchased content, and your own enterprise content. NetBase delivers value by "reading" every sentence inside each available document, linguistically understanding that content, comparing that content to "uniquely deliver" relevant answers and insights that you can use to take action. NetBase is being deployed by organizations that are recognized as global leaders in healthcare, publishing, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and government such as Elsevier, Procter & Gamble, 3M, The U.S. Army, Pepsi and many more. For more information on how you can use the power and insight of Netbase, visit www.netbase.com.

NetBase seeks an experienced Sales Executive/Hunter to drive client acquisition in the Federal Government segment. This role is 100% focused on acquiring new clients and driving new business.

The ideal candidate is a bright, ambitious, responsible, hard-working individual with a proven track record selling complex products to senior level government officials, particularly in the Armed Forces community.

This position offers opportunities for significant compensation as well as potential career growth in sales, and sales management. It also features the benefits of working for a startup company, including rapid change, a fast paced team-work environment, and stock options.

US work authorization required.

Qualifications:
- Proven track record selling complex solutions to the Federal Government and Armed Forces, in and exceeding sales targets
- Passion for sales, exceeding sales goals, and adding value for clients
- Ability to rapidly drive sales from cold call to close
- Aspires to the highest level of integrity
- Undergraduate degree (Engineering degree a plus)
- Outstanding communication, leadership, and teamwork skills
- Ability to adapt to rapid change
- Resourceful, flexible, and aggressive about learning new things
- Track record of meeting deadlines
- Skills with computer tools and office automation tools
- Knowledge of Miller Hieman sales methodologies a plus
- MBA a plus

Location: Washington, DC
Percentage travel: 60% Travel

Authorization to work in the US required.

To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter via email to team@netbase.com with the subject of "Software Sales Executive - Federal".

Seeking Machine Learning Specialists

I could use your help finding great candidates for our opening for a Machine Learning Specialist at NetBase. Please feel free to forward this.

Machine Learning Specialist
Location: Mountain View, CA

NetBase, a well-funded, fast growing company with an impressive roster of top-tier Fortune 500 companies, seeks to grow its team with a machine learning specialist.

NetBase delivers Content Intelligence solutions that harness value and insight from any source, including the Internet, premium and enterprise content. NetBase reads every sentence inside documents, linguistically understands the content and powers breakthrough search experiences with relevant answers and insights. NetBase is being used by organizations that are recognized as global leaders in healthcare, publishing, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and government such as Elsevier, Clorox, 3M, The U.S. Army, Pepsi and many more.

The Machine Learning Specialist role involves clustering/classification, topic identification, named entity tagging, lexicon acquisition and pattern identification from large corpora. The ideal candidate will have a PhD degree in Computer Science or related field with experience in natural language processing, computational linguistics, or information retrieval/extraction. Strong programming skills are required. At least two years of experience working with real life NL systems is required. A strong research record is a plus. We look for people who are flexible, learn quickly, and love getting into the details.

Authorization to work in the US and relocation are required.

To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter via email to team@netbase.com with the subject of "Machine Learning Specialist".

Seeking a Software Architect

I could use your help finding great candidates for our Software Architect openning at NetBase. Please feel free to forward this.

Software Architect
Location: Mountain View, CA

NetBase, a well-funded, fast growing company with an impressive roster of top-tier Fortune 500 companies, seeks to grow its team with a hands-on software architect.

NetBase delivers Content Intelligence solutions that harness value and insight from any source, including the Internet, premium and enterprise content. NetBase reads every sentence inside documents, linguistically understands the content and powers breakthrough search experiences with relevant answers and insights. NetBase is being used by organizations that are recognized as global leaders in healthcare, publishing, manufacturing, consumer packaged goods and government such as Elsevier, Clorox, 3M, The U.S. Army, Pepsi and many more.

We seek a hands-on architect with extensive background in software development to translate business objectives into a technology vision and articulated architecture. Candidates should have a strong track record of designing and developing multi-tiered web applications that are high quality, scalable, and reliable. We prefer generalists who have driven feature development at every layer of the stack. We have a strong preference for large-scale text search expertise whether at a big search company or through experience customizing systems like Lucene or FAST. Also preferred are candidates with experience in applying NLP and Machine Learning to solving problems for Fortune 500 end-users.

Candidates should have excellent interpersonal skills and a track record of increasing responsibility. Those who are skilled in organizational needs assessment and driving change via consensus will fit in well on our team. Candidates should be able to establish credibility quickly and provide mentorship to team members. We target talented individuals who are resourceful, flexible, and aggressive about learning new things.

We are an Agile development shop. We do test-driven design and rapid iterative development and are looking for a like-minded architect to help us build for the future.

Requirements:
* 10 years work experience with 3+ as an architect
* Experience in large-scale, distributed, web-based applications
* Agile development methodology
* Deep knowledge of Java
* MS or PhD in CS
* Database design and SQL (MySQL a plus)
* Excellent interpersonal and communications skills
* High degree of integrity and drive
* Expertise in Adobe Flex, Flash and Python are nice to have

Authorization to work in the US and relocation are required.

To apply: Please submit a resume and cover letter via email to team@netbase.com with the subject of "Software Architect".

Riya rocks!

I needed to find some pictures of my grandma and didn't have time to go through thousands of photos. I used illumin8 to find an easy face recognition tool and it led me to Riya. Riya quickly solved my problem.

All I had to do was upload all my photos, show it a few examples of my grandma, and then it found 77 pictures of her for me. That was so easy...and fun!

Here are the pictures of her, in case you're interested:



By the way, my Grandma makes the best chocolate chip cookies in the world. They are so good I've even brought them to our board meetings!

Material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear"

Hunting around on illumin8, I came across this very interesting innovation from the University of California at Berkeley: a material that can bend light around 3D objects making them "disappear".

source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7553061.stm