CAUTION: Google is NOT a Source

 Google is NOT a Source

 I have noticed for quite a while now that some writers or bloggers in their quest of acknowledging the source of their used image(s), usually write: Photo Credit: Google Image.

This recurring and common error is also linkable to the erroneous feelings that our search results on the internet are domiciled in Google's database. No! Google is NOT a source.

How our search engines work will be treated in other blog post (God's willing), and there, I will highlight the powerful web ranking and information retrieval algorithms used by Google amongst other fascinating features of the giant of internet search engine.

Here, I will simply make a lame man description to explain why the photo credit should be given to the website delivered by Google after the search process, and not to Google.

With an analogy, Google is like a bridge used in crossing to our unknown but desired destination. Imagine a student is willing to know about a particular school, e.g Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM). The unknown but desired destination of the the student is the school's official web portal. Google only becomes a vital tool to be used. When I typed this into Google's search bar, this is the result:

Ultimately, I got  my previously unknown destination i.e UUM's official portal which is www.uum.edu.my
I got this, not FROM Google, but THROUGH Google. Anything (items, photos, text) used from uum.edu.my must be acknowledged by mentioning the name of the site, not that of Google.

This is applicable to our image search process also. A keen observation will inform us that those images are on web sites that contained them. They were simply delivered to us through Google.

Like I said, I will find time to write about the working mechanism of search engines and why Google stands out.

Happy tech reading!!

My 2013 In Retrospect, My 2014 In View

To start with, I have always chosen yearly approach to my goal setting, appraisal and re-evaluation. I am not of the religious type that connects Gregorian calendar to be of any metaphysical or spiritual value. January 1 is just as good as September 5 or any other day -so to say. It is unarguable that the Gregorian calendar is the easiest calendaring method. At least, it is the easiest for me

Therefore, for the sole purpose of goal setting and appraisal, here is my 2013 in retrospect and my 2014 in view.

As a background, I came over to Malaysia in September, 2011. Then, there at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia, I  resolved I must -God's willing- come back to Nigeria with PhD. This is a Facebook post and photo attached to that credit.

The Lord had been good to me. I have remained focused, and the movement has been fulfilling, though challenging.

EDUCATION
I completed the Master Degree in January 2013, and started the much targeted PhD in February, 2013 under the supervision of a cerebral; Professor of Interaction Design in School of Computing, Universiti Utara Malaysia, Prof. Dr. Zulikha Jamaludin.

My MSc convocation held at DM Auditorium in November, 2013.

Gratitude to UUM for granting me scholarship for this pursuit of this Doctoral degree. I will forever be grateful. I am presently working as a PhD work on: Information Visualization Framework to Support Multi-Dimensional Datasets.

PUBLICATIONS
Due to the rigour attached to the formative days of my PhD, I could not afford much academic publications this year. That nonetheless, 2013 was the year I started Journal publications, my 2012 publication (the starting years) were all Conference proceedings (eight (8)). In 2013, I was able to publish two Journal articles, and two conference proceedings. All my academic publications can be accessed through my online scholarly works' archive on SSRN and Academia.Edu.

BOOKS READ
Truth be told, I have never in my life time studied as I did in this year, basically because of positioning my PhD work. I read numerous books in my field, plenty of conference proceedings and Journal Articles. To God be the glory, I have completed my first three chapter under 10 months, and expecting my PhD proposal defense soon.

Due to this stage in my life, my sociopolitical commentaries just as my extra-curriculum readings were greatly affected. Despite the stormy waves of PhD, I managed to read the following in 2013:

1.  The Malay Dilemma by Mahatir bin Mohamad. This book reminds me of the reality that there is noting supernatural about Nigeria's woes as a result of its alleged diverse ethnic configuration. The onus of Nigeria economic and sociopolitical impasse lies in the unfortunate breed of the Nigeria ruling cabal.

2. The Accidental Public Servant by Nasir El-Rufai. This book can be safely regarded the most controversial political literature in the Nigeria political space in 2013, more than what late Chinua Achebe's There Was a Country generated. Unfortunately, I had not read the Achebe's. Kudos to Gimba Kakanda who sent the soft copy of this book to me.

3. Why I am not a Muslim by Ibn Warraq. To the religious robots -victims of religious text slavery, this type of book is no-go-area. I have gravitated beyond such inferiority complex of intellection. Any religious view that cannot withstand probing does not worth taking. Ibn Warraq made some valid arguments though as a result of his misconception of Arabism as Islam, or a false presentation of Islam by the same set of self-appointed Allah's litigators. This is why we must intensify war against religious robots, the scholars of literalism.

  

There are many other uncompleted books, I wish I could do better by 2014. 

2014 in View

1. This 2014 must be used for two major goldmines: after my PhD proposal defense at the early part of the year, followed by necessary post-proposal steps and processes, I must deliver (a) not less than three ISI/Scopus-index Journal publications and (b) a Data Visualization System. 

2. Hopefully, to have a baby, preferably a baby girl to be named AdiyatuLLah.

3. If I have my way, I want to have an internship experience either in industry, research institute or with research group in a university.

4.  Launching of an online portal centring on tech news, tech events and tech resources (open source). Additional flavours will be career and mentorship in IT exclusively, scholarship and job positions (related to IT). In short, a portal of anything IT!!

5. The usual skill acquisition and self-development process go on. This year it is all about Big Data Science, Machine learning and usage of Hadoop and Map Reduce.

Welcome, 2014!!

The Most Demanding IT Skill in 2014?

Without pandering on emotion, the most demanding IT skill in 2014 will be Big Data Analytics and its associated skills and knowledge about its technology. These are knowledge about Data Mining, Machine Learning and Data Visualization.

Photo Credit: TeraData Australia

Big Data according to IBM and Oracle definitions is a data of 3 Vs: Volume, Variety and Velocity. By volume it is expected to be of Terabyte above, by variety, it should at least contain two of the three varieties of data set -the structured, semistructred and unstructured. The third V is the Velocity at real time. The emergence of social media update in changing human and business engagement. This has completely re-shaped the Data Analytics paradigm


This is what Steven Lawton says in Tera Data Blog Post:

As 2013 quickly draws to a close, I thought I’d look back and pick three things I’ve heard/read/discussed about Big Data, in no particular order…

Data Science for the Masses
The interest in Big Data has also generated an interest in data science. There are considerable efforts underway to broaden the talent pool of data scientists both from an academic perspective in terms of producing the data scientists of the future and from a business perspective in terms of increased use of analytical tools such as R and Mathematica.
The availability of a $25 computer (Raspberry Pi) which now comes loaded with a free copy of Mathematica software and a new programming language encourages millions of people around the world to develop their programming and mathematics skills without an expensive barrier to entry.
This should all help to democratise data science.

Hadoop and SQL
Listening and speaking to some customers over the last 12 months I think it’s inevitable that Hadoop will start to offer a serious SQL interface providing reasonable performance and the ability to join data. Apache Hive is the de facto standard for SQL-in-Hadoop but this has many well documented shortcomings. The Stinger Initiative is an effort to drive the future of Apache Hive, delivering 100x performance improvements with familiar SQL semantics. This might then drive the wider business adoption of Hadoop and the use of SQL on Hadoop. Of course, you don’t have to wait for Stinger or another initiative to efficiently query data in Hadoop, you can always use Teradata SQL-H, but that’s for another blog.

Big Data in the Omnichannel
The customers I speak to that use data to drive their decisions are more and more looking at customer behavior data to better understand their most valuable customers. Banks are looking at web browsing and mobile banking app data and looking at combining this with geographic data and proximity to a local branch to provide a better customer experience.
The more (big) data the organisation has about its customers the better it can tailor personalised interactions. This tailoring can also include prioritising high-value customers.
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For a start in Data Science, you can get  Introduction to Data Science, by Jeffrey Stanton here

Keep a date with me on free e-books on Haddop, Map Reduce, Twitter Mining, Sentiment Analysis and host of others