I’ve always found machine learning interesting, way back to some neural network toy programs I wrote in C# over a decade ago. But as the excitement around ML has been heating up over the past year, I’ve been learning more about the cutting edge of the algorithms, platforms, and applications of modern machine learning. It’s an amazingly exciting field and I firmly believe the most important area of active research in tech.

We were promised a world where computers do our bidding, where intelligent bots handle the unpleasant work and leave humans free to enjoy life on their own terms. But what is more unpleasant and emotionally taxing than breaking off a relationship that has run its course? It’s time for a bot to step up and relieve us of our burdens!

Ever since I first got my Google Glass in May I’ve been wanting to build a teleprompter for it. I compete in a lot of hackathons and present onstage a lot, and normally I read my speech off my iPad, but it’s awkward to be looking down reading from that.

Even the simplest internet privacy system is ineffective if people don’t realize they should use it. Maybe if people know just how easily accessible their online data is, they will make the effort to protect themselves.

It’s obviously very early on and very cumbersome, but I have successfully got my new iPhone 4S to charge from my old Palm Pre’s Touchstone inductive charger. I may not be using WebOS anymore (sadly), but the spirit of my Pre lives on. My goal is to bundle this up in a nice package that can be easily added to an iPhone 4 or 4S, and look good doing it. I’ll post updates when I’m closer to that goal.

There are plenty of ways to exchange contact information, but they generally require that people have the same app on the same type of smartphone, as well as requiring both parties to agree to share information. 203-403-NAME make this process extremely simple, by only requiring an online handle (username).

You’ve probably heard of the “around the world” ticket that lets you visit up to 16 different places around the world for one price. And you’ve probably heard of the various credit card offers where you get airline miles for signing up. What happens when we put those two together?

Text (415) 729-3599 with any food or beverage and it will tell you important nutrition facts in seconds. For example, I love the Western Cheese Fries at Longhorn Steakhouse, but I texted “longhorn cheese fries” to that number and found out one plate has over 1700 calories! Maybe next time I’ll think twice about ordering it. How healthy is that Wendy’s Southwest salad really? Text “southwest salad wendy’s” and find out.

Over the past few days, some friends and I have been working nonstop on a windows phone application for the intern Windows Phone app competition. Tirelessly programming Saturday through Monday, we have created a pretty darn good RSS reader application, Headliner. I personally coded for 42 hours straight from Sunday morning until Monday night.

Back in March of 2008, Yahoo held a programming competition here at GA Tech, with the idea being that you take some web services (preferably Yahoo services) and mash them up to make something cool. Dubbed “HackU", the idea was to hack something together in a week; it didn’t have to be pretty, but it should do something different, novel, or useful.