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.
I used to love Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. In 2007 I bought a used Motion Computing tablet PC from a doctor’s office. It was a crappy computer: text input was extremely painful, the stylus wouldn’t properly calibrate, and there was no touch input. It wasn’t a reimagined computing experience, it was just a crippled laptop. But it was so amazing to hold a keyboardless laptop! This wasn’t the future exactly, but it was a taste of tablet computing, and it felt exhilarating to be on the edge of a completely reinvented form factor. It took several years before Apple overhauled the tablet experience and the idea gained mainstream acceptance, and even then the iPad owed a lot to the attempts that came before it.
Time for even more hackathons. First up this month, I’ll be at the TechCrunch Disrupt SF Hackathon, where I’m planning on building a PSaaS. Just what is a PSaaS? You’ll have to wait and find out (no, Google won’t help). Rest assured it will be radical, impactful, and not very transparent.