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Data and Analytics Cool

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Today’s post is a mere link dump about current preview projects coming straight from SQL Azure Labs, CodePlex and MSR. As origin suggests, all projects have a strong focus on the building blocks of our information economy - data.

Now without further ado:

  1. Microsoft Codename "Data Explorer"

    Data explorer is a new cool tool (either client or as a preview-service in the cloud) to take in arbitrarily shaped data and mix and match and turn and twirl it around as you please. Do you want to peek on the price of a cool gadget you wish to buy of your beloved online retailer?! Take Data explorer use your query as input source, apply some transformations to it and get a list of providers along with their suggested price as output. Or maybe you want to know what somebody said on twitter about your cool project, well guess what there is Data Explorer to the rescue.     

  2. Microsoft Codename “Cloud Numerics”

    Do you want to be the next cloud data scientist of the year? Well now you can … write and use the analytics models you imagined but weren’t able to get converging because it took so long. Do you want to design extensive experiments for your company leveraging first class cloud power to drive generation of real value from data? Well now you can!

  3. Microsoft Codename "Social Analytics"

    These days, it’s all about social. Whether it is connecting and sharing with the people you know or as a company finding out about your customers. The social revolution is only starting. If you want to get started on developing in the social context, this lab might be for you:

    Microsoft Codename "Social Analytics" is an experimental cloud service. It’s aimed at developers who want to integrate social web information into business applications.

  4. Microsoft Codename "Data Transfer"

    How do you actually get data into the cloud and perform this jucy analysis on it that I was writing about above? Don’t worry there is a pair of shoes just right for you:

    Microsoft Codename "Data Transfer" is an easy-to-use Web application to move your data into SQL Azure or Windows Azure Blob storage.

  5. Infer.NET Fun: An F# Library for Probabilistic Programming

    F#’s strong suit is the expression of non-trivial data transformation as it is needed in technical and scientific computing. Clearly, you can built abstractions for reasoning on and learning from graphical  models all by yourself. But why not take more advantage of the smart folks over at MSR (yes F# is a lot of MSR love) ?! Well you can with Infer.NET Fun:

    FSoft is an F# library for probabilistic programming. It enables you to write generative models as functional programs, run them to obtain samples, and quote them to infer distributions via Infer.NET.

  6. MySemanticSearch Example on CodePlex

    SQL Server 2012 is almost here (in RC form it is) and with it it’s new semantic search capabilities will arrive as well. Just imagine the vector-space model on stereoids instead of stemming and matching it’s all about taking care of natural language’s fuzziness using statistics and similarities.

With that, I’ll leave you to your experimentation – read you soon.