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Measuring Real Time Public Opinion With Twitter 54

Posted by timothy
from the bloop-bleep-treacle-tweet-thurp-twaddle dept.
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that statisticians from the University of Vermont are hoping to harness the stream of messages flowing through Twitter to read public opinion and sentiment in real time. '"Twitter is a reflection of what people are interested in right now," says Peter Dodds, adding that the goal is to establish an index, akin to the Dow Jones industrial average, that can "give an overall sense of how a collective body of people are feeling at any given point in time.' Dodds says he and his colleagues are analyzing about 1,000 tweets each minute, or about a million a day, looking for trends in descriptive words and phrases that indicate moods and emotions. In addition, the two can monitor the public reaction to news or policy announcement and track it over time. The tool is still in its early stages, but eventually Dodds hopes that it could work similarly to Google Flu Trends, a Web tool that doubles as an early-warning system for flu outbreaks by detecting spikes in certain search terms. Since relationships and conversations are so intrinsic to how people communicate on Twitter, the researchers hope that observing how one user's mood is affected by another might shed some light on crowd behavior and emotional contagion. 'All of this data serves as a remote sensor of well-being,' Dodds says."

Comment: Re:Security? (Score 1) 210

by JustKidding (#27573919) Attached to: Computer-Controlled Cargo Sailing Vessels Go Slow, Frugal




Comment: Re:sourcing the problem (Score 1) 212

by JustKidding (#27059333) Attached to: Tigger.A Trojan Quietly Steals Stock Traders' Data





Comment: Re:Bam! Power Supply (Score 1) 312

by JustKidding (#26381703) Attached to: Asus Reveals the Eee Keyboard



Comment: Re:good! (Score 1) 364

by JustKidding (#26113335) Attached to: The End of Individual Genius?

While I do agree that computers play an increasingly important role in research and development, it's not the computer doing the design work. The human is doing the design work, and using the computer to verify the design, or optimize it within very specific boundaries.

When the computer calculates that a certain structure is stronger than it needs to be, the designer can adjust it. The computer won't design a completely different structure for you.

If you were to use a computer to generate a design (say, circuit board or application specific integrated circuit (ASIC) layout and trace routing) it's really just running a semi-brute force algorithm, optimized by the programmer to produce suitable but possibly sub-optimal solutions quickly.

Without the engineer staring at the screen, the thing would just sit there. Saying the computer designed the bridge is like saying the space shuttle was designed by the pocket calculators. The computer is a tool, and it requires and intelligent and knowledgeable engineer to produce anything meaningful.

Comment: Re:Simpsons Movie (Score 3, Interesting) 612

by JustKidding (#26037765) Attached to: Australian Judge Rules Simpsons Cartoon Rip-off Is Child Porn

So, if two corporations, one of which is less than 18 years old (or whatever the local legal age is) merge, and later create a daughter company, that should be considered statutory rape?

I wonder how the Simpsons could be considered "human"? The Ducks are always half naked, but because they are apparently ducks instead of humans, that makes it alright? Those stories are even meant for children! The horror!

What if Huey, Dewey and Louie Duck would be having a wild party with April, May and June Duck?

Comment: UK vs. Australia (Score 5, Interesting) 419

by JustKidding (#25673419) Attached to: UK Outlines Plan For Internet Black Boxes

And here we were joking about how retarded the idea of filtering all traffic in Australia was.

Not only do they intent to capture every packet, but they also intent to store them and analyze them off-line.

Especially considering the growth of bandwidth usage the past couple of years, this is nothing short of an absurd idea.


One of HST's Cameras Is Back In Action 47

Posted by timothy

Passwords are implemented as a result of insecurity.