pheonixrt has a new home!

I just recently completed the GitHub migration, due to Google Code shutting down.

https://github.com/dg1an3/pheonixrt

Three projects are represented:

• pheonixrt is the original inverse planning algorithm based on the convolutional input layer
• WarpTPS is the interactive morphing using TPSs
• ALGT is the predicate verification tools

Also, see the references at the end of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thin_plate_spline for some videos showing WarpTPS.

Quitwiki

What if there was a wiki, a kind of DIY site that specifically concentrated on quitting services, products, etc. while preserving the value obtained from those services, products, etc.   I guess the basic idea is to pool collective knowledge to lower switching costs for products and services.

For instance, if I want to stop using Quicken to manage my money (maybe to switch to Mint.com, or to just use spreadsheets), then I could go to this "Quitwiki" to find out about how to ensure the highest level of data portability, potential compatibility issues, etc.  I think one of the main things it would need to provide is tools for conversion and access to file formats, APIs, and other tools like that.

Wikis and Social Ontology

I started participating in Wikipedia -- I added a few tidbits to the image registration article. The wiki phenomenon is pretty cool; I think its pretty philosophically consistent with the distributed collaboration concept that underlies theWheel. theWheel needs to be web-enabled allowing multiple people to add nodes / adjust weights / etc. Then one of the main problems of Wikipedia, that there needs to be agreement on content and order, is no longer strictly necessary, because it is possible to interpolate different link weights from a number of different sources.

I think the perfect application of wiki-like collaboration would be in the generation of ontologies for the Semantic Web. The quality of an ontology seems to be related to how well it represents the consensus mental model for the group of people who will be using it to structure their collective knowledge. So it seems only natural to use a collaborative tool like a Wiki to evolve an ontology.

Of course, there are technical issues to be addressed. For instance, certain logical consistencies need to be maintained. But, using description-logic based approaches like OWL, consistency checks are relatively straight-forward. And its not like Wikipedia is absolutely consistent anyway -- at this point, inconsistencies among knowledge within Wikipedia's articles have to be vetted slowely by humans.