Yahoo! Inc is assisting research at the LTI by providing access to a 4,000-processor supercomputer running open-source distributed computing software such as Hadoop and the Pig parallel programming language. The initial group of researchers using the system include Jamie Callan (information retrieval), Noah Smith (natural language processing), and Stephan Vogel (machine translation). "We are excited about collaborating with Yahoo! on systems software research, helping to advance the state-of-the-art, and creating new research possibilities in this critical area," said Randall E. Bryant, dean of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon. For more information, see the Yahoo! press release. 

Social Networking Project Emphasizes Compatible Minds

Incoming CMU freshmen will have the chance to try a new social networking site called Mindkin, developed by four SCS graduate students: Ulas Bardak, Betty Cheng, and Vasco Pedro of the LTI. and Jahanzeb Sherwani of the Computer Science Department. Bardak says he and the other students began working on Mindkin two years ago because existing sites seemed superficial, particularly in the emphasis given to photos.

Mindkin’s central feature is “Thought Stream,” a screen on which ideas submitted by users scroll by. A system of credits forces users to be selective in identifying ideas they like or dislike,which makes it impossible for someone to simply “like” all of the ideas scrolling through Thought Stream. If a user likes enough ideas from the same author, that author’s identity is eventually revealed so direct contact can be made. 

The Mindkin braintrust has received a provisional patent on the concept and is looking for ways to commercialize it.

The Olympus Project has adopted it as a PROBE and will feature the social networking site at its next “Show and Tell” for venture capitalists on Sept. 25 in the Collaborative Innovation Center.