Sorry folks, life is getting busy again and it looks like I’ll be traveling a lot for for work.  For some strange reason, work always gets awfully busy this time a year.

Thanks for sticking around and I hope to start posting again in a few months, probably after the summer.

As I wrote before, I’m trying to make Neural Market Trends a better reader experience but stripping out a lot of things and keeping things simple.  As such, I’ve had a shiny new and unique branding logo created for my blog by Stefenie!

Stef did a fantastic job and helped me translate my vision for the Neural Market Trends brand into an elegant logo.  She’s professional, responsive, and her graphic design skills are great.  I highly recommend her for your future blog work or other graphic design needs!  Big Thanks Stefenie!

Check out her blog to see some more of her talent!

Heh.  This is why I love the XKCD comic strip.

Thanks to all who signed up for their very own Dropbox account using my referral link! I went from 2 gigs of space to just over 5 gigs! I can now move large files easier between computers (without using memory sticks), and be able to collaborate on Rapidminer projects with people.

I'll be recording the first of three Time Series Rapidminer Video Tutorials next week and its probably a good idea to subscribe to my RSS feed now.  This way you'll be alerted when the video is posted.

Its hard to believe but I'm already 50% done with my first batch of Rapidminer 5.0 Video Tutorials.  So far, the reception has been positive and I thank everyone who emailed me, IM'd me, or commented on these tutorials.  I made a promise to myself to make a batch of 10 video tutorials first before I re-engineer this website further.

So far so good and I'm on target to record a new video tutorial tonight or tomorrow morning.  Video #6 will be about creating decision trees in Rapidminer  for a direct mail marketing example.  For video #7, I'll probably focus on an evolutionary weighting example, and then close out the remaining 3 tutorials with financial time series examples.

Below is an screenshot of one of the time series examples I'm working on. This is a time series chart of the S&P500 with a neural net generated trend line.  Neat, huh?

In case you hadn't noticed, I started to tinker around with the theme of Neural Market Trends by changing it to something more simpler and removing Google Ads (as a test).  I'm doing this to help speed up my blog because a recent SEO checkup told me it was too slow, and possibly scaring off new readers.

Overall I want to make my existing and new reader experience more friendly so things may display weird or links might be temporarily broken as these changes roll out over the next few weeks.  Thanks for your patience!

My readers may or may not know but I maintain a professional profile on LinkedIn (you can find me at Thomas Ott). I really like LinkedIn and I’m always looking to network with good professionals in the engineering, data mining/modeling, and financial world. Please feel free to reach out to me because I would love to connect with you! 

But I do ask for a small favor in return…

If you are a reader of Neural Market Trends, and you enjoy my video tutorials and content, please take a moment to write a recommendation for the site. Your candid thoughts and recommendations are very important to the success of this blog and it allows me to grow this site by providing my readers with free Rapidminer tutorials.

The information I share on this site via my videos and tutorials is extremely valuable and free, there’s nothing like this available on the Internet that I know of. Please consider my above request, it would be greatly appreciated.

I've been updating my social media links for a new and improved roll out of Neural Market Trends over the next few months.  My first job was to create a Youtube channel for my new Rapidminer videos, which I anticipate to update on a weekly basis until I've redone all my previous tutorials and added some new ones. I expect that amount to be about 10 or so videos.

Next I created a Facebook Fan Page for my readers to join.  Please note, I usually don't add thousands of friends on FB so if you request me as a friend and I don't add you, please don't be angry or upset.  I'm just very protective and secretive with my inner circle.  Please, instead, join the Facebook Fan Page and interact with me there.

I'm also trying out the Google Friend Connect, which you see in the right sidebar, and I'm available via GTalk.  Please note, that I'm usually very busy from 7AM to 5PM Eastern Time, so chatting is limited to non-existent that time. If you catch me before or after that time, ask me questions, chat with me about Rapidminer ideas, or just say hello.

And finally, I'm still on Twitter but only use it to broadcast my blog posts.  It's too noisy for me.

2010 is going to rock!

It seems that my Rapidminer tutorials and videos are still the #1 draw to this website, even after 3 years.  I guess I know what I need to do.

Been sidetracked with a great online comic I discovered…

These are my links for January 12th through January 13th:

• http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/186786/google_attack_part_of_widespread_spying_effort.html – Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from the world's largest Internet market may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for U.S. companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China. – MUST PROTECT INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL FROM CHINA. THEY JUST STEAL AND COPY.
• Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China – NYTimes.com – “Unless they turn themselves into a Chinese company, Google could not win,” she said. “The company has clearly put its foot down and said enough is enough.”
• http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/186786/google_attack_part_of_widespread_spying_effort.html – Google's decision Tuesday to risk walking away from the world's largest Internet market may have come as a shock, but security experts see it as the most public admission of a top IT problem for U.S. companies: ongoing corporate espionage originating from China. – MUST PROTECT INTELLECTUAL CAPITAL FROM CHINA. THEY JUST STEAL AND COPY.
• Google, Citing Attack, Threatens to Exit China – NYTimes.com – “Unless they turn themselves into a Chinese company, Google could not win,” she said. “The company has clearly put its foot down and said enough is enough.”
• Haitians Confront Devastation of Quake – NYTimes.com – The quake, with a magnitude estimated at 7.0, caused the collapse of the National Palace, leveled countless shantytown dwellings and brought more suffering to a nation that was already the hemisphere’s poorest and most disaster-prone. – WOW. I FEEL BAD FOR THE HAITIANS
• Official Google Blog: A new approach to China – We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China. – WOW GOOGLE TAKING ON CHINA