Political Emotions

The past week in Romania was all about the general turmoil around the debates ignited by the president Basescu around needed healthcare system reform. Following the example of the citizens in Targu Mures, last night several thousands of people in Bucharest, Brasov and Sibiu occupied the streets showing their support for the advancement of the reforms in the public health sector. Their enthusiasm was visible online early on during the week, with Facebook maintaining a major role in the civic effervescence.

Having this in mind, the recent news that Facebook allowed access to its data for text mining and sentiment analysis purposes concerning the GOP primaries cannot be ignored. Au contraire. Social media analysis is undoubtedly playing an important role in political competitions, but until now researchers had to stick to alternative means of reaching and measuring the noise (such as counting Twitter mentions or Google search relevance). Getting access to and, more important, aggregating all those political feelings Facebook users share with their friends can provide a real-time tool for determining the outreach of political events as they happen, even making it possible for the campaign managers to adjust the message being conveyed piecemeal.

While this sentiment analysis opportunity is currently limited to the US, we might expect in the not so distant future to see it made available in more countries and to other organizations. Note also that Facebook users might not be that happy with the social site sharing their private thoughts, but what should they know is that messages are analyzed anonymously by special software designed for that purpose.

2012

Today will be the last day for CES 2012. This year’s edition brought numerous tech premieres and generally allowed us to take a glance at what 2012 will be all about, technologically speaking.

Tablets were there (the top of the class sporting the Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 update on top of  quad-core processors and high-res displays), ultrabooks were there too waiting patiently for Windows 8 Metro touch UI, enormous smarthphones like the new Sony Experia S or the HTC Titan II (4,7 inch display!!!) were also present. Similarly, HDTVs looked their best after some harsh dieting (see the 4mm thick 3D OLED HDTV from LG) and seemed to have lost their remote controls solely to rely on Kinect-like interaction with the user.

Apple was not present, and for that matter they didn’t needed to be – 2012 will be all about iPad 3, Apple TV and maybe even a new iPhone. Let’s not forget Apple is expected to refresh its Macbook line any time soon.

Also, keep a close eye on Windows 8, as its good looks are not the only great feature it brings to the PC world – it also comes with improved multitasking and security, build-in cloud features, own app store and even ARM support of the box (yes, that means tablets).

Happy 2012!