6 ms·

IBM’s Watson Analytics platform is now open to everyone

156 points by pranavpr 12y ago

antimora 12y ago
I signed up and extracted tutorial video URLs that can give you an idea how it looks (video files names have titles): http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/marketing1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/mar... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/operations2.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/ope... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sampleLoad.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/marketing4.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/mar... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sampleExplore.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/hr1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/hr1... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sales2.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sal... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/finance1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/fin... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/it1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/it1... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sales1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sal... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/samplePredict.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/marketing3.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/mar... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sampleStart.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam...
- 56yards 12y ago
  Great job :)
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  So the first link is an exploration in learning how to extract more money from "women with families" using targeted offers, just by dropping an Excel spreadsheet onto a website. Excellent work IBM.
  - stonogo 12y ago
    Were you under the impression that IBM was a non-profit? What exactly do you think corporations purchase IT resources to accomplish?
    - jsprogrammer 12y ago
      No, why would I be under that impression? I think it depends on the corporation and what they are purchasing. IBM has tremendous resources and you'd expect very many smart and well educated people on its payroll. It's just interesting which problems they are selecting to solve when there are so many other problems to choose from that they likely could solve. Why not large scale logistics problems to reduce the cost of the overall food supply chain instead of attempting to extract maximum profit from women with families? I suppose there is an argument that some might make that that is exactly what you should do to achieve maximum reduction in cost. I don't hear IBM making that argument though. I'm not going to make it either, I think there are likely much larger reductions elsewhere.
jsprogrammer 12y ago
Open to everyone who will sign up for a trial account with IBM? Or did they post the code somewhere?
- blaze33 12y ago
  "Watson Analytics is Now Open For Business", doesn't say open source. Also the submitted title doesn't match the linked page title.
audioburn 12y ago
This is amazing. I feel like I'm dreaming. I'm wondering what the input spreadsheets look like, though
nl 12y ago
Does this actually have anything to do with the technologies used in Watson-the-Jeopardy-winning-system? I've read much of the published papers on Watson and I don't really understand how this relates? Is it that the "Watson" brand encompasses all IBM's semi-intelligent systems work?
- htns 12y ago
  Yeah, this appears to be just online statistics. The only "AI" thing about it is that it can match natural language queries to your spreadsheet column names.
- cyorir 12y ago
  Watson refers to the technologies used in the Jeopardy system, yes. Specifically, it refers to the Watson API, which consists of all the NLP and AI algorithms used in the Jeopardy system repackaged (with additions) and hidden under a simpler, query-based system. The Watson API is becoming the basis for most of IBM's Bluemix services which are described by IBM as "cognitive" (as you phrase it, "semi-intelligent systems" - referring mainly to NLP and related applications). IBM is working on a number of applications to use the Watson API, as well as inviting other developers to use the API. Watson Analytics is just one of these applications, but it doesn't run on Watson alone. It is probably better to think of these applications as fitting within the overall framework of IBM's bluemix services, which includes Watson but also other technologies less geared towards NLP. https://console.ng.bluemix.net/ https://console.ng.bluemix.net/
spydum 12y ago
So, just another BI/decision support system, which uses this spiral visualization? It is sorta neat it tries to find some patterns for you, but I imagine once your data exceeds simple spreadsheets it becomes far less cool.
gesman 12y ago
I signed up and tried to upload data and Watson blew up on me with errors: DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-964, SQLSTATE=57011, SQLERRMC=null, DRIVER=4.16.53 Apparently it's very sensitive to data input formats and essentially it wants you to do the data babysitting work first by properly preparing and structuring the data before it'll do anything. These are cool demos on "friendly" pre-baked spreadsheets but way early for any practical production deployments, until IBM will start supporting raw datasets.
- mark_l_watson 12y ago
  I have been using IBM Watson, and it is also sensitive to clean input data. I think that both IBM and Microsoft are doing a good job at "reinventing themselves", BTW. edit: by 'clean' I really meant data that is in a regular structure with good example questions specified for each paragraph in input documents.
  - gesman 12y ago
    The world need more serious analytical tools. I driving an effort for a major bank to combine all sources of different data (traffic logs and external treat intelligence feeds - all of different formats) to create a comprehensive fraud alerting and security investigation system. And we got pretty impressive results utilizing Splunk as a data swiss army knife. IBM is certainly capable of offering a competitive solution to this industry although they need to move faster. WatsonAnalytics is a good start even at it's current "teaser preview" stage.
- michaellosee 12y ago
  It seems that error code may not involve data input format but rather indicates DB2 is out of resources[1]. Honestly this release might be a little early for IBM as well. Any sort of verbose error message is at least a low risk information disclosure finding on a pentest and a verbose database error message is a strong indicator the application is vulnerable to SQL injection. Even if not vulnerable, it's blood in the water and should be fixed before hitting production. [1]http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSATW2_7.3.0/com.ibm.ituam.doc_7.3/troubleshooting/t_exception_db2_sql_error_sqlcode_-964.html http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSATW2_7.3.0/c...
dustinupdyke 12y ago
I signed up and my account has been pending for weeks. When I login, I get an xml error, it isn't even handled nicely in html. Not a great first impression by any means.
Napoleon1963 12y ago
I find the "Stories" section at the bottom to be particularly distasteful. As far as I can tell, they've just taken stock photographs, labeled them with plausible names, and made them seem like testimonials without actually being real testimonials. I don't expect marketing efforts to always be completely honest, but these "stories" seem like a really condescending sham to me. I wouldn't mind it if they discussed how this technology could benefit certain business roles, but to attach fake (as far as I can tell; please let me know if I'm wrong!) personae to these stories comes off as deceitful to me. Marketers, please, stick with actual testimonials very verifiable people, or don't even bother!
- larrymcp 12y ago
  Haha, yeah when I saw the stock photos of the Tina Fey lookalike and the hipster bearded IT manager, I said "okay, um this part of the site doesn't appear to be targeted at me".
orasis 12y ago
Is there any word on pricing?
ha292 12y ago
This Watson Analytics effort is flawed. It has a very limited market. It takes massive investment to run. Very few people will ever try it. They will also get very questionable benefits. Bottom line, it is hard to see IBM getting anything close to a positive return from it. Judging by how IBM has gone on to destroy itself in the last few years, I predict that this will be another nail on their coffin. We won't be talking about Watson Analytics past Summer of 2015. Of course they will have 1000 people still working on it.
- yourad_io 12y ago
  With your opening, I can't help but `s/Watson Analytics/Personal Computing/g` in my head.
- stonogo 12y ago
  "I think there is a world market for maybe five Watson Analytic efforts" --Thomas J. Watson
njx 12y ago
looks similar to https://vimeo.com/107544632 https://vimeo.com/107544632

156 points by pranavpr 12y ago

I signed up and extracted tutorial video URLs that can give you an idea how it looks (video files names have titles): http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/marketing1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/mar... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/operations2.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/ope... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sampleLoad.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/marketing4.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/mar... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sampleExplore.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/hr1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/hr1... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sales2.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sal... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/finance1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/fin... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/it1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/it1... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sales1.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sal... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/samplePredict.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/marketing3.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/mar... http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sampleStart.mp4 http://101d1.http.tor01.cdn.softlayer.net/Welcome-Assets/sam...

56yards 12y ago
Great job :)
jsprogrammer 12y ago
So the first link is an exploration in learning how to extract more money from "women with families" using targeted offers, just by dropping an Excel spreadsheet onto a website. Excellent work IBM.
- stonogo 12y ago
  Were you under the impression that IBM was a non-profit? What exactly do you think corporations purchase IT resources to accomplish?
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    No, why would I be under that impression? I think it depends on the corporation and what they are purchasing. IBM has tremendous resources and you'd expect very many smart and well educated people on its payroll. It's just interesting which problems they are selecting to solve when there are so many other problems to choose from that they likely could solve. Why not large scale logistics problems to reduce the cost of the overall food supply chain instead of attempting to extract maximum profit from women with families? I suppose there is an argument that some might make that that is exactly what you should do to achieve maximum reduction in cost. I don't hear IBM making that argument though. I'm not going to make it either, I think there are likely much larger reductions elsewhere.

jsprogrammer 12y ago

Open to everyone who will sign up for a trial account with IBM? Or did they post the code somewhere?

blaze33 12y ago
"Watson Analytics is Now Open For Business", doesn't say open source. Also the submitted title doesn't match the linked page title.

audioburn 12y ago

This is amazing. I feel like I'm dreaming. I'm wondering what the input spreadsheets look like, though

nl 12y ago

Does this actually have anything to do with the technologies used in Watson-the-Jeopardy-winning-system? I've read much of the published papers on Watson and I don't really understand how this relates? Is it that the "Watson" brand encompasses all IBM's semi-intelligent systems work?

htns 12y ago
Yeah, this appears to be just online statistics. The only "AI" thing about it is that it can match natural language queries to your spreadsheet column names.
cyorir 12y ago
Watson refers to the technologies used in the Jeopardy system, yes. Specifically, it refers to the Watson API, which consists of all the NLP and AI algorithms used in the Jeopardy system repackaged (with additions) and hidden under a simpler, query-based system. The Watson API is becoming the basis for most of IBM's Bluemix services which are described by IBM as "cognitive" (as you phrase it, "semi-intelligent systems" - referring mainly to NLP and related applications). IBM is working on a number of applications to use the Watson API, as well as inviting other developers to use the API. Watson Analytics is just one of these applications, but it doesn't run on Watson alone. It is probably better to think of these applications as fitting within the overall framework of IBM's bluemix services, which includes Watson but also other technologies less geared towards NLP. https://console.ng.bluemix.net/ https://console.ng.bluemix.net/

spydum 12y ago

So, just another BI/decision support system, which uses this spiral visualization? It is sorta neat it tries to find some patterns for you, but I imagine once your data exceeds simple spreadsheets it becomes far less cool.

gesman 12y ago

I signed up and tried to upload data and Watson blew up on me with errors: DB2 SQL Error: SQLCODE=-964, SQLSTATE=57011, SQLERRMC=null, DRIVER=4.16.53 Apparently it's very sensitive to data input formats and essentially it wants you to do the data babysitting work first by properly preparing and structuring the data before it'll do anything. These are cool demos on "friendly" pre-baked spreadsheets but way early for any practical production deployments, until IBM will start supporting raw datasets.

mark_l_watson 12y ago
I have been using IBM Watson, and it is also sensitive to clean input data. I think that both IBM and Microsoft are doing a good job at "reinventing themselves", BTW. edit: by 'clean' I really meant data that is in a regular structure with good example questions specified for each paragraph in input documents.
- gesman 12y ago
  The world need more serious analytical tools. I driving an effort for a major bank to combine all sources of different data (traffic logs and external treat intelligence feeds - all of different formats) to create a comprehensive fraud alerting and security investigation system. And we got pretty impressive results utilizing Splunk as a data swiss army knife. IBM is certainly capable of offering a competitive solution to this industry although they need to move faster. WatsonAnalytics is a good start even at it's current "teaser preview" stage.
michaellosee 12y ago
It seems that error code may not involve data input format but rather indicates DB2 is out of resources[1]. Honestly this release might be a little early for IBM as well. Any sort of verbose error message is at least a low risk information disclosure finding on a pentest and a verbose database error message is a strong indicator the application is vulnerable to SQL injection. Even if not vulnerable, it's blood in the water and should be fixed before hitting production. [1]http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSATW2_7.3.0/com.ibm.ituam.doc_7.3/troubleshooting/t_exception_db2_sql_error_sqlcode_-964.html http://www-01.ibm.com/support/knowledgecenter/SSATW2_7.3.0/c...

dustinupdyke 12y ago

I signed up and my account has been pending for weeks. When I login, I get an xml error, it isn't even handled nicely in html. Not a great first impression by any means.

Napoleon1963 12y ago

I find the "Stories" section at the bottom to be particularly distasteful. As far as I can tell, they've just taken stock photographs, labeled them with plausible names, and made them seem like testimonials without actually being real testimonials. I don't expect marketing efforts to always be completely honest, but these "stories" seem like a really condescending sham to me. I wouldn't mind it if they discussed how this technology could benefit certain business roles, but to attach fake (as far as I can tell; please let me know if I'm wrong!) personae to these stories comes off as deceitful to me. Marketers, please, stick with actual testimonials very verifiable people, or don't even bother!

larrymcp 12y ago
Haha, yeah when I saw the stock photos of the Tina Fey lookalike and the hipster bearded IT manager, I said "okay, um this part of the site doesn't appear to be targeted at me".

orasis 12y ago

Is there any word on pricing?

ha292 12y ago

This Watson Analytics effort is flawed. It has a very limited market. It takes massive investment to run. Very few people will ever try it. They will also get very questionable benefits. Bottom line, it is hard to see IBM getting anything close to a positive return from it. Judging by how IBM has gone on to destroy itself in the last few years, I predict that this will be another nail on their coffin. We won't be talking about Watson Analytics past Summer of 2015. Of course they will have 1000 people still working on it.

yourad_io 12y ago
With your opening, I can't help but `s/Watson Analytics/Personal Computing/g` in my head.
stonogo 12y ago
"I think there is a world market for maybe five Watson Analytic efforts" --Thomas J. Watson

njx 12y ago

looks similar to https://vimeo.com/107544632 https://vimeo.com/107544632