April 2009
1 post
“As you grow up, work deteriorates in mails & meetings.”
– This older tweet of mine tends to be an accurate description of my daily schedule lately…
March 2009
1 post
Cease and Desist or Start to Exist?
Every new day brings a new opportunity and today I had the fortune to enjoy a unique experience; the one of receiving a cease and desist letter. The email regarded the “use of XXX company’s logo and trade name in my websites http://datamine.it & http://gtziralis.com/post/59121553/introducing-datamine-it” and I cannot put it better than pasting some (slightly modified to avoid...
January 2009
1 post
An holistic approach to investment assessment
A paper I co-authored is finally published (in early view, .pdf) in the journal of Managerial and Decision Economics. Along with Konstantinos Kirytopoulos, Athanassios Rentizelas and my professor Ilias Tatsiopoulos, we proposed an holistic approach to investment assessment, a process of value that may be highlighted under the current economic situation.
To make a long story short, the typical...
December 2008
4 posts
My humble activity report for 2008
The last day of the year is a good chance to review what you did and what you didn’t, helping you shape out tangible plans for the year to come. I’ll try to do so in the lines to follow, based on the sparse 35 posts I happened to post in this blog during 2008.
So, what did I do?
finally launched -together with Efthimios- AskMarkets and AskMarkets Services, but we’re clearly in...
Europe's Best Young Entrepreneur by Business Week...
About a month ago, I receive an email from Business Week, stating that I was one of the about 40 nominees for the Europe’s Best Young Entrepreneur 2008 contest. That was a really pleasant surprise, asking me to reply with more information on my business, next to confirming that I am 29 years old or younger, I am the founder or manager of my company, my company has been in business for five...
And we're TechCrunched! →
Launching askmarkets services →
go create your marketplace now
November 2008
3 posts
Introducing HowSocial.ru, a project of Startup...
I’m too exhausted to write about anything but my excitement on participating at Startup Weekend Athens, as @andrewhyde said “the biggest SUW ever organized in Europe”. We set up a fantastic team by @kcorax, @dimitristi, @netwire, @ageor and @thimios and turned a rough idea (“friendfeed counter anyone?”) conceived about an hour before the event into a solid service...
It is about time to let the good times roll: We... →
Introducing DataMine.it
I’m more than happy to share with you that the Course via Blog has matured into a solid start-up. DataMine.it that is and our offering regards -you guessed that right- data mining services.
We put great effort on adding value to AI algorithms by spicing them up with our very human expertise, while trying to keep the whole procedure as simple as it gets and its results much more intuitive...
October 2008
4 posts
Teaching Prediction Markets
I gave an introductory lecture on prediction markets earlier today, in the context of a undergraduate course in Logistics at NTUA’s School of Mechanical Engineering. The feedback and responses on running some hands-on experiments (you can guess the software) were really great, I expect that this will be repeated in a few days when I’m giving a lecture again, in the course of Production...
“He who writes a lot, has little to say.”
– from a discussion with Professor George Cosmetatos, member of my PhD thesis committee, on the extent of my dissertation
Conjuring Startups out of Thin Air, a presentation...
A couple of days ago, George Kasselakis, Dimitris Athanasiadis and I had the privilege to lead a discussion at the Stream08 unconferene. Together with Jennifer Schenker of BusinessWeek, we attempted -quite successfully!- to trigger the conversation about innovation in Europe, trying to figure out some best practices for enabling entrepreneurship excellence.
The presentation is embedded below...
September 2008
4 posts
“The show has moved to the tech start-up scene.”
– Attending SIME Helsinki, the semantics of location just made this clear to me…
Market-driven Innovation Management, from the...
I attach the presentation file, full paper and abstract of the work I presented earlier today at APMS 2008, here in beautiful Espoo, Finland. Your comments are welcome.
Market Drive Innovation Management, from the inside in
View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: tziralis predictionmarkets)
abstract: Modern enterprises and organizations seem like...
Introducing WebSource.it, a new pet project
Have you ever realized how many times you use Google search every single day? No? Get prepared to be amazed if you navigate to Google web history and click on ‘trends’. In my account, for example, Google has already tracked 23,025 searches, an average of about 45 queries per day. Sounds like a lot, right? And you may say it actually is, for a rudimentary service that has almost...
August 2008
2 posts
Quoted in Chicago Tribune - the story beyond
I was honored enough to be quoted among the former ATHOC President Gianna Angelopoulos-Daskalaki and the former Mayor of Athens and current Minister of Foreign Affairs Dora Bakoyannis, in a today’s article of the much respected Chicago Tribune, regarding the post-Games Athens (update: the article actually appeared at the newspaper’s front page).
To give you some more info on that, I...
“Everything under the sun is on ‘public domain’. Thus, it might end...”
– a re-tweet, inspired by boris and mike.
please accept/correct/upgrade, or discard (I’m not the law guy)
July 2008
4 posts
The concept behind askmarkets
cross posted at “the official askmarkets blog”
Askmarkets is an internet-based service for prediction markets, which consists of virtual marketplaces for information trading. Now, while this sentence might seem like an accurate description to our biased eyes, we bet that you can find a much better pitch line and submit it in the comments below. Still, allow us for now, to shed some...
A Course by Blog, Lessons Learned
cross posted at ‘A Course by Blog’
This semester, as you may know, I was privileged enough to teach (or, to be academically correct, to provide teaching assistance, but I truly thank my professor for entrusting me and giving me full freedom to handle everything by myself) the course ‘Information Extraction Algorithms’ -pure Data Mining in practice- at the postgraduate program ‘Applied...
An ode to Chicago
Presenting at the 3rd Workshop on Prediction...
I attended earlier today the 3rd Workshop on Prediction Markets, organized with the support of Yahoo Research at the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University in Chicago. The event managed to gather top-notch researchers and practitioners of the field from Japan till, well, Greece, and I really enjoyed the focus and depth of all presentations.
What’s more, I had the chance to...
June 2008
1 post
TechCrunch goes Open Coffee Greece
It’s true. It’s big. It’s awesome. After 22 Open Coffee events and hundred of participants around Greece this season, we’re very pleased to announce that we’ll cohost Open Coffee Athens XIII with Techcrunch. When? Tuesday, July 1st.
Close your mouth :), we are serious. The blog that brought the term start-up to the mainstream and is read by millions of people worldwide is on european tour and...
May 2008
2 posts
Attending Greek Blogger Camp 2008
I’m attending Greek Blogger Camp 2008 (photos are flowing here, more stuff on twitter) organized by my friend Stefanos in the magnificent island of Ios. Attendance is not excessive in size, but mood and atmosphere are pretty excellent and today alone I had the chance and priviledge to share some ouzo with Boris and Patrick (the latter one is also a speaker to the forthcoming Open Coffee...
“We charge for our services, just to secure your attention.”
– How would you receive such a selling argument?
April 2008
4 posts
“With the exception of advertising, the vast majority of Web 2.0 services are...”
– please comment/correct/upgrade.
Watcha short promo to askmarkets.com, more to be found at the official blog :)
Comments and search added
While I’m definitely a fan of the uber-simplistic and sexy approach to blogging by tumblr, there clearly exist some basic functionalities that are missing and tumblr has been late to add. And, as I haven’t been serious enough to create a personal website including a Wordpress /blog yet, I’ve just added commenting using disqus and ajaxed search using this hack. So, all your...
kind-of twitter addict lately →
according to Robert Scoble
March 2008
2 posts
Watchlifestreaming today, part II: 18.30-…, Open Coffee Athens Meeting IX
Watchlifestreaming today, part I: 12.00-14.00 teaching data mining, introductory lecture update: cancelled, tune in next tuesday, same time and place
February 2008
4 posts
a Course by Blog
I’m teaching the course ‘Information Extraction Algorithms’ (well, pure data mining in practice) at the post-graduate program ’Applied Mathematical Sciences’ of NTUA’s School of Applied Mathematics and Physics. I’m strongly considering the idea of employing a blog to serve at the core of the learning process. The class is held at a pc-lab, so it came...
“It is possible that the many, no one of whom taken singly is a sound man, may...”
– Aristotle on Collective Intelligence, Politics, circa 334-23 BC. a bunch of Aristotle quotes here, hat tip to Cass Sunstein
CSS Rounded Corners 101
Rounded corners are often a designers’ holy grail. They seem to provide a concrete user experience and a feeling of smoothness in navigation, while they are being selected recently for more and more web 2.0 designs. Well, I’m not a designer, but need forced me to explore and implement some rounded magic. There exists a lot of available techniques, most of them claiming to be...
January 2008
2 posts
GIGO and prophets, tears and markets
Prediction markets failed to accurately predict the unexpected effect a few tears had on the New Hampshire primaries; and some analysts rushed to blame the tool and undermine its reliability and applicability. Let me restate some fundamentals and my view, in a snapshot: Markets are not prophets, prophets do not exist. A mechanism’s forecastability should not be judged against a virtual...
A really hot year for prediction markets has just...
After the launch of Wall Street Journal’s Political Market (powered by intrade, coverage here and here) and CNN’s Political Market (powered by inkling), McCluskey and Hanson also debuted Presidential Decision Markets. Today, Cowgill, Wolfers and Zitzewitz just released a full-fledged draft studying markets at Google, which is absolutely exceptional, definitely the most massive...
December 2007
10 posts
My brother, 14, has a blog :) →
Merry Christmas everyone! →
A thought-provoking post via Overcoming Bias.
Prediction markets go mainstream, step by step →
Yahoo launches US elections political dashboard, covering side-by-side poll results, search trends, current prediction market prices and money raised for each candidate. via techcrunch
Freakonomicsed! →
I’m just happy to report that our research was linked by NYT’s Freakonomics :) Now, this is a great motivation to work even harder…
“With markets, “trial and error” works, because error gets killed...”
– Arnold Kling
Prediction Markets as Decision Support Tool for... →
An older paper of mine, now published in the monthly Bulletin of the Hellenic Association of Mechanical and Electrical Engineers
Well, thank you Chris :) →
Prediction Markets are NOT efficient →
some early clues from a joint research effort with Panos Ipeirotis, more results and details to come soon
November 2007
9 posts
Open Coffee Athens Meeting VI
The Open Coffee Athens Meetings are “growing up”. After five quite successful events, some already call the movement an institution, while we all clearly see an ecosystem -the one of greek start-up and entrepreneurship community- developing. And this ecosystem now moves to a place looking much better suited for its present form and future growth. So, leveraging on the global Open Coffe...