This article describes the development of an artificial intelligence model that can identify about 460 Finnish true bug species (luteet; Heteroptera) from photographs. The resulting web application, available at taxai.biomi.org, provides a tool to assist with species identification by suggesting the most likely species based on an image. The project aims to complement—rather than replace—human […]
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Strategic Thinking and Planning
In broad sense, strategic thinking is the process of coming up with ideas in order to reach goals. Still, there isn’t one ‘right’ way to describe strategic thinking. One view is that it is one part of larger strategy creation and execution: Strategic thinking (out-think competitors): What could be done and why? Problem analysis, […]
From a Side Project to a National Information System: Agile Development in a Museum
This is a story of how a small side project I started as an intrapreneur grew into a national information system. I am going to give the project’s full history, but if you wish, you can jump to the year 2009, when the system was born. Diversity of Databases Even though exhibitions are the most […]
Trouble and solutions with museum specimen identifiers
(First published Aug 13th 2015, edited Oct 26th 2015) After reading a few articles discussing the troubles with museum specimen identifiers (Guralnick et. al. 2014, 2015), I decided to write down how we have managed identifiers at the Finnish Museum of Natural History, and what kind of solution we have come up with. We are currently […]
Why I like Twitter more than Facebook or Google+
One reason why I like Twitter more than Facebook or Google Plus: Interesting content on Twitter marked with blue: On Facebook: And on Google+: Larger and simpler content area, less clutter.
Finnish Parliament votings API
Parliament voting data visualized and published as a RESTful API. Results of the votings by the Finnish Parliament are available from the Parliament website, but they are difficult to find and read. It is especially tedious to find out what a particular parliament member has voted, because the results are divided accross hunderds of pages. Linking […]
Nature of Santorini, Greece
Introduction Miscellaneous Information Birds A list of species observed Suggested birding locations Other animals Vegetation Nature Trails Santorini is a small volcanic island group in the Aiegean archipelago, Greece (see location and a local map). It consist of five islands: Thira (the main island, sometimes spelled Thera), Thirasia (Therasia), Aspronisi, Nea Kameni and Palea Kameni. The two […]