Side-project: See-to-Solve!

See-to-solve is a tool to identify the right move for turn-based games, starting with Chess. The original idea was to use machine learning-trained models to: I was planning to run this on my Ray-Ban Stories glasses. My motivations for this project were: The current version leverages many open-source projects to build steps #3 and #4 for online chess (source). The …

Wordle solver

I created a wordle solver. When starting with the word SALET it solves for all possible words in 7920 guesses, or 3.421166307 on average (Distribution 1: 0, 2: 78, 3: 1225, 4: 971, 5: 41, 6: 0). GitHub – jonparis/wordlesolver My solver reaches the theoretically best solution. It was close to perfect in Jan/Feb when I started but slow. I …

Yahoo on Kik

yahoo:

By Jon Paris, Senior Director of Product

At Yahoo, we’ve always built experiences at the intersection of search, communications and content to help you connect with what matters most to you. Today, we’re thrilled to announce three new Yahoo-powered bots, available on Kik.  We are excited to explore how messaging will change the way that we all discover and engage with information.

Whether you’re planning a weekend outing, dreaming of a Parisian vacation or simply celebrating summer sunshine, check out weather information for multiple cities with Yahoo Weather (@yahooweather).  Because messaging is all about sharing, we’ve made it really easy to share weather conditions, brought to life by beautiful Flickr photos, with your friends on Kik.

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Yahoo News (@yahoonews) helps you discover, delve deeper and share the stories that interest you most. Just chat this bot to learn what’s trending. We’ll also share a morning and evening news digest with you.

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Lastly, you can adopt a pet monkey right on Kik – meet MonkeyPets (@monkeypets). With care your virtual pet will grow and thrive. It’ll also teach you a thing or two about emoji and our beautiful world as it shares selfies from its travels.

You can help us make these bots better by sharing your feedback. Just write “Feedback” to any Yahoo Bot to provide input with our team. But first, try them today by adding @yahoonews, @yahooweather or @monkeypets as friends on Kik! We can’t wait for you to try our first few bots! 

Proud to have worked on this with a great team. 

Search-in-Apps

Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference: Mobile Developer Suite Part 2 I have the opportunity to share about Search-in-Apps around 9 minutes from the end of this session.  (Source: https://news.yahoo.com/)

Announcing Search in Apps Integration with TouchPal Keyboards

yahoodevelopers: By Jon Paris, Senior Director of Product Search in Apps was first introduced at the Yahoo Developer Conference back in February. Since then, we’ve been working hard with mobile developers across the U.S. to build awesome in-app experiences with Yahoo Search. As users spend more time in apps, we want to provide a seamless search experience that is always …

Ode to the adventures of parenting

In the run up to this last Mother’s day my wife’s book, The Runaway Mommy (published in 2013) was downloaded over 7,000 times in just a couple days. It has been encouraging to see all the positive reviews pour in as reader’s continue to appreciate her humor and the artistry of the Scott Rim, the Illustrator.   If you are …

Yahoo Search In Apps

I had the honor of announcing Yahoo Search in Apps at the Yahoo Mobile Developer Conference on February 19th, 2015. We announced it as part of the Yahoo Mobile Developer Suite. We start talking about search at 38 minutes, 25 seconds. There is also a follow up discussion later in the day.

Side Projects

Photo (@kamerakrazy) For over 10 years my focus, the one thing I strove to do well at was campus ministry. During my time at UC Berkeley my studies of physics and chemistry became secondary to my desire to help others explore the mysteries of the christian faith. After graduating I focused my career entirely on mentoring university students equipping them …

Runaway Mommy by Jane Paris

If you are a parent of young kids you are sure to relate to the Runaway Mommy, written by Jane Paris, my wonderful wife. Watch the campaign video and you’ll see some our kid’s antics that informed the story! These last number of years Jane has been the biggest supporter of my work with IVCF and Astrid. She bore the lion’s share …