Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2010
From Schneier on Security
Loretta Napoleoni on the Economics of Terrorism
Interesting TED talk:
Loretta Napoleoni details her rare opportunity to talk to the secretive Italian Red Brigades -- an experience that sparked a lifelong interest in terrorism. She gives a behind-the-scenes look at its complex…From The Eponymous Pickle
Putting Shopper Marketing in Hands of Shopper
Joel Rubinson of ARF on Putting Marketing in the Hands of the Shopper, about Modiv's in aisle scanning system in use at Stop&Shop and being shown at NRF. Recall that we helped in the design evaluation of this system in laboratory…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter to Test Online Store
Note also P&G's extensive use of contextual innovation centers to understand the consumer, in the WSJ: Procter & Gamble to Test Online Store to Study Buying Habits Procter & Gamble Co. plans to launch an online store that will…
From Michael Nielsen
Biweekly links for 01/15/2010
Smart phones blessed in Canon David Parrott’s 3G church service
“Yesterday, in the church of the City of London Corporation, he presented an updated version of Plow Monday, an observance that dates from medieval times. On this…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Some Thoughts On Getting The Most From Ed Tech Conferences
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From The Noisy Channel
When Is Faceted Search Appropriate?
Earlier this week, Peter Morville and Mark Burrell presented a UIE virtual seminar on “Leveraging Search & Discovery Patterns For Great Online Experiences“. It sold out! And I thought Pete Bell and I had done well with our seminar…
From Schneier on Security
Ray McGovern on Intelligence Failures
Good commentary from former CIA analyst Ray McGovern:
The short answer to the second sentence is: Yes, it is inevitable that "certain plots will succeed." A more helpful answer would address the question as to how we might …From The Eponymous Pickle
Shoppers Want more Interactivity
Not a surprising result, consumers want more interactivity from retailers: ' ... For example, 75 percent of those surveyed want their mobile phones to tell them where the nearest store of interest is located, and 68 percent.…
From My Biased Coin
Letters and Rights
I generally assume students know to waive their rights to look at a letter of recommendation when they ask me to write one, but I recently ran into a student that did not. I explained that my default was that they had to waive…
From Schneier on Security
$3.2 Million Jewelry Store Theft
I've written about this sort of thing before:
A robber bored a hole through the wall of jewelry shop and walked off with about 200 luxury watches worth 300 million yen ($3.2 million) in Tokyo's upscale Ginza district, police…From The Eponymous Pickle
Functional Food Advances
Advances in Soy protein chemistry seem to indicate increased abilty to release functional ingredients slowly. Article in FoodNavigator.
From Computational Complexity
Do Innovative papers have a hard time getting into STOC and FOCS? I ask this objectively with no ax or teeth to grind.
(This is my last post until next week Tuesday.)
Many people believe the following:
FOCS and STOC only take technically hard results on problems that we already agree are worth studying. Papers that are truly innovative,…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
FETC Day 1 (2010)
My first piece of advice to anyone attending FETC or other major education technology conference is don’t show up at the end of three weeks away from home. I did and I’m already exhausted. Yesterday Pat Phillips and I did a work…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Fun Through Fantasy and Narrative
An interesting topic came up in a recent game design class. We were talking about various types of fun after trying to define fun itself (which, by the way, is a lot harder than it seems at first - if you try to do it, make …
From Putting People First
From people to prototypes and products: ethnographic liquidity and the Intel Global Aging Experience study
The latest Intel Technology Journal (Volume 13, Issue 30 reports the research and development activities of the Intel Digital Health Group and its colleagues. One article, entitled “From people to prototypes and products: ethnographic…
From Schneier on Security
Body Cavity Scanners
At least one company is touting its technology:
Nesch, a company based in Crown Point, Indiana, may have a solution. It’s called diffraction-enhanced X-ray imaging or DEXI, which employs proprietary diffraction enhanced imaging…From The Eponymous Pickle
Arithmetic Stifles Creativity
Long division no longer taught, stifles student creativity. Make sure your batteries are fresh. ' ...Only 57% of college freshman at the University of Washington could solve this problem below (231 / 7 = 33) without a calculator…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Docs to Host All File Types
In an interesting development Google says it will host all file types up to 250 MB in size. Sharing large files is always a problem. This will surely put some file sharing capabilities out of business. Providing a form of…
From BLOG@CACM
Showcasing European Computer Science
Retrospective on the 2009 European Computer Science Summit and the launch of ACM Europe
From Putting People First
Design for sustainable behaviour (part 3)
Can design change behavior? Although at times it can seem difficult to change just one person
From Schneier on Security
Airplane Security Commentary
Excellent commentary from The Register:
As the smoke clears following the case of Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, the failed Christmas Day "underpants bomber" of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 fame, there are just three simple points…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Creating the Expertise We Need
By now you have likely received the January issue of the CSTA Voice and discovered the exciting NSF plans for growing 10,000 new CS teachers and reaching 10,000 schools with a re-vamped AP CS curriculum. Of course, this is all…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hive Thinking
Jaron Lanier in the NYT. We were introduced to him and his Virtual Reality work years ago at the Institute for the Future. Some good points in the article, though it is ironic that this point is made in the NYT, a place where…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computing Research that Changed the World: Reflections and Perspectives
New material has been posted on the website for the Library of Congress symposium hosted by CCC in spring 2009.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Small Business Tools at CES
A review of new small and mobile business tools from the Consumer Electronics Show. Nothing revolutionary, but a number of improvements shown.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Marketing Hub
Former colleague Rich Kiley has plans to make Cincinnati a world marketing hub. ' ... The fledgling effort to position Cincinnati as a world center for consumer marketing has identified two dozen
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
The fundamental properties of computing
Physics works with fundamental properties such as mass, speed, acceleration, energy, and so on. Quantum mechanics has a well known trade-off between position and momentum: you can know where I am, or how fast I am going, but…
From Computational Complexity
ICS I: snapshots and the longer view (guest post)
(Guest Post by Rahul Santhanam)
Title: ICS I : Snapshots & The Longer View
1. Local Arrangements: Kudos to the organizing committee for going far beyond the call of duty and arranging for the coldest Beijing winter in…
From Schneier on Security
Op-ed on CIA's National Clandestine Service
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Brute Force or is there an easy way?
This year being ‘10 has lead to a lot of talk about numbers that look like binary numbers 1/11/10 or 11110 for example. Related to this is talk about palindrome dates. For example with a leading zero 1/11/10 becomes 011110 which…