Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Health Tracking Survey
In Information Week, a very good article and statistics about the use of mobile devices to track health information, based on a recent PEW survey. " ... Seven in 10 U.S. adults track a health indicator such as weight, diet,Sixty…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New CSTA Discussion List
This is something we (Computer Science educators) have needed for a while – a general purpose mailing list to discuss a wider range of CS education topics. As this announcement points out there are regional lists and specific…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Going Home Again aka Back To The Classroom
Started teaching again full-time today. I’m teaching at the same school I taught at 9.5 years ago when I went to work for Microsoft. There are a lot of changes. They’re taking attendance online (something I was working towards…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Analytics at Ford
A good profile of colleague Michael Cavaretta at the Ford Motor Company We met a few years ago to see how our enterprises could colllaborate. " ... Cavaretta's group functions as an internal consultancy at Ford, using technologies…
From Schneier on Security
Dangerous Security Theater: Scrambling Fighter Jets
This story exemplifies everything that's wrong with our see-something-say-something war on terror: a perfectly innocent person on an airplane, a random person identifying him as a terrorist threat, and a complete overreaction…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unconscious Branding
A book review of Douglas van Praet's book. Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing " ... In Unconscious Branding, Van Praet offers a rare combination of advertising savvy and behavioral science…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
PAEMST Awards Now Include Computer Science
This year, for the first time, the prestigious Presidential Award for Excellence in Mathematics and Science Teaching (PAEMST) specifically include computer science!
The PAEMST award is the highest honors bestowed by the United…From The Eponymous Pickle
New Google Image Search Interface
Newly described. Have spent time looking at image search interfaces and how they can be used to both direct search and gather images for analysis. They changes are worth examining as examples in this space.
From Schneier on Security
Violence as a Contagious Disease
This is fascinating:
Intuitively we understand that people surrounded by violence are more likely to be violent themselves. This isn't just some nebulous phenomenon, argue Slutkin and his colleagues, but a dynamic that can be…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 28 January 2013
A couple of house keeping items to start. First off, did you know that you can get new blog posts by email? Yep, on the right side of the page is a little sign up for email updates that looks like this --> All you have to doTraining…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Telepresence Healthcare
Brought to my attention by Mark J Perry. Description and link to a video. This addresses remote healthcare in an enclosed kiosk.. In the early days of our retail center development the major vendors we worked with believed…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Companies are Using Gamification
In GigaOM: Beyond the hype, as it says. Category examples and a number of links to the ways that companies are using game dyamics to solve problems, enagage with employees and customers, and find more creative solutions to problems…
From BLOG@CACM
The Waves of Publication
The traditional role of publication-as-process is gone. What remains?
From The Eponymous Pickle
UK Smart City
An interesting piece about how Glasgow, Scotland has won a competition to be the UK's first 'Smart City' experiment, linking widespread sensors and analytics to improve operational efficiency. Also notably mentioned,Future…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Graph Search for Recruiting
In Mashable: Using Facebook Graph search for recruiting. I am seeing more companies today interested in hiring, but making sure to sure they hire the right people to replace or augment current knowledge within an enterprise…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Machines and World Without Work
General AP article that covers a number of developments in the last decade. Perhaps leading to less labor. This kind of labor singularity is still some distance away. Goods need to be created, transported and maintained. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Efficiency vs Value in Innovation
In Innovation Excellence: A look at the innovation equation. Measurement is always a useful exercise, even if you don't use the measure directly. " ... What organizations need to understand is that, at the macro level, productivity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Improving Your Personal Brand
I was pointed to some interesting pieces in this blog about measuring and improving your personal brand: . " ... Leaders need to have a big, bold vision that others can rally around, writes Karen Kang. That's the best way to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Marketing Spend Rising
AdAge article on how increasing P&G performance is leading to increasing its marketing spending. P&G already planned to step up marketing and innovation in the January to June period, (CFO Jon ...) Moeller said, adding those…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scanning the Brains of Dogs
In Wired: An article about how DARPA is planning to scan the brains of dogs to make better choices of military pairings. An interesting idea that could look at things like task optimization for applications. The research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Skill Shortage?
Forbes piece on what they call a Big Data Skills Shortage. Here I believe that followup training to a typical Computer Science or Information Management degree is sufficient. With particular attention paid to how the data will…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Making Primes More Random
Mathematical tricks Ben Green grew up about 100 meters from the house in Bristol where Paul Dirac was born and lived until age 10. He has followed Dirac to Cambridge University as a Fellow of Trinity College, which adjoins St…
From Wild WebMink
Body As Instrument
Fascinating video of Imogen Heap explaining her “gloves” – actually a set of instrumentation that detects body position and gestures and provides haptic and visual feedback to the performer.
From updated sporadically at best
The Problem with "Mansplaining"
The "mansplaining" meme, which captures the phenomenon of men being patronizing to women in conversation, is trending on the internet. There is a Tumblr here; a Hillary Clinton meme there. While it is good that women are speaking…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Education and Industry–Friends or Foes?
Industry and education should be the best of friends. They should both be working towards some common goals. Mutually supportive allies. These days that doesn’t seem to be the case. And yet industry wants, needs really, an educated…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squirming Tentacle USB Drive
Just the thing. (Note that this is different than the previous squid USB drive I blogged about.)
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From Schneier on Security
Video Interview with Me
This interview was conducted last month, at an artificial intelligence conference at Oxford.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Neuroscience Shopper Engagements
Ron Wright of Sands Research Writes to me:Lily Glick was the lead on the POPAI Shopper Engagement Study and we throughly enjoyed working with her on this project. She has put together an informative white paper and thought you…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Forrester on New Workplaces
Another look at where we work and why. Technology has opened lots of new possibilities, but also new overhead to making the process work. I was at a meeting yesterday that discussed how enterprises make it work. In an era of…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Windows 8 Game Development Links
My good friend Lindsay Lindstrom has started a series on creating Windows 8 games on her blog. Somehow I seem to have neglected to post links to it here. So here they are:
Part 1 of 9: Creating a Complete Windows 8 GamePart…