Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
January 2015
From The Eponymous Pickle
When to Analyze Big Data
In Smart Data Collective, by Richard Boire I like the mentions of real time data,and also that we need to look at longitudinal (historical) views to understand its implications.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Xerox Licenses Thinfilm Labels
Interesting characteristics of this labeling system, with likely applications to Internet of things applications." ... Each label, costing a few pennies, is a plastic tag that’s based on ferroelectric capacitors and allows for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon pulls Diaper Brand
This very notable private label introduction has been pulled after six weeks on the market. In GigaOM. They say for redesign. Do expect more examples of private label CPG from Amazon, leveraging their delivery and consumer…
From Schneier on Security
Defending Against Liar Buyer Fraud
It's a common fraud on sites like eBay: buyers falsely claim that they never received a purchased item in the mail. Here's a paper on defending against this fraud through basic psychological security measures. It's preliminary…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
U.S. Copyright Office Invites Public Input for 2015 DMCA Rulemaking
The U.S. Copyright Office is accepting public input on proposed exemptions to the prohibitions against circumvention under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This process takes place every three years. The deadline…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hyper Relevance in Retail
So what is hyper relevance? And all about dark assets that you are not using. Read about it in the Cisco blog.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Personality Judgements by Computer
Supporting information for a proposed project:" ... This study compares the accuracy of personality judgment—a ubiquitous and important social-cognitive activity—between computer models and humans. Using several criteria, we…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Big Data, Data Science, and other Buzzwords that Really Matter
The AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellows at the National Science Foundation (NSF) have organized a new seminar series on Data Science, Big Data, and Internet of Things. The series is a monthly one-hour informational presentation…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of January 20
January 20 President Obama will give his State of the Union address. 9 p.m., Capitol Building January 21 Hearing: The Communications and Technology Subcommittee of the House Energy and Commerce Committee will hold a hearing on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Mobile Business in the Enterprise
We looked at this topic a dozen years ago in the enterprise. It is not only just about phone calls, but also about how two way, interactive, data rich interactions can be supported. Its about creating foundational businessMore…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pizza Business Insights
In GigaOM: Case study of the use of Splunk for mining business insight by Dominos. Intrigued by the use of this new capability, especially for time domain, real time examples in marketing. " .... Domino’s can make more precise…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wearable Data in the Medical Record
In Forbes: Wearables and analytical value. Should they be in the medical record?" ... The great promise of wearables for medicine includes the opportunity for health measurement to participate more naturally in the flow of our…
From Schneier on Security
Accountability as a Security System
At a CATO surveillance event last month, Ben Wittes talked about inherent presidential powers of surveillance with this hypothetical: "What should Congress have to say about the rules when Barack Obama wants to know what Vladimir…
From Putting People First
Pfizer uses ethnography and medical anthropology in drug development process
In 2013 Pfizer leadership realized that to better enable patient engagement throughout the entirety of the drug discovery, development, and delivery process, the company needed to be more systematic. Pfizer CMO Freda Lewis-Hall…
From Wild WebMink
Legislating For Unicorns
When Julian Huppert MP (Lib-Dem) asked the Home Secretary Theresa May MP (Con) if banning encryption – as the Prime Minister had been interpreted as saying – is “genuinely what the Home Secretary wants to do?”, she evaded him…
From Putting People First
Microsoft survey in 12 countries highlights people’s concerns about privacy
Microsoft’s second annual survey (pdf) of Internet users around the world has many obvious insights on the benefits of technology for how people shop, work, learn, and generally get stuff done, but only one real news item: people’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Turning a Boring Task into a Game
A classic reason for gamifying a task. In the news today: The Airport Scanner game shows how you can get millions of people to perform the luggage scanning task as a simple game. In a former role I worked on a related gamification…
From Putting People First
Time for Big Anthropology
Numbers don’t tell us everything we need to know [in health care], writes strategic consultant Dan Beckham. We must also consider human culture: “That’s often the problem with big data, analytics and chasing metrics. They too…
From Schneier on Security
US Law Enforcement Also Conducting Mass Telephone Surveillance
Late last year, in a criminal case involving export violations, the US government disclosed a mysterious database of telephone call records that it had queried in the case. The defendant argued that the database was the NSA's…
From XRDS
From novice to expert: the art of science of pedagogy
By now, America’s STEM problem – the growing gap between demand and skill in American jobs in STEM fields – is well recognized (see this commentary by Bill Nye). One source of the problem is a lack of interest in …Continue…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unilever Shares Selfies
In Internet Retailer: Another example of shoppers using their phones to explore the marketing space. It is much done already, but how are the results managed, explored, evaluated? See also Storeflix, which is more B to B,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Arrives, Worries People
In Wired, discussing an arrival of AI and how it worries people. I remember that this was warned of in the late 80s as well. Now we have marched down the road some distance, but we are still not at the general intelligence…
From BLOG@CACM
Rising Enrollment Might Capsize Retention and Diversity Efforts
Rapid increase of enrollment in CS classes in the US might undermine efforts to improve diversity.
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
A Comic About Grace Hopper
Ramya from Udemy shared a neat little comic with me about Grace Hopper, and said I could share it here. You can look at the comic on their website, too, where you can also order a Grace Hopper sticker if you live in the US. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Emotional Ads more Impactful in Wealthier Nations
Perhaps Obvious. But have never seen a study attempting to quantify it. In Research Live Magazine." ... A paper published in the Journal of Advertising Research, How to Advertise and Build Brand Knowledge Globally: Comparing…
From Computational Complexity
The two defintions of Chomsky Normal Form
I have eight textbooks on Formal Lang Theory on my desk. Six of them define a CFG to be in Chomsky Normal Form if every production is of the form either A-->BC or A--> σ (σ a single letter). With that definition one can show…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gesture Sensing Armband
In Engadget: Have been looking at applications of gestural interfaces to analytics " .... Muscle-sensing Myo gesture armband will be on Amazon this quarter ... For those who aren't already familiar with the Myo, it consists…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Digital Strategy to Save Customers Time and Money
More on Kroger Digital Strategy. " ... Kroger keeps studying online shopping because 60 percent of all consumers consider trips to the grocery store their least favorite chore. Matt Thompson, Kroger's director of digital and…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 19 January 2015
School is out today in honor of Martin Luther King Jr Day. Semester exams start tomorrow. I think I’m ready. I hope my students are ready. I do have a couple of interesting links to share today. Hope you find them useful.
Logo…From Putting People First
The agency is dead. Long live the agency.
The traditional agency model is physically more than alive on a small scale, but mentally has been stagnating, writes Tobias van Schneider, Product Design Lead at Spotify NYC: Agencies are now tasked to find their own voice,…