Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2010
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Much Math Does the Average Person Need?
InSlashdot, a provocative piece on the real need for advanced math education for the average person. My training is in industrial applications of mathematics, and I think the average person does need to understand enough math…
From Schneier on Security
Halloween and the Irational Fear of Stranger Danger
From the Wall Street Journal:
Take "stranger danger," the classic Halloween horror. Even when I was a kid, back in the "Bewitched" and "Brady Bunch" costume era, parents were already worried about neighbors poisoning candy.That…From The Eponymous Pickle
Zombies at Sears
Zombie Marketing at Sears. How delightful. What, no vampires? Catches you attention today, I guess.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Drive Through Supermarket
The drive through supermarket is a concept I have studied for some time. Here Tesco tests the concept. Baldock is in the county of Hertfordshire which is just North of London. And more on this.
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-31
U.S. Says Genes Should Not Be Eligible for Patenting Welcome and surprising intervention by the US government saying that natural things like genes should not be patentable. Expecting a huge backlash from the biotech industry…
From The Eponymous Pickle
BJ Fogg and Persuasive Technologies
In my last post I mentioned BJ Fogg. We learned of his work while using the Institute for the Future over a number of years. He is a Stanford researcher and consultant, and worked with our enterprise a number of times. Notable…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamification of HealthCare
Design Mind on the Gamification of Healthcare. Includes mention of BJ Fogg, who we utilized for projects in the enterprise that dealt with incentive several times. I like the overall idea, but the examples given in the link…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Winn Dixie's Happy Meals for Adults
An interesting idea. The llink and full article contains lots of example images. Also seems quite complicated, and I think adult consumers might quickly be oversaturated with the idea. How long will they buy into it? Stay…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Food Continues to get more Affordable
A look at the continued and growing affordability of food. Despite criticisms, the agriculture system is remarkable. Also the effects of international trade.
From Schneier on Security
Cargo Security
The New York Times writes: "Despite the increased scrutiny of people and luggage on passenger planes since 9/11, there are far fewer safeguards for packages and bundles, particularly when loaded on cargo-only planes."
Well,…From Wild WebMink
? Leveraging Community
Microsoft: Our strategy with Silverlight has shifted Very smart move (also covered at GigaOm) – Microsoft are trying to lead the race to the bottom with HTML 5, presumably in the hope of killing Adobe, rather than cascading money…
From BLOG@CACM
To Videolecture or Not
Should conferences cover the cost of a videolecture or not? I say "yes."
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Dissecting a Giant Squid
Interesting television program from UK Channel 4.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategic Process Improvement
Brad Power on the importance of improving strategic process in the HBR. I am further a believer in using simulation methods to understand these processes in great detail. It is not used often enough. Read the entire post,"…
From Schneier on Security
Me at TED
Okay, it's not TED. It's one of the independent regional TED events: TEDxPSU. My talk was "Reconceptualizing Security," a condensation of the hour-long talk into 18 minutes.
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Different Perspectives on Projection
I've been studying for my upcoming PhD comprehensive exams, and my major topic is computer graphics. Even though I haven't actually had the opportunity to take a class on graphics, I'm finding I've seen a lot of the material…
From Computational Complexity
Advice on getting connecting to the community (guest post by Daniel Apon)
(Guest Post by Daniel Apon.)
As a follow up to the last post on Do Conferences Build Community? I offer some advice for people to get connected to the community.
Be Confident (And Smile!). It's absolutely important to…From The Eponymous Pickle
Simple Tips for Social Customer Service
Good short piece in BusinessWeek. " .... Adding a social-media layer to your customer-service efforts doesn't have to take much time or energy, writes Pamela O'Hara. Identify the platforms that your company should be engaging…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fast Paced Auctions with a Smartphone
I posted a while back that I have been helping Cowans Auction House, to improve their ontology and online presence. This week I tracked a historic Guns and Militaria auction they were holding. Most notable was how fast-paced…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Retailers Engage Tech Enabled Consumers
Interesting download-able report with registration: The Customer-centric Store 2010: How Retailers Engage Tech-enabled CustomersConsumers
From The Eponymous Pickle
More about the Tesco Scanning App
More detail about UK retailer Tesco using the Redlaser barcode scanning capability in their IPhone App, including some additional usage scenarios.
From Schneier on Security
The Militarization of the Internet
Good blog post.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Microsoft Free Tools for Teachers
Every so often I do a talk on various free software tools that Microsoft has available for teachers. The other day I did one such talk at the Mass CUE conference. In preparation I made a handout that listed the resources I talked…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Web is Reborn
Technology Review Magazine on how the Web will be Reborn. " ... The last decade expanded what we could do online, but the Web's basic programming couldn't keep up. That threatened to fracture the world's greatest innovation engine…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Bionic Arm
Dean Kamen, of Segway fame, presents at TEDMed and demonstrates a new and improved prosthetic arm. Also a distribution deal for his water purifying machine. He has also produced a very cheap and efficient LED bulb that he…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-28
Oracle Responds to JCP Concerns Exactly the sort of public statement that needs making, bravo. Let's hope there is a whole lot more of this and it stops being necessary for the community to yell before there's explanation or…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-28
Tantric TSA: The art of foreplay "I wondered what government official in what dark alley dreamed up this groping to protect the public?" At some point our elected representatives will get a clue and say on our behalf that it's…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-28
A month of LibreOffice "LibreOffice is here to stay; as a project, and as a software. After our two betas we are expecting a code freeze by tomorrow or so, and we already have included lots of patches and fixes that will make…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Twitter's 145 Million Users
A GigaOM post on Twitter's 145 Million Users. My comments: I have now used Twitter for over two years. I started using it as an experiment to see if it could increase visitors to this blog. It seems to have, though many other…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-28
Tantric TSA: The art of foreplay "I wondered what government official in what dark alley dreamed up this groping to protect the public?" At some point our elected representatives will get a clue and say on our behalf that it's…