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
Genetic Programming Book
We examined these methods in the enterprise. Publisher please send me a copy if you would like a full review in this blog. " ... you might like to know that Foundations of Genetic Programming by William B. Langdon will be…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Consumer Hard Drives to be Extinct?
The comment is made in slashdot that the cost per solid state gigabyte will decrease to about fifty US cents by next year. Will this kill the hard drive? In the comments there are some interesting debates about reliability,…
From Putting People First
The most popular phone in the world
To fully understand what’s wrong [with Nokia], we’ve got to understand what’s been right, or to put in another way, what’s distracted Nokia. Meet the most popular phone in the world. “The phone’s small size makes its extremely…
From Putting People First
Nokia Research touts 5 innovative mobile interfaces
Wired’s Gadget Lab posts five big ideas that are currently under development at Nokia Research Center that reveal some intriguing possibilities on how we will interact with our devices in the future. Touchscreens everywhere Nokia…
From Putting People First
When augmented reality hits the Internet of Things
Wired.co.uk contributor Anna Leach examines how augmented reality and The Internet of Things could impact each other in the coming years. “Both the Internet of Things and augmented reality (AR) are hotly tipped computing trends…
From Putting People First
Usability inspection of digital libraries
Lorraine Paterson and Boon Low highlight findings from the usability inspection report conducted for the JISC-funded research project, Usability and Contemporary User Experience in Digital Libraries (UX2.0). Demands for improved…
From Wild WebMink
? More Change
Wind of Change Florian Effenburger steps down as OpenOffice.org marketing project lead. He has always been the model of leadership in that role, patient, tolerant and firm when necessary, and I am sure he will be missed. His…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Creativity and Sadness
Does sadness make us more creative? In Wired/Frontal Cortex. My own informal innovation center observations would say otherwise, but this may depend more strongly on the context and diving goals of the task at hand. The article…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Singularity Operating System
Technical but intriquing piece in CACM Microsoft's experimental operating system. The Singularity System Safe, modern programming languages let Microsoft rethink the architectural trade-offs in its experimental operating system…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New Hampshire TechFest 2010
I spent most of Saturday at the New Hampshire TechFest at Windham High School. NH Tech Fest is a Satellite Event of the USA Science and Engineering Festival which was running concurrently on the Mall in Washington, D.C. I understand…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Loss Aversion
In Wired / Frontal Cortex: On the Allais paradox, or loss aversion in humans. One of the most well known and powerful concepts in neuroeconomics. With some excellent practical examples.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hyper Social Organization
Paul Gillin on Hyper social organizations:" ... I
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-23
Mike Shapiro Leaves Oracle Another of the key Solaris guys quits. A key figure in the development the ZFS storage appliance as well as of DTrace in Solaris kernel engineering, Mike was also the guy that shut down OpenSolaris…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Ways to Map Influence
In Fastcompany. An idea we also examined. How do you figure out where useful ideas come from? And why they sometimes do not have the influence you might expect? Paper citation tracking often does not give you the insight…
From Schneier on Security
Steganography in the Longfin Inshore Squid
While the notion that a few animals produce polarization signals and use them in communication is not new, M
From The Eponymous PickleMagazines on the iPad
A good piece on early experiments with publishing mags on the iPad. I see this an example of really fundamental change. Are we seeing the beginning of the new electronic media? Ephemeral print on flat panels that we carry…
From Schneier on SecurityVideo Interview with Me from RSA Europe
I was interviewed this week at RSA Europe.
From Computer Science Teachers AssociationCS Education Resources
Steve Cooper, Mehran Sahami, and Paulo Blickstein at Stanford University have a project about online repositories of computer science educational material and they could use your help.
An online repository is any website that…
From Putting People FirstSmartphones are our new drug of choice
Smartphones’ sleek forms, tactile buttons, and blinking lights add up to a sort of game — and a perfect catalyst for compulsive behaviors, writes Shelley DuBois in Fortune Magazine. “Smartphones actually could tap into one of…
From The Eponymous PickleMore QR Codes in Retail
QR codes are gaining momentum as they increasingly appear on shelf tags, in-store posters and product packagingIn Supermarketnews, more examples of how scan able codes are being used in retail for a number of information applications…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonComputer Class or Computer Science Class
There is much too much confusion about the difference between a
From Putting People FirstThe (limited) power of good intentions
Socially responsible design, writes Julie Lasky in Metropolis Magazine, is a whole lot harder than it looks.
From The Eponymous PickleVisualizing Your Inbox
Another example of Gmail inbox visualization. I have mentioned a few others here. I have built some simple screen scraping methods to look at this via Excel, but still looking for a way to do this easily. Let me know if there…
From Computational ComplexityNew York Area Theory Day- Nov 12, 2010
New York Area Theory Day, Organized by: IBM/NYU/Columbia, External sponsorship by: Google, Friday, November 12, 2010
The Theory Day will be held at Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, New York University, 251 Mercer…
From The Eponymous PickleEcononomics of Mass Collaboration
HBR Podcast with guest Don Tapscott, chairman of nGenera Insight and coauthor of Macrowikinomics: Rebooting Business and the World. on the economics of mass collaboration. Just reading his book, Very useful thoughts.
From Wild WebMinklinks for 2010-10-22
AWS Free Usage Tier I was actually surprised to find Amazon didn't have a sandpit for AWS, so this new offering really doesn't surprise me. They still have no easy-start developer environment that I have found, that's a serious…
From Schneier on SecurityFaceTime for Mac Security Hole
Once a user has logged into FaceTime, anyone with access to the machine can change the user's Apple ID password without knowing the old password.
From The Eponymous PickleTynt - Copy and Paste
Another example of the ability to determine how much your content is being shared. I have always looked at this with mixed feelings ... you want what you say to be shared, it is a measure of how good it is. Yet how can that…
From The Eponymous PickleSome Shopping by Phone Only
Who shops using mobile, and what are the consequences?" ... A small segment of consumers prefer to shop using their mobile devices, according to a report from Millennial Media and comScore. Among the 8% of survey respondents…
From The Computing Community Consortium BlogDeborah Crawford to receive 2010 Presidential Rank Award
Deborah Crawford, who recently left her position as NSF’s Deputy Assistant Director for CISE (Jeannette Wing’s right-hand person) to become Vice Provost for Research at Drexel University, will receive a 2010 Presidential Rank…