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 Putting People First
Device Design Day videos
Kicker Studio organised on 20 August a Device Design Day in San Francisco, exploring the design of the next generation of products. Most videos are now online: Stuart Karten: User-driven innovation [31:40] Stuart Karten Design…
From Putting People First
What the developing world can teach us about technology
“Creativity, Cost-Cutting & Keeping it Simple: what the Developing World can teach us about Technology” is the long title of a short feature story by Anna Leach on Shiny Shiny, a gadget blog, where she reports on a fascinating…
From Putting People First
mobile + africa
A contingent of Stanford University d.school students recently returned from Kenya, where they spent two weeks working with Nokia Research Africa, and the University of Nairobi, developing health-related mobile applications.…
From Putting People First
US UX versus EU UX: What
In response to questions from Amy Knox regarding US user experience and European user experience, S
From Putting People First
Project explores human factor in
Boston University is participating in a $2 million National Science Foundation-funded Smart Neighborhood project that seeks to make a Boston neighborhood more energy efficient. But rather than just install solar panels or electricity…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Kodu Kamp for Educators
OK so you know I am a big fan of Kodu. Perhaps you read about the Kodu workshop I did for students last weekend. Perhaps you just heard about Kodu from some random place. But where ever you heard about it you asked yourself
From The Eponymous Pickle
Who Owns Personal Data?
Thinking about who owns personal data.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tableau 6 Includes What-If Modeling
The newest verison of Tableau 6, now in beta, has the ability to create variables for use in your analysis. We call these parameters, and they open up new possibilities from sensitivity analysis to what-if modeling. More with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stealing Your Reality
Can your behavior on social netowrking sites be stolen and your 'reality' stolen? I know that reality can be augmented, even replaced by being made virtual, but can it be taken from you? CW looks at Malware that attempts this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tragedy of the Commons
I looked up the concept of 'Tragedy of the Commons' concept recently to get additional historical information about the topic. . Found that the Wikipedia has a nice overview and some useful background.
From Schneier on Security
Picking a Single Voice out of a Crowd
Interesting new technology.
Squarehead's new system is like bullet-time for sound. 325 microphones sit in a carbon-fiber disk above the stadium, and a wide-angle camera looks down on the scene from the center of this disk. All…From Computational Complexity
How hard is this problem?- I ask this non-rhetorically
I recently saw the following puzzle:
Which two numbers come at the end of this sequence? (That is, what are x and y?)
2,4,5,30,32,34,36,40,42,44,46,50,52,54,56,60,62,64,x,yI could not figure it out. I went to the sequence…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-10-14
FLOSS Weekly 139: Alfresco It was a long session, but the conversation flowed between me, John Newton and Luis Sala of Alfresco and FLOSS Weekly anchor Randal Schwartz. (tags: FlossWeekly Clippings SimonPhipps Podcast Alfresco…
From Schneier on Security
Pen-and-Paper SQL Injection Attack Against Swedish Election
Some copycat imitated this xkcd cartoon in Sweden, hand writing an SQL injection attack onto a paper ballot. Even though the ballot was manually entered into the vote database, the attack (and the various other hijinks) failed…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
What does your school need?
The What Our School Needs contest is being run by the Bing team at Microsoft. You are using Bing for your Internet search needs right? Well even if not (and you do what to check it out) you will be interested in this contest.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Sharing Between CPG and Retail
Data sharing between retailers and manufacturers have been done for a long time. Here is an example of the process between Food Lion and Kraft.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Inside the Mind of the Shopper
I have had a chance to re-examine Herb Sorensen's book from last year, and his supporting site that contains articles about some of the concepts included. Also, a number of posts in this blog about the concepts in the book. Inside…
From BLOG@CACM
When a Crisis Doesn't Look Like a Crisis
Do we have a crisis in U.S. STEM (and particularly) CS education or don't we? It could be that all the commentators are right, and the problem is too few of the right kinds of graduates.
From BLOG@CACM
Computer Science Needs Education Schools. Desperately.
Improving high-school computer science in the United States is critical for the success and growth of computing education. To do that, we need teachers. To get teachers, we need Education schools.
From The Eponymous Pickle
LinkedIn's New Lab
ReadwriteWeb writes about Linkedn's new lab. Says it has meager pickings for the average user. LinkedIn is a resume mill that is no longer possible to ignore. I have always thought they could do much more with their huge quantity…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Can you trust fixed-bit computer arithmetic?
Suppose that you have 10 pictures, and all lined up, they take 100 pixels. Is it safe to say that each picture has a width of x pixels if 10 x = 100? We all know that a x = b has a unique solution x as long as a is non-zero.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Creative Labs
A slideshow from Google Creative Labs. " ... interesting HTML5 apps, iPhone apps, visualization tools, 3D projections, art projects, creative YouTube videos, crowdsourcing services and many other interesting things ... ".
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Recruiting: Lessons for a CSTA Chapter
As we started the new school year, our small group of five (three college and two high school educators) is entering round two of starting a CSTA chapter. We created it last year and barely got it up and running. Now, we are…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Store Brands Here to Stay
Overview of Deloitte study on store brands in Progressive Grocer: " ... In a Deloitte study, 80% of consumer respondents said they think most store brands are made by national brands, and 85% said they found store brands they…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Embedded Phenomena, Augmented Reality, and Education
I love it when something so simple is so effective. Tom Moher's 2006 paper [ACM, CiteSeer] describing his work on what he calls Embedded Phenomena was a case of "why didn't I think of that?" for me for sure. He offers an affordable…
From Computational Complexity
Two Candidates for an Ig Noble in Mathematics
(This is a sequel to my post on the Ig Nobel Prize.)
Two candidates for an Ig Nobel prizes in Mathematics. They deserve it for opposite reasons. (They are old results and hence, I assume, do not qualify.)
The Banach Tarski…From The Eponymous Pickle
Where do Innovations Come From?
The hive mind say Kevin Kelly and Steven Johnson. Maybe they are nurtured (or not) that way, but all the really good and remarkable ideas I have seen have come from individuals.
From Schneier on Security
The FBI is Tracking Whom?
They're tracking a college student in Silicon Valley. He's 20, partially Egyptian, and studying marketing at Mission College. He found the tracking device attached to his car. Near as he could tell, what he did to warrantwarrant…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Kodu Programming For Kids
I
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procrastination
James Surowiecki in the New Yorker: What does procrastination tell us about ourselves? Orin Kerr in Volokh follows with the suggestion that procrastination may well be rational.