Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2011
From The Eponymous Pickle
Is College Worth the Investment?
Wharton discusses this. Hardly an objective party, but the thoughts are interesting. I have been confronted with this topic recently. I was brought up in a world where it was not doubted, where entrepreneurship was very uncommon…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bored in Space
You would not think it was possible. To be bored while in space, with all the tasks to do and the stars and earth to look at. But apparently it is, and games like the wildly popular 'Angry Birds' will be used to pass the time…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hadoop and IBM do Big Data in the Cloud
I have just started to look at Hadoop, which " ... enables applications to work with thousands of nodes and petabytes of data. Hadoop was inspired byGoogle's MapReduce and Google File System (GFS) papers.... " IBM is starting…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Kinect-ing at the NJSBA Annual Workshop
Normally the conferences I attend are about educational technology or computer science education. Events like ISTE, MASSCue, TCEA, SIGCSE or CSTA
From My Biased Coin
Students are Awesome(ly Productive Right Now)
What's the use of a blog if you can't brag about your students? And my students have all been doing great stuff, so I'm excited to let others know about their work. In random order...Zhenming Liu's paper Information Dissemination…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
An interesting story
From The Eponymous Pickle
Launching Ketchup on Facebook
For their most avid fans, Heinz is launching some new flavors of Ketchup on Facebook. An interesting example or relatively low involvement products. But they already have the followers in place who are enthusiastic about their…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
It Is Not Where You Work, But Who You Work With
It is widely believed that intellectual productivity is tied to location. That is, if you work in a basement at Harvard like Walter Bishop in the TV show Fringe, you’ll be far more brilliant than if you do the same work in a…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Short History of the Web at Work
How the web has powered work for 20 years. A brief view of the history and its implications. It seems like it has been much longer. What is next?
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
International S&E Visualization Challenge: Vote Before Friday
Back in February, we noted that the National Science Foundation and Science
From Schneier on Security
Cracking the Copiale Cipher
I don't follow historical cryptography, so all of this comes as a surprise to me. But something called the Copiale Cipher from the 18th Century has been cracked.
From Putting People First
Energy consumption in the home
The Danish Alexandra Institute (see also previous post) published in 2009 an anthropological user study of needs, motivations and barriers in relation to energy consumption in the home. It was part of the MCHA project (Minimum…
From Schneier on Security
Demands from Law Enforcement for Google Data
Google releases statistics:
Google received more than 15,600 requests in the January-June period, 10 percent more than the final six months of last year. The requests in the latest period spanned more than 25,400 individual[…From Putting People First
The Internet of Things comic book
The Danish Alexandra Institute has just released a comic book called “Inspiring the Internet of Things,” which explains the benefits of networking everyday objects – as well as the ethical issues – through 15 illustrated scenarios…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Changing How Doctors and Patients Interact
I have been examining exactly this question recently. Is it as simple as SMS messages? My doctor has a problem with the privacy issue.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Procter & Gamble's Pixel Visualization Room
From the SAS ComBlog: A description of an effort at Procter & Gamble to provide data visualization and analytics support: "... P&G colleagues collaborate in what
From Putting People First
Audio of EPIC 2011 presentations
The organisers of the Ethnographic Praxis in Industry (EPIC 2011) conference have posted audio of the keynotes and most of the presentations. The conference took place in Boulder, Colorado on 18-21 September. Keynotes Opening…
From Schneier on Security
Twofish Mentioned in Thriller Novel
I've been told that the Twofish encryption algorithm is mentioned in the book Abuse of Power, in the first paragraph of Chapter 3. Did rhe terrorists use it? Did our hero break it? I am unlikely to read it; can someone scan…
From Putting People First
Want to create a great product? First, forget
User-friendliness is the inevitable result of a smart design approach, not the starting point. Robert Hoekman, Jr lists three criteria to help you develop a useful design brief that will ultimately yield a great product. “User…
From Putting People First
Intentional environments: designing a culture of co-creation
Elements such as social dynamics, communication styles, and creative inspiration deeply affect our experience of work and what we create. While most of us don’t have the authority to change the architecture of our work places…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Analytics Resources
I attended an IBM seminar on predictive methods a few weeks ago. I thought it was well constructed and worth while. In reviewing some of their material I see that they are supporting work by Prediction Impact, a SF company.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Future of Privacy in a GPS World
With GPS attached to phone and cars and even simpler devices, what is the future of locational privacy? What are the privacy implications? By Orin Kerr and others. And also the more legal implications of a 4th amendment GPS…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Free Big Data Tablet Tool
IBM Offers Free Big Data Analysis Tool for iPads. I have recently been looking at tools for tablets that make data easy to visualize quickly. Will take a look at this. The specific merchandising example is also interesting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Zakta as a Social Curation Platform
I have mentioned Zakta a number of times here, I have communicated with some of the founders of the idea from inside and outside the enterprise for years. They are starting write some new and interesting things. AboutZakta…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Pushing the
An interesting example in today’s New York Times
From Computational Complexity
John McCarthy (1927-2011)
First Steve and then Dennis and now we have the death of a third computing pioneer this month. John McCarthy passed away earlier this week at the age of 84. McCarthy was one of the founders and early promoters of Artificial…
From Putting People First
Games, Life and Utopia conference
Games, Life and Utopia is a half-day event in Pottsdam, Germany on 11 November, that is all about gamification, serious games, learning and play. It
From Schneier on Security
NSA Acronyms
The second document in this file is the recently unclassified "Guide to Historical Cryptologic Acronyms and Abbreviations, 1940-1980," from the NSA
Note that there are still some redactions.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Mini-Grants for Collaborative Projects to Include Disabled Youth in CS
Passing along this announcement from the CSTA Blast announcement list. Computer science has a lot of opportunity to help differently abled people but to maximize the value need to think about including them in the process.
In…From Wild WebMink
Nothing New
Watching an interesting TED Talk by Amber Case, I was reminded of a long-term guiding principle I have followed when faced with novelty. It’s an old idea that’s embedded deep in many traditions. The pithy summary says “there’s…