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 Female Perspective of Computer Science
What if you want a PhD but don't plan to do research after?
I was thinking the other day about the different reasons a person might want to get a PhD, and I wondered if those who weren't necessarily intending to be researchers when they were done would be valued as highly during their…
From Computational Complexity
Theorems that are impressive at first but then....
Mission Impossible was my favorite show as a kid. As an adult it would not make my top 20, and I wonder why I liked it so much as a kid. (Actually I do know- at the beginning they are given a well defined problem and they solve…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Interbot
Interbots’ consumer robot for autism therapy took the top prize last Thursday at the nation’s first-ever next-generation robotics venture competition. The event, called
From Wild WebMink
On Ecclesiastes and Pornography
Filtering “pornography” without any way to define what it is can only harm our society, and seeing it proposed is yet another reminder that the “Ecclesiastes Principle” still holds true. You can read about this on ComputerWorldUK…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Imagine Cup as Group Projects
One of the things that often makes Imagine Cup entries a good educational experience is that they require planning and team work. A good Imagine Cup entry is seldom a one person project. Many universities use the Imagine Cup,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Isolating the Impactof Learning
In Chief Learning Officer (CLO): Can you isolate such a change based on any single variable?
From The Eponymous Pickle
Testing Your Code with Myers-Briggs
In ReadwriteWeb: You can test your code's Myers-Briggs score. Does this have any real meaning?
From The Eponymous Pickle
At Atlanta Southface
I presented and interacted at Atlanta Southface today about the gathering ad democratizing enviuronemental sensor data. " ... For more than 30 years, Southface has promoted comfortable, energy-, water-, and resource-efficient…
From Wild WebMink
Need Tab-Sweep Tool
Quick LazyWeb request:
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Stanford University professor Sebastian Thrun and Google engineer Chris Urmson — the brains behind
From My Biased Coin
John Byers on WBUR
Listening to my co-author, John Byers, streamed live on WBUR, discussing our work on Groupon. Ben Edelman is another participant in the show.Here's the link.
From The Noisy Channel
Oracle Acquires Endeca!
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
How Many Jobs Are There For Poets
I was listening to an Internet stream of Gary Stager presenting a keynote at an education conference in Iowa the other day. The technology for this amazes me but the opportunity it provides is even more impressive. In any case…
From Putting People First
The rise of cross-channel UX design
“Seamless, cross-channel experiences are the way of the future, as technology fades into the background and the personal, physical, and social context determine the methods we use to interact with information,” writes Tyler Tate…
From Schneier on Security
Discovering What Facebook Knows About You
Things are getting interesting in Europe:
Max is a 24 year old law student from Vienna with a flair for the interview and plenty of smarts about both technology and legal issues. In Europe there is a requirement that entities…From The Eponymous Pickle
Adding Interactivity to Real Objects
Augmenting reality by adding interactivity to real objects. From Engadget:" ...We'd seen Intel Lab's Oasis (Object-Aware Situated Interactive System) project a while back, and sure, while what it's showing off is the same, we…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
New Hampshire TechFest 2011
Last Saturday I spend the day at Windham High School in Windham New Hampshire for the second annual NH TechFest. TechFest is a project created by parents and others interested in making sure that students are exposed to information…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Challenge Your Culture
You should really question your own culture. In the HBR blog. " .. The truth is that most leaders don't know how to develop a useful picture of their organization's culture, which is why they resort to platitudes. However…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Science Nation story published today
From The Eponymous Pickle
Refinding E-Mail
Is it worth it to formally organize your eMail by placing messages in folders? To facilitate re-finding specific correspondence? I have done that since nearly the beginning of e-Mail, and especially since the emergence of classifying…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Transforming Business
Analytics Will Transform Business. In Paul Gillin's blog. I agree, having delivered analytical solutions for over thirty years in the enterprise. Need help? Contact me and I will be glad to provide some of our operational…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Inspiration
Nearly every Sunday morning I try to read the Sunday paper to help me get charged up for the week and relax for a few quiet moments before starting my day. This past Sunday I was drawn to the Parade section because the feature…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
True scientists are irreverent
Richard Hamming compared knowledge to compound interest: The more you know, the more you learn. Hence, progress tends to be exponential. Some innovations increase our rate of progress slightly. The light bulb allows us to work…
From Computational Complexity
Teaching PCPs to Undergrads
The last few times I've taught undergraduate theory I cover the PCP theorem. It's not complicated if you state it the right way: PCP Theorem: For any constant ? > 7/8, there is a polynomial-time computable function f mapping…
From Putting People First
Data visualisation: in defence of bad graphics
Simon Rogers asks on The Guardian’s DataBlog if there is a backlash gathering steam against web data visualisations. “There has definitely been a shift. A few years ago, the only free data visualisation tools were clunky things…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Administration Seeking Input on National Bioeconomy Blueprint
Last month, the President
From Schneier on Security
Criminal Uses of Crowdsourcing
Interesting article.
From Putting People First
Service design, the most important term you haven
James Rock, the managing director and chief business designer for Cultivar Consulting Limited, a business and services design consultancy, talks about service design, its benefits and why it
From Wild WebMink
? Removing Obstructions
Last week I was in Paris as a guest of The Document Foundation to speak at their first annual LibreOffice Conference. It was my honour to make the opening remarks at the opening reception, hosted by the government of the Paris…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 17 October 2011
I spent two days are a Windows Phone event last week. One of several I posted date for at Your Chance to Learn Windows Phone Development for Free There are a lot more of them up and down the east coast. We had a few faculty members…