Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2012
From Putting People First
Human Drives card set
Our friends at human-centered design consultancy Namahn in Brussels have created a lovely “human drive” card set to be used as a source of inspiration for ideation and co-design sessions. The 48 cards, that have the exact size…
From Putting People First
BMW’s electric experience
Martin C. Pedersen reports in a long article for Metropolis Magazine on the 2014 BMW i3, the company’s first fully electric vehicle aimed at city driving. The article focuses on how BMW’s new business strategy is all based on…
From Putting People First
Brave New City
Metropolis Magazine asked seven visionary design teams, both established and up-and-coming, what they predict a fully accessible city might look like (and better yet, how it would function). “We broke the city into its component…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Visual Basic Gangnam Style!
Last week I was browsing though my RSS feeds and came across a post called Python Gangnam Style! that was all about playing music with Python. Now Python is a fine language but at heart I am a Visual Basic person. Clearly converting…
From Putting People First
Creating behaviour change in people using mobile technology
Rajeev Suri posted a short interview with Gustav Praekelt of Praekelt Consulting and the Praekelt Foundation, who focuses on creating behaviour change in people – particularly in emerging markets – using mobile technology. In…
From Putting People First
The Age of User Experience Design – Infographic
The growth of the User Experience Design field is breathtaking, but well deserved. Thanks to UX Designers all over the world, the quality of products has increased dramatically. Design really does matter now. It’s a user centric…
From Wild WebMink
The Forces Of Open
What’s driving open source? That was the question InfoWorld asked me to explore for a feature-length article. I spent a good deal of time over the summer thinking about it, and went on to present some ideas as the opening keynote…
From Putting People First
User experience in the age of sustainability
Designers, as makers of products and services, are key stewards of our planet because the products and services we design influence the ways in which people live, argues Kem Kramer in an article for Johnny Holland. “What we design…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New MIT Center for Mobile
MIT newest research center will focus on mobile technologies. More here. Also known more formally as the MIT Center for Wireless Networks and Mobile Computing, the new organization pulls together more than a dozen MIT professors…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Apps4VA Hackathons
My friend Ed Donahue asked me to pass along some information about Apps4VA and their upcoming hackathons this weekend. Apps4VA sounds pretty cool so I am happy to oblige. Note: Most of what follows is copied with permission from…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NYC Ends its Square Taxi Test
In GigaOM : this was brought to my attention as I started my own small pilot of the Square payment method for some kinds of consulting work. So far it has gone well, though I did note that were some issues reported around…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Will Cash be Obsolete?
Adage on the obsolescence of cash. I am convinced it will happen, especially if convenience incentives continue to grow, and are provided in exchange for elements of engagement that retailers and manufacturers will provide for…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Awards $21 Million to Enable Use of Big Data
Last week, the National Science Foundation (NSF) awarded $21.6 million to 34 institutions across the country through the foundations Campus Cyberinfrastructure-Network Infrastructure and Engineering (CC-NIE) program. The awards…
From Schneier on Security
Apple Turns on iPhone Tracking in iOS6
This is important:
Previously, Apple had all but disabled tracking of iPhone users by advertisers when it stopped app developers from utilizing Apple mobile device data via UDID, the unique, permanent, non-deletable serial number…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Perspective
There is a recent news story about a 14 year old Pakistani girl who was shot by the Taliban because she was advocating for girls to be able to attain an education. At such a young age, she recognized the value education could…
From Computational Complexity
Matching Nobel Prizes
This week Bill and I have traveled to Germany for the Dagstuhl Seminar on Algebraic and Combinatorial Methods in Computational Complexity. Plenty of newly minted Nobel laureates here, winners of the Peace Prize last Friday. But…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
You cannot scale creativity
As a teenager, I was genuinely impressed by communism. The way I saw it, the West could never compete. The USSR offered a centralized and efficient system that could eliminate waste and ensure optimal efficiency. If a scientific…
From Schneier on Security
Master Keys
Earlier this month, a retired New York City locksmith was selling a set of "master keys" on eBay:
Three of the five are standard issue for members of the FDNY, and the set had a metal dog tag that was embossed with an FDNY lieutenant's…From The Eponymous Pickle
Group Intelligence
On Group Intelligence: In the HBR blog network. Collective intelligence is a complex issue. It clearly deals with IQ and social aptitude. " ... work is nearly always a team activity, and often those teams are embedded…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 15 October 2012
Happy Monday. Hope you had a good weekend. One of the things I did was to attend the New Hampshire TechFest at a local high school. NH TechFest is an annual event that brings together a large number of companies and colleges…
From Wild WebMink
Eric Whitacre Interview
I missed this interview by Bob Edwards when it was first posted – full of personality and insight, worth taking the time to listen to the whole 45 minutes.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Brain Simulation
The EU's human brain research simulation project. Have seen a number of attempts to do this kind of thing. None that have made significant progress that I can see in the sense of producing intelligent thought, except in "…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tips for Data Success
Doug Lautzenheiser's tips for success. Do predictive analytics with big data. He as a seasoned data practitioner and has some great analysis and advice. Further I think we have the data and the tools, though I think they need…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Accelerating the Speed of Intelligence for Fast and Flexible Results
More on flexible and quick forecasting From A report prepared by CFO Research Services in collaboration with SAP: September 2011. " ... Accelerating the Speed of Intelligence for Fast and Flexible Forecasting Engaging…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Must be Fast, Diverse
In GigaOM: A good case is made that the 'bigness' of data is often not enough. In addition, I add: Bigness means you can often find patterns that will be useful to the enterprise. Diversity helps to make the results significant…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smarter Vending
Ever since several trips to Japan and their wonderfully complete universal vending capabilities. I have researched the use of vending machines and their integration with data streams. Which can be used to indicate demand and…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
On the value of a CS education
Back at the beginning of my career a hiring manager told me that he almost recommended that I not be interviewed because I had been formally trained in college. He thought that was a disadvantage. I still got the job and didI…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Creativity and Economy
An article called Why Creativity is the New Economy led me back to the blog and site: Visual Mapping. A favorite topic. We are all visual thinkers. Visual thinking is a kind of story telling. It links pieces of information…
From Schneier on Security
Another <i>Liars and Outliers</i> Review
I was reviewed in Science:
Thus it helps to have a lucid and informative account such as Bruce Schneier's Liars and Outliers. The book provides an interesting and entertaining summary of the state of play of research on human…From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Car
A squid art car.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.