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 The Eponymous Pickle
P&G's Listening and Response Post
In AdAge: Many companies do this, but the details are interesting here. Create a near real time interaction with flows of data. Visualize and mine it to make mid-course corrections in tactics. And most importantly, respond…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Intelligence Symposium
UPDATE: I have now seen the list pf participants, and this will be an exciting and informative local meeting about the topic. Meet a number of local practitioners. Will include a talk by Glenn Wegryn, former head of analytics…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Acoustic Barcodes
A European colleague sends this piece about acoustic bar codes. It is a hack, but I like the idea of being able to interact with packaging or display via a touch interaction and then getting the same information you would get…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
My Brief Visit to E-Learn
I went to Montreal on Wednesday to present my work on what makes augmented reality good for learning (and in general, really). The conference was the World Conference on E-Learning in Corporate, Government, Healthcare & Higher…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
My Thing About The “Thing” Movies
A geometric puzzle based on the Thing movies James Arness was not a scientist, but was an actor who is best known for having played Marshall Dillon in the long-running TV series “Gunsmoke.” This series had a 20-year run, unheard…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
HS Computer Science Honor Society Survey
There has been talk about a high school computer science honor society among the high school CS education community for years. For the most part it hasn’t gotten past the talking stage. These days it looks like it might goDear…
From Wild WebMink
CDB has 0% citizen support
My Freedom of Information request for the summary of citizen input on the UK’s Communications Data Bill reveals unanimous opposition, as well as a disturbing trend to lump opponents of the bill together. Read about it on ComputerWorldUK…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Augmented Reality Shopping
An example of augmented reality shopping by Junaio in Cover magazine. A physical publication. See it and try it here on Facebook. An early example of advanced interaction with a magazine, but could as well be packaging or store…
From The Eponymous Pickle
60 Years of a Barcode Patent
I was just reminded that it has been about 60 years since the patenting of the bar code. See this BBC article. Today we think of it as a very humble thing, but it was the first commercially successful attempt to convert the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Looking at Recommender Systems
IEEE deconstructs and compares recommender systems. " ... By now, online shoppers are accustomed to getting personalized suggestions from the sites they visit. Amazon compiles lists of books we might like. Netflix suggests
…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
I will start at the beginning of my story to explain why I titled my blog with the famous quote. The beginning of the 2011-2012 school year I had a conversation with one of the school board members for the school district where…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Top Computer Science Educators on Twitter
I’ve been maintaining a very loosely curated list of computer science educators and resources on Twitter for a while now. I make no claim that it includes everyone and I am sure I am missing some great people. I’ve really had…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unilever Seeks Open Technology
In CGT: Unilever seeks technologies that will support sustainable growth. " ... Unilever put out an open call for cost-effective innovation on three technical challenges it wants to solve to meet sustainability goals: It is…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unlocking Big Data in Social
In CIO Insight. Lots of groups are seeking to insight out of social. Many with very great expectations. News from Oracle OpenWorld. Drilling for insight is the new Oil. Keep your expectations focused and business oriented…
From Putting People First
Content and the journey: Building a good user experience for news sites
Discussions at recent news industry conferences have often referred to the importance of good user experience, particularly during discussions about how news outlets are reaching and interacting with their users on digital platforms…
From Schneier on Security
"Ask Nicely" Doesn't Work as a Security Mechanism
Apple's map application shows more of Taiwan than Google Maps:
The Taiwanese government/military, like many others around the world, requests that satellite imagery providers, such as Google Maps, blur out certain sensitive[…From Computational Complexity
Why Does College Cost So Much?
When John Hennessey gave his talk on MOOCs at the CRA Snowbird meeting he recommended the book Why Does College Cost So Much? by Robert Archibald and David Feldman, both economics professors at William and Mary. I've never seen…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
NCWIT Award for Aspiration in Computing 2012 Reminder
Time for a reminder. Now that school has been underweight for a while you may have identified some young women who would be good candidates for the NCWIT Award for Aspiration in Computing.
What is the award?
The Aspirations…From The Eponymous Pickle
Explaining Analytics
I often have to explain analytics and modeling to people. Just today I had a meeting with a client who needed to understand the value of analytics and modeling beyond just extracting and visualizing complex data. The presentation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Lego and Open Innovation
From IdeaConnection: Good piece about how Iconic toymaker Lego uses open innovation. " ... Lego is an open innovation pioneer, one of the first companies to develop practices and platforms to engage external contributors to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Focus on Results, Not Technology
A clear message to Big Data Giants. Memo To Oracle, SAP: Listen To P&G's Language ... Oracle and SAP keep fighting a war of words over whose technology is bigger and better. They could learn a lot from Procter & Gamble CIO Filippo…
From Schneier on Security
The Insecurity of Networks
Not computer networks, networks in general:
Findings so far suggest that networks of networks pose risks of catastrophic danger that can exceed the risks in isolated systems. A seemingly benign disruption can generate rippling…From Putting People First
Top 10 things still to fix in experience design
Here’s the view of Ray McCune, managing partner at Flow, on some of the peaks we still have to climb if experience design is to become a mainstream business discipline. It’s quite excellent. 1. Targets and incentives within businesses…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Are Your Students Whiteboard Ready?
One of my former students is the CTO of a startup these days. He posted today about the need for all of the employees of his company to be “whiteboard ready.” His theory is that "He who controls the whiteboard controls the conversation…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Enterprise Search Updated
In CW World: I have always thought that search engines did a poor job of internal search. In particular they have not taken advantage of internal knowledge structure that naturally exists within an enterprise. The piece also…
From Computational Complexity
Theory Day. How to get the word out on this and other events?
Aravind asked me to post on this again (NOTE- registration-for-free deadline is TOMMOROW!!!!!) The University of Maryland at College park is having a Theory Day on Wed Oct 24! Come hear Distinguished talks by Julia ChuzhoyFor…
From The Eponymous Pickle
TagWhat Notifies
Some time ago I was introduced to TagWhat, and have written about it a number of times. About to be reintroduced, now including notifications. It is a method for retrieving and organizing rich online and social information…
From The Eponymous Pickle
McKinsey on Innovation Structures
McKinsey report on a survey done with executives. Registration required for full report. " .... Executives say their companies use multiple organizational approaches to drive innovation and that the success of these efforts…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamification Course Outline
I have given a number of talks on the use of gamification for both internet and productivity engagement. I did receive some interest on the topic. I see here a link to the final review of a Coursera course on gamification,…
From BLOG@CACM
What Does 'Big Data' Mean? (Part 2)
In this second post on big data, I continue with a discussion of the use case of big volume-big analytics.