Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
October 2014
From The Eponymous Pickle
Galactic Shadows
My colleague Keith J Caserta has come out with a second book in his Kindle series called: Galactic Shadows. Science fiction about AI and how aliens are likely to interact with us. His web page and ordering information. Much…
From Putting People First
Creating user-friendlier environments
MIT News describes how Federico Casalegno of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab designs technology environments that keep human experience at the center of user experience. “The director of the MIT Mobile Experience Lab looks to innovate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fast Track Back to Kanban
It has been a considerable time since I have worked with Kanban, the lean, just in time manufacturing process. This InfoQ piece outlines what it is and a workshop that addresses how to achieve it. Even including a Kanban"…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Productivity Startups
We need more of these, in particular startups that deliver more efficient connections to each other, supplanting regular e-mail, focus data to value and have the ability to improve process.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kroger Scan, Bag and Go
Got a chance today to use the Kroger in-aisle checkout method at the Middletown, Ohio Kroger today. This was a concept we tested with many alternatives in the innovation center and in lab stores. Nicely done example here.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Strategy and Execution for CIO
In Future of CIO: Business strategy and execution challenges. " ... Many companies spend significant portion of time for formulating rock solid strategies, focuses on business strategy development and puts a lot of efforts to…
From Geeking with Greg
At what point is an over-the-air TV antenna too long to be legal?
You can get over-the-air HDTV signals using an antenna. This antenna gets a better, stronger signal with less interference if it is direct line-of-sight and as near as possible to the broadcast towers. So, you might want an antenna…
From Putting People First
Should more banks acquire UX design firms?
Underscoring the importance of a great customer experience, Capital One has acquired the San Francisco-based design and user experience firm, Adaptive Path. Is this a testing of the waters by a historically innovative financial…
From Putting People First
Report outlines future of UK social design research
Social Design Futures: HEI Research and the AHRC By Armstrong, Leah, Jocelyn Bailey, Guy Julier, Lucy Kimbell University of Brighton and Victoria and Albert Museum October 2014, 84 pages The UK’s Arts and Humanities Research…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Cognitive Computing as Taught at Columbia
How is Watson cognitive technology being taught today in universities? Here is an example of how it is described in a curriculum at Columbia:" ... IBM Watson is ushering in a new era of computing, cognitive systems. Based on…
From Putting People First
Experientia president to speak at User Friendly 2014 in China
Experientia president Michele Visciola is one of the keynote speakers at User Friendly 2014, the annual user experience conference of UXPA China, to be held in Wuxi, China, 13 to 16 November. The theme of the 11th conference…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Many Worlds
Many Worlds is a 1950s idea that came out of physics. A result of the math that works very well predictively at the tiny, particle level, but for the real world gives results that don't match our every day reality. A …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Manufacturing and the IOT
Manufacturing and the Internet of Things. "... Manufacturers like GM and Stanley Black and Decker are creating this platform for innovation by deploying open standards–based Internet Protocol (IP) technologies that converge…
From BLOG@CACM
What Is Your Research Culture? Part 1: The Questionnaire
What kind of computer science culture reigns in your country and organization: retro, or modern? Take the questionnaire and find out.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Humboldt Squids Attack Submarine
A pair of Humboldt squids attacked a Greenpeace submarine. There's video. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered....
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USPTO and NIST To Host Multistakeholder Meeting on Cybersecurity and Patents in Silicon Valley on November 14
The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), will host the first multistakeholder Cybersecurity Partnership Meeting on November 14 in Menlo Park,…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Monitoring Vital Signs for the Elderly
The National Science Foundation recently featured University of Missouri computer scientist Marjorie Skubic in a Science360 radio episode. Skubic is engineering high speed networks that can remotely monitor movement and vital…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Watson Works
A straightforward, non-technical video of how Watson/Cognitive is designed to work, implemented in the real world. Worth a look if you are at all interested. This does not mean that considerable work will be needed to use…
From My Biased Coin
Harvard Junior Faculty Job Search
Harvard Computer Science is doing a junior faculty search this year. We pretty much have been doing one every year, but it's nice to be able to make an announcement and point people to the ad.So here is the ad, telling you what…
From Schneier on Security
The Ineffectiveness of Sealing the Border Against Ebola (and Other Viruses)
Good analysis....
From Apophenia
My name is danah and I’m a stats addict.
I love data and I hate stats. Not stats in abstract — statistics are great — but the kind of stats that seem to accompany any web activity. Number of followers, number of readers, number of viewers, etc. I hate them in the way…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Realities of Local Retail
In ThinkwithGoogle:" ... The relationship between digital and local stores is changing—something we learned from our new Digital Impact on In-Store Shopping study, commissioned from Ipsos MediaCT and Sterling Brands. From it,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G to Spin off Duracell
Not unexpected. But the form of the move is unusual. Not a profitable enough business. " .... Though P&G said that the Duracell has 'attractive operating profit margins... and cash generation,' it saw its growth prospects as…
From Geeking with Greg
Why can't I buy a solar panel somewhere else in the US and get a credit for the electricity from it?
Seattle City Light has a clever project where, instead of installing solar panels on your house where they might be obscured by trees or buildings, you can buy into a solar panel installation on top of a building in a more efficient…
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Role of the Chief Data Officer
Excellent piece here. Have worked in the area of regulatory compliance. Here the idea is to consider the more formal roles involved to address this problem systematically over time. " ... In today’s world, it is becoming increasingly…
From Schneier on Security
Analysis of Printer Watermarking Techniques
Interesting paper: Maya Embar, Louis M. McHough IV, and William R. Wesselman, "Printer watermark obfuscation," Proceeding RIIT '14: Proceedings of the 3rd annual conference on Research in information technology: Abstract: Most…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Former Apple Retail Store Manager Will help You Choose.
The Apple store is impressive. An impressive showy blend of service, expertise and demonstration. With lots of geeky camaraderie.The Genius Behind The Apple Store Wants To Help You Choose Your Next Gadget Former J.C. Penny…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google and AI with DeepMind
More examples of Cognitive, here with Google." ... Google, the search company that's investing heavily in robotics, is teaming with Oxford University researchers to work on artificial intelligence.In January, Google bought the…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Big Data in the Classroom
Data sets are growing rapidly. Yahoo, Google, and Amazon, work with data sets that consist of billions of items. The size and scale of data, which can be overwhelming today, will only increase as the Internet of Things matures…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Available Watson Cognitive Services
Jim Spohrer points to a more complete list of Watson Bluemix services. I am in the midst of exploring. Here is one example to give you an idea of the granularity of the cognitive offerings. There are a total of 8 now, but they…