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 Computational Complexity
Algorithms that never get coded up
(There was a passing ref to this topic in the comments to one of Scott's blogs, so I thought I would pick up the theme.) When I teach Formal Lang Theory I end up teaching them many algorithms that I don't think are ever coded…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Getting to Know the Chief Data Officer
Working with the complexity of data and its application to analytics is increasingly complex." ... The transformative power of data and analytics is being harnessed by organizations to make smarter, quicker and more analytically…
From The Eponymous Pickle
AI Becomes Cognitive. Is it Now Ready for Sustained Value?
Is AI finally ready to roll? Again? Spent years in the 90s working on it, with successes but also ultimately descent into a winter of discontent. Back then there were a small number of well funded startups that drove the efforts…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Web Style Analytics in the Retail Store
Good Forrester report, requires registration." ... Retail stores have been living in the analytical "dark ages" in comparison to digital channels, using metrics that rarely take into account customer behavior. But new advances…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Future Directions for NSF Advanced Computing Infrastructure
The National Science Foundation (NSF) requested that the National Research Council (NRC) carry out a study examining anticipated priorities for advanced computing infrastructure in support of NSF-sponsored science and engineering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Channels Become Apps as Advertising Changes Forever
In Adage: Remarkable piece about the conversion to digital TV happening now, and how it will change advertising. And create a new flood of advertising data. " ... The start of TV unbundling is upon us, with HBO and CBSSlowly…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Decision Trees–Possible Interesting Coding Project
I found this interesting flowchart for determining where one should eat Thanksgiving. It’s pretty complete which also means it’s complicated. I guess if you know the answers it is not too bad to follow. If you just want to see…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Chef Watson as an Advisor
Just received early access to IBM's Chef Watson Beta this past week. I have been testing, not for recipe development, but with an eye to how it's structure could be adapted to other advisory systems. Also, how it really differs…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Online Replacing In Store Browsing
The results of an Ipsos and Google survey and report. " ... Whether through a laptop at work or a smartphone before bed or in-store, online searches continue to replace much of the shopper discovery process that comes from in…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NIST Global City Teams Challenge Report
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) launched their Global City Teams Challenge with a great deal of energy and enthusiasm last month. The workshop ended with more than a dozen presentations by potential…
From Schneier on Security
How Did the Feds Identity Dread Pirate Roberts?
Last month, I wrote that the FBI identified Ross W. Ulbricht as the Silk Road's Dread Pirate Roberts through a leaky CAPTCHA. Seems that story doesn't hold water: The FBI claims that it found the Silk Road server by examining…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 19 October 2014
You know those school weeks with lots of interruptions, strange schedules and little normal routine? Yep, had one last week. I also managed to record a good number of Office Mixes on various programming topics. I’ll post a list…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Invention of Google Scholar
Now ten years old. Contains 160 million documents. " ... Making the world’s problem solvers 10% more efficient ... Ten years after a Google engineer empowered researchers with Scholar, he can’t bear to leave it .. " " ... Some…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Redesigning Bill Gates Favorite Data Visualization
From Perceptual Edge: A 3D Treemap is at the link ..." .... Colorful space filling graphs are visually attractive, they do gather your attention. But are they good ways to visualize data and really understand it? It is still…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Free Piston Engines
Toyota's remarkable new approach to the gas piston engine, the first in 134 years. I was truck by the visuals used.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Forecasting Net Site and Blog on Ebola
George Boretos, Strategy & Marketing ExpertJust posted an update, including the most recent cases for October and a forecast of the expected Ebola deaths and mortality rate, also based on actual data up to Oct 1st 2014. ....The…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Autodesk Prints 3D Virus
Did not know that Autodesk had a genetic engineer. Worked with them in the area of displaying marketing data for the enterprise. From 3D Print: " ... Weaving his way through a virtually invisible and widely unknown world of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
History of Mail and Things Communicating
Recall using mail on the Arpanet in those early days, but it was never seen then as a means to stay generally connected. Only to answer very specific questions.Network Trailblazer: A Conversation with Eric AllmanEric AllmanIf…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Systems Services
Brought to my attention. Nothing very new here, but a good overview of the topic. Enabling Smart System Services in Smart Cities by Dr. Ko-Yang Wang, CTO and Executive Vice President Institute for Information Industry With…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Need for Practical Anthropology
While I was at the enterprise we had precisely, and rather informally, one anthropologist. Was always fascinated by the role. Understanding human behavior is important, but is retail behavior in their realm? So do we needExperienta…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Robotic Explorers
Without sensors or GPS a group of robots can explore. " .... The system uses stereo vision depth-sensing to provide the obstacle map, and other image-processing methods to identify and track all the agents in the system.The…
From Putting People First
Hospitable Hospice, Redesigning Care for Tomorrow
Design for good death Hospitable Hospice, Redesigning Care for Tomorrow An IDEA 2014 Award winner research project Free download: issuu, pdf Existing healthcare systems can make the end-of-life experience more frustrating and…
From Putting People First
Event: Why the world needs anthropologists
An upcoming event is encouraging anthropologists to “come out of their ivory towers” and work more closely with their colleagues in the field, in order to bridge the gap between “pure” and “applied” anthropology. The international…
From Putting People First
Update on EU research on energy efficient built environments
The European Commission funds research on a lot of important thematic areas, and in recent years the themes of sustainability and participatory approaches have received a lot of attention. This has made way for companies like…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stop Controlling Ex Employees Knowledge?
In the HBR: This issue has come up a number of times recently. Here a good overview of the topic. Not everyone agrees. The coverage of the legal, compliance and regulatory knowledge by US state is particularly interesting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Marketing and the Internet of Things
It is about data. Its about reach. Anna Russell writes:" .... Let’s take a step back and look at just what the Internet of Things contains that might excite marketers. IoT, the result of a growing number of M2M and internet…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IPad Friendly Kid Augmented Reality Game
Have seen a number of augmented reality games. These use real world spaces as a playing field. Here Osmo has received considerable funding." ... Osmo, the iPad-powered gaming device built by former Googlers (and dads) as aThe…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A New Provable Factoring Algorithm
Factoring, factoring, the whole day through, keeps on my mind—apologizes to Hoagy Carmichael and Stuart Gorrell Waterloo Mathematics source Michael Rubinstein is an expert on number theory, who is on the faculty of the University…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: 1,057 Squid T-Shirts
That's a lot. As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered. And commenting was broken for a couple of days. It's fixed now, I hope....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Integrating Work and Life
The ultimate goal. Successfully integrating work and life. From Knowledge@Wharton. Book interview and text.