Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2009
From Putting People First
User stories: a strategic design tool
Collaborative design methods play a key role in aligning team members towards a shared and strategic project vision. In this article Penny Hagen and Michelle Gilmore describe how user stories stimulate and facilitate discussion…
From Schneier on Security
Protecting OSs from RootKits
Interesting research: "Countering Kernel Rootkits with Lightweight Hook Protection," by Zhi Wang, Xuxian Jiang, Weidong Cui, and and Peng Ning.
Abstract: Kernel rootkits have posed serious security threats due to their stealthy…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Email Netiquette
Can you remember life without email and texting?
BITD B4 the EMSG, we talked, in person or on the phone, and wrote in a language that was readable. Now, most of our communication is done via email and texting. This sometimes…From The Eponymous Pickle
Persuasive Technologies
FuturePundit on Persuasive Technologies. I am also reminded of Stanford's Persuasive Technology lab, who we worked with several times. And their blog.
From My Biased Coin
Graduate School? How to Decide...
What do people think about students going to work for a year or two and then applying to graduate school? Or applying but then deferring to work for a year or two?It's that time of year when seniors are thinking about graduate…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Eternal Conference Call
Nick Carr on the Eternal Conference call. I think I am still on that call. Insights on asynchrony versus synchrony in communications. -
From Computational Complexity
Multi-Agent Biological Systems and Nat Algorithms Workshop (Guest Post)
Guest Post from Aaron Sterling
Multi-Agent Biological Systems and the Natural Algorithms Workshop
I attended the Natural Algorithms Workshop on November 2nd and 3rd. This was an event held by the Center for Computational…
From Schneier on Security
Is Antivirus Dead?
Security is never black and white. If someone asks, "for best security, should I do A or B?" the answer almost invariably is both. But security is always a trade-off. Often it's impossible to do both A and B -- there's no time…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Adoption of RFID
This issue has been on the table since at least 2000. Its such a good idea, so why isn't it taken up by everyone? The benefit studies have been done, the companies are there to provide hardware and software, the problems it solves…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-11-10
US Department of Justice issues a statement that's the diplomatic equivalent…
From Putting People First
Book: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out Kids Living and Learning with New Media (John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Series on Digital Media and Learning) An examination of young people’s everyday new media practices…
From The Noisy Channel
The Noisy Noogler: A Quick FAQ
I’m barely 24 hours into my new life as a Googler, and I’ve already gotten lots of questions!
From Putting People First
CNN
Check out Experientia partner Jan-Christoph Zoels’s superb appearance on CNN’s Christiane Amanpour show yesterday… vividly describing how as an opposition member, he was among the first East Germans to cross into West Berlin…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Use of Twitter, Facebook Exploding
From CW: I am a bit surprised that these are seeing very widespread use. Article also covers some of the privacy and security watchouts. ' ... People using Twitter to get the word out about their company, sales and promotions…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Massively Complex Agent Environments
I am reposting this article from over a year ago to remind myself and readers of interesting work done in very large scale agent models. Here from Simulex, which positions itself as developing Synthetic Environments for Analysis…
From Computational Complexity
If FACEBOOK the new email?
Back in 1993 I had the following conversation with one of my relatives:
BILL: Just give me your email address and I'll email it to you.
RELATIVE: I don't have an email account. Why would I? Only you techno-geeks need …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Isolation and New Technology
Yes, it does cause some isolation, but also opens many new doors as well.
From BLOG@CACM
Consilience: The Path to Innovation
I believe solutions to many of the most challenging problems facing our society – medicine and health care, climate and the environment, economic security and privacy – will require fusing expertise from multiple disciplines,…
From Schneier on Security
John Mueller on Zazi
I have refrained from commenting on the case against Najibullah Zazi, simply because it's so often the case that the details reported in the press have very little do with reality. My suspicion was, that as in in so many other…
From Putting People First
The human factor
NESTA, the UK’s National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts, has published a 45-page discussion paper on how transforming healthcare to involve the public, i.e. the creation of people-powered public services, can…
From Putting People First
Designing mobile money services for emerging markets
Nokia user researcher Jan Chipchase has posted an in-depth presentation and paper on designing mobile money services for emerging markets: “Hang around a telecoms industry conference long enough and you start to get big-number…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Reading recommendation: Saturn
I just finished Saturn’s children. This is my third
From Schneier on Security
Laissez-Faire Access Control
Recently I wrote about the difficulty of making role-based access control work, and how reasearch at Dartmouth showed that it was better to let people take the access control they need to do their jobs, and audit the results.…
From Putting People First
The internet is killing storytelling
Narratives are a staple of every culture the world over. Yet, argues Ben Macintyre, writer at large for The Times (UK), they are disappearing in an online blizzard of tiny bytes of information. “The internet, while it communicates…
From Putting People First
Banking the unbanked Africans
The November 2009 edition of Mobile Money Africa, “Africa’s leading online resource for mobile financial inclusion”, is entitled “Banking the unbanked Africans” and is entirely available for download. The December edition will…
From Apophenia
Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out
I am delighted to announce that "Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media" is now in the wild and available! This book was written as a collaborative effort by members of the Digital…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2009-11-09
I like this reflection from Chris Messina. The OpenOfficeMouse is just part of the rich flora and fauna that happens when you're in a place that's truly open. It's …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cellphones as Microscopes
In the NYT: ' ... Microscopes are invaluable tools to identify blood and other cells when screening for diseases like anemia, tuberculosis and malaria. But they are also bulky and expensive. Now an engineer, using software that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Retinal Displays
For applications like augmented reality it makes sense to investigate ways to better get data directly into your eyes, without having to find a screen or move a smartphone around. And even for the most common interfaces it would…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Increased Use of Video
AdAge reports about increased use of online video by a number of consumer packaged goods players.