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 The Eponymous Pickle
Future Direction of Wolfram Research
Colin DeCair sends along a link which features a video clip from Stephen Wolfram
From Wild WebMink
? Music for a Bad Week
It may just be that you need some free music to soothe away the bad taste from a bad week. There are a bunch of pointers on my personal blog.
From The Eponymous Pickle
On Amazon's PayPhrase
In StorefrontBackTalk, a discussion about Amazon's new payphrase system and what the longer term implications for how you purchase. Speed and the ability to customize point of purchase decisions.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gamma Rays in Lightning
Antimatter signatures, gamma ray flashes, have been detected in terrestrial lightning storms. Don't recall this ever having been mentioned before. New safety implications, now beyond worrying about cosmic rays? A new energy pathway…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scratch Programming for 'All'
In CACM, the evolution of a programming language for all. I have looked at the Scratch site, but have not tried it for a real application. My argument to these kinds of ideas is always: "Do we want everyone to become a car designer…
From My Biased Coin
Ranking
An anonymous commenter asked an insightful question, worthy of a real answer: "Hi Prof, Why are you so obsessed with ranking things?"*Honestly, I don't think I am. I have 3 children, and I have thus far avoided assigning them…
From The Noisy Channel
Apologies for Slow Response Times
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Dentyne Ice Squid Ad
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Senate Judiciary Committee Approves Data Security Bills
In a markup session yesterday, the Senate Judiciary Committee approved two bills on the protection of consumer data. S 1490, the Personal Data Privacy and Security Act of 2009, takes a number of steps to increase the penalties…
From The Noisy Channel
Going (to) Google
From Schneier on Security
Interview with Me
On CNet.com
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Metagenomics and the Computing Challenges of Microbial Communities
Why should you care about microbial communities? Except for viruses, they are the most abundant life on Earth and have an overwhelming effect on our environment and our lives. Consider that about half the carbon dioxide on Earth…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Near Real-Time Flu Tracking at CDC
I was involved with a project that sought to use retail data to do something similar. With the potential to use it for epidemics or bioterror detection and tracking. Now ' ... The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Limits of Social Media Marketing
A cautious piece about social media marketing. Its more than just starting up a free presence and expecting people to engage.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Entrpreneurial Resources
Useful: In Inc. Top Entrepreneurial bloggers and in Mashable: useful tools for Entrepreneurs.
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Sets up Indian Analytics Center
In my early days in the enterprise we worked directly with IBM to use their optimization software and resources to solve tough analytics problems. Over the years this changed to other sources of expertise augmenting our own.IBM…
From BLOG@CACM
Blogging Informatics Education Europe IV, Day Two
The second day of Informatics Education IV in Freiburg, Germany, focused on accreditation, expanding enrollments, student engagement, parellelism, and interdisciplinarity.
From Computational Complexity
Button Button
Here is the offer: If you press the button you will receive $200,000. The caveat: Someone you don't know will die. I was born during run of the original Twilight Zone but growing up watched them over and over again in reruns…
From My Biased Coin
FOCS/STOC and Asymmetry
I had a funny conversation with Madhu Sudan yesterday, with him relaying an idea he said he heard from Umesh Vazirani (and perhaps the trail goes on further from there) -- roughly that FOCS should double in size and STOC should…
From Schneier on Security
The Doghouse: ADE 651
A divining rod to find explosives in Iraq:
ATSC’s promotional material claims that its device can find guns, ammunition, drugs, truffles, human bodies and even contraband ivory at distances up to a kilometer, underground, through…From My Biased Coin
Harvard Financial Aid
This post will talk about Harvard's financial aid program, and why it's a perfectly good thing to give money to Harvard, despite what you might read in the New York Times.I am motivated to write about this also because some weeks…
From BLOG@CACM
Who Needs Massively Multi-Core?
Do consumers want massively multi-core? Or would they rather have lower power consumption and better memory bandwidth? Are we building what people want?
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Computer Science in Practice
Seen in the stairwell of the Purdue Student Health Center...
Robb Cutler CSTA Past President
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet Choice Perception
From O'Reilly: ' ... Individual perception of increased choice can occur while the overall choice pool is getting smallerThis gem from Whimsley makes the point - with extensive statistical modeling supporting the argument - that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reading and Augmented Reality
An upcoming issue of Esquire plans to include a number of readable Q codes. So Engadget suggests that this is augmenting reality. It is augmenting reading, and I have seen a number of presentations by companies seeking to add…
From Putting People First
Reinventing British manners the Post-It way
Wired UK asked Bill Moggridge and his IDEO team to tackle the urban rage problem that is rendering the UK cityscapes ever more aggressive. “Design thinking defines the practical way in which IDEO approaches its problems, but…
From Putting People First
Social isolation and new technology
The Pew Internet Personal Networks and Community survey finds that Americans are not as isolated as has been previously reported. People
From Putting People First
Strength in science collaboration
Rory Cellan-Jones of BBC News reports on how Google Wave is proving its worth in the scientific community, as one of the new collaboration tools which scientists are using to work together and conduct research. “The key to these…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Grad School Time Management
Grad school's different from pretty much all school before it.In high school, everything was very structured, with the same classes happening every day. You always knew what homework you had to do because you either had to hand…
From Computational Complexity
Innovation
The new Innovations in Computer Science conference announced their accepted papers earlier this week including my paper with Rahul Santhanam "Bounding Rationality by Discounting Time". Shiva is collecting PDF pointers (hope …