Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2011
From The Eponymous Pickle
Your Attention Taken
Eye embedded screens on contact lenses have been in the news lately. This is not a new idea, we experimented with screens that could be flipped in front of the eye for hands-free maintenance tasks. At the time experiments on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovation Center for Spices
I like the idea of innovation research centers. Here, in an unrelated space: McCormick Science Institute explores the health benefit of spices. Not about retail, but about a specific set of benefits. A way of tailoring innovation…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Launches Secure & Trustworthy Cyberspace Program; Webinar Scheduled
Last month, the National Science Foundation (NSF) launched a new multi-disciplinary program — Secure and Trustworthy Cyberspace (SaTC)
From Schneier on Security
Free Cryptography Class
Dan Boheh of Stanford University is teaching a free cryptography class starting in January.
From Putting People First
Everything is a service
A long essay by Dave Gray, founder of the XPLANE/Dachis Group, explores the topic of the service economy from a user experience point of view. Make sure you read his thinking of the product as a service avatar. “The emerging…
From Putting People First
Design for digital context (white paper)
Fjord, the digital design consultancy, has just completed a white paper called “Design for Context: Understanding How User Context is Evolving”, looking at the background to context-sensitive design and current approaches, as…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Medical Data Access
From Technology Review: Discovered during a look at the 'medical circles' idea addressed here previously. To what degree should you have access to data which come from implants in your own body? " ... goal is a new twist on…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Storeflix: A Social Network for Business
Just brought to my attention: Storeflix. " ... The social media application gives businesses the ability to instantly see and analyze their business operations around the world.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Rock Paper Azure Challenge is back
The Rock Paper Azure Challenge is back and you could win big!
Play Rock, Paper, Scissors in the cloud for your chance to win a trip to Cancun, an Acer Aspire S3 Laptop, a Windows Phone, or an XBOX 360/Kinect bundle! Entering…From The Eponymous Pickle
The New Know
Colleague Jose Guerra brought this book to my attention. The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics (Wiley and SAS Business Series) by Thornton A. May (Sep 28, 2009) Have placed it on the stack. " ... Examining analytics…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Following last month’s focus on smart health and wellbeing, IEEE Intelligent Systems
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gathering BI Requirements
From TDWI: How to interview for business intelligence requirements. This is fairly obvious, but worth reading if you you are new to this area, or as a reminder of the issues you need to cover. I think it should always be…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Look at Citrix Collaborative Workspace
A post in the HBR blog. A good look, with pictures, of the Citrix example. How can physical spaces promote effective collaboration, innovation, brainstorming, engagement and delivery of ideas? We worked on this for years…
From The Eponymous Pickle
5% of Adults Use QR Codes
This seems quite low, though not far from my own observation, probably mostly those with other technology interests. The code reading Apps are getting better and easier to use. It needs to get in the 50% realm to be significant…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ShopKick Partners with Visa
Followed ShopKick for a while due to their more precisely locational approach for a retailer engagement method. Now a partnership has emerged: " ... Shopkick, which offers instant mobile rewards for stepping into retail stores…
From My Biased Coin
Round Two Reviewing : An Exercise in Conditional Probabilities
We're in "round 2" of reviews for NSDI, and it's brought up a problem for me I've noticed before. I worry that, subconsciously, I'm inclined to give papers I read on the second round a higher score, since I'm swayed by the fact…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 21 November 2011
This week will be a short one with the Thanksgiving holiday here in the US later this week. I
From Computational Complexity
The Jobs Bio
I just finished the Walter Isaacson biography of Steve Jobs. Seems like everyone in the blogosphere has analyzed every sentence in the book, so I won't do that. Instead I viewed the book as a trip down memory lane. The Apple…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Third Annual CSEdWeek Just Around the Corner
The third annual Computer Science Education Week — CSEdWeek
From Schneier on Security
Hack Against SCADA System
A hack against a SCADA system controlling a water pump in Illinois destroyed the pump.
We know absolutely nothing here about the attack or the attacker's motivations. Was it on purpose? An accident? a fluke?
From Wild WebMink
Open Source Nurtures Innovation
Following on from a blog posting about open source and innovation by Stephen O’Grady, I’ve written about the way open source potentially makes innovation easier and cheaper, over on ComputerWorldUK.
From Putting People First
How much should people worry about the loss of online privacy?
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal posted excerpts from a debate between Danah Boyd, Stewart Baker, Jeff Jarvis, and Chris Soghoian on privacy: “Privacy in the digital age means a lot of things to a lot of people. Some…
From Putting People First
Announcement: Dataviz workshop in Torino, Italy
On 12 to 17 December, the people of Better Nouveau plan Dataviz, an in-depth workshop on the visual representation of large datasets. Better Nouveau is an independent design label and an innovation project initiated in June 2011…
From The Noisy Channel
CIKM 2011 Industry Event: Chavdar Botev on Databus: A System for Timeline-Consistent Low-Latency Change Capture
This post is part of a series summarizing the presentations at
From The Eponymous Pickle
Conagra Mills Does Analytics
An interesting business analytics example. Note that Conagra is using it for supply chain decisions with their clients: "... ConAgra Mills, a Commercial Foods brand of $12.3 billion ConAgra Foods, Inc., along with IBM and SignalDemand…
From Apophenia
Debating Privacy in a Networked World for the WSJ
Earlier this week, the Wall Street Journal posted excerpts from a debate between me, Stewart Baker, Jeff Jarvis, and Chris Soghoian on privacy. In preparation for the piece, they had us respond to a series of questions. Jeff…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Binary Hand Dance
If you are looking for some inspiration and/or entertainment for you or your students, check out the Vi Hart's Blog. Vi is a "recreational mathemusician" (her words, not mine) who creates interesting videos about mathematics…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predictive Modeling News
Brought to my attention. The Monthly Newsletter for Healthcare Professionals Involved with Predictive Modeling. " .... Featuring articles, news, key data, technology development, results from recent studies, interviews, case…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Intelligence Predictions
Boris Evelson provides some interesting business intelligence predictions for 2012. Including: " ... More BI will move into the hands of end users. IT will learn not fight it or risk becoming irrelevant. IT will also learn…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G's John Smale Passing
I worked with Mr. Smale as part of the IT Innovation Research team: ... John G. Smale, former Chairman and Chief Executive Officer for Procter & Gamble, passed away on November 19, 2011 at the age of 84 ... P&G Alumni Network…