Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
November 2012
From My Biased Coin
Harvard Financials
Harry Lewis has had several interesting posts this month over at his blog. In particular, he discusses Harvard Magazine's recent analysis of Harvard's Annual Financial Report, which offers what I find to be a somewhat bleak…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Apps
SAP support Windows 8 with six new apps. " .... In addition to SAP WorkDeck, the other five new apps for Windows 8 are: SAP Manager Insight for human resources decision-making; Learning Assistant for on-the-go training, anytime…
From Schneier on Security
Webmail as Dead Drop
I noticed this amongst the details of the Petraeus scandal:
Petraeus and Broadwell apparently used a trick, known to terrorists and teenagers alike, to conceal their email traffic, one of the law enforcement officials said. …From The Eponymous Pickle
Future View of Sustainable Packaging
Via Chris Holden of RecordedFuture A view of the future of packaging. " ... "Sainsbury's said that it had the industry's most ambitious target to reduce packaging - by 33% relative to sales by 2015." ... And much more…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data Medical Applications
In CACM: Valerie Barr outlines important big data medical applications. Exciting examples underway.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Social Powered Subscription Service
In AdAge, another project from their social labs. A social powered subscription service. " ... The @WalmartLabs unit today is broadly launching Goodies Co., a $7-a-month box of gourmet, organic, ethnic and specialty snacks…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Predicting Supply Chain Disasters
Over the years a problem we dealt with many times, some of our key production facilities being located in bad weather prone areas. This article in HBR does a good of outlining the issues. Consider too using methods scenario…
From Schneier on Security
Keys to the Crown Jewels Stolen?
At least, that's the story:
The locks at the Tower of London, home to the Crown Jewels, had to be changed after a burglar broke in and stole keys.The intruder scaled gates and took the keys from a sentry post.
Guards spotted…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Open-ended Project
I’ve been thinking a lot about projects the last month or so. You may have seen it in my posts. Mostly I’ve been talking in generalities but today I’d like to focus on a specific idea. last week someone, I don’t remember if it…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Data Center History
Fascinating view of how the Google Data center has evolved. " ... Google opened up on its data center operations today at an industry event in Phoenix. It shared how its thinking and practices have changed as it seeks to lower…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Unconscious Branding Book
Via Sands Research Palgrave Macmillian Releases Today: Unconscious Branding: How Neuroscience Can Empower (and Inspire) Marketing by Douglas Van Praet"Doug Van Praet has a unique ability to translate complex science into a straight…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
The Ryan Wiliams Combine
Structuring his famous proof to build more on it Ryan Williams is a deep theorist who is known among other things for his frontier-setting lower bounds against circuits. There is also a professional football player named Ryan…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Supporting Student Innovation
Pat Yongpradit is one of my heroes. He is a high school computer science teacher who just does amazing things and gets his students involved in projects that take them well beyond the bounds of normal pointless projects. ForImagine…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Interactive Webinar on NSF’s CyberSEES Program
On Monday, November 19, at 4:00 PM EST, the National Science Foundation will hold a webinar on its Cyber-Enabled Sustainability Science and Engineering (CyberSEES) Program. The program aims to advance interdisciplinary research…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fast Sets of Integers
Maintaining a set of integers is a common problem in programming. It can also be implemented in many different ways. Maybe the most common implementation uses a hashing (henceforth hashset): it provides optimal expected-time…
From My Biased Coin
Posts from FOCS (Part 4)
[Editor: In Part 4 of what now looks to be a 5- or 6-part series of reports from FOCS, second-year graduate student Ludwig Schmidt of MIT contributes a summary of the worksop on Randomized Numerical Linear Algebra from Saturday…
From Computational Complexity
If GASARCH Tweeted what would he tweet?
If I tweeted this is what I would tweet:
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wicked Problems
We started to use the phrase 'wicked Problem' around the year 2000. Here is an incomplete analysis of the use of the phrase: So what is its definition? I like this one: They are Messy, Aggressive and Confounding. Not just…
From Putting People First
Nicolas Nova interviewed on Ethnography Matters
The people from Ethnography Matters, an ethnography group blog that is celebrating its first year anniversary today, interviewed their new regular contributor Nicolas Nova. He joins the all-woman team of Tricia Wang, Heather…
From Putting People First
How 3 million hours of user-testing fixed the Jawbone Up
Pulled from store shelves after a month, the first high-profile wearable activity tracker was a humiliation for Jawbone. Now, the Up is back, and anyone vying for a stake in wearable tech should pay close attention to the product’s…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strategic Marketing Mix Decisions
I have been recently been taking a look at the broad concept of marketing mix decisions. The problem is old: how do we decide how much promotional dollars to allocate to what marketing medium? How much are we wasting? And…
From Putting People First
An interview with three UX strategists
The role of UX Strategist is a relatively new one on UX design teams, and has recently addressed in two articles on UXmatters: “UX Strategy: The Heart of User-Centered Design” and “What Does a UX Strategist Do?“. To provide more…
From Schneier on Security
Free Online Cryptography Course
Dan Boneh of Stanford University is offering a free online cryptography course. The course runs for six weeks, and has five to seven hours of coursework per week. It just started last week.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Project or Recipe
Chris Lehmann is the principal of the Science Leadership Academy, a partnership school in Philadelphia, and a frequent speaker on educational issues. He’s a great guy, smart, friendly and truly dedicated to his students and their…
From Putting People First
A qualitative study of internet non-use in Great Britain and Sweden
Living Offline – A Qualitative Study of Internet Non-Use in Great Britain and Sweden by Bianca Christin Reisdorf (U. of Oxford, UK), Ann-Sofie Axelsson (Chalmers U. of Technology, Sweden) and Hanna Maurin Söderholm (U. College…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Midsize Organizations: Simpler BI
Jeff Zabin via Gib Bassett on using simpler business intelligence applications. Especially for the midsize company. Yes, I agree. In fact I would take it even a step further, all organizations should always start simply with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Keeping Plastic Cards
In GigaOm: I had always expected that plastic cards would go away once the mobile smartphone-enabled wallet took over. Here the case is made that cards will remain for some time.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Another Look at Design and Analytics
I met Joseph Kyoung-yun of Wayne State at a talk I gave last week and he was nice enough to send along some background on the work he was doing. He writes: " .... Glad meeting you at Indy during the VA-CASE F2F meeting. As…
From Schneier on Security
Fairy Wren Passwords
Mother fairy wrens teach their children passwords while they're still in their eggs to tell them from cuckoo impostors:
She kept 15 nests under constant audio surveillance, and discovered that fairy-wrens call to their unhatched…From Putting People First
Book: Advancing Ethnography in Corporate Environments
Advancing Ethnography in Corporate Environments: Challenges and Emerging Opportunities Edited by Brigitte Jordan Left Coast Press November 2012, 224 pages [Amazon link] Abstract In this innovative volume, twelve leading scholars…