Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2010
From The Eponymous Pickle
On the Failure of Social Media
GigaOm on the failure of social media campaigns. I agree that it is far to early to predict when these campaigns will succeed or fail. Some good directional thoughts to consider here.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sharing Your Car
In another innovative personal transportation market, reported in Wired, you can share your car for cash. : " ... RelayRides lets car owners set their own rates starting at $6 per hour. Of the cost, 65 percent goes straight to…
From Schneier on Security
Computational Forensics
Interesting article from IEEE Spectrum:
During two years of deliberation by the National Academy's forensic science committee (of which I was a member), a troubling picture emerged. A large part of current forensics practice…From Computer Science Teachers Association
Learn C# Programing in a Social Gaming Environment
Check out Pex for Fun (http://bit.ly/PexLearn) for a challenging and engaging way for students to practice their programming skills. Pex for Fun enables programming in C#, Visual Basic, and F# right within the web browser.
…From Computational Complexity
BREAKTHROUGH in algorithms: Improved algorithm for Metric TSP!!!!!!!!
BREAKTHROUGH in Algorithms: Improved Algorithm for Metric TSP,
(Guest Blog by Mohammad Hajiaghayi)
We all recently heard about the breakthrough complexity result by Ryan Williams on non-uniform circuit lower bounds. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
An App for an Airport
I reported previsously on developing specialized Apps for conferences. Here is another example of something similar: A specialized App for an airport, here San Francisco (SFO) . Nice idea that combines rapidly changing local…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
For Your In-memory Databases, Do You Really Need an Index?
For large data sets on disk, indexes are often essential. However, if your data fits in RAM, indexes are often unnecessary. They may even be harmful. Consider a table made of 10,000,000 rows and 10 columns. Using normalization…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Computational Photography
A few interesting news stories in the past week: What is “Watson”? Word came on Tuesday that “Watson,” an IBM supercomputer system, will take on Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter — the two most successful players in “Jeopardy” history…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-12-20
The Document Foundation joins Open Invention Network Smart move here – by joining now, they gain access to all those patents belonging to Novell that will leave the pool and belong (among others) to Microsoft and Oracle when…
From Schneier on Security
"Architecture of Fear"
I like the phrase:
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From Putting People FirstVodafone foresight on the world in 2020
Vodafone has launched its new futureagenda website that presents the results of a 12 month insight and foresight programme on the world in 2020. The project, which was presented last week in Istanbul, Turkey (and only got covered…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonInteresting Links 20 December 2010
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From The Eponymous PickleOntoprise
Brought to my attention and reviewing: Ontoprise. " ... is a leading independent software vendor for industry-proven Semantic Web infrastructure technologies and products used to support dynamic semantic information integration…
From The Eponymous PickleBody Browser
Just took a look at the Google Body Browser Beta. It requires WebGL, such as that included in the new Chrome Beta. Other options at the link. Nicely done ... a visual encyclopedia of the body that you can explore in 3D. I…
From Wild WebMink? Kinds Of Trust
USTR’s Request for Comments on ACTA Your holiday project: send USTR at least one comment on ACTA. If you need ideas, let me know… The Anonymous WikiLeaks protests are a mass demo against control Really excellent article by Richad…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMCommerce Department and Federal Trade Commission Seek Guidance on Online Privacy
In the first half of December the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Commerce Department's Internet Policy Task Force (IPTF) each issued reports focused on privacy online. In both cases the reports are meant as the next…
From The Eponymous PicklePrivate Car Networks
In MF Perry's blog on the natural emergence of markets: A car network that works from a smartphone: " ... "Request a car by telling Uber where you are. Text us your address, or use our iPhone or Android apps to set your pickup…
From The Eponymous PickleAd Injection for Mobile Advertising
Recently in the Metaio Newsletter: " .... San Francisco / Munich, December 9th, 2010 - junaio, currently seen by many experts as the most advanced mobile Augmented Reality browser, announced today the new "Ad-Inject" serviceAn…
From The Eponymous PickleImaginary Dieting
Thinking about eating can be filling? Research ongoing in this space: In the NYT: Real Evidence for Diets That Are Just Imaginary
From Wild WebMink? Strange Communion
I don’t think I’ll be able to get out to hear her performing live tomorrow evening in Winchester at The Tower, but I wanted to mention how much I have enjoyed Thea Gilmore‘s music this year and tell you about her wonderful winter…
From My Biased CoinEnd of Year Update from the Trenches (Area Dean News)
I last posted on Lance's blog about two months ago, so it seems a good time for an update.My class is (hooray!) finished. I've sent out grades to the students, and just have to record them in the system. (Last chance for students…
From The Eponymous PickleWord Lens Translation App
I have worked with machine translation in Google and also with high end translation systems. The result is never perfect. They can often but not always give you a general understanding of what a sentence means in another language…
From Schneier on SecurityFriday Squid Blogging: Prosthetic Tentacle
From The Eponymous PickleFood Lion IPhone App
In SupermarketNews: Always innovative Food Lion is promoting its new IPhone App with contests.
From The Eponymous PickleBradley Efron Says it Simply
A very good interview with Stanford statistics prof Bradley Efron in Significance Magazine. I was sent a PDF, but I see it is regrettably behind a pay wall. There are some tempting quotes in Numbers Rule Your World.
From The Eponymous PickleProcter Focus on Sales and Innovation
In the Cincinnati Enquirer: P&G outlines focus on sales and innovation at the Wall Street Meeting in Cincinnati yesterday. A good outline of company direction under the new leadership.
From Schneier on SecurityHiding PETN from Full-Body Scanners
From the Journal of Transporation Security, "An evaluation of airport x-ray backscatter units based on image characteristics," by Leon Kaufman and Joseph W. Carlson:
Abstract:
Little information exists on the performance of…
From The Noisy ChannelCIKM 2011 Industry Event
CIKM 2011 is nearly a year away, but I wanted to give folks a heads up about the Industry Event there that I am organizing with Tony Russell-Rose. These events have become an an increasingly important part of the annual
From Schneier on SecurityDid the FBI Plant Backdoors in OpenBSD?
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMPCAST Issues Report on NITRD program
On December 16 the President's Council of Advisers on Science and Technology (PCAST) issued the latest in its Congressionally required assessments of the Networking and Information Technology Research and Development program …