Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2012
From Computer Science Teachers Association
CSTA Launches CSEDWeek With New Student-Created Posters
CSTA is pleased to announce the winners of the Faces of Computing poster contest as part of the Computer Science Education Week celebration. The winning posters were selected based on the creative design of images that reflect…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Linked Smartphone Seismometers
I like the idea of using multiple sensors to drive some sort of decision making system. Smartphones are an example of a commonly available, widely deployed sensor. Could they be connected to form a network for analyzing seismometer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fractal Nature of Organizations
Nice link through to to a video on fractal organization. A long time interest of mine that we were able to use for such seemingly unrelated areas like product design. Organizations certainly do have an element of dimension…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Mounting or Solving Open Problems
Programs not programs src Richard Hamilton is the mathematician who laid out the route that eventually led to the positive solution to the three-dimensional Poincaré Conjecture by Grigori Perelman. He is the Davies Professor…
From Wild WebMink
No Apologies
Sorry is not enough in the days of the tabloids. There’s no way out; they will hound and pursue and compound and imply and demand and decry, treating confession as a spur to further vitriol, apology as a request for lynching…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Retail Paper.Li
I see that one of my posts, on the German clothing manufacturer, has been featured in the IBM Retail Paper.li publication. I had not seen this aggregation before. It also includes job opportunities in IBM related retail.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Reinvention
My colleague Sammy Haroon on Core Competency driven reinvention.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Open Data for Smart Cities
GreenPlum report that is of interest. " ... Smart Cities are all about collaboration, sharing and transparency. They need true openness of data. It is not just governments opening up their data for everyone in public platforms…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Neuro Challenge for Marketing
Abstract:Contemporary marketing is constantly subject to challenges generated by the evolution of market relations. Promoting the holistic conception in marketing determines new theoretical and practical urges in the field. The…
From Schneier on Security
Squids on the <i>Economist</i> Cover
Four squids on the cover of this week's Economist represent the four massive (and intrusive) data-driven Internet giants: Google, Facebook, Apple, and Amazon.
Interestingly, these are the same four companies I've been listing…From The Eponymous Pickle
Food Network Starts an Analytical Partnership
With my food and retail background and interests I found an interesting mention in this AdAge article. It is rare to see plays regarding the food industry using analytical methods. The article describes how Food Genius is partnering…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Tesco's Fresh & Easy Headed for Closure?
In Progressive Grocer: " ... Five years after its widely publicized U.S. debut, British supermarket operator Tesco is embarking on a strategic review of its beleaguered Fresh & Easy chain that has struggled to turn a profit…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Levels of Inventory Optimization
In SciDigest. Good point, graphically delivered. Inventory optimization analytics is first looked at tactically, but there us usually benefit in taking it to the strategic level. Practically, from my experience, it is usually…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Should Kids Learn to Code in Grade School
This blog piece was republished from the KQED MindShift site with permission of the author. Author Sheena Vaidyanathan teaches 3D design and computer programming to students in the Los Altos School District in California.
Deep…From The Eponymous Pickle
Utilitarian Marketing
Mitch Joel in the HBR on utilitarian marketing, using the case of Meijer. Once again about the issue of finding things in a complex retail retail space, and leveraging that knowledge in an App. " ... Meijer, a regional market…
From Wild WebMink
German Lessons
Why did Munich succeed but Freiburg fail in their open source migrations Following up from my look at the situation in Freiburg, I tried to distil the differences between the two into a straightforward narrative for InfoWorld…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Windows Guy Buys An iPad
In a move that had one of my friends deciding that maybe the Mayan forecast of the end of the world was true and another suggesting a tiny bit of hell had frozen I bought an iPad Mini the other day. Now understand that whileI…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Midsize Loyalty Biometrics For Retail
I have been looking at both engaging and value adding plays for the midsize business in loyalty systems. I was pointed by the IBM Midsize group to the work by the 355 year old German clothing fashion retail firmGewandhaus…
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Computer Screen for a Car Windshield
In CACM: A heads up display for the automobile. Providing local information for the driver. Driving directions. And connecting the driver to their network. What is dangerous distraction versus information that could…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SAP Retools for Internal Startups
Last year I posted about SAP trying to utilize external startups for innovation. I was invited to one of their meetings concerning that approach. Now they have apparently changed their strategy to focus on internal startups.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Risk and Insurance in Innovation
In Innovation Excellence: A discussion of risk and responsibility in innovation. Using innovation in nanotechnology as an example, from the insurance industry.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC to sponsor challenges and visions track at CIDR 2013
The CCC is sponsoring another in its series of “Challeges and Visions” tracks at the 6th Biennial Conference on Innovative Data Systems Research (CIDR) January 6-9, Asilomar Conference Grounds, Pacific Grove, CA. As part of its…
From Geeking with Greg
Google and the right database for the job
I finally got a chance to read "Processing a Trillion Cells per Mouse Click", a paper out of Google presented at the recent VLDB 2012 conference. It describes the rather cool PowerDrill column-oriented database at Google that…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Game Based Learning
There have been a number of attempts at using the enthusiasm and engagement seen with the use of games to deliver learning. Here is an example. Here for standardized test preparation.Thought I have never seen this successfully…
From Schneier on Security
Comedy and Cryptography
Not the sort of pairing I normally think of, but:
Robin Ince and Brian Cox are joined on stage by comedian Dave Gorman, author and Enigma Machine owner Simon Singh and Bletchley Park enthusiast Dr Sue Black as they discuss secret…From Computational Complexity
Where is the youth of TCS/questions on Nash Eq (guest post by VJ)
(Guest post by Vijay Vazirani.) On Theory Day on Nov 30, 2012 Vijay Vazarani gave a talk: New (Practical) Complementary Pivot Algorithms for Market Equilibrium. He was inspired by the reaction to the talk to write a guest blog…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Declare the Variables First
Back in the early days of programming one pretty much had to declare ones variables before writing any useful code. COBOL had (probably still has) a special section where all the variables were declared. Early versions of FORTRAN…
From Wild WebMink
A Bad Loser
Donald Trump seems to want us to think he’s an asset to Scotland. All the same, his behaviour there leaves many British people cold. His most recent outburst involved an uncontrolled verbal attack on a brand of scotch whisky…
From The Noisy Channel
Lily 5.0, LinkedIn 2.0
What a wonderful week! On Tuesday, my daughter Lily turned 5. We celebrated by taking her out to her first karaoke night, where she had a blast — as did we! I’ll post a video soon. And no, she didn’t sing in a bear…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Indoor Mapping
We experimented first with kiosk based store floor maps, then with the advent of the simplest smart phone delivered directions to shoppers to allow them find a product. Now the emergence of the precise indoor map has led toPopAI…