Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Internet of Things v Beer Game
Have played the MIT beer game a number of times for demonstrating supply chain applications. Even used it as a simulation base for gamification tests. Now can it be part of the internet of things? In the Cisco Blog.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Sonification
A space I looked at for our information innovation group. A way to use other senses, including sound, as an interface to deliver data and its patterns. AT&T had done some experimentation in this area. In the simplest approach…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Models for the Data Economy
Just brought to my attention, a topic I am examining:Business Models for the Data Economy by Q. Ethan McCallum and Ken GleasonFree Kindle edition. A 29 page brief survey. Just examining. They write:" ... Business Models for…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sharks in the Internet of Things
Sharks triggering tweets in at Australian Beach. A clever idea. Sensors providing warnings in the narrow bandwidth of tweets. This may provide some hints as to how to integrate other entities in the IOT. Worth following."…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Old Grocery Lists
I worked for some time on the psychology and technology of the simple grocery list. Now it has emerged, Michaelangelo's handwritten grocery list. How much have we generally evolved since the sixteenth century? I wish I had…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data v Spreadsheets v Visualization
From the very beginning I have been involved in leveraging data for value. If you examine what companies have done over the years, starting with the invention of the spreadsheet, many companies today are doing analytics. Simple…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computers and Society
Recently talked to Lisa C. Kaczmarczyk about her interdiciplinary computing blog. And her book site: Computers and Society - Computing For Good." ... Computers and Society: Computing for Good contains in-depth case studies with…
From The Eponymous Pickle
More iBeacon Rollout Details
More on the iBeacon. Details of the rollout. Recently took a closer look at similar approaches, and how the data being gathered could be used for tailoring promotions. We will see more about this in the coming years.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Kim Jong Un Tours Frozen Squid Factory
Frozen squid makes him happy.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Step by Step ROI Innovation
Doing it step by step is key: In Forbes: " .... Do you have a great idea for improving your industry? For most people, inventing a new product is foreign territory. There are multiple steps (and costs!) involved in bringing…
From The Eponymous Pickle
March on: Cost of Bad Online Experiences
A good piece in CIO Insight, with some very useful points. But I have some issues again with the format. The slide show. This is getting more common, apparently to provide more space for advertising. Discussed it with my…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Big Picture of Big Data
Good overview interview of the state of big data, with a number of industry examples that I had not seen before. There is much more in this blog on the topic, including a number of books and other resources.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Wikipedia's Data Trove for Trends
I have talked to several people who are using the Wikipedia as an ontology of knowledge. Surely there is much more data to be mined there. But what statistics exist about its operation? What trends there are that are indication…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Examining Online Returns
In Retailwire: A discussion of online returns. Easy returns are becoming a big issue for online purchases. How can they be better addressed? " ... With free shipping and other lenient return policies becoming common practice…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Dell and Dropbox
A interesting interaction. In my own experience I am seeing more people using Dropbox as a standard tool, working well on all the standard devices. I often suggest it as a standard way to begin detailed interaction.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Showrooming at Best Buy
I had not realized I was part of BestBuy's showrooming strategy. I was there for the first time in months last week. But they did not ultimately convert me. In Adage: But did their approach work? " ... Best Buy's showrooming…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Fastest way to compute the greatest common divisor
Given two positive integers x and y, the greatest common divisor (GCD) z is the largest number that divides both x and y. For example, given 64 and 32, the greatest common divisor is 32. There is a fast technique to compute the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NFL Tackling Big Data
In our recent executive briefing we used the work by the NBA using video imaged game recording for gathering big data to understand the detail of game and player behavior using analytics. An excellent example. ColleagueWalter…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Showrooming and Webrooming
A retail story, Inspired by a post by correspondent Herb Sorensen. I relate our experience: .... We were recently in local Costco buying a relatively expensive piece of electronic equipment. Aided by a knowledgeable sales person…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Engines
Data Engines. A reminder of this topic, which I had forgotten about. You want to perform some analytic process, but where is the required data? Often a big issue. A list of examples. Including Quandl, a new one in the mix…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Re-gifting An Old Theorem
An old theorem re-packaged? Emily Post was America’s premier writer on etiquette for much of the 20th Century. The Emily Post Institute, which she founded in 1946, carries on much of her legacy, directed mostly by family at the…
From Computational Complexity
To Write, or Not to Write, That Is the Question
Guest post by Vijay Vazirani Our field has been blessed with some great books: classics such as Knuth's volumes and Garey & Johnson literally got the field going, and the books of Lovász brought much clarity in difficult, important…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Too Many Images
Very useful ideas, especially when we have more happening on mobile and thus smaller spaces.Online Shopping Choices: Less Is Sometimes Better Than More Online shopping sites trying to reel in customers this holiday season may…
From Schneier on Security
Operation Vula
"Talking to Vula" is the story of a 1980s secret communications channel between black South African leaders and others living in exile in the UK. The system used encrypted text encoded into DTMF "touch tones" and transmitted…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013) Final Report
I was pleased and honored to be a part of the committee that developed this document over a period of several years. If you are interested in undergraduate computer science education this is a must read.
We are delighted to…
From Schneier on Security
Christmas Comic
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Merry Christmas 2014
Merry Christmas and a Healthy, Happy and Prosperous New Year to all my readers and friends.
God Jul og Godt Nyttår
Maligayang Pasko at Manigong Bagong Taon
Boas Festas e Feliz Ano Novo
Pozdrevlyayu s prazdnikom Rozhdestva…From The Eponymous Pickle
Role of Intuition in Analytics: Abductive Reasoning
Intuition, creativity, even directed randomness are parts of analytics. And thus also part of what we are now calling 'Big Data'. Now how we do implement the use of intuition? By setting up easily used sand boxes that allow…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bosch and the Internet of Things
In CWorld: With a special emphasis on Sensors and MEMs. We experimented with several early developers in the smart appliance space." ... Bosch says the future is the Internet of Things By Patrick ThibodeauGerman appliance…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
A Pardon For Alan Turing
I beg your pardon Elizabeth Mary, Queen Elizabeth II, is the Queen of the United Kingdom and of the other Commonwealth realms. She has just today granted Alan Turing a posthumous royal pardon under the rule of “royal prerogative…