Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
December 2014
From Geeking with Greg
More quick links
More of what caught my attention lately: "Make infinite computing resources available internally ... Give teams the resources they need to experiment ... All employees should be limited only by their ability rather than an…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Rethinks the Captcha
From CWorld: In attempt to get away from the often annoying Captcha interaction to prove you are not a robot. With a far simpler subtle approach. Will this be enough for the more clever robots of the future? I assure you this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hawking Fears AI
In an interview with the BBC. It is right to be concerned, given the malleability of humans. Look how dumb things like smartphones can control us. But we still have far to go, many simpler service and advisory issues to…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Jefferson Science Fellowship Experience
The following blog post was written by Dr. Stephanie Forrest, Distinguished Professor of Computer Science at the University of New Mexico. Dr. Forrest recently completed a one year Jefferson Science Fellowship at the U.S. Department…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Toward Cognitive Business Process Modeling
An excellent talk today in the Service Sciences Innovation series. This about a favorite topic: How to manage business process in the modern enterprise. Business Process Models (BPM) have been the way to represent and address…
From Putting People First
The politics of the sharing economy
Trebor Scholz, Associate Professor for Culture and Media at The New School in New York, writes that he “support[s] peer production and sharing practices but [he is] vexed by attempts to subsume them into the new corporate hype…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Browsers Getting to Know You, Quickly
In Radar O'Reilly: A description of the interaction between user and browser. And a form of real time analytics at work. The auction interaction is interesting, see the tag below for more on auction science in this blog. The…
From Putting People First
Ericsson’s new ConsumerLab report about the smart citizen
Last month, Ericsson published its latest ConsumerLab report, entitled “Smart Citizens: How the internet facilitates smart choices in city life.” The study covers 9 cities worldwide-Beijing, Delhi, London, New York, Paris, Rome…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big Data and Patents
How Big Data Impacts the World of Patents .... Patents and Intellectual Property are gradually gaining significance around the world. This is leading to a bottleneck–large databases and ever growing information. Read on to find…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Eye Tracking Display Menu Choice
In Mashable: Use of eye tracking interaction with a menu. Example in Pizza Hut. Developed in conjunction with the eye tracking company Tobii. The images for the toppings shown are cartoonish, which would seem to influence"…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
When bad ideas will not die: from classical AI to Linked Data
Back in the 1970s, researchers astutely convinced governments that we could build intelligent systems out of reasoning engines. Pure logic would run the day. These researchers received billions for their neat ideas. Nothing much…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Agent Modeling and Health Care Data
This reports on work done with Argonne National Labs, known for their work with agent based simulation models or ABMs. We used similar models with Argonne for evaluating product introduction." ... Now, a collaboration between…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
USACM Members Testify Before Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
The Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB) met in Washington D.C. on November 12 to take testimony on privacy in the context of counterterrorism programs. The board heard from four panels of experts, two of whom…
From Schneier on Security
The Future of Auditory Surveillance
Interesting essay on the future of speech recognition, microphone miniaturization, and the future ubiquity of auditory surveillance....
From The Eponymous Pickle
Modeling Complex Decisions
Recently had to review the use of rules to model business decisions. Exploring the integration of these methods with Cognitive systems. Integrating these rules with optimization models. We utilized ILog JRulesNow part of…
From My Biased Coin
Yet More Good News, Harry Lewis Edition
As mentioned previously, our current Dean for the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Cherry Murray, will be stepping down at the end of the year.The good news out today is that Professor Harry Lewis will be stepping. …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Computationally Modeling Emotion
Video on: Computationally Modeling Human Emotion. Professor Stacy Marsella at USC discusses "Computationally Modeling Human Emotion" a Contributed Article in the December 2014 CACM (cacm.acm.org/magazines/2014/12/180787 ) Very…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Susan Horwitz 1955–2014
Susan and a paradigm shift in software engineering Susan Horwitz was—it is hard to type “was”—a computer scientist who did important work in the area of software engineering. She passed away this summer on June 11th. Today Ken…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile Eye-Tracking in Retail
Here for cereal packaging. Good example of the current use of behavioral tracking in aisle. Some interesting statistics for CPG products. Data for these kinds of tests should also be gathered and trended for understanding…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Interaction to 'Fit' Products
In Retailwire: Same work covered in another recent post. Another piece on smart fitting rooms to engage with consumers. Has also often been used for virtual makeover type applications. Here mentioning work with Nordstrom's…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook and Multi Device Shopping Habits
Another are we addressed in some detail. Shopping is increasingly multi channel and multidevice. It has to be considered in all these dimensions. " ... Facebook to Track Users Across Devices to Study Shopping Habits - Bloomberg…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Retailers and Security
Some useful points about how digital retailers are addressing security. Its not all about the network." ... According to a study released this month by privacy and security research firm Ponemon Institute and database security…
From BLOG@CACM
HPC: Computational Performance vs. Human Productivity
One of the themes at SC14 was the tension between developing programs that run fast vs. the time required by humans to develop and maintain fast-running programs.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CCC BRAIN Workshop – A Neuroscientist’s Perspective
The following blog post was written by Dr. Martin Wiener, AAAS Fellow Directorate for Computer & Information Science & Engineering Division of Information and Intelligent Systems at the National Science Foundation. Comparisons…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of December 1
December 1 The Supreme Court hears arguments on a case involving when (and/or if) online comments could be considered as a threat for the purposes of criminal prosecution. Supreme Court Building December 3 Hearing: The House…
From Computational Complexity
Cliques are nasty but Cliques are nastier
BILL: Today we will show that finding large cliques is likely a nasty problem STUDENT: Yes! In my High School the Cliques were usually at most six people and they gossiped about everyone else. They were very nasty. BILL: Um…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Big CPG Takes Advertising Claims to Court
In Adage: Fascinating direction about what claims can be made in advertising. Nestle, P&G and Unilever are examples. " ... The world's three biggest packaged-goods companies, facing increased investor pressure over sluggish…
From The Eponymous Pickle
UMass Report on Use of Social Media by Fortune 500
Today attended the yearly presentation of UMass Dartmouth Prof Nora Barnes, commissioned by SNCR, where I was a fellow for years. Lots of fascinating numbers about the use of all common forms of social media by the FortuneSee…
From BLOG@CACM
Women in STEM, Women in Computer Science: We're Looking At It Incorrectly
A rethinking of how best to analyze data on women's undergraduate degrees in STEM disciplines.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Design Principles in Business
In Radar O'Reilly: An interview. Our enterprise added design as a key function." ... Design principles are being applied in all aspects of business today — they are no longer limited to graphic design, product design, web design…