Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2010
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Not being able to program a computer is like
I confess to an almost addictive love for a good analogy to explain various ideas. One analogy people use is that they can use a car without understanding how it really works do they can use a computer without understanding how…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Blogging to Drive Business
After a number of warnings following around blogging be passe lately, its good to see a new book on blogging and business ... '" ... From Eric Butow and Rebecca Bollwitt, this week's selection is Blogging to Drive Business: Create…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-02-20
A crucial and foundational legal finding that establishes violation of open source licenses is not acceptable and that penalties relate to…
From The Noisy Channel
Holding Back the Rise of the Machines?
Amazon’s Mechanical Turk is one of my favorite examples of leveraging the internet for innovation: Amazon Mechanical Turk is a marketplace for work that requires human intelligence. The Mechanical Turk web service enables companies…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Time on Advertising Sounds
A Time Mag article: Now Hear This. A good piece, on sounds in advertising, see also my previous post on Martin Lindstrom and Buyology Inc's work in this area.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Socks
Cute, but not really for me.
From Putting People First
The Internet in 2020
A new report on the future of the internet, based on interviews of nearly 900 internet stakeholders and critics, conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project and the Imagining the Internet Center at…
From Putting People First
How evidence-based design leads to better patient outcomes
Barbara Pantuso, director of healthcare innovation at frog design, reports on health outcomes and financial implications of Evidence-Based Design (EBD). “It
From Putting People First
Who needs banks if you have a mobile phone?
Cellphone-based money transfer is transforming the prospects of people who live without bank accounts or ATMs
From Schneier on Security
Cyber Shockwave Test
There was a big U.S. cyberattack exercise this week. We didn't do aa
I recently read Ken Auletta's book Googled, about the creation and rise of Google. I read it as both a techno-geek and as an educator. There were two particular things about Google that I contemplated as an educator. Among…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Talking Smartphone Tags
I happened on a demonstration of Talking Tag by Air Arts via Ven Cheva while I was in Chicago yesterday. A clever and simple idea that attaches an audio track (or other kinds of content) to a post-it or other kind of tag. The…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Learning Computer Science and Algorithms with Augmented Reality
This is the third and last post in a three-part series of design proposals for augmented reality learning applications. These are from a paper I wrote in my computers and cognition class. I'll be reworking the main ideas in the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
New Products from Procter
From the WSJ: Expect a flurry of new products from P&G: ' Robert McDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, said the company's growth strategies "are starting to work" and said the company will launch 30% more products in key countries…
From The Eponymous Pickle
World's Most Addictive Sounds Discovered
From Martin Lindstrom: Analyzing sounds" ... The article probes the results of a new 9-month study conducted by the New York Buyology Inc., team, in partnership with global audio identity experts, Elias Arts, to determine precisely…
From Schneier on Security
Al-Mabhouh Assassination
It reads like a very professional operation:
Security footage of the killers' movements during the afternoon, released by police in Dubai yesterday, underlines the professionalism of the operation. The group switched hotelsFolliard…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Nostalgia
Last week someone on the SIGCSE mailing list mentioned that they learned to program in FORTRAN, using punch cards on an IBM 1130. Well so did I and I said so. This seemed to have opened the floodgates of nostalgia (lots of us…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data and Dating
Steve King reports on Data and Dating in Small Biz Labs. The topic has always been of interest to me. I worked with some matching algorithms in the enterprise, and worked with a startup that was looking at how to address linking…
From Putting People First
Design bugs out
The Design Council and the Department of Health partner to combat the spread of infection in U.K. hospitals. David Sokol reports in Metropolis Magazine. “Patients go into hospitals to be cured of what ails them, but the ugly…
From Computational Complexity
A problem about Graph Partitions (guest post)
(Guest post from Richard Taylor who requests information on a problem.)
The following graph partition problem arises in connection with studies I am doing on a particular dynamical systems problem. I wonder if there are …
From Schneier on Security
Opening Locks with Foil Impressioning
Interesting blog post, with video demonstration, about an improved tool to open high security locks with a key that will just "form itself" if you insert it into the lock and wiggle it a little. The basic technique is a few years…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2010-02-18
It's bad enough to buy a product and be told by the manufacturer that you can't be trusted to have actually…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Cheating In Computer Science Classes
This story on cheating in Computer Science classes is one of those things that really makes you think. Years ago one of my students was so tired of students looking over his shoulder and stealing his code that he started using…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Grocery Barcode Scanning Comparison
For a research investigation I have been comparing smartphone-based 2D barcode scanners using an IPhone 3G. Specifically for typical grocery scans of multiple items in a bright light environment. Another requirement is that the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
NBC, the Olympics and the Internet
A considerable criticism of NBC's use of the Internet to provide coverage of the Vancouver Olympics. I have done only a little of searching around for alternative streaming content, and as they say there seems to be very little…
From Putting People First
BBC
During a keynote address at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Erik Huggers, the BBC Director of Future Media and Technology, shared his plans to make BBC Online even more accessible on mobiles, and what the industry can do…
From Putting People First
English via your mobile
The BBC reports on Janala, a service that is revolutionising the teaching of English in Bangladesh using simple mobile technology. “Janala – it means Window – is a service run by the BBC World Service Trust and funded by the…
From Schneier on Security
Bruce Schneier Facebook Page
I finally have control of my Facebook page. There'll be nothing on it that isn't on my blog, but some of you might prefer following my writing from there.
(I also have a Twitter account, although I've never posted.)
From The Eponymous Pickle
Insincere Flattery can Work
Roger Dooley reports on a recent study that appears to show is ' .. that even when we realize we are being flattered, and
From Computational Complexity
Kurt Mehlhorn to receive EATCS award
Kurt Mehlhorn will receive EATCS award! Read about it here.
He has had a LONG and PRODUCTIVE career with many EXCELLENT papers. While he is mostly known for data structures and algorithms and Comp Geom, he did do some complexity…