Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2011
From The Eponymous Pickle
Revealing all the Ingredients
More examples of increasingly providing more detailed information about products:Clorox Reveals Chemicals You've Been Dumping on Your Floors, Counters, Commodes Cleaning-product companies are notorious for keeping a tight lid…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Research into Squid Hearing
Squid can hear, scientists have confirmed. But they don't detect the changes in pressure associated with sound waves, like we do. They have another, more primitive, technique for listening: They sense the motion…
From Schneier on Security
Biometric Wallet
Not an electronic wallet, a physical one:
Virtually indestructible, the dunhill Biometric Wallet will open only with touch of your fingerprint.It can be linked via Bluetooth to the owner
From The Eponymous PickleMaking Fan Pages More Effective
Jan Ochs on setting up a Facebook fan page and making it more effective. Useful ideas.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonWhat Does Watson Mean?
Researchers at and working with IBM have created a computer and software that played and beat the best human players of the TV game show Jeopardy. This is an event that raised a lot of questions. For computer scientists it raises…
From BLOG@CACMIntellectual Amplification via Computing
As the recent performance of IBM's Watson system on the game show Jeopardy! illustrated, the combination of large-scale data, rich algorithm suites and powerful computing are opening new vistas. Vannevar Bush's 1940s vision of…
From Wild WebMink? Microsoft Bans Its Own License
The rules for Microsoft’s Windows Phone Marketplace appear to mean that even Microsoft’s own open source license – the Microsoft Reciprocal License – is banned. Read about it on ComputerWorldUK.
From The Eponymous PickleKraft Advanced in-store Kiosks
I have not seen much about advanced kiosks of late. We experimented with them in labs and stores. The additional capability of having a kiosk or display 'look back' at the shopper was also pushed by several vendors, but never…
From The Eponymous PickleMedia in the Drivers Seat
In Adage ... while platforms can impress people, get them looking, content has always been king: Call It a Comeback: Media to Thrive in World of New Devices, Technologies Activate's Michael Wolf on Why Competition Between Platforms…
From The Computing Community Consortium BlogWith the Score
Decimated. Vanquished. Demolished. As you probably know by now, those are but a few of the words being used to describe how “Watson” — the IBM question-answering supercomputer system — bested its two competitors in a three-part…
From Wild WebMink? Freedom In A Box
Moglen on Freedom Box and making a free net Eben’s ideas on a zero-interaction home server (“FreedomBox”) to route internet traffic safely and effectively seem very interesting, but I wonder if there’s not the dimension of personal…
From Schneier on SecurityNIST Defines New Versions of SHA-512
NIST has just defined two new versions of SHA-512. They're SHA-512/224 and SHA-512/256: 224- and 256-bit truncations of SHA-512 with a new IV. They've done this because SHA-512 is faster than SHA-256 on 64-bit CPUs, so these…
From Putting People FirstThe business of personal data
The World Economic Forum just came out with a report, “Personal Data: The Emergence of a New Asset Class,” that surely is going to raise some controversy, as it explores what it means to commercialise personal data and make good…
From Geeking with GregWhat I have been reading lately
Here are a few of the articles that have caught my attention recently:
Googler and AI guru Peter Norvig on what artificial intelligence has been able to do and what was a surprise ([1]) Watson's performance in Jeopardy was impressive…
From The Eponymous PickleGoogle Improves Social Search Tool
Google has changed its social searches so that when you are logged in with your Google account you will get interleaved results that include hits from your own connections. Much more here. Seems to be a reasonable change, though…
From The Eponymous PickleDisrupting Your Industry
I am in the midst of a consulting project where it looks like it will be very hard to disrupt the industry. Most everything has been done already. All the slack has been taken out. . There seems to be no room for disruption…
From The Female Perspective of Computer ScienceProcedural Rhetoric in Games
In the Carleton Game Dev Club meeting last week, a member showed a video from the Escapist series Extra Credit. Called Narrative Mechanics, this episode was all about how video games can tell a story through its mechanics alone…
From The Eponymous PickleOn Backups
Good defensive computing CW piece on backups, what they are and what they are not and how to make sure you don't lose really important things.
From The Eponymous PickleCatalog for Language Resources
More resources that can help you do research with languages: " ... It has just become a whole lot easier to search the world's language archives. The new OLAC Language Resource Catalog contains descriptions of over 100,000 language…
From Putting People FirstThe business of Inclusive Design
Last year I wrote about the book “Innovating with people
From Schneier on SecurityHistorical Study of the NSA Scientific Advisory Board
Recently declassified: "Historical Study: The National Security Agency Scientific Advisory Board 1952
From Wild WebMinklinks for 2011-02-17
Microsoft: Absolutely NO Free Software for Windows Phone and Xbox Apps Despite all the rhetoric from Microsoft's evangelists, they just can't get over their hatred and fear of software freedom. This sweeping rule ensures they…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred ThompsonNew Software on DreamSpark
Dreamspark is all about free development software for students. This week we added six new or updated products to the mix.
This release included:
Kodu SmallBasic Mathematics 4.0 SQL Server 08 R2 XNA Game…
From Wild WebMink? Archives
I’ve not found a way to add a subject index page to my blog that’s automatically generated from the tags or extracts or even a word list, but I have added an archive page so you can at least scan through all the subject lines…
From The Eponymous PickleRamping Up Shopper Marketing
Good overview article from Wharton which provides a statement of the direction of what we used to call merchandising: " ... Shopper marketing is gaining popularity as stores and consumer goods manufacturers seek a way to capture…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMUSACM Joins Statement of Concern Over Expansion of Intercept Law
Today the Center for Democracy and Technology released a statement it developed to respond to possible changes to the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (CALEA). USACM is one of the organizations that signed on…
From The Eponymous PickleSands Research Superbowl Ad Ranking
Sands Research has posted their most recent super bowl ad ranking information, based on their unique neuro marketing methods. They have also included eye tracking information this year as well, which is further very useful in…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACMACM Washington Update Vol. 15.1 (February 16 2011)
CONTENTS
[1] Newsletter Highlights [2] USACM Comments on Proposed Web Accessibility Guidance [3] USACM Responds to Department of Commerce Online Privacy Report [4] Computers Freedom And Privacy Conference 2011 [5] NITRD Program…
From Computational ComplexityIf I tweeted here is what I would tweet
If I tweeted there is what I would tweet:
There was an interesting blog post that responded to Aaron Sterling's Chemoinformatics Post. See here for this interesting discussion. See here for info on the Watson's performance…
From Wild WebMink? Nokia Dooming Windows Phone?
There’s plenty of talk about how Nokia’s embrace of Microsoft’s Windows Phone has doomed Nokia. But has Nokia’s embrace actually doomed Windows Phone? Read my views on ComputerWorldUK.