Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2013
From The Eponymous Pickle
Building Better Products
Thoughtful piece in GigaOM: About the process of coming up with new products and extensions. Starting with knowing what has been done before. This article derived from experiences at Google and Microsoft. There is almost…
From The Eponymous Pickle
What Search Graph Means to Retail
What Facebook Search Graph Means to Retail. In POPAI: " " ... Basically, the bigger a brand’s fan base and, more importantly, the more active they are, the more they’ll likely reap the benefits. And, in addition, if a big brand…
From Putting People First
Dan Hill’s critique of the smart cities movement
Dan Hill (of CityofSound, ARUP, Sitra and now Fabrica fame) is not only extremely prolific, but his writing is also very much to the point. His latest Smart City (or better “Smart Citizen”) manifesto is a case in point. Weighting…
From Putting People First
Launch of Global Ethnographic, a free online journal
Global Ethnographic is a brand new, general interest, peer reviewed web journal featuring the field research and perspectives shaping our social world. Free and exclusively online, Global Ethnographic is multi-media driven and…
From Putting People First
The four waves of user-centered design
Dr. William Gribbons is director of the Master of Science in Human Factors in Information Design and founder and senior consultant of the Design and Usability Center at Bentley University. An article for UX Magazine describes…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Data Waves for Fast Device Communication
New to me in New Scientist: " ... This type of electromagnetic wave stays at the interface between the surface of an object and the air, rather than travelling through open space. Radar systems have used them to see around…
From Apophenia
mourning and public-ness
When I ranted about how the media’s incessant desire to get the story was not allowing the people of Newtown to mourn, I did not expect that I’d be mourning the death of a friend a month later. As I’ve tried to come to terms…
From My Biased Coin
Friday Ruminations
It's felt like a bad few weeks at Harvard.Not that anything actually BAD has happened, like an inexplicable paper rejection or some interdepartmental fight or anything. It's just that January is filled with time-sucking (or,…
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G Acquires Minority Stake in Verix
Reported about " ... Verix, Inc., a designer and developer of enterprise performance management and analytics solutions for the pharmaceutical industry. ... ". see also Verix.com. They are also looking for a VP of R&D. That…
From updated sporadically at best
Life without Wine, Whiskey, or Even St. Germain
I used to be deeply suspicious of non-drinkers. I assumed that everyone who categorically refused alcohol (who was neither a Muslim nor a former addict) was using their sobriety to guard at least one sordid secret. Then months…
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Squid Anchor
Webpage says that it's "the most effective lightweight, portable anchor around."
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
Reducing MapReduce
Vincent Granville on What MapReduce can't do. " ... We discuss here a large class of big data problems where MapReduce can't be used - not in a straightforward way at least - and we propose a rather simple analytic, statistical…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
SAS Stepping Up But What About Others
Although the number of corporations taking action to address the growing shortage of STEM) graduates, particularly in computing, some companies, such as SAS are asking themseleves a critical question: how can corporations provide…
From Schneier on Security
Pentagon Staffs Up U.S. Cyber Command
The Washington Post has the story:
The move, requested by the head of the Defense Department's Cyber Command, is part of an effort to turn an organization that has focused largely on defensive measures into the equivalent of…From The Eponymous Pickle
Memory Irrelevance and Tagging
Oliver Sacks, in the NRB on the emergence of memory, and the curious way that too many connections between irrelevant items in our memory can be a problem. And indifference to what we read and its sources is an enabling process…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Facebook Pays Attention to CPG Marketing
In Adage: Imagine the potential data generated here. " ... Facebook held its first CPG Summit Jan. 17, and has hired Erin Hunter, formerly of Procter & Gamble, as its new chief of CPG Marketing. "It's very important to us to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
WiFi Thermostats
In Technology Review: An update and overview on an obvious idea. We will see more about this. And of course the objections to one more erosion of our privacy.
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
“Cantor” Video Quick Survey
A little help wanted Edited from src1, see also src2. Julian Fellowes is the creator and chief writer of the hit British ITV series “Downton Abbey.” Actually, he is The Right Honourable Lord Fellowes of West Stafford, and also…
From Schneier on Security
Jared Diamond on Common Risks
Jared Diamond has an op-ed in the New York Times where he talks about how we overestimate rare risks and underestimate common ones. Nothing new here -- I and others have written about this sort of thing extensively -- but he…
From Wild WebMink
Microsoft Now Ships GPL Code
Visual Studio now includes GPLv2 code, derived from the libgit2 project. They are also collaborating with GitHub over the project. Did hell just freeze over? I don’t think so, as I explain in InfoWorld today, but it’s definitely…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Do We Need Radical Change in Computer Science Education?
Everyone seems to be getting into the game of “fixing” computer science education. From Khan Academy to Code.org online programs seem to be popping up weekly. Some of these programs have been started by people with teaching experience…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bunchball and IBM
Have had some conversations with gamification vendor IBM. Good to see they have partnered with IBM Connections. Exploring how to add game dynamics and fun to user engagement. " ... For a little more than a year, IBM and Bunchball…