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 Schneier on Security
Tide Becomes Drug Currency
Basically, Tide detergent is a popular product with a very small profit margin. So small non-chain grocery and convenience stores are happy to buy it cheaply, no questions asked. This makes it easy to sell if you steal it.started…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Force Feedback for Smartphones
Research ongoing to produce force feedback that could ultimately be used on a smartphone. This opens some interesting new sensor applications, on games certainly, but also in other areas.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Making Internal Collaboration Work
McKinsey Quarterly interview with Don Tapscott: " .... The author and strategist describes why effective knowledge management within enterprises requires replacing e-mail with social media. ... " But I add it does have to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
An Internet for Manufacturing
In Technology Review: Each product will remember and record how it was made, and what raw material components made it. That is a powerfully useful stream of information for manufacturing and marketing. It was an idea we often…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
National Academy of Engineering elects new Members
Election to the National Academy of Engineering – which has roughly 2,000 members across a dozen fields – is one of the highest professional honors accorded to engineers in academia, industry and government. Today, the NAE Class…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Postdocs in Computational Complexity Blog
Check out CCC council member Lance Fortnow’s blog, “Computational Complexity.” Today’s post focuses on postdocs in computer science. Anita Jones is troubled by the growing number of postdocs in computer science, she uses “troubling”…
From Computational Complexity
Postdocs in Computer Science
Anita Jones is troubled by the growing number of postdocs in computer science, she uses "troubling" twice in the first paragraph of her CACM Viewpoint. But is it really a troubling trend or just a natural outgrowth of a maturing…
From Schneier on Security
Over $3M in Prizes to Hack Google Chrome
Google's contest at the CanSecWest conference:
Today we’re announcing our third Pwnium competitionPwnium 3. Google Chrome is already featured in the Pwn2Own competition this year, so Pwnium 3 will have a new focus: Chrome OS…From Wild WebMink
The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0
Reblogged from The Document Foundation Blog: The free office suite the community has been dreaming of for twelve years Berlin, February 7, 2013 - The Document Foundation announces LibreOffice 4.0, the free office suite the community…
From Putting People First
Small, local, open and connected: resilient systems and sustainable qualities
How do we design a resilient socio-technical system, asks Ezio Manzini in Design Observer. “Let’s look to natural systems; their tolerance of breakdowns and their adaptation capacity (that is, their capability of sustaining over…
From Putting People First
Book: Orchestrating Human-Centered Design
Orchestrating Human-Centered Design Guy Boy Springer, 2013 The time has come to move into a more humanistic approach of technology and to understand where our world is moving to in the early twenty-first century. The design and…
From Putting People First
Recent studies on the impact of tablet use in schools – an overview
2012 One-to-one Tablets in Secondary Schools: An Evaluation Study (see also here and here) Dr Barbie Clarke and Siv Svanaes, Family Kids and Youth, UK, 2012 Research was carried out between September 2011 and July 2012 and included…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Swapping Values The Tricky Way
Last week my friend Tom Indelicato who talking to his Advanced Placement Computer Science students about sorting. As is necessary this involved talking about how to swap one value for another. This is typically done with the …
From Putting People First
Study on the introduction of iPads in UK secondary school
Naace, the UK’s educational ICT association, published a report last year (July 2012), entitled “The iPad as a Tool for Education – A study on the introduction of iPads at Longfield Academy, Kent“. “After a successful implementation…
From Geeking with Greg
Quick links
It's been a while since I did a Quick Links post, so there's a lot to cover. Here's the latest of what has caught my attention: First Netflix wanted to be Blockbuster (DVDs), then a replacement for cable (streaming video),[1]…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Junaio Augmented Reality on the Second Screen
Recently received and of interest. Adding Augmented reality information to the TV screen. I hope to watch this. Note that the TV show is in German. Will attempt to get a video demo of this.Second Screen’ is one of the buzz…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM PureSystems
Had cause to take a look at applications that could do pattern recognition and was pointed to IBM PureSystems, mentioned here. " ... With the new PureSystems models, IBM says even organizations with limited IT skills and resources…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Digital Disruption and Engagement Relevance
In Adage: Digital Disruption Can Make TV Ads More, Not Less, RelevantHow An Era of Direct Relationships Will Give New Life to TV Ads By: James McQuivey of Forrester. And then what analytical methods can be used to make this…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Abolish the Patent System
Two economists argue in this paper that the patent system should be eliminated. I agree, most of what I have seen in that system system has been garbage, and just adds cost to the system.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
How fast should your dynamic arrays grow?
When programming in Java or C++, your arrays have fixed sizes. So if you have an array of 32 integers and you need an array with 33 integers, you may need to create a whole new array. It is inconvenient. Thus, both Java and C…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Analytics Skills
A fairly good list of things that are useful to be a successful analytics provider. Some of these are more generally good consulting skills. In particular, I emphasize and they cover, always learn the business that you are attempting…
From Schneier on Security
Why Is Quantum Computing So Hard?
Blog post (and two papers) by Ross Anderson and Robert Brady. News article.
From Michael Nielsen
The artist and the machine
In September of 2012, a team of scientists released a photograph showing the most distant parts of the Universe ever seen by any human being. They obtained the photograph by pointing the Hubble Space Telescope at a single tiny…
From Computer Science Teachers Association
It Is the Little Things That Count
Most of us look at advocacy from a larger perspective. We think of it in terms of Districts, States, National, etc and we sometimes forget it is the little things that matter most sometimes.
Currently I am enrolled in a graduate…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Presidential Innovation Fellows Program Accepting Applications
The White House is currently accepting applications for the second round of the Presidential Innovation Fellows (PIF) program. The program pairs top innovators from the private sector, non-profits and academia with top innovators…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Fitness Gamification
Again, what would appear to be an ideal application to embody in an engaging game. And with an App to be taken anywhere. And gather data. Wharton discusses:From Fitbit to Fitocracy: The Rise of Health Care GamificationThese…
From Schneier on Security
<i>New York Times</i> Hacked by China
This was big news last week, and I spent a lot of time doing press interviews about it. But while it is an important story -- hacking a newspaper, looking for confidential sources is fundamentally different from hacking forGhostNet…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
The Focus (Finding Outstanding Classrooms Using Social media)
The Focus (Finding Outstanding Classrooms Using Social media) is an online video show started by Don Wettrick to showcase GREAT teachers and students. I thought I would group his shows on this blog post as they appear as well…
From My Biased Coin
Zachary Quinto and Cherry Jones are in Town...
Harvard had a special faculty meet-the-director-deal thing for a preview of The Glass Menagerie, playing the next few weeks at the American Repertory Theater, that my wife and I went out to tonight. Cherry Jones and Zachary…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Cloud As Innovation Enabler in Consumer Goods
A set of observations about what is going on in Consumer Products from Smarter Planet. Some good examples of innovations to follow from the use of the Cloud. " ... In fact, recent research by IBM indicates that while 16 percent…