Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
February 2015
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CISE AD Issues Letter to Community on FY 16 Budget Rollout
National Science Foundation (NSF) Assistant Director for the Directorate of Computer & Information Science & Engineering (CISE) James Kurose has issued the following letter to the community describing Monday’s FY16 budget rollout…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson Adds Services to Developer Cloud
In SiliconAngle: Notable to me is the speech to text capability. But the added analytics are also good directons. I am in the midst of working with startups to evaluate Watson services. So far these capabilities look very…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Whats Next for Data Security in Retail?
In Retailwire: " ... According to Boston Retail Partners' 2015 POS/Customer Engagement Benchmarking Survey, payment security ranked among the top three priorities by retailers for 2015 for the first time in 16 years. More than…
From Schneier on Security
NSA Using Hacker Research and Results
In the latest article based on the Snowden documents, the Intercept is reporting that the NSA and GCHQ are piggy-backing on the work of hackers: In some cases, the surveillance agencies are obtaining the content of emails by…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Innovative Cloud Computing
In February IEEE Computing Now:Achieving Dynamic Capabilities with Cloud ComputingHear how senior IT executives are maximizing their organizations’ dynamic adaptability through new and innovative uses of cloud computing. ...…
From Schneier on Security
GPG Financial Difficulties
Werner Koch, who has been maintaining the GPG email encryption program since 1997, is going broke and considering quitting. Updates to the article say that, because of the article, he has received substantial contributions to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Glass Still Alive in the Enterprise
In CIO Mag: Showing that despite all the bad press and ridicule it has its place in focused applications.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Expertise On Demand
The following is a guest blog post by Sharoda Paul, former Computing Community Consortium (CCC) CI Fellow now Collaboration Researcher at GE Global Research. In 2011, GE embarked on a multibillion-dollar initiative called…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Expert is not Good Enough: Inserting Advice
Professor Wayne Gray of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute gave an excellent talk today at the Cognitive Systems Institute Thursday talk series: Expert is not good enough! Asymptotes, Plateaus, and Limits to Everyday Human Performance…
From BLOG@CACM
Why the Pass at the End of Super Bowl XLIX Was the Right Call
If we explore the logic behind the Seattle coaching decision near the end of Superbowl XLIX with computational thinking, we'll see it was the correct decision.
From The Eponymous Pickle
The New Marketing Golden Age
Long piece, lots of interesting thoughts. I have been involved in many parts of these efforts, not all successful. Though the tech is fictionalized, it did happen and continues to evolve: In McKinsey:" ... Marketers are boosting…
From The Eponymous Pickle
CogSketch
Very interesting project. We examined a number of ways to make people more visually creative, including training groups to improve their ability to sketch. Many conversations with graphics recording artist David Sibbet onKen…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Beacons and Retail Shelf Labels
We did much work with electronic shelf labels (ESL). See the link below for much more. Quite natural to connect them to the beacon idea as part of retail infrastructure. Combines visual and data transmission.. In the RFID…
From Computational Complexity
Computers Turn Good and Evil
Entertainment Weekly proclaimed 2015 the year that artificial intelligence will rule the (movie) world with talk of the Terminator reboot, the new Avengers movie Age of Ultron, where Ultron is an attempt at a good AI robot turned…
From Geeking with Greg
Quick links
What has caught my attention lately:
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smart Securing of IOT Device Data
In the CACM: Work is going ahead on security concerns for the Internet of Things. This sounds simple, but I wonder that it won't be easy to unravel." ... The main problem involves finding a way to share necessary information…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Driverless Cars and Retail
In the News, concept cars designed for a driverless future. In a previous post I pointed to a simulation study that indicated that driverless cars could increase congestion. Contrary to expectations. Now Retailware startshow…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strap HQ Software and Analytics Platform
Strap. Brought to my attention. A local startup of interest. More to follow. " ... The only platform that goes everywear ... " ...." ... Strap is a software and analytics platform that unleashes the potential of wearables…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Scaling Kanban
Being agile. " ... It is a misconception that in an agile organization all teams would use agile methods. There are many different methods, teams have to apply what works for them and adapt it to their situation. Organizations…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Hadoop and Governance
A topic that has come up a number of times in discussions about the construction of Big Data solutions. Is it a test bench system or a fundamental part of a company's infrastructure. Governance and risk need to be considered…
From Schneier on Security
Tracking Bitcoin Scams
Interesting paper: "There's No Free Lunch, Even Using Bitcoin: Tracking the Popularity and Profits of Virtual Currency Scams," by Marie Vasek and Tyler Moore. Abstract: We present the first empirical analysis of Bitcoin-based…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Limitations of Geospatial Analytics
In Datamag: Really some very classic issues about the limitations of long term forecasting in general. " ... From a statistical analysis standpoint, modeling natural disasters as black swan risk-mitigation scenarios is better…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Visual Search for eProcurement
Have brought up this method a number of times for minimizing costs. Now new methods include a novel visualization supporting search to find better, cheaper, procurement solutions. They describe it: " ... Vinimaya, Inc., a leader…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Fiscal Year 2016 Budget Request
Yesterday, the National Science Foundation (NSF) Director France A. Córdova outlined President Obama’s fiscal year (FY) 2016 budget request to Congress for NSF. The FY16 request calls for $7.7 billion for NSF, an increase of…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Girls Who Code Is Hiring Paid Teaching Staff
Looks like these opportunities are in New York, Detroit and San Francisco.
Girls Who Code is a national non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology. Through our Summer Immersion Program and Girls …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Leading Thinkers on Growth and Prosperty
In McKinsey:"Leading thinkers on how to maintain economic growth and prosperity .... What is the single biggest opportunity we can act on now to sustain rising prosperity for the long term? ... "
From The Eponymous Pickle
Business Process Modeling and Cognitive AI
Announcement of a webinar February 18, on BPM and Cognitive AI. By colleague Peter Fingar. As a practioner of both technologies, this interaction is a favorite topic of mine. More details here. " .... Webinar: The Next…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Amazon Echo as a Task Channel
Have ordered an Amazon Echo. This is the Amazon always-on microphone/speaker. Which claims an AI voice recognition and task enablement system. It is Beta, but a friend who is using it now says it works fairly well. Similar…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
New USDOT Connected Vehicle Solicitation
The United States Department of Transportation (USDOT) is pleased to announce the release of a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) for the Connected Vehicle (CV) Pilot Deployment Program, Phase 1: Concept Development. From the solicitation…
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
Your brain and its software patches
Scott Alexander wrote a series of great posts on genetic determinism. He recounts how he believes he learned English without any effort but could not learn Calculus. He explains that a 7-feet-tall healthy individual is almost…