Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2009
From BLOG@CACM
Google Android Authentication
I recently saw a Google Android phone at HotMobile 2009 and was intrigued by the drawing-based authentication mechanism built in. Basically, there's a 3x3 grid of dots, and to log in, you simply use your finger and draw a pattern…
From insideHPC
Article explores answers for challenges faced by virtualization in
Twitter user LeahRosin tweeted a link to this article yesterday at SearchEnterpriseLinux.com, “Virtualization for high-performance computing on Linux: Critiques and challenges” In my tip Using virtualization to reinvent high-performance…
From Springenwerk Blog
github iPhone client
Wow, that was quick! It took only 6 days (or 4 work days) for my iPhone app to be reviewed and approved by Apple. It's my 3rd iPhone app, but my first own, not-for-a-customer app. Very exciting :) It's called "gittop" and it's…
From insideHPC
Cilk++ 1.0 multicore C++ development environment
This week parallel programming platform developer Cilk Arts announced the release of 1.0 of their flagship product, Cilk++ for Windows and Linux The Cilk++ programming platform reduces the challenge of multicore software programming…
From insideHPC
Acceleware announces GPU services
This week HPC application appliance maker Acceleware (about whom I’ve written in depth before) announced the formation of a new professional services team Acceleware…announced a new CUDA-based professional services offering,…
From insideHPC
Hosted HPC on the
Michael Feldman blogs at HPCwire this week about the evident increase in customers taking advantage of hosted HPC services, and Microsoft’s Cloud Computing Futures announcement While the main audience for utility computing is…
From insideHPC
TeraGrid conference looking for education, workforce development
This week 2009 TeraGrid Conference announced it is looking for submissions that highlight successes in training and workforce development — part of HPC’s contribution to lightening the load of our current economic situation The…
From insideHPC
Russian HPC company intros cell-based system at
Russian HPC maker T-Platforms, which has sytems on the Top500, is showing off its new cell-based gear at CeBIT this week in Hanover T-Platforms company, the leading Russian developer and provider of supercomputers, takes part…
From insideHPC
SiCortex science to science
SiCortex announced this week that it is beginning a webinar series to highlight the ways in which HPC is used in science…on SiCortex gear, one presumes. In each installment of the series, scientists from renowned academic institutions…
From ACM-W supporting, celebrating and advocating for Women in Computing
Ada Lovelace DayGuest Blogger: Barbara Boucher Owens, USA
Ada Lovelace Day is March 24, 2009. A movement to promote female role models in technology is underfoot and you can help. But first some background, most of which I gleaned from Betty Toole's marvelous biography, Ada, The Enchantress…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Kindle on the IPhone
I have mentioned here several times that I was not willing to drag around yet another device and so was not interested in buying a Kindle. I have tried a number of book reading devices including several on the IPhone such as…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Designing the User Interface
A good review, which describes what is new in the book: Designing the User Interface, 5th Edition by Ben Shneiderman and Catherine Plaisant. I have a much earlier edition, which I found very useful. This edition is said to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ConAgra Looks at Store Marketing
An interview with ConAgra on in-store marketing.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Institute for Large Scale Innovation
Just founded by John Kao and Deloitte, of interest:The Institute for Large Scale Innovation (ILSI) is a non-profit organization founded to address three key questions: How can innovation be fostered most effectively at a societal…
From insideHPC
Rocks-A-Palooza
The Rocks cluster toolkit developers have announced the fourth annual Rocks-A-Palooza.
From Daniel Lemire's Blog
On academic branding
Good communication is part of our jobs as researchers. And communicating well, in 2009, means having an effective web presence. When I read someone’s paper, and I like it, I want to know who the person is. Sometimes it is merely…
From BLOG@CACM
Three Misconceptions About Human-Computer Interaction
Three misconceptions about the field of human-computer interaction, as observed by an AI researcher turned HCI researcher in a large corporate research lab
From insideHPC
120 more employees laid off at
Timothy Prickett Morgan at The Register is reporting today that another 9% of SGI’s workforce has been laid off Supercomputer maker Silicon Graphics has let go 120 more employees, nine per cent of its workforce, in an effort…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Caromatherapy
The Whiff Guys, sensory specialists, report on caromatheraphy experimentation by Mercedes-Benz. Read it as car-aromatherapy. Admittedly only in the luxury limo division, but more about personalizing contexts in which we live.…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sites that Excerpt: Legal?
Excerpts from the NYTimes like the one below from the article: Copyright Challenge for Sites That Excerpt, are coming under fire. It is true that most of the challenges are for much larger pieces of screen scraping and somethis…
From insideHPC
Cray Forms Indian
Cray has announced a new wholly owned subsidiary in India. The senior management at Cray has felt for some time that the company needed to expand its footprint in India to provide a strong, local presence for our customers,”…
From insideHPC
NCAR Bill Signed by
Governor Dave Freudenthal of Wyoming has signed a bill into law that removes a potential bureaucratic bump in building the new National Center for Atmospheric Research [NCAR] supercomputing center in Cheyenne.
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Pscyh Angle of the Netflix Prize
The Netflix prize is a well known example of pattern recognition from a large database. $1,000,000 to anyone that can improve Netflix's movie rating system by at least 10%. In Wired, the non-technical telling of a new approach…
From Putting People First
Design thinking for the future at LIFT09
The session devoted to Design Thinking was my personal favourite of the entire 2009 LIFT conference. Beyond the engineers and business’ discourse about the future, what is it designers can propose? What sort of alternatives are…
From Springenwerk Blog
Links for 2009-03-02 [del.icio.us]
From Putting People First
March-April issue of Interactions Magazine devoted to trust
More and more content of Interactions Magazine is becoming available online. The latest March-April issue is devoted to trust and “explores the idea of assurance and the feelings of ease or unease related to relationships of…
From Putting People First
Consumers in a downturn: a new spending habit? (part 1)
The business channel of The Atlantic Online published this weekend the first of two articles by Grant McCracken on the implications of the recession on consumer habits. This article just deals with three variations of a mere…
From Putting People First
Industry trends in prototyping
Get an overview of the thought process and common strategies for generating prototypes from Dave Cronin, Director of Interaction Design at Cooper. Although applied to Fireworks, Cronin’s discourse is general, especially when…
From Putting People First
From Congo to Kathmandu, how mobiles have transformed the world
The Guardian published a special section on the role of mobile phones in emerging markets: Nice talking to you … mobile phone use passes milestone A UN report reveals that half the globe now pays to use one, with the fastest…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Useful Sketch Tagging Examined
I recently mentioned the service called Sketchory, which contains 250K free-to-use sketches. Like the image on the right which I got when I asked for 'abstract'. Nice service. I have been involved with the problem of tagging…