Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2011
From Computational Complexity
TAMC conference accepts are out/What does a name tell you about a general theory conference?
The TAMC conference list-of-accepts is posted here. TAMC stands for Theory and Application of Models of Computation.
For general theory conferences does the name tell you anything? I will consider FOCS, STOC, ICALP, TAMS, …From Putting People First
Faculty openings in design & human engineering at UNIST in Korea
In December Experientia signed a five-year research and education collaboration agreement with the Design and Human Engineering School (DHE) of the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) – Korea
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-03-16
GNU Free Call Announced This looks like an excellent initiative to create a decentralised voice-over-Internet service. Timely and necessary. (tags: Telephony FOSS OpenSource GNU VoIP Distributed) Japan before and after the disaster…
From Schneier on Security
Hacking Cars with MP3 Files
Impressive research:
By adding extra code to a digital music file, they were able to turn a song burned to CD into a Trojan horse. When played on the car's stereo, this song could alter the firmware of the car's stereo system…From Putting People First
Why user experience cannot be designed
Helge Fredheim wrote a smart article in Smashing Magazine to clarify why UX cannot be designed. “Several models of UX have been suggested, some of which are based on Hassenzahl
From Putting People First
How honest should smart devices be?
David Sherwin reflects on the frog design blog about the SXSW conference, starting from the questions raised in the contribution by Genevieve Bell (director of Intel
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Rebirth of DIY Software Development
In the heady, exciting, almost wild West atmosphere of the early days of PCs it seemed like almost everyone I knew was writing software in hopes of making a little extra money. Shareware was big. That was the idea that you would…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Mobile Updated
I see that the Google mobile App for the IPhone and iPad have been updated to include a much easier to use interface. More here. Works particularly well for searching images from a mobile device or changing media.I like the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Honesty of Smart Devices
How Honest should a smart device be? In Design Mind. Cultural anthropologists look at the interaction of devices, data and the expectations of human behavior. " ... what happens when our devices are sensitive, respectful,…
From Putting People First
Tough Sell: Selling User Experience
Misha W. Vaughan, architect of applications user experience at Oracle USA, reflects in this interesting, small article for the February 2011 issue of the Journal of Usability Studies on the challenges explaining the value of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Testing Phone-as-Wallet
Some reports via Ars Technica about Google testing the NFC short range capability for SmartPhones. There were rumors about the IPhone including NFC this year, but these have been squelched in the most recent wave of information…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Bringing R to the Data Warehouse
Given the increasing use of R in academia, this makes much sense. Increasingly people come out of school with knowledge of the Open Source package and its application. In ReadWriteWeb: " ... IBM Netezza and Revolution Analytics…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Moving Value of an Impression
Good recent piece in AdAge Digital. As I sit in a restaurant watching a number of people heads-down on smartphones. The attention budget we have is clearly now somewhere new, has changed remarkably and it is mobileHow Social…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
My Great Canadian Appathon Experience
This past weekend was the Great Canadian Appathon, a 48-hour game design and development competition. I was on Team Harmony with some of the guys who helped out with Gram's House, our Imagine Cup game. We'd already worked together…
From Wild WebMink
links for 2011-03-15
Open Source Software Hits a Strategic Tipping Point – Laurie Wurster – The Conversation – Harvard Business Review It is confirmed; open source has hit the top of the bell-curve. Gartner now believes it's a tipping-point trend…
From Putting People First
Experientia intern wins UNICEF 2010 INDEX design challenge
Experientia intern, Ane Eguiguren, together with her team partner Fran
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Heuristics
How do we learn? How do we develop strategy in games, in work, in our daily lives? We store information and we use information from the past to decide what will happen in the future. In software we use heuristics to create software…
From The Eponymous Pickle
KMart Tests AT&T Geolocated ShopAlerts
A not unexpected next step. The use of geo-fencing to understand location and react to it with push marketing. Most interesting will be how consumers buy into this idea with opt-ins. Some testing I have seen shows that shoppers…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Associative Memory in Defense and Aerospace
I have mentioned Saffron Technology several times here, we examined them for associative applications in the AI space for example-based knowledge systems. Here they are in the news: CDG, a Boeing Company, Becomes First to Offer…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Too Reliant on GPS?
In O'Reilly Radar, an article about the increasing reliance on GPS location signals. They are a critical part of our information infrastructure. Although it is illegal, the signals can be jammed and spoofed. There is also…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Easier Access to E-Books
More on E-Books from the library:"he steady growth of e-books has forced libraries to contend with how to curate and distribute materials in a way that makes them easy for increasingly technology-oriented patronage to access.…
From Computational Complexity
Computer Science Takes Over
We live in our own research areas. I focus on computational complexity and marvel at what our field has accomplished over my over 25 years in the field as well as the simple problems we have failed to solve. But every now and…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of March 14
March 14
Hearing:
The Intellectual Property, Competition and the Internet Subcommittee of the House Judiciary Committee will hold a hearing on promoting and protecting Internet commerce 4 p.m., 2141 Rayburn Building
March …From The Eponymous Pickle
Dropping the Dollar Bill
A clear case for replacing all US denominations below five dollars with coins. Why has it not worked in the past? Because they didn't remove the dollar bill. In MF Perry's blog.
From Wild WebMink
? Subscriptions Article Available
My article discussing why open source subscriptions should not be procured with the same assumptions and procedures as proprietary software is now available in the Essays section.
From Schneier on Security
Using Language Patterns to Identify Anonymous E-Mail
Interesting research. It only works when there's a limited number of potential authors:
To test the accuracy of their technique, Fung and his colleagues examined the Enron Email Dataset, a collection which contains over 200,000…From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 14 March 2011
This highlight of my week last week was being in Dallas Texas for SIGCSE. This is by far my favorite conference of the year. I was able to connect with a bunch of people who read my blog (thanks for mentioning that everyone),…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphone Enabled Cancer Detection
A protype that is a good example of mobile sensor-based data display and analysis: At the Singularity Hub: " ... Massachusetts General Hospital that have knocked it out of the park by integrating a microNMR device that accurately…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google Circles
It has been rumored that Google will soon launch a new social networking system called Google Circles. Do we need a new social network? The emphasis stated is that this will be about circles of colleagues and the ability to…
From The Eponymous Pickle
TED Opens up Data and Talks
FastCompany reports that the TED conference will open their talks and related data sources with an API around midyear. Creative idea.