Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2012
From My Biased Coin
Pointers, Not Papers
Having just crammed everything we could of a 10 page paper into 5 pages for a workshop paper, I admit that besides (once again) being annoyed by having to go through this process, I'm not clear for the reasons behind it. I understand…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Google's Knols are Going Away
I was just sent a message warning me that the Google Knol system will be retired by April 30. We experimented with it in the enterprise in 2007, thinking about the potential of using it internally as an architecture for aIn…
From Schneier on Security
The Keywords the DHS Is Using to Analyze Your Social Media Posts
According to this document, received by EPIC under the Freedom of Information Act, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security is combing through the gazillions of social media postings looking for terrorists. A partial list of…
From The Eponymous Pickle
IKEA Re Engineers the Touch Pad
For the launch of their iPad catalog IKEA has commissioned a clever new take a touch tablet designed for cold weather mittens. Video.
From Computer Science Teachers Association
New Education-Related Tools
Last month I attended the Consumer Electronics Show, the largest annual convention held in Las Vegas. The 2012 CES featured more than 2,700 vendors, 1.8 million square feet of exhibits and 140,000 attendees. While there were…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
CS 2012 Strawman Draft Comment Period Open
As I mentioned a few weeks ago, (ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curricula 2013 - Strawman draft) the ACM/IEEE-CS Computer Science Curricula 2013 (CS2013) Strawman draft is now available at the CS2013 website or directly at: http…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Addressing Shopper Behavioral Shifts
Good piece from the editor of Mobile Marketer. Behavior is changing rapidly and retailers will have to keep up to survive. The data to describe this change is now appearing. Can we analyze it to tailor the future response?…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Self Propelled Shopping Cart
A Kinect shopping cart that follows people around the store and can track what they put into it. The 'smarter cart' as they put it. Have followed and tested many of these ideas. Seems there may be many details that still…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
First Person:
Last week, we blogged about
From BLOG@CACM
COLT/ICML Open Problems and ICML Instructions
Open problems will be presented in a joint session in the evening of the COLT/ICML overlap day. If you have a difficult, theoretically definable problem in machine learning, consider submitting it for review, due March 16.
…From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Thank You!
I’d like to pause briefly today to acknowledge you — our readers. On behalf of the CCC Council,
From Schneier on Security
Comic: Movie Hacking vs. Real Hacking
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
More on Signing Up for DreamSpark and AppHub
About a month ago I wrote a post (DreamSpark and AppHub Sign Up) to help people step through the process of signing up for DreamSpark and AppHub accounts. The problem at the time was that signing in for people who had already…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Gartner Quadrant for Business Intelligence
In Tableau Software's blog they publish an overview of the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Business Intelligence. A useful representation, but hardly quantitative, so it is ironic that it is about a BI topic. Much quibbling…
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
The Little Things Matter When Learning Math
I recently started tutoring someone for grade 11 college prep1 math. Our first topic was trigonometric equations for solving triangles. When my student got stuck on solving a right triangle after finishing several problems110810…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Marketing Optimization as a Big Data Problem
A very interesting article in the SAS Blog. " ... One of the areas that high-performance analytics has the potential to improve is marketing optimization. In fact, almost every presentation I see about high-performance analytics…
From Computational Complexity
The Internet of the Present
On this blog we rarely get non-spam comments on posts more than a few days old. Sometimes I can bring up a topic I had posted on just a few months ago and no one will notice. When people said they enjoyed my blog I used to ask…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
Hill Tech Happenings, Week of March 5
March 6 Hearing: The Science and Space Subcommittee of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee will hold a hearing on research and development investments. 2:30 p.m., 253 Russell Building March 7 Hearing: The…
From Schneier on Security
Themes from the RSA Conference
Last week was the big RSA Conference in San Francisco: something like 20,000 people. From what I saw, these were the major themes on the show floor:
From The Eponymous Pickle
Documenting the Human Face of Big Data
A photographic project. What is it and what are its implications? More here.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
On the heels of Saturday’s New York Times‘ story about iRobot, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is out with a feature
From The Eponymous Pickle
Titan Trading and Recorded Future Predictive Signals
I have been working with and testing some of the predictive analytics capabilities of RecordedFuture for some time now. You can test it for yourself at the link. Powerful idea to understand the semantic implications of the…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Pepsi Urges Speed and Data Gathering
In CPGMatters: " ... The food industry needs to speed up the way it collects data, develops products, reduces days of inventory, and deals with the convergence of online and in-store shopping. To make that happen, trading partners…
From The Eponymous Pickle
E-Books Interrupt Themselves
In The NY Times Media and Advertising Section: I have pondered this recently as I have started to use e-Books more often. My smartphone and pad readers interrupt me with the gentle ping of an incoming message. So I stop…
From Putting People First
Low2No featured in ARUP Design Yearbook 2011
The Design Yearbook 2011 of ARUP — the global firm of designers, planners, engineers, consultants and technical specialists that Experientia collaborated with on the Low2No project in Helsinki — is a gorgeous overview of the…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
CIA CTO:
Ira “Gus” Hunt, the CIA’s
From Schneier on Security
British Anti-Theft Briefcase from the 1960s
From Putting People First
How to manufacture desire
Nir Eyal continues his article series on Techcrunch (see also “Habits are the new viral“) with a short essay on manufacturing desire. “Companies increasingly find that their economic value is a function of the strength of the…
From Putting People First
Book: The Transition Companion
The Transition Companion: making your community more resilient in uncertain times by Rob Hopkins Chelsea Green Pub Co, November 2011 320 pages Abstract In 2008, the bestselling The Transition Handbook suggested a model for a…
From Putting People First
Book: The Power of Habit
The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg Random House, February 2012 400 pages Abstract In The Power of Habit, award-winning New York Times business reporter Charles Duhigg takes us to the…