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 Wild WebMink
A Bright Future For LibreOffice
Following on from my blog post at ComputerWorldUK, InfoWorld in the US asked me if I would write a column for them about LibreOffice. I gathered together the rather large number of positive news releases from the community in…
From Putting People First
The landscape of UX design in Asia
Daniel Szuc and Josephine Wong describe the current state of UX design in Asia: “As businesses in Asia in various domains look to how they can mature, differentiate and compete globally in their respective products and services…
From Putting People First
Connected Learning
Together with a committed group of colleagues and partners, cultural anthropologist Mimi Ito has been engaged in the MacArthur Foundation
From Putting People First
Book: Wicked Problems
Austin Center for Design today published a new book focused on the role of design in social entrepreneurship. Titled Wicked Problems: Problems Worth Solving, the book is presented as a handbook for teaching, learning, and doing…
From The Noisy Channel
Strata 2012: Big Data is Bigger than Ever!
I spent the last three days at the O’Reilly Strata Conference, an assembly of two thousand people focused on data science and its applications. While I’m wary of industry conferences from attending vendor-fests in my past life…
From Apophenia
Born This Way Foundation: guided by research
Yesterday, Cynthia Germanotta and her daughter Lady Gaga launched their new initiative to empower youth: the Born This Way Foundation. The Foundation wants to create a kinder, braver world so that youth can be the change-agents…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Mobile Apps and Mobile Strategies
Brought to my attention: Building a Mobile App Is Not a Mobile Strategy In the HBR. With some thoughtful comments as well.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Changing Cognition in Kids
Interesting piece in the Atlantic. Regarding a Pew report: " ... The survey found, overall, what many others already have: that neuroplasticity is, indeed, a thing; that multitasking is, indeed, the new norm; that hyperconnectivity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Studying Cyber attacks
In CACM: A Comparative study of cyber attacks. Technical and quantitative view that I have not seen before.
From Schneier on Security
State Department Redacts Wikileaks Cables
The ACLU filed a FOIA request for a bunch of cables that Wikileaks had already released complete versions of. This is what happened:
The agency released redacted versions of 11 and withheld the other 12 in full. The five excerpts…From The Eponymous Pickle
Fragrance Interaction at Burt's Bees
Always interested in alternative sensory interaction and engagement. Here in AdAge's blog, a note about the fragrance Gud, From Burt's Bees (A Unit of Clorox) , which is using a social and scratch-and-sniff method, distributed…
From Wild WebMink
? Why I Want My Pi
The Raspberry Pi reminds me of my youth – it’s a gadget like that which got me interested in technology in the first place. I hope the Pi will tempt today’s generation in a similar direction Read more at ComputerWorldUK.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Barbara Liskov Named to Inventors Hall of Fame
Turing Award-winner
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Social Networks and Mobility in the Cloud
The following is a special contribution to this Blog by Amr El Abbadi, Professor of Computer Science at the University of California at Santa Barbara, Christos Faloutsos, Professor of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University…
From Schneier on Security
Detect Which Social Networking Sites Website Visitors Are Logged Into
Clever hack.
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
It Doesn
Recently someone posted the following question and bit of code to the Advanced Placement Computer Science teacher mailing list:
Assuming that all values are ints that have been properly initialized, which two of the following…From Putting People First
German divide between
The divide between
From The Eponymous Pickle
Sports Analytics: Beyond Moneyball
Excellent article in Informs' Analytics Magazine. With links back to some detailed analytical studies in the sports industry. May of these same thoughts can be applied to outside of sports." ... Over the past several years…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Thoughtful Risk Taking
From Knowledge@Wharton: Kodak and MasterCard. Kodak is a company I have followed for many years, and even interacted with in the innovation space. How could they fail? Impressed with the details behind MasterCard" ... The…
From Wild WebMink
? Scutter Prototypes
In the humourous cult sci-fi TV series Red Dwarf, which is set aboard a space ship far in the future, the ship is cleaned and maintained by odd-job-robots called Scutters. Watching this demonstration of the aerial robotic equivalent…