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 Apophenia
Reflections on Fear in a Networked Society
I’ve been trying to work through some ideas on how fear operates in a networked society. At Webstock in New Zealand, I gave a talk called “Culture of Fear + Attention Economy = ?!?!” Building on this, I gave a talk at SXSW called…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
Improving Our Ability to Predict Tornadoes
Today’s
From The Eponymous Pickle
Probabilistic Topic Models
In the CACM: Somewhat Technical, but some valuable insights: " ... Surveying a suite of algorithms that offer a solution to managing large document archives ..... As our collective knowledge continues to be digitized and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Getting Ready for Big Data
Good general piece in CIO about getting ready for Big Data. Companies will increasingly need to leverage the data within their own domains and lead rather than follow to make sure it is the right data as well.
From Computational Complexity
What is an Elegant Proof?
What is an elegant proof? I do not know and I doubt it can be well defined; however, we all know it when we see it. I welcome comments on the topic; however, I will give a very simple example for a contrast of elegant and non…
From The Eponymous Pickle
The Big Idea of Associative Intelligence
What is the big idea of Associative intelligence? In a back of the envelope exploration, Saffron Tech presents the idea. It is an important one. How do we save and retrieve the kind of fuzzy intelligence we use so successfully…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
We’ve previously described in this space
From BLOG@CACM
NITRD 20: A Day in Your Life
Progress in information technology over the past 20 years has dramatically changed our lives — in our daily routine, at play, and at work.
From Schneier on Security
Rare Spanish Enigma Machine
This is a neat story:
A pair of rare Enigma machines used in the Spanish Civil War have been given to the head of GCHQ, Britain's communications intelligence agency. The machines - only recently discovered in Spain - fill in…From BLOG@CACM
Happy 20th Birthday to NITRD!
The theme of NITRD's 20th birthday symposium was to recognize that in just 20 years, computing research has made astounding progress and has had an astounding impact on our lives, setting us up for an even more amazing future…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
26 March 2012
Busy week (as usual) in between meetings and trying to Get ready for Windows 8. I also spent some time at a high school programming contest which I
From Putting People First
Samsung criticised for lack of privacy protection on HD-TV
Samsung
From Putting People First
Desire engines
Nir Eyal’s third Techcrunch article on behavioural engineering, delves into the topic of “desire engines”. “Desire engines go beyond reinforcing behavior; they create habits, spurring users to act on their own, without the need…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Making Navigation Systems Unusable
In CNet Reviews: An example of how to let regulations contort perfectly good technology to make their use as unusable and complicated as possible. Keep it simple, please.
From The Eponymous Pickle
Shoppologist
Just discovered. The Shoppologist. Retro looking view at things shopping with some discovered gems.
From My Biased Coin
Aside on the Politics of Teaching
Paul Krugman says:"OK, I wasn
From Wild WebMink
? ORGCon, London
I spent the day yesterday at ORGCon with friends old and new, enjoying talks from a wide range of speakers including of course Cory Doctorow and Lawrence Lessig. There was a film crew recording all the talks; I’ll highlight some…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Smartphone vs Dumbphone and a Lesson in a Bagel Shop
Colleague Walter Riker looks at the Smart phone-dumb phone conundrum. I thought this was all solved already, but maybe not. Can everyone master the smart phone? Just the other day I had a waitress at a bagel shop ask me if…
From The Eponymous Pickle
VisionIQ Tagging Images
On VisionIQ: This was brought to mind because in a previous world I dealt with the methodology of reliably tagging arbitrary images, difficult without human assistance. " ... Image recognition platform ... IQ Engines
…From The Eponymous Pickle
Learning Bursts
A look at the concept of 'learning bursts'. short time duration, repeated learning sessions. " ... A learning burst is a combination of an eight- to 10-minute audio cast similar to a talk show, which can be played on any compatible…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Who Is In Charge
I have to confess that I have not been doing a great job of keeping up with my blog reading lately. I
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
In Memoriam: David L. Waltz
The computing research community lost a wonderful researcher, colleague, and friend last week. David L. Waltz, whose extraordinary contributions and service to the field included a term as member of the CCC Council
From Computer Science Teachers Association
Single Sex CS Education from the Student's Perspective
As a student at an all-women's college, there are no barriers to my exploration of typically male-dominated fields. Before taking an introductory computer science class, I had very little knowledge of programming languages and…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Preventive Health via Social Gaming
Kind of an obvious thing at one level. But how do you make it work well? Health is a personal thing, so are people willing to share specific information to empower the gaming dynamic?
From My Biased Coin
Best Written Paper
Daniel Lemire pointed to an article on bad writing in science (here if you care to see, not CS-specific), which got me to thinking: do we (in whatever subcommunity you think of yourself being in) value good writing? Should…
From The Eponymous Pickle
WalMart Labs and Big Data Tools
Intriguing Change:" ... Walmart is making a change in the way it does online commerce and there
From The Eponymous Pickle
P&G and PInterest
An interesting piece about P&G using Pinterest. Always something new. Not sure if it solves their social media 'problem', but it does get some new brand managers something distinctive to do.
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
A Workshop on Non-Intrusive Appliance Load Monitoring
Mario Berg
From The Female Perspective of Computer Science
Where Have I Been Lately, Anyway?
While I managed to get back on the blogging bandwagon in February, I've had a pretty big gap here in March. So where the heck have I been?I'd love to blame my absences on the baby, but it's not entirely her fault. She's been…
From Putting People First
mBCC Field Guide for Developing Mobile Behavior Change Communication Programs
The