Communications of the ACM
The blog archive provides access to past blog postings from Communications of the ACM and other sources by date.
March 2013
From Schneier on Security
Getting Security Incentives Right
One of the problems with motivating proper security behavior within an organization is that the incentives are all wrong. It doesn't matter how much management tells employees that security is important, employees know when …
From Putting People First
John Maeda on our life in 2020
In 2020 we might just regain some of the humanity that was lost in 2010, argues John Maeda, president of the Rhode Island School of Design. “The software industry is poised to embrace its craft heritage. By 2020 software will…
From Computer Science Teacher - Thoughts and Information From Alfred Thompson
Interesting Links 4 March 2013
Last week was school vacation week. Like a lot of teachers I spent the week catching up on things around the house. For me that meant spending a coup[le of days installing sheetrock on the ceiling of my family room. I spent far…
From The Eponymous Pickle
ZoomData
Real time data visualization on the iPad: Press release. " ... Zoomdata makes it easy for data administrators to quickly connect its stream-processing engine to a wide variety of real-time data feeds and historical data sources…
From The Eponymous Pickle
SlateUp: A New Knowledge Community
Just brought to my attention: SlateUp. More to follow. Membership now by invitation to .edu accounts. Check out the site for more information. Sponsored by Fortune 500 companies. More to follow here. Join us: " ... …
From The Eponymous Pickle
Towards an Augmediated Life
The new ideas that have been pushed forward for Google Glass look very similar to ideas that have presented for Augmented Reality (AR), while the AR approaches are delivered using the smartphone camera as an 'eye' portal. In…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Teach Robots Lateral Thinking
From MIT News: An area we examined. How do you teach a help mate robot ways to get around their physical limitations? A floor sweeping robot can trade time for a task addressing those limitations. But other examples ofwith…
From Wild WebMink
Not Risk But Trust
Amanda Palmer has stumbled on trust as the answer to the music industry's problems.
From The Eponymous Pickle
A Cloud Intrusion
An example of a cloud security issue with the popular package Evernote, which I have used for some time. Good example which led me to refresh my understanding of hashing and salting, as applied to Password security. And asecurity…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Putting a Value on Data
This question came to mind during a meeting this week. Here a good overview. To me it is first how the data can be used today to improve decision process.... and secondly how the data can be predicted to improve the process…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Watson in College
In GigaOM: more steps towards a revolution in AI? How do you learn and collaborate like humans? Our own journey into AI used similar methods, but the large enterprise does not have the research patience or funds of an IBM…
From Gödel's Lost Letter and P=NP
Cryptography Is Dead?
Comments from a keynote panel Whitfield “Whit” Diffie, Ron Rivest, Adi Shamir, and Dan Boneh are all famous cryptographers. They just gave a keynote panel at this year’s RSA Conference. Of course Rivest and Shamir are the ‘R’…
From The Eponymous Pickle
How Search Works
From Google, a mostly visual description of how search works. From algorithms to answers. No algorithm details, and all of this would be known by anyone who has followed the technology of search, but useful for instructional…
From Wild WebMink
Artificial Scarcity
When there’s no legitimate way to make money, dinosaur publishers resort to digital vandalism to create scarcity artificially. Technical measures that prevent reading digital books or listening to digital music are as ridiculous…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Stats on Interest in Statistics
The Numbers Guy in the WSJ comments on the increasing interest in statistics as a field of study. Since statistics is the underlying foundation of analytics, it is a good idea that more people are learning about it. Like all…
From U.S. Public Policy Committee of the ACM
House Creates Congressional App Challenge
The U.S. House of Representatives created a national academic competition this week for students to showcase their talents in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. Consistent with the importance of computer science…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Advertising and the Internet of things
In the HBR: An internet of things that links to deliverable advertising. Kevin Ashton, mentioned in the article, worked with us in the innovation center.
From Schneier on Security
Friday Squid Blogging: Another Squid Cartoon.
As usual, you can also use this squid post to talk about the security stories in the news that I haven't covered.
From Schneier on Security
Me on "Virtually Speaking"
Last week I was on "Virtually Speaking."
From Wild WebMink
Certification And Innovation
While there is probably a place for ”granular” certifications, especially if their origin is the external accreditation of real-world recognition inside a community-of-practice, abstract profession-wide certifications such as…
From The Computing Community Consortium Blog
NSF Smart and Connected Health (SCH) Program
The National Science Foundation (NSF) has recently announced the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) program solicitation. “The goal of the Smart and Connected Health (SCH) Program is to accelerate the development and use of innovative…
From Apophenia
Is Facebook Destroying the American College Experience?
Sitting with a group of graduating high school seniors last summer, the conversation turned to college roommates. Although headed off to different schools, they had a similar experience of learning their roommate assignment and…
From Putting People First
The user research behind HTC One’s Sense 5 interface
Drew Bamford, Director of User Experience at HTC, explains Sense 5.0 and why the company’s Android UX needed redefining. “HTC radically overhauled the look and feel of Sense UI aboard the HTC One. It removed the standard homescreen…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Strengthening Brand America
Ed Burghard curates and posts on economic development and place branding. Always some interesting ideas than can be applied to the local brand.
From The Eponymous Pickle
IBM Boosts Analytics Revenue Goals
Not unexpected based on my reading. The intersection of Big Data and analytics requires a consulting base, which IBM clearly has. Recent acquisitions also point in this direction. " ...IBM CEO Ginni Rometty said the company…
From The Eponymous Pickle
Publication as Process
On academic publication as process in CACM. Big changes are continuing in the space of how information is found, produced and delivered.
From Schneier on Security
Phishing Has Gotten <i>Very</i> Good
This isn't phishing; it's not even spear phishing. It's laser-guided precision phishing:
One of the leaked diplomatic cables referred to one attack via email on US officials who were on a trip in Copenhagen to debate issues…From Putting People First
The Google Glass feature no one is talking about
The Google Glass feature that (almost) no one is talking about is the experience – not of the user, but of everyone other than the user, writes Mark Hurst in a thought provoking post. “Anywhere you go in public – any store, any…
From Putting People First
In a world of connected devices, focus on what they do
Stacey Higginbotham reports on a the GigaOM Internet of things meetup in San Francisco a few days ago: “All of the participants agreed that the connected device wasn’t the product; the service was. Ideally, the Internet of things…